Page images
PDF
EPUB

*

ceed farther than Castle-Dermot; he then committed his army to a competent military commander, and remained with his clergy engaged in earnest prayers for its success.' The result was favourable; but as the English were shortly after defeated in Meath, it was thought expedient to commit the government of Ireland to a military commander; and accordingly on the 10th of September, Sir John Talbot, lord Furnival, arrived as lord-lieutenant. He immediately made a progress round the pale in a warlike manner, and though he brought no additional forces with him from England, he induced all the surrounding chiefs to sue for peace. In 1416, when lord Furnival went to England, he appointed the archbishop as his deputy, who pursued the same mild and judicious line of conduct-repressing disorders, redressing grievances, and administering justice with an impartiality at that time little practised. He visited England in 1417, and died the 25th of May at Faringdon, "full of days and honour." His body was conveyed to Oxford, and buried there in New College of which he had been warden, and had also been for a time chancellor of that university.

Richard Talbot.

DIED A. D. 1449.

RICHARD TALBOT, brother to the celebrated Sir John Talbot, lord of Furnival, was consecrated archbishop of Dublin in the year 1417. He had the year before been elected to the primacy, but having neglected to hasten his confirmation in due time, John Swain was promoted in his place.† His brother, who for his distinguished and faithful services in France, was in the succeeding reign created earl of Shrewsbury, Waterford, and Wexford, was now the lord-lieutenant ; and when he was summoned to England in 1419, he appointed the archbishop as his deputy. In 1423 he was made lord-justice, and afterwards chancellor of Ireland, and had various grants of land assigned him for the purpose both of supporting his dignity, and rewarding his services. There were various contests between him and Swain on the subject of primatial jurisdiction, and Talbot was summoned to England on the complaint of the latter to answer the charges made against him on this subject. These complaints, however, do not appear to have had any prejudicial effect on his interests; as in 1431 he was granted the custody of two-thirds of the manor of Trim, and other lands being in the crown, in consequence of the minority of Richard, duke of York;‡ he was also still continued as chancellor, and in 1436 was again appointed deputy of the kingdom, to Sir Thomas Stanley. On the primacy of Armagh becoming vacant, he was a second time elected to that see, but refused the appointment. In 1440 he was nominated lord-justice, and held a parliament in Dublin, at which it was enacted,

"1st. That no purveyor or harbenger should take any thing without payment; and if he did the proprietor might resist.

* Cox.

† Dalton.

+ Ibid.

"2d. That comrick or protection of tories be treason.

"3d. That charging the king's subjects with horse or foot without consent, is treason.

"4th. That the party who desires a protection, (cum clausa volumus) shall make oath in Chancery of the truth of his suggestion.'

But to make provision for war, it was enacted that every twenty pound worth of land should be charged with the furnishing and maintaining an archer on horseback.*

James, earl of Ormonde, being shortly after sent over as lord-lieutenant, Talbot resigned his office, and in the subsequent administration of lord Wells, was sent to England by the parliament, along with John White, abbot of St Mary's, to the king, "to represent the miserable estate and condition of Ireland, whereby the public revenue was placed so low, that it was less than the necessary charge of keeping the kingdome by one thousand four hundred and fifty-six pounds per annum.”† In 1447, he was appointed deputy to his brother the earl of Shrewsbury, then lord-lieutenant, who, on his return to England, accused the earl of Ormonde of treason before the duke of Bedford, constable of England, in the Marshall's Court, but the king abolished the accusation. The archbishop wrote a tract this year, entitled, De Abusu regiminis Jacobi Comitis Ormondiæ, dum Hiberniæ esset locum tenens. And it seems that Thomas Fitz-Thomas, prior of Kilmainham was on the side of the archbishop, for he also accused the earl of Ormonde of treason, and the combat was appointed between them at Smithfield in London, but the king interposed and prevented it. There were also champions on the opposite side, among whom was Jordan, bishop of Cork, and Cloyne whose epistle to Henry VI. upon this subject is still extant.§

The contests for primatial sway between Talbot and the archbishops of Armagh were numerous, and were renewed by him and John Mey in 1446, and the three following years. In the last of these Talbot died, having held the archbishopric for nearly thirty-two years, during the entire of which time he was privy councillor to Henry V. and VI., and was buried under a marble tomb in St Patrick's church, which was ornamented with his figure cut in brass. Ware states that it bore the following inscription :

"Talbot Richardus latet hic sub marmore pressus

Archi fuit Præsul hujus Sedis Reverendæ

Parvos Cononicos, qui fundavitque Choristas.

