"'I THE CHURCH OF lEELAND: A HISTOKICAL SKETCH. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/churchofirelandhOOsedd V THE OCT! CHURCH OF IRELAND: 1 1 BY THE s/ EEV. HENRY SEDDALL, LL.D., Rector of Vastina, Diocese of Meat h ; AUTHOB OP " EDWAKD NANGLE, THE APOSTLE OF ACHItL," "THE MISSIONAKY niSTOET OP SIEKEA LEONE," "MALTA, PAST AND PEESENT," ETC. " It is not by resigning ancient rights that we can hope to carry our Church in safety through the dark future that looms before us, but by adhering to our Church as she came down to us, so far as possible, by upholding her truth and maintaining her Apostolic character." — The Lord Primate to tlie Armagh Diocesan Synod, 1885. DUBLIN: HODGES, FIGGIS, & CO., GRAFTON STREET, )Putillst)ets to t))e Stnltxtsltii. LONDON: IIATCHARD & CO., PICCADILLY. 1886. PREFACE. J HAVE endeavoured to give, in the following pages, a concise and, at the same time, an accurate account of the changes through which the Church of Ireland has passed during the last fourteen hundred years. The subject upon which I have ventured to write has occupied my attention for several years past ; and I have laid under tribute every scrap of information which I thought could throw some light upon it. There are, no doubt, many very valuable books in existence which deal with Irish Church History ; but it will be found that these books have been written for scholars, and are not easily accessible to general readers. They are, besides, limited in their range ; VI TJie Cliiirch of Ireland. each author confining himself to one portion, some- times indeed, a very small portion, of the Ecclesias- tical History of this country. A book which could be easily procured, and which, within a small compass, should contain the informa- tion eagerly sought after by many Churchmen, ap- peared to be required ; and I have taken upon myself to try and supply the want. I have aimed at producing a " Sketch " — nothing more. To discuss the history of the Church of Ire- land in detail would require the genius and learning of Macaulay or Alison ; but, in its proper place, even a Sketch may be of some use. Bishop Mant's interesting volumes were published nearly half a century ago; and since then many events of immense importance have occurred. These events have been included in the following narrative. For six years (1875 — 1881) I wrote every week, as spe- cial correspondent of a Church of England Weekly Newspaper,* a letter which contained a summary of * The EocL Preface. vii " Irish Church Intelligence." Some of the informa- tion contained in these letters I have reproduced and woven into the concluding chapters of this hook. I have also given in an Appendix a correct list of the Bishops of the Church of Ireland for a period of 350 years, from 1535 to 1885. The Episcopal succession for the whole period, from the time of St. Patrick to the Reformation was, undouhtedly, unhroken ; hut it is not easy to obtain a correct list of the names of the Bishops for that period. I hope that what I have written may he read in England as well as in Ireland, and may prove useful as establishing the historical continuity of the Church of Ireland. • If it be allowable for me to say anything .more by way of apology for having produced the following " Historical Sketch," let me do so in the words of I Bishop Mant. Hesaj's: — "An acquaintance with the history of the Reformed Church of Ireland is neces- sary for completing an acquaintance with the history viii The Church of Ireland. of the British Empire in general, as well as with that of Ireland in particular. It is also necessary for completing an acquaintance with the history of that National Church of which the Irish Church forms an integral member — the United Church of England and Ireland. But an acquaintance with the history of the Eeformed Church of Ireland is not really at- tainable ; for while England and Scotland each pos- sesses its ecclesiastical histories, Ireland is destitute of similar channels of intelligence. Those, indeed, who are solicitous on the subject, and have the various sources of information at hand, may search it out where it lies overwhelmed, as a secondary topic, among the records of the general history of the country, or imperfectly blended with the biographies of eminent political or ecclesiastical characters, or mixed up with heaps of miscellaneous documents. But it is not easy thus to procure a copious, detailed, entire, and continuous view ; and in all likelihood the consequence is, that the history of the Eeformed Preface. IX Irish Churcli is known -with any considerable ac- curacy and fulness by a few orAy ; and by the many is hardly known at all." It will be a source of boundless satisfaction to me if the result of this feeble effort of mine be, to make the leading facts of the history of the Church of Ireland known to many, " especially unto them who are of the household of faith." H. S. Vastina Rectory, Castletown, mullingae. November, 1885. CONTENTS. i PAGE I Preface v i CHAP. I I. — Early History 1 | II. — Invasion 21 | III. — Reformation 47 IV. — Hostile Camps 76 V. — Church and State 107 VI. — Union with Engiand .... 136 VII. — The Coming Struggle 164 | VIII.— Disestablishment ..... 196 ; IX. — Reconstruction 231 X. — Progress 268 XI. — MoBERN History 301 XII.— Church Work ....... 335 Appendix : Bishops of the Church of Ireland from 1535 to 1885 . . . 377 j THE CHURCH OF IRELAND. CHAPTER I. EARLY HISTORY. NATURE," says Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, " has implanted in our breasts a lively impulse to extend the narrow span of our existence by the knowledge of events that have happened on the soil which we inhabit, and of the characters and actions of those men from whom our descent, as individuals or as a people, is derived." I venture to think that there are very few Irish Churchmen who do not take an interest in the eccle- siastical, as well as in the secular, events of bygone days, and who do not estimate at their true value the " characters and actions " of the men of old, to whose steadfastness and fidelity Ireland is so deeply indebted at the present moment. The history of the Church of Ireland deserves the special attention even of those who are not in com- munion with her. Her career has been so eventful, BO romantic, so full of adventure, that she occupies 2 The Church of Ireland. quite a unique position among the Churches of Christendom. During a j^eriod of fourteen centuries she has passed through innumerable changes and vicissi- tudes. Sometimes the sun of prosperity has shone brilliantly upon her ; and at other times the lowering clouds of adversity have gathered over her : but whe- ther in prosperity or in adversity, she has always been, as a Church, true to her great mission. She has preserved, through evil report and through good report, the grand truths of the Christian religion in Ireland. Overborne for a time by the almost irresistible influence of the Church of Rome, she nevertheless rose, when opportunity offered, superior to that influence. Used as a tool sometimes for the furtherance of political ends by those who stood at the helm of the State, she always in the end success- fully asserted her independence, and proclaimed to the world that her mission is a Divine, not a secular, mission. She now stands before the Christian world purified by the fire of trial through which it has been her lot to pass, determined to maintain at all hazards " the faith once delivered to the saints," resolved to stand forth as the defender of Holy Scripture against the assaults of the Intidel and against the corrup- tions of the Vatican ; ready to perish, and to be blotted out of existence, rather than surrender even the weakest of the outposts in the citadel of Truth. If there be now any regard for religion and mora- lity in Ireland, if there be any loyalty towards the Early History. 3 legitimate sovereign of the Kealm, any desire to obey the law, and those whose duty it is to enforce obedience to the law ; I say unhesitatingly that the credit is due mainly to the influence and action of the Church of Ireland. Let it be carefully observed that I say mainly, not exclusively. I willingly and gratefully acknowledge that all Protestants in Ireland are on the side of true religion, of law and order ; but the ancient Church of this country, having long been an Established Church, and, as such, bound up with the very exist- ence of the nation, possesses still an amount of in- fluence over the loyal portion of the population which other bodies of Protestant Christians never have pos- sessed, and never can hope to obtain. As for that branch of the Church of Rome which has obtained a footing in Ireland, I do not scruple to say that she has always been the open and undis- guised enemy of the Bible, and also, that she has often been the secret abettor of plots against the British Government. When I say the Church of Rome, I mean exactly what I say, and nothing more. I speak of the Church as a corporate body. For it would be both unfair and untrue to deny that within the communion of that Church are to be found large numbers of individual members who are as loyal to the Queen, as obedient to the laws of the land, and as pure and upright in their lives, as the very best of Protestants. In dealing with the subject which I have proposed 4 The Church of Ireland. to discuss, I shall endeavour to be as fair, as impar- tial, and as exact as possible. I write only to serve the cause of pure and Scriptural Christianity, and to convey to those who shall read what I am about to write accurate information concerning that Church of which it is my happiness to be a Presbyter, and that it were in my power to do her full and complete justice before the world, my highest ambition. Let us look back into the dim and shadowy past. We shall find, if we do so, that there is light enough to guide us in our historical researches. When we study the ancient history of Ireland, this conclusion forces itself irresistibly on our minds ; that the Irish people, even during the centuries which immediately preceded the Christian sera, were not untutored savages. They lived under a monarchi- cal government. They had equitable laws, which were, on the whole, wisely administered. They cul- tivated the arts of civilised life. Wars amongst rival clans were, it is true, frequent, and were attended, as wars always are, with great calamities ; but not- withstanding this drawback, the land was well tilled in the intervals of peace, and manufactures were not altogether neglected. There was also a code of public opinion to which all classes yielded obedience, and which was the means of fostering probity in public life, and morality in the domestic circle. Litera- ture, too, was held in great esteem. The ancient Irish had their bards or poet-musicians, and their chroniclers or historians. Phcenius, the founder of 1 Early History. 5 the Milesian race, is said to have introduced into Ireland the arts of reading and writing, and a love for philosophy. He is invariably called by the old writers " the Sage ;" and it is related of him that he appointed seventy men to disperse themselves all over the globe, and to make themselves acquainted with the various languages and dialects of the coun- tries through which they travelled. At the expira- tion of seven years, they were to return to Ireland, and to make known the result of their observation and experience. ■ One of these seventy learned men was Gadel, or Gailag ; and from his name Mr. O'Halloranj the historian, derives the word Gaelic. The Milesians may be regarded as the ancestors of the modern Celtic* population of Ireland ; and if any reliance can be placed on the statements of the early annal- ists, who profess to derive their information from very ancient records, their history was full of note- worthy incidents, and it was, moreover, the history of a people who attached great importance, not only to the development of their physical strength, but still more to the cultivation of their intellectual gifts. When, therefore, the Christian religion was first preached in Ireland, the Irish were prepared to accept * The Celts formed a portion of the great Indo-Germanic race who, at a very early period, spread from east to west across Central Europe. The country whence they originally came is supposed to have been Galatia, in Asia Minor. They were, therefore, called Galatae or Celtae. 6 The Church of Ireland. it, and to believe it, as a confirmation of many of the ideas which they ah-eady entertained, and also, as giving a sanction to many of the moral principles which they had been in the habit of enforcing. They would certainly have given their assent to such a statement as that which was made many ages after by Bishop Butler if it had been made to them by their Christian teachers, viz. : that " practical Chris- tianity, or that faith and behaviour which renders a man a Christian, is like the common rules of conduct with reference to temporal affairs." It is not possible to fix the precise date when Christian missionaries first landed in Ireland; but Eusebius (a.d. 325) tells us that some of the apostles crossed the ocean to "the British Isles;" and Chry- sostom (a.d. 390) says that there were, in his time, many persons in the British Isles familiar with the Holy Scriptures. The use of the plural word " Isles " is suggestive. It almost irresistibly points to Ireland as well as to Great Britain. Then, in a.d. 431, according to the Chronicle of Prosper, we find that " Palladius, having been first consecrated by Pope Celestine, was sent as the first bishop to the Irish believing in Christ.'"^ The year a.d. 432 was rendered remarkable, as * " Before the landing of the EngHsh in Britain, the Christian Church comprised every country, save Germany, in Western Europe as far as Ireland itself. The conqiiest of Britain by the Pagan English tlirust a wedge of heathendom into the heart of this great communion, and broke it into Early History. 7 most writers of Irish Ecclesiastical History tell us — notably the Kev. Robert King— by the arrival in Ireland of the celebrated St. Patrick. The late Rev. Dr. Todd, S.F.T.C.D., fixed the date ten years later. Sir John Temple, whose knowledge of Church History does not appear to have been very profound, in his story of the Rebellion of 1641, assigns a date for the visit of St. Patrick which is at variance with the opinion of all other historians, if by the expres- sion " fourth age " we are to understand fourth cen- tury. Pie says : " It is certainly not without some good grounds affirmed by ancient writers that in the fourth age after the Incarnation of our blessed Lord and Saviour, some holy and learned men came over out of foreign parts into Ireland, out of their pious desires to propagate the blessed Gospel throughout the kingdom, as Sedulius, Palladius, and, besides several others, Patricius, the famous Irish saint." It is, however, clear from the almost universal testimony of ecclesiastical historians that it was not until towards the middle of the fifth century that St. Patrick began his celebrated mission in Ireland. About St. Patrick — Sanctus Patric'ms — much of a controversial character has been written. By some he is regarded as a personage altogether mythical ; by others, as a Christian bishop concerning whose two unequal parts. On tlie one side lay Italy, Spain, and Gaul, whose churches owned obedience to the See of Rome ; on the other the Chuech of Ireland. " — Green's History of the English People. 8 The Church of Ireland. identity there can be no more doubt than there can be concerning that of St. Paul or St. Peter. It seems hardly necessary to say that no one ■who really knows anything at all about the matter can jDossibly regard St. Patrick as a mere myth, the hero of a series of legendary tales. He was unquestionably, and beyond all doubt, although not the first i^reacher of Chris- tianity in Ireland, the founder of the " Church of Ireland," and the first occupant of the See of Armagh, •which has ever since been the Primatial See of this country, as that of Canterbury is of England. The Eev. Thomas Olden, M.li.I.A., in his trans- lation of the " Epistles and Hymn of St. Patrick," thus describes the commencement of his missionary labours in Ireland : — " Having reached the neigh- bourhood of Tara on the eve of Easter, he made pre- parations for celebrating the festival, and proceeded to light his Paschal tire on the hill of Slane ; but at this very time a great Pagan festival occurred, which began by the extinguishing of every fire in that country, and whosoever kindled one before the king's fire appeared on the hill of Tara, that soul should be cut olf from his people. No sooner had the bright flame of the strange fire shot up into the evening air than the Druids recognised a rival power ; they de- clared that the fire should be immediately extin- guished, else it would get the better of their fires, and bring about the downfall of the kingdom. This was the first open contest between Christianity and Druidism in Ireland. It was a critical moment, and Early History. 9 the fate of bis mission hung in the balance ; but he was ' strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.' ' Some ' (he is reported to have said) ' put their trust in chariots, and some in horses, but u c will remember the name of the Lord.' Ordered to appear before the king, the opportunity was afforded him which he so much desired, of preaching the Gospel in the presence of the rulers of the kingdom. It was on this occasion that he composed the Irish Hymn, which he sang as he approached the palace, and thus gave all to understand the foundation on which his courage rested. His exhortation failed to convince the king, though several of his followers became obedient to the faith ; but he had gained much by successfully encountering the Druids in the head-quarters of their system, and he was thence- forward assured of victory." One fact in the history of St. Patrick is now, thanks to the labours and researches of modern writers, placed beyond all dispute. It is this : that he never was at Rome, that he never had any epis- copal commission from Rome, but that he was con- secrated and sent to Ireland by some of the bishops of the Church of Gaul. A mere glance at his extant Avritings will convince the most sceptical that he did not regard himself as in any degree under the control of the Roman Church. " If," says Neander, one of the great ecclesiastical historians of Germany, " St. Patrick came as a deputy to Ireland from Rome, it might naturally be expected that in the Irish Church lO The Church of Ireland. a certain sense of dependence would always have been preserved towards the Mother Church at Rome. But we find, on the contrary, in the Irish Church afterwards a spirit of freedom similar to that shown by the ancient British Church which struggled against the yoke of Roman ordinances." Another fact of importance is this : that St. Patrick in his teaching laid great stress on the Scriptural doctrine of salvation through the Divine Saviour. In the celebrated hymn which he sang at Tara, and to which allusion has already been made, he says : — " Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me ! Christ below me, Christ above me, Christ at my right, Clirist at my left ! Christ in breadth, Christ in length, Christ in height. " Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me, Clirist in the mouth of everyone who speaks to me, Clirist in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me ! " I bind myself to-day to a strong virtue, an invocation of the Trinity. I believe in a Threeness with confession of a Oneness in the Creator of the universe." There is in this magnificent hymn no reference whatever to the supposed mediatorial office of the Blessed Virgin, but a clear avowal of belief in a Triune God, and a distinct acknowledgment of the Divine power of Christ. Early History. II The Church of Rome in the days of St. Patrick had not admitted the worship of the Virgin Mary into her recognised formularies. The heresy was of much later date. The quotation given ahove is most valuahle, as showing that Mariolatry, as it has been well called, could not have been sanctioned by the early Church, of which Rome claims to have been the head. If it had been, St. Patrick, sup- posing him to have derived his orders and his conse- cration from Rome, would hardly have composed so remarkable a hymn without some reference to a dogma of such unspeakable importance. But, in ti'uth, St. Patrick never had any ecclesiastical connection with Rome, and "Litanies to the Virgin " were utterly unknown in any part of Christendom during the first seven centuries, at least, of the Christian sera. St. Patrick's memory ought, undoubtedly, to be dear to all true-hearted Irishmen. They are quite unworthy of their country who treat with indifference one of the greatest names in her annals, or who are ignorant of the principal incidents of his life, and of the sublime truths which he loved and taught. His father is said to have been a deacon named Calphurnius, and his grandfiither a priest named Potitus. It is clear that, if this be true — and there is no reason to doubt its truth — clerical celibacy was not enforced during the age immediately preceding that in which St. Patrick lived. Celibacy, in fact, was not made compulsory on the clergy until Hildebrand, under the title of Gregory VII., became Pope, towards 12 The Church of Ireland. the close of the eleventh ceutury, six huudred years after the mission of St. Patrick to Ireland. There was a depth of meaning in this policy which can only be fathomed by those who know how powerful is the influence exercised by the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland at the present moment; whenever the autho- rity of the Pope is called in question. By compelling every ordained man to lead a single life, Hildebrand severed him from society, forced him to sacrifice the noblest and purest of human affections — those that spring up in the domestic circle — and attached him for life to his Church and to his Order, The priest, after his ordination, was no longer a German, a Frenchman, a Spaniard, an Englishman, or an Irish- man. He was a Roman, the subject of the Pope. Every country was alike to him. He was a minister and peer of an empire which claimed to extend over the globe. To quote the language of Phelan in his Policy of the Church of Rome — " Like the envoy or the minister of any foreign government, he observes the laws of the State in which his master may have placed him ; and he respects, for a time, the autho- rity of the local magistrate ; but his Order is his country, the Pontiff his natural sovereign, and their welfare and tlieir honour are the appropriate objects of his public care." This policy was unknown in the days of St. Patrick, and for several centuries after his time. St. Patrick's father and grandfather were, as we have seen, eccle- siastics. There was then no law " forbidding to Early History. 