it. Matthew Sheyn, queen's bishop of Cork and Cloyne, publicly burned at the high cross of Cork the image of St. Dominick belonging to the Dominican friary of that city.*

And now we might sup full of horrors, with the ecclesiastical historians of the period, in detailing the cruel persecutions and painful deaths of the national clergy, wherever the unsparing arm of that ferocious English Reformation could reach them ;-how Patrick O'Hely, bishop of Mayo, and Cornelius O'Rourke, a pious priest, were, by order of Drury, placed on the rack, their hands and feet broken with hammers, needles thrust under their nails; how they were at last hanged :-how Dermod O'Hurley, archbishop of Cashel, was arrested by order of Adam Loftus (then Chancellor of the Pale, and Queen's Archbishop of Dublin, Armagh having proved too hot for him, as we saw); how he was loaded with irons until the Holy Thursday of the following year, dragged before the chancellor and treasurer, questioned, tortured, and finally hanged outside the city walls before break of day :-how John Stephens, a priest, having been duly convicted "for that he said mass to Teague Mac Hugh," was hanged and quartered. All this and much more may be found in the martyrologists of the time. But what is material for us to re

Ware. Bishops of Cork and Cloyne.

+ O'Sullivan. Hist. Cath.-O'Daly. Ralatio persecut. Hibern.-Arthur-a-monasterio, (quoted in Brenan's Eccl. Hist. of Ireland.) Theatre of Catholic and Protestant Religion, &c.

mark is, the fact that such methods of conversion were then the only known methods;—that this island had now become one of the battle-grounds on which Europe in those centuries fought out the cruel quarrel of her rival faiths ;—that Philip of Spain was at this very moment striving to crush liberty and Protestantism in the Low Countries, almost as fiercely as another foreign tyrant was warring against liberty and Catholicism in Ireland ;—that, a few years before, in the streets of Paris, was done that deed of horror which makes St. Bartholomew's a day that mankind, while the earth stands, will tremble to name ;— that hideous rumours of intended extermination,

-Catholics to be massacred by Protestants, Protestants by Catholics,—affrighted the general ear of Christendom —and, further, that Pope Pius the Fifth had lately, by a solemn bull, deposed the Queen of England from her throne, and absolved her subjects, as far as a bull could, from their allegiance; which, indeed, he had precisely as good a right to do as she to deprive him of his spiritual supremacy.

This confounding of spiritual and temporal authority, upon both sides, led to all those terrible persecutions and "religious wars," as they were called, which devastated Europe for more than a century.

CHAPTER V.

THE GERALDINE WAR.

A. D. 1578-1584.

AFTER Some years' confinement in the tower, Gerald, Earl of Desmond, and his brother were sent as state prisoners to Dublin; from whence, in 1574, they had found an opportunity to escape on horseback during a hunting party, and by desperate riding arrived in Munster, whither it did not seem advisable to follow them. For about four years after this Desmond seems to have lived in peace with the English; yet still, as Ware alleges, was keeping up negotiations with the pope and King of Spain, but without much result, until at last James Fitzmaurice, his kinsman, proceeded to Rome, and through the celebrated ecclesiastics, Saunders and Allen, solicited and obtained from his Holiness a bull commanding the chiefs and clergy of Ireland to assist Fitzmaurice in defence of holy church against the heretic English, with promise of indulgences and spiritual privileges, such as the Crusaders had earned by fighting for the blessed sepulchre.

Thus accredited, Fitzmaurice proceeded to Spain and entreated King Philip, the mortal

enemy of England, to supply men and arms for the war. In Spain also he expected to be joined by Stukely, an English adventurer, who had shortly before obtained six hundred Italians from the pope for the invasion of Ireland, and had proceeded as far as Cadiz on his way. A strange career had this Thomas Stukely, and his story is characteristic of the time. It was of course from no patriotic motive that he sought to levy war in Ireland, where his antagonists were to be his own countrymen ;-nor yet from religious zeal: for he was, in truth, an undertaker, and was setting forth under the pope's authority, as Essex had come under Elizabeth's, to seek his fortune and make a plantation in Ireland-poor Ireland! that hunting-field for all the hungry adventurers of the earth. Essex and Smith had bound themselves, as we saw, to establish the queen's religion in their settlements: Stukely, as deriving under the pope, was to uphold Catholicity. Elizabeth had entitled those adventurers Lords of Ards; and his Holiness duly created his missionary (whether by letters patent or papal rescript does not appear) Marquis of Leinster, Earl of Wexford and Carlow, Viscount Murrough and Baron of Ross. When he and his six hundred arrived at Cadiz, it happened that Dom Sabastian of Portugal was collecting all his powers for a descent upon Africa, to reinstate King Mohammed on the throne of Fez, and also to found for himself a Portuguese empire upon that continent. Stukely was dazzled by the splendour of this African undertaking; and when Sebastian prof

ferred him a share in the enterprize he speedily exchanged his Irish earldom for a principality on the Mediterranean ;-perhaps was created Duke of Barbary or Prince of Mauritania-and led his freebooters to the Moorish war. A true adventurer this—a genuine knight-errant of that age, not vowed to God or ladye-love, but to Mammon and Moloch. This poor Stukely indeed never came into the enjoyment of those vast estates and honours of his, whether in Africa or in Ireland. Neither was the Mauro-Lusitanian empire ever founded, nor King Mohammed reinthroned; for, on the bloody field of Alcaçarquivir, swift destruction overtook them all. There fell three crowned kings, ending quarrel and life together, and with them died this most singular Marquis of Leinster and Baron of Ross.

So when Fitzmaurice reached Spain he found that Stukely had turned his face southward, and abandoned the cause of Ireland: but for him those Moorish kingdoms had no attraction. Not the vales of Atlas, nor the Atlantic island itself could draw him aside. Northward lay the shores of Munster, where, perhaps, even now the adherents of the Geraldine were hard pressed by those accursed English, and from the capes of Desmond were gazing wistfully over the sea, pining for the Spanish ships. At last three small vessels cast anchor in Smerwick bay, carrying Fitzmaurice and a poor band of eighty Spaniards, accompanied by Allen and Saunders, and bearing a consecrated papal banner, in the sure hope that, if not for love of liberty and old Ireland, yet for the sake of religion and to save their souls alive,

F