I. 1694 And in what condition was the Church which was CHAP. thus determined to assert its sovereignty so peremptorily? Hacket, the Bishop of Down and Connor, who, in Lord Clarendon's time had been six years absent from his diocese, was residing still undisturbed at Hammersmith, and openly sold his preferments. Clarendon had ordered his return. He had paid no attention. In 1691 the Primate of Ireland applied to Archbishop Tillotson to appoint a coadjutor. The Archbishop discovered difficulties, but recommended that Hacket should be deprived for scandalous neglect of his charge.' Two more years passed. The diocese was reported as in hopeless disorder; and, in 1693, the Bishops of Meath, Derry, and Dromore went down as commissioners to examine and punish. The first offender who fell under their notice was Archdeacon Matthews, the persecutor. The character of this gentleman may be described by the commissioners: 'Dr. Mathews, as Archdeacon of Down, had four cures without any vicarages endowed, and five cures as Prebendary of Carncastle, in the diocese of Connor. On some of them he never had any resident curates; on others he had only nominal curates, to answer at visitations, but not perform other offices; on others curates altogether insufficient and unfit. Where he had curates he did not allow them sufficient maintenance. Catechizing, visiting the sick, administration of the sacraments, were so neglected that many left the Church and turned Presbyterians and Papists. To save charge of curates, he corrupted visitation-books, procured the Bishop to unite parishes in perpetuum, chose no churchwardens, usurped the Bishop's office in some BOOK II. 1694 parts of ordination. As Chancellor of the diocese of Down his misbehaviour had been equally great." Matthews was deprived of his archdeaconry and suspended from his other offices. He scraped together what money he could lay hands on and rushed to London to appeal; the Lords Justices thinking it necessary to write to the Archbishop of Canterbury to desire that no favour might be shown to him.2 Hacket's case followed. The Bishop was convicted of non-residence and of flagrant simony. He had delegated his authority to women. He had admitted Papists to church livings, giving them false certificates of subscription. He was past improvement. The Commissioners deposed him, and declared the see vacant.3 Ward, Dean of Connor, was deprived for adultery and incontinence. Mylne, a prebendary of Kilrush, was reprimanded for habitual drunkenness, and suspended for neglect of his duties. Down and Connor, it may be said, was an exceptional diocese. Scandals had crept in through the Bishop's absence, and when discovered were vigorously reformed. But such exceptions should have ceased to be possible before the Prelates of the Church took on themselves to punish others for doing work which their own officials could leave undone; work, it may be said, which it was impossible in the nature of things that they could ever discharge effectually. The presentations to the great majority of benefices was in the hands of the Government. Irish government patronage, spiritual and secular, ran generally in political grooves, and was disposed of to purchase 1 'Report of Ecclesiastical Commissioners, 1694.' MSS. Ireland, Record Office. 2 The Lords Justices to the Archbishop of Canterbury.' Ibid. 3 Ibid. I. 1702 votes in Parliament. A corrupt secretary, if he CHAP. chose to use his opportunity and distribute Church preferment to his own advantage, was never at a loss. for a clergyman who was eager to make a simoniacal bargain with him.' Every parish, according to law, was to have a local school supported by the incumbent. A single instance will show how vainly even the best bishops struggled against abuses which turned the act, as a scheme of national education, into an insult to the Irish people. Among the waste lands thrown in as makeweights among his other bargains by the Court of Claims in 1652, Sir William Petty had secured the larger portion of the mountains of Kerry. At that time they were covered with forest, and Petty, who had a true genius for turning opportunities to account, had established furnaces at Kilmakilloge on the Kenmare river, at Kenmare itself, and at other spots in the neighbourhood to which ore was brought from England to be smelted. Small knots of Protestants had thus been collected and dispersed over a district where their presence, had they remained there, would afterwards have been of incalculable service. They had cod and ling fisheries, seal fisheries, and a rising trade. The Kenmare colony had been strong enough and spirited enough to sustain a four months' siege in the last rebellion. The first care of a prudent Government would 1 Secretary Southwell, writing on the 23rd July, 1703, to Lord Nottingham, says: The clergy here seem mighty dependent and very great courtiers, for the livings are pretty good and there is a constant expectation of preferment and a very great greedi ness to obtain. Nay, they hardly Office. BOOK II. 1702 have been to see that these people were not left uncared for to sink away in the Catholic morass. Petty himself cared little for religion in its spiritual aspect; but he was aware of the money value of Protestant tenants and of the terms on which they could be preserved. On the Restoration two clergymen were sent into the district, one to Kenmare and Kilmakilloge, another to Templemore and Kilcroghan. The two parishes lay along the opposite shores of the Kenmare river for twenty miles, and the smelting colonies were thus moderately provided for. The rector of Kenmare died in 1673. A Mr. Palmer was appointed to succeed him. The rector of Templemore dying in 1676, a faculty was granted to Mr. Palmer to hold all the benefices collectively, and thus a single clergyman had charge of two groups of parishes divided by an arm of the sea. The water, however, formed a convenient highway at a time when there were no roads. With the help of curates the scattered flocks still received their due attendance, and in 1689, the furnaces were in full work and the colonies prospering. Mr. Palmer lived till 1701, and the downward progress marks the ebb of the vitality of Irish Protestantism. Tralee is forty miles from Kenmare, the Killarney mountains lying between them; and Kilmakilloge is nearly twenty miles beyond Kenmare. On Palmer's death, Dr. Richards, Dean of Tralee, already overburdened with Church preferments, set his mind upon annexing, in addition, these remote and outlying benefices. He made influence with the Castle, obtained the presentation, and an order with it to the Bishop of Limerick to institute him. With this introduction the following letters from the Bishop of Limerick to Joshua Dawson, the Castle secretary will tell their own story. The Bishop of Limerick to Joshua Dawson, Esq., Secretary's 'October 9, 1702. 'Sir,-This day I received yours of the 6th instant, wherein you mention a former letter which I never received. Dean Richards has imposed on the Lords Justices by telling them that the livings of Mr. Palmer, lately deceased, are contiguous to his deanery. I believe they are at least twelve miles 1 distant from the nearest part of the Dean's livings; and there is, moreover, a great mountain between them several miles over. They are of very great extent, and there is a considerable number of Protestants in them. Dean Richards writes to me to befriend him in his application for these livings; but I sent him word. that I did by no means think it proper that he, who had so considerable a cure as that of Tralee to serve, should likewise have so many and large parishes at such a distance from him to serve besides. He offered to allow a curate what I should think fit, but I would not hearken to it. Mr. Palmer's livings will be a handsome competency for some deserving resident incumbent, who shall make it his whole business to serve those cures without any other plurality. The Dean has, besides the parish of Tralee, eight or nine more parishes to take care of, being the corpus of his deanery, and his turn every fifth Sunday in the cathedral of Ardfert to preach besides.' The Irish House of Commons passed a resolution in 1697, that the non-residence of the clergy with cure of souls in many parts of the kingdom was a great occasion of the growth and increase of Popery.2 1 Twelve Irish miles equal 2 Commons' Journals, December eighteen English. 1, 1697. CHAP. I. 1702 |