ions and opinions, then acted and agreed on in England, as o ecclesiastical matters, that the same be in Ireland so likewise celebrated and performed."

Sir Anthony St. Leger having spoken to this effect, George Dowdall, who succeeded George Cromer in the Primacy of Armagh, stood up; who, through his Romish zeal to the Pope, laboured with all his power and force to oppose the liturgy of the Church, that it might not be read or sung in the church; saying, "then shall every illiterate fellow read. . . Mass.”

To this saying of the Archbishop's, Sir Anthony replied, “No, your Grace is mistaken; for we have too many illiterate priests amongst us already who neither can pronounce the Latin, nor know what it means, no more than the common people that hear them; but when the people hear the liturgy in English, they and the priest will then understand what they pray for."

Upon this reply, George Dowdall bade Sir Anthony “beware of the clergy's curse.'

Sir Anthony made answer, "I fear no strange curse, so long as I have the blessing of that Church which I believe to be the true one."

The Archbishop again said, "Can there be a truer Church, than the Church of Saint Peter, the Mother Church of Rome?"

Sir Anthony returned this answer: "I thought we had all been of the Church of Christ; for he calls all true believers in him his Church, and Himself the Head thereof."

The Archbishop replied: "And is not Saint Peter the Church of Christ?"

Sir Anthony returned this answer, "Saint Peter was a member of Christ's Church, but the Church was not Saint Peter's; neither was Saint Peter but Christ the head thereof."

Then George Dowdall, the Primate of Armagh, rose up, and several of the suffragan bishops under his jurisdiction, saving only Edward Staples, then Bishop of Meath, who tarried with the rest of the clergy then assembled. . . . Sir Anthony then took up the order, and held it forth to George Browne, Archbishop of Dublin, who standing up, received it saying, “This order, good brethren is from our gracious King, and from the rest of our brethren the fathers and clergy of England, who have consulted herein, and compared the Holy Scriptures with what they have done; unto whom I submit, as Jesus did unto Cæsar, in all things just and lawful, making no questions why and wherefore, as we own him our true and lawful King."

Although this narrative together with the letter of Archbishop Browne, printed on p. 121, have been generally accepted as genuine, it is possible that they are among the historical forgeries of Robert Ware, son of Sir James Ware, the Irish antiquarian (1594-1666). See P. Wilson, Trans. of the Bibliogr. Soc. (1920) xv.

XVIII. THE ACCESSION OF QUEEN MARY

(1) Instructions given by Philip and Mary to the Lord Deputy, Lord Fitzwalter and the Council (28 April, 1556). [Cal Carew MSS., I. 252-3.]

Our said Deputy and Council shall, by their own good example and all other good means to them possible, advance the honour of Almighty God, the true Catholic faith and religion now by God's great goodness and special grace recovered in our Realms of England and Ireland; and namely they shall set forth the honour and dignity of the Pope's Holiness and See Apostolic of Rome, and from time to time be ready with our aid and secular force, at the request of all spiritual ministers and ordinaries there, to punish and repress all heretics and Lollards and their damnable sects, opinions, and errors.

(2) Rejoicing at Kilkenny on the Accession of Queen Mary. ["The Vocation of John Bale 2 to the Bishopric of Ossory in Ireland, his Persecutions in the same, and final Deliverance (Rome, 1553). Harleian Miscellany, VI. 450-2.]

On the twentieth day of August, was the Lady Mary with us at Kilkenny proclaimed Queen of England, France and Ireland, with the greatest solemnity that there could be devised, of processions, musters and disguisings; all the noble captains and gentlemen thereabout being present. What-a-do I had that day with the prebendaries and priests about wearing the cope, crosier and mitre in procession, it were too much to write. . . . On the Thursday, which was the last day of August, I being absent, the clergy of Kilkenny, by procurement of that wicked justice Hothe, blasphemously resumed again the whole Papism, or heap of superstitions of the Bishop of Rome; to the utter contempt of Christ and His holy Word, of the King and Council of England, and of all ecclesiastical and politic order, without either statute or yet proclamation. They rung all the bells in that cathedral, minster, and parish churches: they flung up their caps to the battlement of the great temple, with smilings and laughings most dissolutely .. they brought forth their copes, candle sticks, holy-water

Sir Thomas Radcliffe, later Earl of Sussex.