Anno Milleno, C quater, X quoque nono,

Quindeno Augusti Mensis Mundo Valedixit :

Omnipotens Dominus cui propitietur in Evum."

Michael Tregury.

DIED A. D. 1471.

MICHAEL TREGURY, "a man so famous," says Ware, "for his learning and prudence, that he was sent by Henry V., king of England, in

* Cox.

+ Ibid.

Ibid.

§ Dalton.

1418, to take upon him the provostship of the college of Caen in Normandy," and was selected to succeed Talbot in the archbishopric of Dublin. He had been also chaplain to Henry VI., and was nominated one of the privy councillors, with a salary of £20 per annum on his promotion. The temporalities of the see were also immediately restored to him, with the usual clause, by which he renounced any benefit from the pope's bull, that might be prejudicial to the crown of England. He rebuilt the manor of Tallagh, and there he usually resided. At the time of the great jubilee held by pope Nicholas V. in Rome, a number of pilgrims went from his diocese, to whom he gave recommendatory letters; and so great was the crowd there, that many of them were pressed to death.* Palmerius says, "there was so great

a gathering of people from all parts of the Christian world at this jubilee, that at Adrian's hole almost 200 perished in the press, besides many who were drowned in the Tiber." When the news was brought in 1453 that Constantinople was taken by the Turks, and the emperor Constantine Palaologus slain, the archbishop was so afflicted that he proclaimed a fast to be observed throughout his diocese for three successive days, and went himself with his clergy to Christ's Church clothed in sackcloth and ashes.† In 1453, the archbishop was taken prisoner in the bay of Dublin by some pirates, who were however pursued and overtaken, and the archbishop released from his perilous condition. He lived to an advanced age, and died in 1471 at Tallagh. His body was conveyed to St Patrick's church, where, according to Ware, there was 66 a spacious monument erected most artfully adorned with his statue." The ruins of this were discovered in the time of Swift, who had the cover set up in the wall on the left hand after entering the west gate with the following inscription :—“ Vetus hoc monumentum, e ruderibus capellæ divi stephani nuper instauratæ erutum, Decanus et Capitulum huc transferri curaverunt. A. D. 1730." His works are mentioned by Bale and Pitts.

Walter Fitz-Simons.

DIED A. D. 1511.

WALTER FITZ-SIMONS was consecrated archbishop of Dublin in 1484. Ware calls him "a learned divine and philosopher;" and he was bachelor both of the civil and canon law. His knowledge and learning, however, did not secure him from deception; and he became a strenuous supporter of the absurd pretensions of Lambert Simnel, at whose coronation he assisted in Christ's Church in 1487, when John Payn, bishop of Meath, preached a sermon in the presence of the lord-deputy, the chancellor, treasurer, and other great officers of state, and that they placed on the head of Simnel a crown taken from the statue of the Virgin Mary. This strange delusion being, however, quickly dissipated by the capture and degradation of Simnel, the archbishop renewed his allegiance, and received his pardon the year fol

* Dalton.

+ Ibid.

