THE BISHOPS OF MEATH.

CHAPTER I.

DR. WILLIAM WALSH.

Succeeded 1554. Died 1577.

DR. WILLIAM WALSH, of whom a short notice appeared in our last volume,* was born, most probably, in Dunboyne, County Meath, joined the Cistercian order, and, by apostolic dispensation, became a member of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine. He visited Rome, officiated as chaplain in the palace of Cardinal Pole, professed Theology, became Prior of Duleek and Colpe, and Rector of Loxeudy, County Westmeath. At the suggestion of Cardinal Pole, he was nominated to the see of Meath,† and, by special commission, was associated with the zealous Primate, Dr. Dowdall, in healing the wounds inflicted on religion during the disastrous reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., and in expelling from the sanctuary the false, impenitent brethren who had shamefully betrayed their sacred trust. He was consecrated about the close of 1554, and immediately proceeded in the visitation of his extensive diocese, denouncing vice, reforming the abuses which had

*The Diocese of Meath, pp. 104-110.

† Meath was regarded as an English see, in consequence of its position in the Pale; and the Kings of England had been accustomed to write to Rome for the appointments of its bishops, as for the prelates of England. At the time of Dr. Walsh's succession the see was impoverished, as the Church property had been plundered during the previous reigns. See Dr. Moran's very valuable work on the Catholic Archbishops of Dublin, vol. i., part i., p. 52.

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crept in during the days of schism and heresy, and animating all to renewed fervor in the practices of religion. His remarkable piety and charity, his wonderful zeal and spotless life, rendered him an object of love and veneration to the people; while his great learning, unbending orthodoxy, and filial devotion to the Holy See, overwhelmed with confusion the enemies of the faith. Four years of unremitting labor, of apostolic zeal and efficiency, had scarcely passed by, when Elizabeth ascended the throne of England, set herself up as a ruler and a director of God's Church, and unsheathed the sword of persecution against all who refused to embrace her novelties. Dr. Walsh, like a faithful bishop, nothing daunted, preached boldly and fearlessly against these innovations, and warned his flock to sacrifice everything in this world, even life itself, rather than renounce one iota of their faith. For refusing to acknowledge the Queen's spiritual supremacy, he was imprisoned by the Lord Lieutenant; and the new female Pope, the impersonation, forsooth! of Scriptural truth and of ecclesiastical freedom, as a mark of her royal displeasure, ordered him to be kept under close arrest. Incarceration and penalties having failed to intimidate the noble confessor, they next proceeded to depose him-as far as these laymen could depose him—and to deprive him of his temporalities—that is, of his means of living-as a punishment for his want of pliancy, for his fidelity to his vows. On the 16th of July, 1565, Loftus, Protestant Archbishop of Armagh, one of the royal commissioners, wrote to Sir William Cecilt that, on the 13th of that month, by virtue of their commission, they had put into prison, in Dublin Castle, Dr. Walsh, late Bishop of Meath, for refusing to take the oath of supremacy, and to subscribe to the new formularies of

*Ware's Annals place this event in the year 1560.-See Diocese of Meath, p. 108. Two of the head commissioners wrote to the Privy Council in 1564, that "we thought good that they meddle not with the simple multitude for the present, but with one or two boasting Mass-men in every shire." Shirley, p. 140.

t Shirley's Original Letters, p. 219.

religion. He adds that Dr. Walsh protested in open court, in presence of all the people, against the new doctrines, as irreconcilable with conscience, and opposed to God's word; that he would never be present at such services, or hold communion with those who adopted them; and concludes by observing that Dr. Walsh "is one of great credit amongst his countrymen, and upon whom (as touching causes of religion) they wholly depend." In a word, the agents of the Reformation admitted that Dr. Walsh, by his learning and influence, was one of the most formidable antagonists to the Queen's novelties, and hence, that for the diffusion of Protestantism, and the uprooting of ancient worship, he ought to be put out of the way. Queen Elizabeth never spared a foe. She hated the Catholic Church with a fiendish hatred; she resolved to extirpate it from her dominions, and she sacrificed all persons, without distinction of age or sex, who dared to disobey her edicts. In the pride and plenitude of her power, she passed laws against the Mass, the invocation of saints, the venerable authority of the Holy See; she welcomed the right of private judgment in order to abrogate ecclesiastical jurisdiction, but she took care to punish with fine, imprisonment, and death, all who presumed to judge otherwise than as she judged herself. Dr. Walsh, of course, knew well what he had to expect for opposing such a fanatic; but he resolved, like St. Thomas of Canterbury, even at the peril of his life, to vindicate principle, to resist all lay encroachment on Church authority, and to guard his flock, as he was bound, against the snares laid for their ruin. As a punishment for his loyalty to God, and fidelity to his sacred trust, he was arrested in the Queen's name, and re-conducted to his former prison, which was a "subterraneous dungeon, damp and noisomenot a ray of light penetrating thither."* Here for thirteen years he suffered with the constancy of a martyr, until his persecutors, at length_vanquished by his firmness, connived at his escape. Dr. Moran, from authentic, as

well as unpublished records, thus describes the close of our bishop's life, the termination of his sufferings, and his happy death:*

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During all that time (of his imprisonment in Dublin) his food was of the coarsest kind; and, with the exception of rare intervals, when the intercession of some influential friends obtained a momentary relaxation, he was allowed no occupation that could cheer the tedium of his imprisonment. In all this lengthened martyrdom prayer was his resource, and, as he himself subsequently avowed, he oftentimes passed whole days and nights overwhelmed with heavenly consolations, so that his dungeon seemed transformed into a paradise of delights. To preclude the possibility of idleness, he procured a bed made of twisted cords, and whensoever his mind was fatigued with prayer, he applied himself to untie these cords, and often was he well wearied with the exertion before he could reunite them to compose himself to sleep.

"His persecutors, overcome by his constancy, and finding his fervour in spiritual contemplation a continual reproach to their own wickedness, at length, about Christmas, 1572, connived at his escape. Sailing from our shores, his only regret was to abandon the field of his spiritual labours, and to leave his flock defenceless amidst the many enemies that now compassed its destruction. His friends had provided a ship bound for Bretagne. For sixteen days he was tossed on the waves by a viclent storm, and was at length driven in shipwreck on the coast of France. Weighed down with the infirmities which he contracted in prison, and with the burden of more than sixty years, he was compelled to remain for six months unknown and abandoned in Nantes. At length, receiving aid from the Nuncio, he proceeded to Paris, and thence to Spain.

*

Dr. Moran consulted the Fasciculus SS. Ord. Cistercien, and Menelogium Ordin. Cistercien, compiled by Henriquez; also a fragment of an Italian Martyrology of the Cistercians, written in the seventeenth century, and preserved in the Valicellian archives; and three letters, written by Dr. Walsh, which he discovered in the archives of the Vatican.-See note under page 130 of the Catholic Archbishops of Dublin. In a fragmentary account of the Irish Church, compiled in 1580, preserved in the Vatican archives, there is reference to Dr. Walsh in the following words :-" Meath is vacant by the death of William Walsh, who died in Alcalá two years ago, suffragan of the Archbishop of Toledo.”—Irish Ecclesiastical Record, December, 1866, p. 149.

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