2 Bale, who was of English origin, had originally been educated in the Romish religion, but later became converted to an extreme form of Protestantism. He was nominated to the see of Ossory by Edward VI in 1552. He was extremely unpopular in his diocese, on account both of his innovations and of his overbearing manner, and at one time his life was actually in danger. In his " Vocation" he compares his sorrows and perils in Ireland to the sufferings of St. Paul. He left the country shortly after the accession of Mary, and proceeded to Switzerland. He returned to England on the accession of Queen Elizabeth, but never to his Irish diocese. See Ware's Bishops of Ireland (ed. Harris), PP. 415-17.

tock, cross and censers; they mustered forth in general procession nost gorgeously, all the town over, with Sancta Maria, ora pro tobis, and the rest of the Latin litany: they chattered it, they chanted it, with great noise and devotion: they banqueted all the day after, for that they were delivered from the grace of God into

a warm sun.

XIX.

MISERABLE STATE OF THE IRISH
CHURCH UNDER ELIZABETH

I

(1) Letter from Alexander Craik, Bishop of Kildare, to Lord Robert Dudley (30 April, 1561). [E. P. Shirley, Original Letters and Papers in Illustration of the History of the Church in Ireland, PP. 95-7-3

Right honourable and my singular good Lord, my duty most humbly remembered, whereas I have hithertofore divers and sundry times molested your honour with my writings, specifying the heavy burden of my conscience . . . and as yet never received comforts by word or writing, wherefore I do most humbly beseech your honour, that like as ye were the instrument of this my continual and daily torment (I mean of my preferment unto a bishopric in such a place in Ireland where neither I can preach unto the people nor the people understand me) that ye will be the like instrument to the Queen's Majesty, that I may be exonerated and unburdened of the same, for there is not a preacher to assist me in setting forth of God's Word, or the Queen's Majesty her proceedings, saving one Mr. Loftus. Thus leaving off the lamenting of all my grief by pen, with distance and separation of our bodies by the interval of seas, which is not the least of my griefs, with my most humble commendations unto my honourable and good Lord . . . from my house at St. Patrick's the last day of April, by your honour his most humble and addicted servant during life.

(2) Sir Henry Sydney's Account of the Diocese of Meath. [Letter to Queen Elizabeth (28 April, 1576). A. Collins, Letters and Memorials of State (1746), I. 112-13.]

And now, most dear Mistress, and most honoured sovereign, I solely address to you, as to the only sovereign salvegiver to this your sore and sick Realm; the lamentable state of the most noble and principal limb thereof, the Church I mean, as foul, deformed, and as cruelly crushed, as any other part thereof; by your only gracious and religious order to be cured, or at least

• Appointed Bishop of Kildare by Letters Patent, 21 Aug., 1560.

Sydney, at this time Lord Deputy, was perhaps the ablest of all the English governors during this period.