+ Cox.

lowing, from Sir Richard Edgecombe, the king's commissioner, who, in the great chamber in Thomas Court, received the oaths and recognizances of the earl of Kildare, then lord-deputy, and all the nobility who had been involved in the late rebellion.* In 1492, Fitz-Simons was made deputy to Jaspar, duke of Bedford, and while he held this office Perkin Warbeck made his appearance in Ireland, but from the shortness of his stay there at that time, the lord-deputy was not compelled to take any part either for or against him. He held a parliament in Dublin in 1493, and having resigned his office to viscount Gormanstown, he went to England, both to give the king an account of his own administration, and also to make him aware of the general state of the kingdom. After remaining there about three months, during which time he appears to have made a most favourable impression on the mind of Henry, he returned to Ireland with ample instructions respecting the management of that country. It is stated by Stanihurst that the archbishop being with the king when a highly laudatory speech was made in his presence, he was asked by Henry his opinion of it, on which the archbishop answered, "If it pleaseth your highness it pleaseth me; I find no fault, save only that he flattered your majesty too much." "Now, in good faith," said the king, 66 our father of Dublin, we were minded to find the same fault ourselves." When, in 1496, the king having appointed his son Henry, duke of York, lord-lieutenant of Ireland, he put him under the guidance of the archbishop, in whose "allegiance, diligence, integrity, conscience, experience, and learning," he had the most implicit confidence; and he at the same time appointed him lord-chancellor. In a synod held by the archbishop, he ordained a yearly salary to be paid by him and his suffragans to a divinity reader. In the same year the see of Glendalough, which had been united to Dublin from the reign of king John, but the government of which had been usurped by friar Denis White, was re-united to that of Dublin by the voluntary surrender of it by White, whose conscience became oppressed towards the end of his life by his illegal tenure of it. Fitz-Simons, having held the archbishopric for twenty-seven years, died at Finglass, on the 14th of May, 1511, and was buried in St Patrick's Church. He was a man of a very just mind, of high principle, deep learning, and had a graceful and insinuating address, which particularly qualified him for the high sphere in which he moved, and won for him the regard and confidence of persons of opposite parties and opinions.

William Rokeby.

DIED A. D. 1521.

[ocr errors]

WILLIAM ROKEBY, bishop of Meath, was translated to the see of Dublin in 1511. In the following year, Cox says, Rokeby, archbishop of Dublin, held a provincial synod at Dublin where they did non constat, for the canons are lost;" but in 1518 he convened another,

[blocks in formation]

66

the canons of which are still extant in the Red Book of the Church of Ossory. During this year he was made chancellor of Ireland by Henry VIII., who valued him highly, and expresses his "special thanks" to Surrey, on his appointment as lord-lieutenant in 1520, for sending "the archbishop of Dublin, our chancellor there, to Waterforde, for the pacifying of suche discourdes, debates, and variances, as be betwixt the Erle of Desmonde and Sir Piers Butler;" and adds, right comfortable news it shulde be unto us, to heare and understande of a goode concourde betwixte theym, so that they, being soo pacified, mought, with their puysaunses, joyne and attende personnally with, and upon you our lieutenaunte, for your better assistance in repressing the temerities of our rebellious Irishe enimyes.”* Rokeby died on the 29th of November, 1521. In his will he gave special directions respecting his remains, ordering that his heart should be buried in the church of Halifax, and his body in his new chapel at Sandal. The former injunction was certainly complied with; but Ware states that his body was deposited in his own cathedral of St Patrick's.t

Hugh Juge.

DIED A. D. 1528.

HUGH JUGE succeeded Rokeby both in Meath and Dublin. He was a man of great probity, and much esteemed by the earl of Kildare, who entrusted him with matters of great importance. He held the see only six years, being attacked with that complaint called the English sweat, of which he died in 1528, and was buried in St Patrick's cathedral.

Maurice de Porto, Bishop of Tuam.

DIED A. D. 1513.

THIS prelate was appointed to the see of Tuam by pope Julius II. in 1506. His true name was O'Fihely. He was a native of Cork, and educated at Padua. He seems to have spent his time chiefly abroad; and assisted at the council of Lateran in 1512. It was on the following year that he was sent over to his diocese. He obtained on this occasion a license to grant certain indulgences to all who should attend his first mass at Tuam; but on landing in Galway he was taken ill, and died without saying the mass, on the 28th May, 1513. He was so much admired for learning and virtue, that he obtained the appellation of Flos mundi.

[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »