humble retreat, a few miles from Drogheda, on the 6th of D 1679, and committed to prison, solely for his religion and for the functions of a Catholic prelate. The arrest of the prima new turn to things in Ireland. Hetherington, Shaftesbury came over to concoct evidence of a plot, and a number of abandoned characters-cow-stealers, rapparees, and gaol-break soon found ready for the purpose. These vile miscreants each other in swearing away the lives of innocent men; and them came forward to make the most outrageous charges against the venerable archbishop. Foremost among these witnesses were two degraded priests and as many apostate those turbulent times, when there was so much to disorgan and encourage vice, it is not extraordinary that men s been found capable of any degradation; and these wretched were persons who, after fruitless efforts to reform them. subjected to canonical censures; the two seculars having b municated by the primate, and the friars declared apostat superior. As the evidence of these men would obtain no cr land, the primate was taken to London, where the incredible, i and indeed impossible statements of the false witnesses were gospel truth by the judges, jury, and people of Englan Plunkett was immolated at the shrine of English fanaticism

*See on this point the admirable life of Dr. Plunkett, published in Duffy's Co vol. ii., p. 144.

† Dr. Oliver Plunkett belonged to a branch of the ancient family of the earls of born at Loughcrew, in Meath. He went to Rome when a young man, in 1649, a Irish college founded by cardinal Ludovisius, and which was then administered by eight years after he became professor of divinity in the Propaganda, and so con years; and on the death of Edmond O'Reilly, archbishop of Armagh, in 1669, h to the primacy of Ireland by Pope Clement IX. It was then a perilous as well a nity; but he hastened to his afflicted country, where he arrived about the end of year, and an immediate, but fruitless, search was made for him by order of the g Robarts, who was soon after recalled, was then lord lieutenant; but during the lords Berkley and Essex Dr. Plunkett continued to exercise his functions withou was indefatigable in his apostolic labors, holding numerous ordinations, and exer prudence and assiduity to correct abuses among clergy and laity. He was an country and of her venerable antiquities, and composed an Irish poem about T tioned by O'Reilly, in his Irish Writers. In the persecution which followed t pretended Popish plot, he removed from his usual residence, at Ballybarrack, I small house at a place called Castletownbellew, a few miles from Drogheda, whe At his trial he stated that he had lived "in a little thatched house, wherein wa for a library, which was not seven feet high; that he had never more than on he was scarcely ever able to support even one." As to his income it never ex pounds per annum." It was six months after his confinement in Newgate that t was trumped up against him, and when it was then investigated before the Irish c as utterly absurd. A reward of £500 was, it is said, offered for Hetherington, the of the perjuries, but he had fled to his employer, Shaftesbury; and when the arraigned at the Dundalk assizes, although every man, both on the grand an

L

MEMOIR OF ARCHBISHOP PLUNKETT.

613

It has been truly said by a great Protestant statesman that "the Popish plot must always be considered an indelible disgrace upon the

Protestant, not one of the miscreants who had made depositions against him would come forward. No one was more active, says Carte, in procuring those witnesses than Jones, the Protestant bishop of Meath, "who had been scout-master-general to Oliver Cromwell's army" (Orm. ii. 498); and it was at his suggestion that Shaftesbury got the primate's trial removed from Dundalk, where be would, assuredly, have been acquitted, to London, where anything sworn against a Popish bishop could not be too monstrous for the popular credulity. The Irish government was required to assist the witnesses for the plot, of one of whom (James Geoghan) who was sent to beat up the country for swearers, Ormond writes that "at length, his violences, excesses, debaucheries, and, in effect, his plain robberies, committed on Irish and English, Protestants and Papists, were so manifest, as raised a great disturbance in all places," and it became necessary to put him in gaol (see letter in Carte, ii. 514); yet such was the general character of the degraded men produced as witnesses against the holy archbishop-profligates and apostates, to whom a free pardon was offered as an inducement to add perjury and murder to their other crimes. Dr. Plunkett was removed to London about the close of October, 1680, and was so rigorously confined in Newgate that no friend could have access to him. Here he spent his time in almost continual prayer, and his keepers were surprised to see him always look so cheerful and resigned. When brought up for trial he obtained five weeks to procure evidence from Ireland; but in those days of slow travelling, when weeks were sometimes lost in waiting for a passage from Holyhead to Dublin, the time was insufficient; and when the trial at length came on on the 8th of June, 1681, the primate's witnesses had not arrived, and certain records which he desired to obtain from Ireland to show the character of the witnesses brought against him, would not be given to his agents without an order from the court; but a single day longer would not be granted to him. He was browbeaten by a bench of partizan judges; six of the most eminent lawyers in England were arrayed against him; and he stood alone, without one to speak a word in his defence or procure for him fair play; for as the law then stood he was not allowed the benefit of counsel. A host of abandoned wretches, who, says the great Charles Fox, would have been unworthy of credit, even in the most trivial matter, made charges against him that were not only incredible bnt absolutely impossible (Fox's Historical Works, p. 40). In vain did he pray for time and declare:-"If I had been in Ireland I would have put myself on my trial tomorrow, without any witnesses, before any Protestant jury that knew them and me." He, who was se poor and meek, and had such a horror of mixing himself up in any temporal concern, was convicted of plotting to raise an army of 70,000 men; of collecting some enormous fund for that purpose among the clergy; of practising to bring over 40,000 French troops; and of inspecting the harbours round the coast of Ireland, and selecting Carlingford as the place for the debarkation of the invading army! On the 15th, when brought up to receive sentence, the brutal chief justice addressing him, said:— "Look you, Mr. Plunkett, you have been indicted of a very great and heinous crime....The bottom of your treason was your setting up your false religion. ...a religion that is ten times worse than all the heathenish superstitions." The earl of Essex went to the king to apply for a pardon, and told his majesty "the witnesses must needs be perjured, as what they swore could not possibly be true;" but his majesty answered in a passion:-"Why did you not declare this, then, at the trial? I dare pardon nobody....His blood be upon your head and not upon mine" (Contin. of Baker's Chronicle, p. 710, and Echard's Hist. of Engl. iii. 631). The address which the holy primate read at Tyburn was an able and beautiful vindication. On the 1st of July he was hanged and quartered; his heart and bowels were thrown into the fire, but his body was obtained from the king and interred in the church-yard of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, except the head, and the arms to the elbows, which were enclosed in two tin cases. In 1683, when the quarters of his body were exhumed by his friend Father Corker, they were found entire, and all his relics were translated to Lambspring, in Germany; but Hugh MacMahon, one of his successors in the primacy, having obtained the head from cardinal Howard, brought it to Ireland, and subsequently deposited it in the convent which he founded, in 1722, for Dominican nuns, at Drogheda, in which the first prioress was Catherine Plunkett, a relative, it is presumed, of the holy primate; and in this house, known as the Sienna convent, the precious relic is enshrined in a small ebony temple decorated with silver. An authentic portrait of the illustrious martyr, taken after his condemnation, has been engraved, and published by Mr. Duffy. (See the excellent and learned memoir of Oliver Plunkett published, with the report of his trial, &c., ia Duffy's Catholic Magazine; also the notices of him in the Theologia Tripartita of his cotemporary

English nation;"* and if the lessons which history teaches are to have any effect, such a blot ought assuredly to humble national pride. It is a remarkable fact that Dr. Plunkett was not only the last victim of that atrocious imposture, but that the tide of persecution ebbed immediately upon his death. He was executed at Tyburn on the 1st of July, 1681, and the very next day Shaftesbury, the patron of the gang of perjurers and the chief promoter of the plot, was himself dragged to the tower for high treason; nor was it long after when some retribution overtook the infamous Titus Oates, who was whipped by the common hangman and pilloried for his perjuries. The severity of the penal laws was relaxed in Ireland. Ormond, whose growing moderation had drawn upon him the violent attacks of Shaftesbury and the Whigs, now more openly befriended the Irish Catholics. Whether influenced by some remorse for the past, or revolution in his own sentiments, or change which he observed in the feelings of the king, it is certain that he became liberal at the close of his long career. Charles II., who was received into the Catholic church a few hours before his death, expired on the 6th of February, 1685, and was succeeded by his brother James, duke of York, who had for several years past openly professed the Catholic faith, and suffered for it many persecutions and even banishment from England. Thus did a new vista of hope dawn upon the Irish.

The seventeenth century, towards the close of which we now approach, though brimful of calamity to Ireland, was illumined by innumerable lights of Irish history and literature. Its first quarter

and friend, Arsdekin; the Hib. Dominicana; Harris's Additions to Ware's Irish Writers; the Thorpe Collection of Pamphlets; the State Trials; Mr. Thomas Darcy M'Gee's Irish Writers, &c.) All subsequent Protestant writers have admitted that he was unjustly executed. Bishop Burnet, who was certainly no friend to Catholics, writes:-"Lord Essex told me that this Plunkett was a wise and sober man, who was always in a different interest from the two Talbots;" and he adds, that the foreman of the grand jury who had investigated his case in Ireland, and "who was a zealons Protestant," told him the witnesses "contradicted one another so evidently that they would not find the bill" (Burnet's Hist. of his own Times, vol. i. p. 502-3). "Of his innocence," says Fox, "no doubt could be entertained" (Hist. Works, p. 40). "He was," says the writer of the memoir quoted above, "the last victim of the Popish plot, and the last martyr who was directly put to death for the Catholic religion in these countries” (Cath. Mag. ii. 231). It will interest Irish antiquaries to know that Florence Mac Moyer, one of the witnesses against Dr. Plunkett, was the hereditary keeper of the celebrated Book of Armagh, and that being reduced to beggary at the close of his life he pawned, for £5, that celebrated relic of antiquity, which thus came into the possession of an ancestor of lord Brownlow, its present proprietor.

*Charles J. Fox's Historical Works, p. 33.

"Titus Oates," says Grainger, "was restrained by no principle, human or divine, and like Judas, would have done anything for thirty shillings. He was one of the most accomplished villains that we read of in history." (Biographical Hist. of Eng., vol. iv., p. 201.) Oates obtained for his perjuries a pension of £1,200 a-year, of which he was deprived by king James, but William III. granted a pardon to the miscreant and conferred on him a pension of £400 a year.

IRISH WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

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witnessed the labors of Philip O'Sullevan Beare, Stephen White, Peter Lombard, and Thomas Messingham; the Four Masters (Michael, Conary, and Cucogry O'Clery, and Ferfeasa O'Mulconry) were compiling their celebrated Annals of Ireland from 1632 to 1636; Geoffry Keating, who has been called the Irish Herodotus, died about the middle of the century; archbishop Ussher, that wonderful compound of great learning and intolerant bigotry, and the honest and learned sir James Ware, flourished at the same time; the eminent Irish scholar and antiquary, Duald MacFirbis, was Ware's Irish amanuensis; father John Colgan, the greatest of our hagiographers, published his invaluable Acta Sanctorum Hibernia, at Louvain, in 1645; and during the same century flourished Patrick Fleming, Hugh Ward, David Roth, Luke Wadding, Dominic O'Daly, Thomas Carve, Anthony Bruodin, Nicholas French, Oliver Plunkett, Richard Arsdekin, archdeacon Lynch (Gratianus Lucius), and the learned author of the Ogygia, Roderick O'Flaherty. The list might be much extended, and to the preceding, who with two or three exceptions were ecclesiasties residing abroad, might be added a long array of other Irishmen who confined their labors in the foreign monasteries and colleges exclusively to sacred subjects. At the same time the Irish at home preserved their traditions and some of their ancient records in their woods and mountains, where their priests found hiding places from persecution, and where we can fancy that the wild strains of the native music, devoted to the utterance of so much sorrow, became nore exquisitely plaintive in their character.

Temper of parties in Ireland at the Accession of James II.-Hopes of the Catholics the Protestants.-Clarendon lord lieutenant-Refusal to repeal the Acts of Settlem Richard Talbot created earl of Tirconnell, and appointed to the command of the ar -Succeeds Clarendon as lord lieutenant.-Numerous Catholic appointments.-Ala -Increased disaffection of the Protestants.-Birth of the Prince of Wales.-Wil Orange invited to England-The league of Augsburgh-William's dissimulation at Torbay.-James deserted by his English subjects and obliged to fly to Fra Association of the Protestants of Ulster-The Protestants in general refuse to give -The Rapparees.-Irish troops sent to England and the consequence.-Closin Derry. The Irish alone faithful to king James-He lands at Kinsale and mar -Siege of Derry-The town relieved and the siege raised-Conduct of the E James's Parliament in Dublin-Act of Attainder.-Large levies of the Irish.-Lar berg-He encamps at Dundalk and declines battle with James.-Battle of C lands at Carrickfergus-Marches to the Boyne.-Disposition of the hostile fore of the Boyne-Orderly retreat of the Irish.-Flight of king James-He escap William marches to Dublin.-Waterford and Duncannon reduced.-Gallant def by the Irish.-Retreat of the Williamite army under Douglas.-William besieges defence of the Garrison-The English ammunition and artillery blown up by city stormed-Memorable heroism of the besieged-William raises the siege and land.-Arrival of St. Ruth.-Loss of Athlone.-Battle of Aughrim and death Siege and surrender of Galway.-Second siege of Limerick-Honorable capituls army embark for France.

NBOUNDED was the joy of the Irish Cat accession of James II., and in a like propor depression produced among the Protestants For the feelings of both parties at a time w elements of discord were rife due allowanc be made. On the one side we see men who groaned under oppression and ruin suddenl hope of restored fortunes and religious li other, a dominant party enriched with the antagonists, but now dreading the loss of estates so dubiously acquired, and what w all, the extension of favor towards a creed entertained a fanatical aversion. The ol become almost identified in sympathies an the Irish, and between both and the new interest, as th