amended. I would not have believed, had I not for a great part viewed the same throughout the whole Realm, and was advertised of the particular state of each church in the Bishopric of Meath (being the best inhabited country of all this Realm) by the honest, zealous, and learned bishop of the same, Mr. Hugh Brady, a godly minister for the Gospel, and a good servant to your Highness, who went from church to church himself, and found, that there are within his diocese 224 parish churches, of which number 105 are impropriated to sundry possessions, now of your Highness, and all leased out for years, or in fee farm, to several farmers, and great gain reaped out of them above the rent which your Majesty receiveth; no parson or vicar resident upon any of them, and a very simple, or sorry curate, for the most part, appointed to serve them, among which number of curates, only 18 were found able to speak English; the rest Irish priests, or rather Irish rogues, having very little Latin, less learning, or civility. All these live upon the bare altarages (as they term them), which, God knoweth, are very small, and were wont to live upon the gain of masses, dirges, shrivings and such like trumpery, goodly abolished by your Majesty; no one house standing for any of them to dwell in. In many places, the very walls of the churches down, very few chancels covered, windows and doors ruined or spoiled. There are 52 other parish churches in the same diocese, who have vicars endowed upon them, better served and maintained than the other, yet but badly. There are 52 parish churches more, residue of the first number of 224, which pertain to divers particular lords, and these though in better estate than the rest commonly are, yet far from well.

If this be the state of the Church in the best peopled diocese and best governed country of this your Realm (as in truth it is), easy it is for your Majesty to conjecture in what case the rest is, where little or no reformation, either of religion or manners, hath yet been planted and continued among them; yea, so profane and heathenish are some parts of this your country become, as it hath been preached publicly before me that the sacrament of baptism is not used among them, and truly I believe it. If I should write unto your Majesty what spoil hath been, and is of the archbishoprics, whereof there are 4, and of bishoprics whereof there are above 30, partly by the prelates themselves, partly by the potentates their noisome neighbours, I should make too long a libel of this my letter; but your Majesty may believe it, that upon the face of the earth where Christ is professed, there is not a Church in so miserable a case, the misery of which consisteth in these three particulars :—the ruin of the very temples themselves; the want of good ministers to serve in them, when they shall be re-edified; competent living for the ministers being well chosen.

(3) Letter from William Lyon, Bishop of Cork and Ross, to Lord Hunsdon (6 July, 1596). [Cal. S.P. Ireland,

PP. 14-16.]

...

Our state here is very dangerous. Here are five justices of peace that sit on the bench every sessions, but they never took the Oath of Supremacy to her Majesty, nor will. Two of them utterly refused at the general sessions holden in March last. Hereby they are generally mightily drawn away from their loyalty to her Majesty's godly laws now within these two years so far, that where I had a thousand or more in a church at sermon, I now have not five; and whereas I have seen 500 communicants or more, now are there not three. . . . I have caused churches to be re-edified, and provided books for every church through my diocese, as Bibles, New Testaments, Communion Books, both English and Latin . but none will come to the church at all, not so much as the country churls; they follow their seducers the priests and their superiors.

. In Waterford, the Mayor and Sheriff of the city come not to church, neither will they take the Oath of Supremacy, and in this city of Cork the bailiffs refuse the oath, neither come they to the church. And I, questioning with one of the last year's bailiffs . . . for whom I sent to know the cause why he would not come to the church, nor obey any of her Majesty's ecclesiastical laws, he made me answer, that he was sworn to the league that he should never come to the church, nor obey any of her Majesty's ecclesiastical laws concerning the same.2

(4) Sir John Davies's Account of Clerical Abuses. [Letter to Cecil (20 Feb., 1604). Cal. S.P. Ireland, p. 143.]

Touching the state of religion here, there are 4 archbishoprics, and under them are or should be 20 bishops at least. Has perused the book of first fruits, wherein the spiritual livings are all numbered and valued, and finds the dowry of the Church to be very great; but is informed by such as are both wise and honest, that the churchmen for the most part throughout the Kingdom are mere idols and ciphers, and such as cannot read, if they should stand in need of the benefit of their clergy; and yet the most of those, whereof many be serving men and some horseboys, are not without 2 or 3 benefices apiece, for the Court of Faculties doth qualify all manner of persons and dispense with all manner of residence and pluralities. And yet for all their pluralities they are most of them beggars, for the patron or ordinary, or some of their friends, take the greater part of their profits by a plain contract before their institution; so that many gentlemen, and some women and some priests and Jesuits have the greatest benefit 1 George Carey, second Lord Hunsdon (1547-1603). • See p. 148.