13 marry; " but we have no evidence to show that St. Patrick himself was, like St. Peter, a married man. At the age of sixteen he was taken captive at Dum- barton, in Scotland, where he then resided, and he was sold as a slave to Milcho, a Pagan prince, in the north of Ireland. For six years he endured all the bitter suffering of slavery, and at the end of that time he contrived somehow to regain his liberty. There is a remarkable passage in his writings, in which he gives an account of the spiritual conflict through which he passed during the days of his cap- tivity. Although born of Christian parents, he does not appear to have had any serious thoughts on the subject of religion until sorrow had brought him under discipline. " Up to the period of ray cap- tivity," he says in his Confession, " I knew not the true God ; but in the strange land the Lord brought me to a sense of my unbelief ; so that, although late, I called my sins to remembrance, and turned with my whole heart to the Lord my God, who regarded my low estate, took pity on my youth and igno- rance, watched over me before I knew Him, protected me and comforted me as a father would his own son." Feeling the power of the Gosnel in his own heart, St. Patrick became intensely anxious for the spiritual welfare of the people of Ireland. Soon after he re- gained his freedom, he determined, notwithstanding the opposition of his parents and many friends, to return to the land of his captivity as a missionary, 14 The Church of Ireland. and to bear to the Irish the glad tidings of salvation through Jesus Christ. It is not possible to fix accurately the date of St. Patrick's ordination and consecration ; but everything goes to prove that he was set apart to the sacred ministry in Gaul. Some Koman Catholic historians would have us believe that Pope Celestine admitted him to Holy Orders, and commissioned him to preach to the Irish. Even Archbishop Ussher, the Rev. Robert King says, believed that St. Patrick had a commission from Rome ; " but," adds Mr. King, " since the days of this eminently learned man, the question has been further sifted, and the additional light thus thrown upon it has tended to make it appear highly pro- bable, or almost certain, that St. Patrick never was at Rome, and that he never received from Rome any commission whatsoever." The Rev. Thomas Olden tells us that the earliest accounts state that he was consecrated in Gaul by a bishop named Amathorex ; " and this," he adds, " is the more probable from his intimate connection with that country." Few missionaries have had such abundant success granted to them as St. Patrick had. We cannot believe all that is said about him. We cannot, for instance, give credit to the statement made about four hundred years after his death, that he founded in Ireland three hundred and sixty-five churches, that he consecrated three hundred and sixty-five bishops, that he ordained three thousand presbyters, Early History. 15 and that in Connaught alone he was the means of converting twelve thousand persons to the faith of Christ. There is evident exaggeration in all this ; but that his mission work in Ireland was singularly successful, no one who has taken the trouble to find out what is really known about him can possibly doubt. " The i^icture of his success," says Mr. Olden, " is sometimes drawn in very brilliant colours. It is said to have been rapid, bloodless, and complete ; but this description is far from accurate. Missionary life has its successes and failures, its joys and sor- rows ; and if we are told of a career all sunshine and no shadow, we instinctively feel that the picture is overdrawn. His mission was no exception to this rule. He met with frequent opposition ; his life was threatened and plotted against. On one occasion his charioteer was killed in mistake for himself. Many rejected his authority ; and it has been inferred (ac- cording to Dr. Todd), from his placing fortifications around his ecclesiastical establishments, that he had little confidence in their security. Yet, after making all the allowance that truth requires, a survey of his labours will convince us that he occupies one of the very highest positions among the soldiers of the Cross, and is justly entitled to the honour of being named the A].)ostle of Ireland." In the age immediately following that in which St. Patrick lived and laboured, the Church of Ireland produced many illustrious men, noted for their learn- i5 The Church of Ireland. ing and for their zeal in promoting a knowledge of the Christian faith. Chief among these was St. Columba, the Apostle of the Highlands and western islands of Scotland, and founder and first Abbot of the celebrated Monastery of lona. The more common name, Columbkill, or Columb of the Churches, by which he is usually distinguished, was given to him because of the great number of churches and monas- teries which he founded. Columba died on the 9th June, 597. That day, therefore, is marked as his festival in the calendar of Irish saints. For the same reason the 17th March is chosen as " St. Patrick's Day " by Irishmen all over the world. The literary fame of Ireland in those early days does not rest for its evidence on doubtful records, or on the testimony of unknown authors. It is inter- woven with the ecclesiastical history of Europe. It is attested by the most trustworthy chroniclers. Foremost among the books then studied by Irish scholars was the Bible. The philosophy of the age, such as it was, was not neglected. Poetry received some share of attention. The classics of Greece and Eome were read, and, to a great extent, appreciated. In the literature of those days, however. Holy Scripture filled the most prominent place, the place which of right belongs to it ; and, as might naturally have been expected, the light of truth burst forth from Ireland to illuminate many of the countries of Europe which were then shrouded in Pagan dark- ness. Early History. 17 It was Columbanus, an Irishman, who converted the Suevi, the Boii, and the Franks of Germany. It was Kilianus, another Irishman, who brought the Gospel to the Eastern Franks, Gallus, the apostle of Switzerland, who has given his name (St, Gall) to one of the cantons of that remarkable country, was an Irishman, Batavia, Friesland, and Westphalia were brought to the profession of the Christian faith by Willibrord, who, although not an Irishman by birth, received his first religious impressions and his educa- tion in Ireland. Johannes Scotus Erigena, the great theologian of the ninth century, who opposed Pas- chasius Radbertus, the first promulgator of the doctrine known as " Transubstantiation," was an Irishman. The celebrity of the Irish schools for learning continued down to the eleventh century. We have interesting evidence of this in the life of Sulgen, who was appointed Bishop of St, David's, in Wales, about the year 1070, and who studied the Bible in Ireland, when a young man, for more than ten years. "For three centuries after the time of St, Patrick," says the Bishop of Ossory, Right Rev. W, Pakenham Walsh, D,D., " L-eland was the favourite abode of learning and religion. Historians of different creeds and countries agree in pointing her out as the University of Europe, to which multitudes of students came from various lands, to receive instruction in divine and human wisdom. Even so late as the eleventh century, we find the Irish celebrated as a 0 l8 The Church of Ireland. nation famous for their knowledge of the Word of God. But not only was Ireland renowned as a depository of Scriptural truth. She was also the refulgent centre from which beams of Gospel truth were diffused throughout a great part of the Con- tinent. When the nations of Germany and Northern Europe were sunk in heathenism, it was from Ireland principally that they received the knowledge of God. It was by means of her missionaries that two-thirds of Saxon England, and a great part of Scotland, were converted to the Christian faith." "Ireland was formerly called the Island of Saints," said the late Bishop of Lincoln, Eight Bev. Chris- topher Wordsworth, D.D., to the clergy assembled at his triennial visitation in Nottingham, October, 1882. " Fourteen hundred years ago," he added, " she was the burning and shining light of Western Christen- dom. In sacred and other learning she was in advance of England. The sons of our nobles and gentry were sent to Ireland for education. She was the University of the West. She was rich in colleges and schools, and trained our forefathers in sound learning, especially in the Word of God. She was also famous for missionary zeal. A great part of England owed its Christianity to Irish missionaries from the school of St. Columba in lona. Ireland also evangelized countries on the Continent of Europe." The British Army and Navy are justly proud of many victories gained over powerful foes in every Early History. 19 part of the world. Such names as those of Welling- ton and Nelson — names which stand at the head of a very long list of heroes — are deservedly had in honour. Our national banners have inscribed on them the names of places in which great battles have been fought, and splendid feats of valour have been witnessed. Those names will never be forgotten so long as there exists among us a spark of true patriotism. The Church of Ireland, too, may be permitted to inscribe upon her banners the names of men who have fought the good fight of faith, and of places in which bloodless contests have been brought to an end by an acknowledgment of the sovereignty of Him who is the Prince of Peace. As a missionary Church, the ancient Church of this country may challenge the admiration of the whole woiid. Let me here observe— and let no one be offended at the observation — that the Church of which I am now writing is pre-eminently and emphatically the Church of Ireland. She is not the Church merely of the Protestant Episcopalian portion of the population of Ireland, but the Church of the whole country, founded by St. Patrick, and holding still in spiritual matters the position which she has maintained for fourteen centuries. If she be not the Church of the majority of the Irish people, if she no longer possess the territorial jurisdiction which she once enjoyed ; it is not that she has been untrue to her mission, unfaithful to her sacred obligations. The fault lies 20 The Church of Ireland. not with lier, but with those who, to serve their own political ends, in former times placed every obstacle in the way of her advancement towards the promotion of true religion, and who in these latter days cast her aside, in the vain hope that by so doing they would conciliate a turbulent mob, backed by the priesthood of a rival Church, " steeped to the lips" in hatred of everything that is English and Protestant. This I shall endeavour to show further on. Mean- while let me support the assertion which I have made above by two short quotations from the Charge of the late learned Bishop of Lincoluj to which I have already alluded. " In the twelfth century," said the Bishop, " Eng- land, in her lust for conquest, betrayed Ireland into the hands of Rome ; and for four hundred years England tried to govern Ireland by means of Rome." And, alluding to recent events, the Bishop said : — " The Church of Ireland was making steady pro- gress, and might, by salutary measures of reform, have become a blessing to her people, and have been restored to her primitive place in Christendom. But England again interfered to blight her hopes." CHAPTER II. INVASION. THE history of Ireland, botb. ecclesiastical and civil, during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, was rendered memorable by many calami- ties. First France, then England and Scotland, and afterwards Ireland, suffered severely from the incursions of the Danes. The Danes were distinguished in those days, as Lord Macaulay tells us, " by strength, by valour, by merciless ferocity, and hy hatred of the Christian name." Under the blighting influence of these heathens, the Christian religion was upheld and maintained in Ireland with great difficulty, and in very many cases only at the risk of the lives of those who pub- licly professed their faith in Christ. Churches and abbeys, monasteries, colleges, and seminaries for the education of the clergy, were destroyed ; libraries, valuable documents, and ancient records were com- mitted to the flames ; and in many places the wor- ship of Woden and Thor v/as substituted for the worship of God through Jesus Christ. Three times in one month Armagh was burned and plundered. 22 The Church of Ireland. Cork, Waterford, Limerick, Lismore, Ferns, Clon- fert, Slane, Kildare, Clonmacnoise, Kells, Clonard, Glendalough, Swords, and many other Irish towns and villages were pillaged, and their inhabitants were put to death by the Danish barbarians. At last it was determined to make a gigantic effort to conqner the whole of Ireland. Never before had the country been in such imminent danger. The Danes had established their iron rule in Great Bri- tain from the Orkneys to the Scilly Isles; all that was now wanting to their complete supremacy was the conquest of Ireland. Extensive and mighty pre- parations were made for the attack. Every harbour in Norway, Denmark, France, England, and the Channel Islands was alive with ships, which were intended to convey the troops of the Danish invader to the Green Isle of the West. As so many isolated and defenceless towns had yielded to the Danish arms, it was expected that there would be little or no resistance, if a bold and determined attempt were made to destroy the independence of the whole land. Fortunately for Ireland, she then possessed a native sovereign whose courage and whose skill were equal to the occasion. Brian Boroihme — or Boru — that is Brian of the Tribute, who had been king of Monster, had become, partly by his valour, and partly by his skill in diplomacy, Ard-Ri, or supreme monarch of Erin ; and the moment he heard of the intended in- vasion of his kingdom, he began his preparations for defence. Invasion. 23 The DaTiish flotilla, uuder Admiral Brodav, entered Dublin Bay, on Palm Sunday, April 18th, 1014. The following Friday — Good Friday, April 23rd — the armies of Denmark and of Ireland came into collision at Clontarf. Brian himself, mounted on a richly caparisoned charger, rode through the Irish lines, exhorting the troops to remember the moment- ous issues that depended on the fortunes of that day — Religion and Counti'y against Paganism and Bondage. It is said that, overcome with emotion, he delivered an address which roused his soldiers to the utmost pitch of enthusiasm. " Remember," he paid, " that on this day Christ died for us on Mount Calvary ; and you are about to fight for faith and fatherland." The brave troops of the Irish king did fight with a heroism worthy of the occasion. The Danes and their allies were defeated and fled, some in the direction of Dublin, and others to their ships. The intrepid king fell in the battle. He is said to have been killed by Brodar, the Danish admiral, who attacked him at a moment when he was off his guard. This Battle of Clontarf was undoubtedly one of the most glorious events in the annals of ancient Ireland. The valour of Brian's troops on that day saved the country from being overwhelmed by the tide of heathenism. Christianity was upheld and maintained, and henceforward was cherished with greater fervour than it ever had been before. But the clouds of adversity soon began to gather. For a 24 The Church of Ireland. century and a half disaster brooded over the land. Utterly broken down and dispirited, little by little the Irish people lost much of their ancient prestige. " England," says the late Mr. A. M. Sullivan in his Story of Ireland, " was becoming a compact nation, governed by concentrated national authority, and possessed of a military organisation formidable in numbers and in arms, but most of all in scientific mode of w^arfare, and perfection of military discipline ; while Ireland, like a noble vessel amid the breakers, was absolutely going to pieces — breaking up into fragments or clans, north, south, east, and west. As a natural result of this anarchy, or wasting strife of factions, social and religious disorders supervened ; and as a historian aptly remarks, the Island of Saints became an island of sinners. The state of religion was deplorable. The rules of ecclesiastical discip- line were in many places overthrown, as was every other necessary moral and social safeguard ; and inevitably the most lamentable disorders and scan- dals resulted." It does not appear that during the period referred to in the foregoing quotation, any serious effort was made to restore the manly independence which had formed an essential feature in the national character of Ireland. At last, in a moment of despair, the Irish Church, clergy and laity alike, submitted to the yoke of Rome, imposed by England. " It was through England," says the Eev. Eobert King in his Church History of Ireland, " that Invasion. 25 Ireland first became connected with the Roman | Church, and subject to the authority of the Pope." All extant historical records go to prove the accuracy of this statement. There were in the reign of Henry II. five principal sovereignties in Ireland — Munster, Leinster, Meath, Ulster, and Connaught. As it had been usual for one of these to take the lead in war, there was generally some monarch who seemed to be in fact, although not by right, King of Ireland. In the year 1172, Roderic O'Connor held this dignity ; but his authority, little respected as it was, even within his own territor}', was insufficient to defend the country against foreign invasion. The ambition of the King of England had, very early in his reign, led him to contemplate what is erroneously called the "Conquest of Ireland." A pretext for lauding and taking possession of the country was eagerly sought for. That pretext was furnished by the dissensions of the chieftains ; but in order to give the enterprise a colour of justice, Henry II. had recourse to the Church of Rome. Every reader of history knows that Henry II. began his reign by ])lacing himself in antagonism to the Papal authority. As soon as Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, was dead, the king resolved to curb, in every way, the power of the clergy; and in order that he might be secure against all opposition, he promoted to the office of Lord Chancellor the celebrated Thomas a Becket. Not content with this, 26 The Church of Ireland. he entrusted a Becket with the education of Prince Henry, his eldest son, and soon after commanded that he should be elected Archbishop of Canterbury. Lord Tennyson, the Poet Laureate, in the magni- ficent drama which has lately entranced thousands of enthusiastic readers, has thrown a flood of light on the character of a Becket. So far from becoming the tool of the king, he defied the royal authority when that authority was used to curb the exorbitant power of the clergy. He gave his assent, it is true, to the "Constitutions of Clarendon but when the Pope refused to ratify those Constitutions, a Becket did not hesitate for a moment to obey the Pope, and to disobey the king. The contest ended, as we know, with the assassination of a Becket, a heinous crime, which was made a thousandfold more heinous by the peculiar circumstances under which it was committed, and by the exalted rank of the unhappy victim. The news of a Becket's murder was received by the king with real sorrow, for it had been brought about by a few incautious words spoken by himself, which were never intended to produce so unfortunate a result. It was clearly a matter of importance that the Pope should be thoroughly convinced of the king's innocence of the murder ; and the political affairs of Ireland just then came to his aid in a way which he could never have anticipated. Two years after Henry's accession to the crown of England (115G), Adrian IV., better known as Nicholas Breakspear, issued a Bull, the object of which was to Invasion. 27 bring the Irish Church under the dominion of Rome, and in it be gave the King of England full power and authority over Ireland. Mr. A. M. Sullivan sa3-s that " there is no such Bull in the Papal archives ; yet," he adds, "it is credited that some such Bull was issued." It is beyond all doubt that nearly every historian of repute who has recorded the events of the reign of Henry II. makes mention of a Bull of this nature ; and it is also highly probable that Adrian being an Englishman — the only English- man who ever filled the Papal chair — would take every suitable opportunity of forwarding the interests of England, and those of the Church of Rome. The Rev. Robert King states that both the Bull of Pope Adrian, and the confirmatory one of Pope Alexander III. (1159), are to be found in Ussher's Sylloge. Here it will be necessary to go back a few jears, and to see how Ireland was prepared to acquiesce in the Papal pretensions. In 115'2, Cardinal Paparo arrived in Ireland as the Legate of Pope Eugenius III. He was accompanied by four English Archbishops. A Synod was held at Kells, in the County Meath (March 9th, 1152), and at that Synod palls were conferred on the four Archbishops of Ireland — Armagh, Dublin, Cashel, and Tuam. It may here be explained that the pall, or lyallium, is a part of the ecclesiastical dress of a Roman Catholic Arch- bishop, which is sent by the Pope to one newly appointed to that dignity; and until the pall is 28 The Church of Ireland. received the Archbishop cannot perform all the duties connected with his office. Malachy, Archbishop of Armagh (1134), according to Rev. R. King, was the first Irish prelate who adopted this mark of sub- mission to the Bishop of Rome. Bishop Mant says it was Archbishop Gelasius. The first person who filled the office of Papal Legate in Ireland is said to have been Gilbert, Bishop of Limerick, nominated in 1139. The permission to invade and conquer Ireland, although given, as I have said above, by Pope Adrian IV. to Henry II. in 1156, was not acted upon until 1172. In the spring of that year Henry II., anxious to give some public intimation that he regarded with horror the murder of a Becket, took an oath on the relics of certain saints, in the presence of a distinguished assembly of ecclesiastics, that he had neither desired nor commanded the death of " the late Archbishop of (Canterbury;" after which he received absolution, and was confirmed in the grant of Ireland made by Adrian sixteen years before. Alexander III. was the reigning Pope then. Although it has been confidently asserted that no copy of the remarkable document issued by Adrian IV., and confirmed by Alexander III., is now in existence, yet in that which purports to be a true copy, and which is contained, as I have already said, in Archbishop Ussher's Sylloge, we find these words : — " Ireland and all the islands upon which Christ the Sun of Righteousness hath shined, and which Invasion. 29 have received instruction in the Christian faith, do belong of right to St. Peter and the Holy lioman Church." We also read that, " in token of submis- sion to the claims of the Church, the Pope com- mands that each household shall pay as tribute one penny a year to him or to his representative." This tax is known as Peter's Pence. It is hard to resist the conclusion that some defi- nite instructions, in writing, regarding Ireland were given by Adrian IV. to the King of England, and that, when a suitable opportunity presented itself, the king proceeded to act on those instructions. A petty quarrel between the King of Leinster and the King of Connaught gave Henry II. a pretext for inter- fering, and Earl Strongbow was sent over with an armed force to restore peace. Then came in due time the royal progress through the newly-acquired territory. Setting out from Milford Plaven, the English king landed in Waterford, and, at the head of five hundred knights, travelled from place to place, and received everywhere the homage of his new sub- jects. Most of the Irish chieftains were left in quiet possession of their estates ; the English adventurers who accompanied the king had grants of land made to them, which in some cases were of considerable extent and value ; Earl Strongbow was appointed Seneschal of Ireland, an office which invested him with all but royal dignity in the absence of the monarch ; and after a visit of a few months Henry II. returned in triumph to England. " By these trivial 30 The Church of Ireland. exploits," says Hume, " scarcely worth relating, ex- cept for the importance of tlie consequences, was Ireland subdued and annexed to the English crown." Except for the impoi-tdnce of tlic consequences ! Seldom, indeed, has any national acquisition of ter- ritory been attended with graver results. To the State the consequences of the visit of the King of England to Ireland may have been beneficial ; to the Church they were in the highest degree disas- trous. There can be no greater mistake than to speak of this event as the " Conquest of Ireland," or to regard it as holding a similar position in history to the Conquest of England by William the Norman. It was a peaceful occupation of a country inhabited by a peoi)le worn out with internal dissension, and glad to accept any sovereign and any form of government, jirovided it were possible to obtain security for life and in'operty, and freedom of action within the limits of the law. "\^'illiam the Conqueror had not merely to win the ]3attle of Hastings. He had to fight his way step by step, and to subdue a people for the most part unwilling to receive him. In the end he succeeded. England was conquered, and the Duke of Normandy established a royal dyuastj' which has lasted for more than eight hundred years. Ireland was never conquered. She was annexed to England in a moment of heavy affliction and mute despair. Happy would it have been for her if, after her first burst of sorrow and wrath was over, she had sought Invasion. 31 to cultivate the friendsliip and win the esteem of England, whilst she preserved her own national tra- ditions and usages. She did not do this. She has never attempted to do this. When the right hand of fellowship, even now, is held out to her, she sulkily refuses to grasp it ; and instead of regarding herself as a component part of a mightj^ empire, she aspires to a separate nationality which has become impos- sible. The circumstances under which her union with England took place seven centuries ago were, no doubt, much to be deplored ; but the union having taken place, it ought long ago to have been cemented by ardent love on both sides, and it ought to have become, with the lapse of each succeeding century, so firm as to be now indissoluble. This, unhappily, is not what has occurred. Political and religious differences have kept the two countries widely apart, and the estrangement has been deeply injurious to both. In 1172 the terrible misfortunes which had been endured by the Irish clergy during the greater part of the preceding century, had so completely demo- ralized them, that they gladly welcomed any change for the better. When they heard of the Bull of Adrian IV., they came to the conclusion that to ac- cept it would be to obtain relief from all their suffer- ings. Little did they know that they were imposing on themselves a yoke which they would soon find it hard to bear. Eoger Hovenden says that " at Water- ford all the archbishops, bishops, and abbots of 32 The Church of Ireland. Ireland came to the King of England, and received him for Lord of Ireland, swearing fealty to him and his heirs, and the power of reigning over them for ever ; and then they gave him their instruments. And after the example set them by the clergy, the kings and princes of Ireland did receive Henry, King of England, for Lord and King of Ireland, and they became his men, and swore fealty to him and his heirs against all men." This was the first step. The second followed as a natural consequence. The King of England might now dictate laws to his faithful subjects in Ireland. Why should not the Church of England, which had acknowledged the supremacy, not merely the primac}', of Rome, also dictate laws to her " sister Church of Ireland " ? At various critical periods of Church history during many preceding centuries, councils or synods had asseml)led in various places for the purpose of deciding important questions concerning doctrine or discipline. Nica3a, Chalcedon, Constantinople, and many other places had become centres of interest, by reason of their connection with great events in eccle- siastical history. A great event in the ecclesiastical history both of England and Ireland was brought about by the intervention of Henry II. The king, acting under advice, required that a council or synod should be summoned " to make laws for the better regulation of ecclesiastical affairs in Ireland;" and the council was accordingly summoned under the royal sign-manual. Invasion. 33 Cashel, in the county of Tipperary and province of Munster, was selected as the place in which the council was to meet and deliberate. Cashel was then the ecclesiastical metropolis of the south of Ireland, and a place of great importance. It was long called " Cashel of the Kings," because many Irish chief- tains have been crowned in its noble cathedral. The ruins of this once magnificent Minster, including the chapel of King Cormac, are still in existence, and furnish one out of many proofs of the vitality as well as the splendour of the ancient Church of Ireland. "No person of taste or feeling,", says Mr. John Davis White, in the Introduction to his History of the City of Cashel, " can see the ruined yet noble pile of buildings which crowns the Rock of Cashel, without being struck with admiration of their beauty and grandeur." " Upon this rock," says the Venerable Henry Cotton, D.C.L,, " have been erected at different periods — (1) A Round Tower, which is still entire. (2) A small but beautiful stone-roofed Church, of what is usually called the Norman style of architec- ture, built in the early part of the twelfth century by Cormac M'Carthy, King of Desmond or South Mun- ster, and still familiarly known by the name of Cormac's Chapel. (3) Occupying the whole space between those buildings, and, as it were, embracing them, stands the larger Church or Cathedral, which was erected about the year 1169 by Donald O'Brien, King of Limerick." 34 The Church of Ireland. It will be seen from this quotation that when Henry II. visited Ireland, the cathedral of Cashel had only just been completed ; and it was but natural that a building of such stately proportions, and in such a commanding position, should have been se- lected as the meeting-place of the newly-summoned Synod. Archbishops, bishops, and clergy assembled from every part of Ireland to constitute the Synod of Cashel. The king was represented by his domestic chaplain and the Bishop of Llandaff. The proceed- ings of this assembly have been described by several contemporary historians. Among these Giraldus Cambrensis occupies a foremost position. He gives a detailed account of the several rules which were framed for the guidance of the Irish Church, in the very words in which they were originally published. One of these rules effected a complete revolution in the internal affairs of the Church of Ireland. It ran as follows : " Those who die with a good confession shall be buried with suitable obsequies, and the ac- companiment of Wakes and Masses. Likeivise all offices of Divine Service shall, for the future, in all parts of Ireland, be regulated after the model of Holy Church, according to the observance of the Church of England." Ware, in his History of the Bishops of Ireland, tells us that Donald O'Hullican was the Archbishop of Cashel when the Synod was held. He tells us further, that the Pope's Legate and the Bishop of Invasion. 35 Lismore presided. He then quotes the statement of Brompton, abbot of Ferval in Yorkshire, to the effect that '* King Henry received from every archbishop and bishop, charters with their seals pendant, whereby they confirmed the kingdom of Ireland to him and his heirs, and testified that they constituted him and his heirs kings and lords of Ireland for ever." He goes on to say, on the authority of Roger Hovenden, that the king sent a transcript of these charters to Pope Alexander, who, by his apostolic authority, confirmed the said kingdom to him and his heirs, according to the letters of the archbishops and bishops. After this he sums up the canons enacted by the Synod in these words : " They forbid marriages within the prohibited degrees, and estab- lish an exemption of Church lands from secular exactions, especially from coign and livery, cosheries and cuddies. They enact that the clergy shall not pay earic or composition for murder ; that the chil- dren shall be baptised at the font, and catechised without the Church doors ; that tithes of cattle, corn, and other profits shall be paid to the Parish Church ; and that the sick shall make their wills before the priest and their neighbours. Their movables were to be divided, if they have children, into three parts, one to the wife, one to the children, the third to the performance of his will " — that is, to be disposed of according to the wishes of the testator. " If there be no children, then the goods to be divided into two parts, one to the wife, the other to the performance 36 The Church of Ireland. of his will. If there be no wife living, but only children, then the goods to be divided into two parts, one to himself, and the other to his children. Also, that every Christian being dead shall be reverently brought to the Church and decently buried ; that Divine Service be observed in Ireland as in England. And so," adds the historian, " having owned the king supreme in Church and State, he confirmed their canons ; and at the same Synod the laws of England were thankfully received by all, and the observance of them confirmed by an oath." The Synod of Cashel was undoubtedly the most remarkable council of the Church which was ever held in Ireland, until, in our own day, after her Dis- establishment and Disendowment, the Church met, as she still meets, and as she will continue to meet, in her General and Diocesan Synods, to make laws for her own guidance, and to adopt such measures as will tend to promote pure religion throughout the whole land. It was at the Synod of Cashel that the Church of Ireland surrendered her independence, and acknowledged the authority of Rome. It was then that the Pope's supremacy, upheld by his Legate, was clearly admitted and publicly recognised by the representatives of the Irish Church. A Pope's " Legate for all Ireland " had, no doubt, been ap- pointed so far back as the year 1139, but his au- thority was not universally acknowledged ; and it is an admitted fact that when Cardinal Paparo distri- buted, as I have already said, palls to the archbishops Invasion. 37 in 1152 at Kells, some of the Irish bishops and many of the clergy refused to sanction his proceed- ings by their attendance. The enactments of the Synod of Cashel, unlike those of the Synod of Kells, were accepted by the whole body of Irish ecclesiastics. Thenceforward, until all Europe was convulsed by the preaching of the Reformers in the sixteenth century, the Popes and their Legates held undisputed sway in Ireland. One fact, however, must be borne in mind. It is this : that the laity of the Church were not repre- sented at the Synod of Cashel. Yet even in those days of old, when laymen possessed little or no edu- cation, and hardly any political power, they had shrewdness enough to look with suspicion on a cleri- cal conclave which bartered away many of their an- cient privileges, and which handed them over to the control, in spiritual matters, of a foreign bishop, resident on the banks of the Tiber. Resistance, however, was useless. Laymen of all ranks in Ire- land, who were in immediate connection with the new English settlers, or who were to some extent dependent on them, adopted and carefully observed the rules of the English Church. A few, who lived in those parts of the country which were not easily accessible to the English, preserved, to some extent, their independence, and continued to carry out the ecclesiastical usages to which they had been accus- tomed just as if the Synod of Cashel had never been held. These laymen, however, gave no trouble. 38 The Church of Ireland. Eome was dominant throughout the length and breadth of the land. It may, at first sights seem very strange that the whole body of the Irish clergy, who for centuries had resisted the encroachments of the Church of Eome, should not have banded themselves together in defence of what they must have deemed their rights, and should not have insisted strongly on being free from the control of an alien Church. But it must be remembered that foreign invasions and domestic troubles had unnerved them, and had made them unable to offer any resistance. The progress of religion and learning had been checked. The ardent desire for knowledge, and especially for knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, had been almost quenched amid the din of war. Then, when all was in a state of declension and decay, when the wail of distress was rising to heaven from ruined chieftains, from poverty- stricken peasants, and from pastors whose flocks were utterly unable to contribute to their support, English and Roman influences made themselves felt. For a moment the prospect brightened. The sun shone out from behind the clouds, and all looked peaceful and prosperous. Only for a moment. Again the angry clouds gathered ; again the thun- der of civil commotion was heard, and the sound of the Church's voice was completely lost in the roar of the conflicting elements. The Synod of Cashel, from which so much was expected, only riveted more closely the chains which ) Invasion. 39 England had fastened upon Ireland. Before long, Ireland was made to feel that she had completely surrendered her independence. The English colonists lived within " the Pale," whilst between them and those who lived outside its boundaries, a marked difference was soon established. Within the Pale, the English settlers assumed an air of superiority which could not but give offence to those outside. The " mere Irish " were treated as little better than serfs, and were employed only as " hewers of wood and drawers of water " by the fortunate military adventurers who had formed the escort of Henry II., or who had afterwards obtained from him or his successors grants of fertile land for services said to have been rendered to the Crown. It is here that we must look for the origin of all those party feuds and those civil and religious dissensions which have made Ireland a bj--vvord among the nations of the earth. It was at this time that the Celt and the Sassenach began to hate one another with the bitterest hatred. Later on the Celt was left, as we shall see in the course of this narra- tive, in the darkness of Eomanism, whilst the Saxon Irishman became, like his friends and connections in England, a member of the Preformed Church ; and so there sprang up another source of hatred — hatred fostered by religious differences. And, as if this were not enough, sentimentalists in this nineteenth century appeal to the " days of old," when Ireland was free and unfettered, when she had not submitted to the 40 The Church of Ireland. yoke of England, and, on the strength of mere senti- ment, clamour for Home Kale and a National Parlia- ment. This introduces another element of discord, and we find so-called Nationalists and Constitu- tionalists taking opposite sides in politics. If Eng- lish statesmen, who, as a rule, know very little about Ireland, really wish to understand why Ireland is in a condition of chronic discontent, and why vast numbers of Irishmen hate England, they must go back to the days of Henry II. and Adrian IV. It was the policy adopted by these two potentates seven hundred years ago, and persistently carried out by their successors until times comparatively recent, that made the Irish problem so difficult to solve during the last century. It was the selfishness of an English King, and the ambition of an English Pope, that have made the government of Ireland a task of surpassing difficulty, even for the most experienced rulers of the present day. The last King of Ireland was Roderick O'Connor. He died in 1178, six years after the so-called " Con- quest," at the age of eighty-two. Having reigned as King of Connaught for ten years, and as Supreme Euler of Ireland for eighteen years, he spent the remainder of his life doing penance in the Monastery of Cong. With him the Irish monarchy fell, and the Irish Church gradually lapsed into all the errors and into all the vices which disgraced, all over Christendom, the Church of the "Middle Ages." It is no great wonder that the Church became Invasion. 41 corrupt in her doctrine, and the clergy dissolute in their lives, during the four centuries which immedi- ately preceded the Eeformation. The Bible was then, ' to all intents and purposes, a sealed book. It had been superseded by the Breviary, the Missal, and the Acta Sanctorum. The decree of Hildebrand con- cerning celibacy, to which I have already alluded, was rigidly enforced ; and the annals of those days are, consequently, filled with accounts of the vicious and scandalous conduct of the clergy, the consequence of this unwarrantable interference with the Divine Law. The corruption of the Church in matters of doctrine was increased by the rapid multiplication of the Monastic Orders during the eleventh and twelfth centuries; and Ireland did not escape the contagion. The land was overrun, in the course of a very few years after the arrival of the English settlers, by " Eremites and friars, Wliite, black, and gray, with all their trumpery," as Milton graphically describes them. The Benedictines, and Augustinians, during the intei'val which elapsed between the reign of Henry II. and the Reformation, possessed many large establish- ments in Ireland, and exerted a great deal of influence over the people. They took the lead in advancing Papal authority throughout the land. Out of each of these arose several minor Orders. The Benedict- 42 The Church of Ireland. ines were divided into Clugniacensians or Monks of Clugny, Camaldulensians, Cistercians, Grandimon- tans, and Carthusians ; the Augustinians into Aroasians, Victorines, Gilbertines, and Prenionstra- tenticians. Some of these minor Orders were repre- sented in Ireland. Then there were the Mendicant Friars, classed as Dominicans, or Black Friars, and Franciscans, or Grey Friars. The Mendicant Monks, in the twelfth century, had become necessary to the very existence of the Church of Rome. The other Orders bad become wealthy, and wealth had engendered sloth. Obedience to the dictates of the Supreme Pontiff had become lax ; and heretics were suffered to spring up in all directions. There was, therefore, an absolute necessity for a body of men who would inculcate and insist on obedience to Papal authority. The first person who perceived this, and who supplied the ■want that had arisen, was Innocent III., the Pope who placed England under an interdict during the reign of King John. He sent these Mendicant Monks all over the world ; and that he might in- crease their power, he exempted them from the jurisdiction of the bishops of the several countries which they visited, and declared them to be respon- sible immediately and solely to the See of Rome. " During two centuries," says Mosheim, " they had the direction of nearly everything in Church and State ; they held the highest offices, both ecclesiasti- cal and civil, taught with almost absolute authority Invasion. 43 in all the schools and churches, and defended the authority and majesty of the Koman Pontiifs against the kings, bishops, and heretics, with amazing zeal and success." They certainly left their mark upon Ireland. Besides the Orders above-mentioned there were to be found in Ireland during the twelfth and four following centuries, Carmelites or White Friars, and Eremites of St. Augustine, or Austin Friars. There were other Orders of Monks in England and on the Continent ; but those mentioned above comprise all •who came to Ireland, except the Friars de Penitentia Jesu Christi. They appeared in Ireland in 1268, and founded one, and only one, establishment, and that was in Dublin. Convents belonging to all the other Orders were to be seen all over the country. Most of them now form very picturesque ruins. Whilst the Popes were strengthening the power of the Church of Rome in Ireland, the Kings of Eng- land were extending their own authority through the medium of the Bishops of the Irish Church. There were incessant disputes about the appointments made to Bishoprics in Ireland. The Irish clergy never failed to remonstrate, when they had an opportunity of doing so, against the unfairness of placing foreign rulers over the Church ; but the result of all these disputes and of all these remonstrances almost in- variably was that the episcopal office was filled by Englishmen devoted to the Papal interest, who, with the help of the English Government, used all their 44 The Church of Ireland. energies for the removal of everything which was supposed to be distinctive of Ireland's ancient Church, and thus destroyed the last relics of her independence. In " Certain Decrees for the Keformation of Ireland," as quoted by the Rev. Canon Philip Dwyer in his History of the Diocese of Killaloe, John Travers deplores the state of the inhabitants of the realm in these terras: — "For the more part, they have of long time and yet hitherto be ignorant of the true doctrine of Christ for lack of preaching of the same, which hath caused them to neglect due obedience to God and the king. It shall be for remedy thereof necessary that the Archbishop of Dublin, my Lord of Meath, and such others as favour the Gospel, do instruct the Irish Bishops of this realm, causing them to relinquish and renounce all Popish or Papistical doctrine, and to set forth sincerely within each of their dioceses the true Word of God." Canon Dwyer tells us further that among the special requests made in the reign of Henry VIII,, by Moroghe O'Brien, Earl of Thomond, was the following: — "That there may be sent into Ireland some well-learned Irishmen, brought up in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, not being infected with the poison of the Church of Rome. And they to be approved first by the King's Majesty, and then to be sent to preach the Word of God in Ireland.'" * * " This is a work which is a credit to our Church. Since Fhelan's Eemains, nothing like it has appeared. It reminds Invasion. 45 That Ireland rapidly degenerated after the Synod of Cashel had placed the Church under the control of the See of Rome, no one who knows anything about her past history can doubt. Bishop Mant,. writing of the events which followed the visit of Henry II. to Ireland, says: "Of the moral condition, indeed, of the lower Irish during the period in question, a sketch has been drawn in recent times by an ecclesi- astic of high dignity in the Romish Church in Ireland, as cited by Dr. Phelan in his History ; and by him they are represented as exhibiting ferocity combined with cunning, and astuteness with cruelty, as characterized by individual bravery and collective cowardice, and as generally estranged from honesty and truth. The features of this portrait, it is to be hoped, are exaggerated ; but the delineation had pro- bably too near a resemblance to the original as it may be traced in the occurrences of the times. Upon the whole, whatever pretensions may have been justly one of the best school of English Church Historians. It is a disgrace to us that a second edition has not been called for long before this. It will be a disgrace to our University if some mark of honour is not paid to the learned and laborious author. It is an honour to the University, when it is the fashion to run her down. Every Irish clergyman ought to possess it. If he has not the industry to study it, or the head to value or understand it, the world would give him credit for both, if Canon Dwyer's splendid work, splendid in every sense, were seen on his table." — Canon Crosthivaite, V.G., in his Pamphlet entitled, " Which Church has Orders from St. Patrick r' 46 The Church of Ireland. advanced by Ireland in previous ages to the title of ' Island of Saints,' an examination of its subsequent condition shows that its profession of Christianity had become such as to preclude its continued claim to that appellation ; that it had fallen many degrees below the standard of evangelical purity and simpli- city, and was weighed down by a burden of corruption and error during the centuries under review; and was abundantly in need of improvement in its profession and practice of religion, in the character of its clergy and people, and in the ordinances of its Church at the sera of the Eeformation." I have now reached the second stage in my narra- tive. It seems clear, from all the evidence before us, that in the interval between the middle of the twelfth and the middle of the sixteenth century, the Church of Ireland, under the blighting influences of Kome, had sadly declined in faith and morals, that her light burned very dimly, and needed to be rekindled. How, in the providence of God, she returned to her ancient creed, and again held aloft the torch of Divine Truth, we shall see as we proceed with our investigation into her past history. CHAPTEK III. EEFOKMATION. IN the beginning of the sixteenth century the Chris- tian religion had become so changed from what it had been when it was deUvered to the world by Christ and His Apostles, and the teaching of the clergy so entirely different from the teaching of the inspired writers of the New Testament, that it seemed as if the whole human race were about to be en- veloped once more in the dismal darkness of hea- thenism. The higher classes of society all over Europe, when not actually engaged in war, were immersed in sensual living. The lower classes were in a condi- tion little, if at all, better than that of slaves. The clergy, who formed a sort of connecting link between the two, were ignorant, rapacious, ambitious, and spent their time in " serving divers lusts and plea- sures." They certainly seemed to live as though heaven and hell were mere names, not vivid realities. Dr. Merle d'Aubigne tells us, on undoubted autho- rity, that Pope Leo X. was in the habit of speaking of the Christian faith as a " fable " from which he derived all his wealth and power. " Quantum nobis prodest," he used to say, " hcBC fabida Jesa Christi." D'Aubigne tells us, too, that Cardinal Bembo was 48 The Church of Ireland. ashamed to write the words " Holy Ghost," lest he should be ridiculed by the learned men of Rome ; and he therefore used what he regai'ded as a more classical phrase — "the breath of the heavenly Zephyr." It is also related of this Prince of the Church that when he saw a pious man one day engaged in trans- lating the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, he said to him — " Let these childish matters alone ; such fooleries do not become a man possessed of common sense." Now and then a glimmer of light shot across the dark abyss ; but it only served, to use Milton's phrase, to make " darkness visible." The few earnest followers of Christ who, in the loneliness of their cloisters, mourned over the general decay of religion, as Jeremiah mourned over the apostacy of his own countrymen, longed for a change, but how to bring it about they knew not. At last the key-note of true religion was struck by Martin Luther. Every one knows how he shook the world ; how he roused all Christendom from the deep sleep of ages. The " Reformation,'^ begun in Germany, soon ex- tended its influence to England and to L-eland. Henry VHI., a king of whose moral character it is impossible to say a word of commendation, became, strange to say, in the hands of God, the great pro- moter of the Reformation in England. A more un- willing instrument it would have been impossible to find ; but God made use of him to carry out His own purposes of mercy to His Church. Nobody who has Reformation. 49 studied history can suppose that Henry VIII. held any of the theological opinions now held by Pro- testants. He merely asserted as a king his own supremacy within his own dominions, in opposition to the Pope's supremacy, whenever the Pope came into conflict with him on matters which concerned the internal government of the Church of England ; but to the last day of his life he accepted every dogma of the Church of Rome. He attacked Lu- ther's writings, and was rewarded by the Pope with the title, " Defender of the Faith." He ordered Sir Thomas More, and Fisher, Bishop of Pi.ochester, to be beheaded for asserting their belief in the Pope's supremacy ; and he had Bilney, Frith, Anne Askew, and many other persons burned for refusing to believe in Transubstantiation. So that whilst it is an un- doubted fact that Henry VIII. promoted the Refor- mation in England, it is equally true that he was influenced by political rather than by religious mo- tives. It is most important to bear this in mind ; and to insist upon the truth of this statement when we have an opportunity of doing so, for there is not an Irish Roman Catholic Priest or Bishop who has been trained in Maynooth who has not been told that the Church of Ireland was established by Henry VIII., and that the doctrines which she holds to be true, emanated from his royal brain. The Maynooth ecclesiastic accepts this falsehood as an undeniable truth, and communicates it to his flock, who can hardly refuse to believe what they hear from their 50 The Church of Ireland. pastor. Both pastor and flock are deserving rather of pity than blame. On such a subject as this no ray of light can possibly be expected to irradiate the inner chambers of the skull of a Mayuooth student. On the 3rd November, 1534, Parliament conferred on the king the title of " Supreme Head on Earth of the Church of England," as it had already invested him with all the real power belonging to that office ; and it was but natural that the king, having suc- ceeded in getting his supremacy acknowledged by the clergy of England, and confirmed by the High Court of Parliament, should be anxious to establish his supremacy equally over the Church of Ireland. He encountered, however, more opposition than he had expected. Cromer, Archbishop of Armagh, was determined that the Papal supremacy should be up- held, and most of his clergy cordially supported his views. In Dublin, the king was more successful. The archbishopric being vacant, he appointed Dr. Browne, an Englishman, who appears to have been filled with a desire to promote the reformation of the Church, and who looked upon the declaration of the Royal supremacy as the first step in that direction. But Archbishop Browne found that he had undertaken a work of great difficulty. He had many enemies, who perpetually thwarted his plans. In a letter to Lord Cromwell, the King's vicegerent, as he was called, quoted by Bishop Mant, the Archbishop complains bitterly of the Lord Deputy, Lord Leonard Grey, Reformation. 51 " who," he says, " though a zealous robber of churches, is equally a favourer and practiser of image-worship, and generally well disposed to the Popish corruption." He adds — " So doth he aid me in my Prince's cause, I think the simplest holy-water clerk is better esteemed than I am. I beseech your Lordship, in the way of charity, either cause my authority to take effect, or else let me return home again unto the cloister. When that I was at the worst, I was in better case than I am now, what with my Lord Deputy, the Bishop of Meath, and the pecuniose Prior of Kilmainham." The king's obstinate determination, however, sur- mounted all obstacles. The Archbishop of Dublin recommended that the king's supremacy should be established by Act of Parliament in Ireland. It was perfectly well understood that the recommendation, when obtained, amounted to a Royal mandate. The Irish Parliament met in Dublin in 1537. The clergy, with few exceptions, signified their dissent, V but to no purpose. The enactment passed, and ' Ireland took the first step in the direction of Pro- testantism. The next step, taken shortly afterwards, | was one in a retrograde direction. An Act was passed for the encouragement of " the English order, habit, and language ;" which required that " spiritual \ promotion should only be given to such persons as could speak English, unless, after four proclamations made in the next market town, such could not be had." The same Act further enjoined that English 52 The Church of Ireland. parochial schools should be established in the coun- try, and that all clergymen should be bound by oath to endeavour to learn and teach the English tongue, to " bid the beads " in English, and to preach the Word of God in English, " if he can preach." The king's supremacy was thus pressed upon the Church of Ireland, and, before long, received at least a silent acquiescence from all classes ; but English, as distinguished from Irish, the language of the people, was also forced upon the clergy and their flocks. At the same time the Church was systema- tically robbed. Abbey lands were bestowed on the king's favourites among the nobility, who received the Rectorial Tithes of parishes attached to the abbey, whilst the clergy who discharged spiritual duties within those parishes were obliged to be con- tent with the Vicarial or Impropriate Tithes. The evil effects of this robbery, for it was nothing else, have been keenly felt ever since. Monasteries were dissolved on all sides, but not a single school or college was endowed with the funds which were thus obtained. Bishop Mant says : " When he " — the king — " relieved the Church from the impediment of monastic institutions, he forbore to provide thereby for the religious education of her people, as well as to bestow upon her any secular benefit^ and left her incapacitated for necessary activity, and beset by difficulties." Hume tells us that " great murmurs were everywhere excited on account of these vio- lences; and men much questioned whether priors Reformation. 53 and monks, who were only trustees and tenants for life, could by any deed, however voluntary, transfer to the king the entire property of their estates. In order to reconcile the people to such mighty innova- tions, they were told that the king would never thenceforth have occasion to levy taxes, but would be able, from the abbey lands alone, to bear, during war as well as peace, the whole charges of Government. " While such topics," he adds, " were employed to appease the populace, Henry took an etfectual me- thod of interesting the nobility and gentry in the success of his measures. He either made a gift of the revenues of convents to his favourites and cour- tiers, or sold them at low prices, or exchanged them for other lauds on very disadvantageous terms." I have already said that when Henry VIII. insisted on his own supremacy in opposition to that of the Pope, he merely wished to defend what he believed to be his Royal rights against the encroachments of an Italian Prelate. He had no wish to interfere with the theological teaching of Rome. When Primate Cromer died, he appointed as his successor George Dowdall, a man strongly attached to the interests of Rome, and decidedly opposed to the Reformation ; so much so, that although he consented to receive his nomination from the king, he would not be satisfied until he had had his appointment ratified by the Pope. And yet, after all, the establishment of the Royal supremacy was an event of the greatest importance. 54 The Church of Ireland. It -was, indeed, the event upon wliich the whole of the Church History of the next three reigns turned. It made Eeformation possihle, and practicahle. There was no hope that Protestantism would make any way in Ireland, so long as the Church recognised the Bishop of Eome as her Supreme Head, and con- sented to remain at his will hound in the chains of slavery. The first blow in the direction of free- dom was struck when the Head of the State was acknowledged to be also the Head of the National Church. There was another advantage gained. It was but natural that the king should allow the men who had helped him to establish his supremacy a good deal of their own way ; and so the exertions of Archbishop Browne, of Staples, Bishop of Meath, and others, were made instrumental in the correction of abuses. It was by these men, and others like-minded, that images and other objects of superstitious veneration were removed from many churches, to make way for English translations of the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. In 1547, Henry VIII. died in the fifty-sixth year of his age. A month before his death he made his will, and in it he confirmed the Act of Parliament which settled the succession to the Crown first " on Prince Edward, then on the Lady Mary, and after- wards on the Lady Elizabeth." The two princesses were bound, under penalty of forfeiting the Crown, not to marry without the consent of the Council Reformation. 55 which he appointed to carry on the Government during the minority of the young Prince. Long hefore Henry VIII. was born, there were in- dications perceptible to the observant, of a coming change in matters of religion, and these indications were visible in Ireland as well as in England. Like the sighing of the wind, which often precedes a fierce gale, murmurs were sometimes heard which pointed to the approach of a storm of such tremendous vio- lence that the corruptions of the Papacy would be swept away before it as though they were mere straws. A curious instance of this occurs to me just at this moment. The Vision of Pierce Plowman is a satiri- cal poem ascribed to Robert Longlande, who lived in the middle of the fourteenth century. The poet refers to the spread of the doctrines which were silently bringing about the Reformation, and he utters a remarkable prophecy. It is important to bear in mind that it has been satisfactorily shown that these lines were not inserted in the poem after the event. They were really prophetic. The writer says : — " And there shall come a King and confess you, Religious; And beat you, as the Bible telleth, for breaking of your Rule ; And amend monials, monks, and canons, And put them to her penance And then shall the Abbot of Abingdon and all his issue for ever Have a knock of a King, and incurable the wound." 56 The Church of Ireland. The prophecy, as we have seen, was abundantly ful- filled. "What Henry VIII. began, his young sou con- tinued, and would have completed if he had lived long enough. Edward VI. had been brought up as an uncompromising Protestant. But his reign lasted only six years. " He possessed," says Hume, " mild- ness of disposition, application to study and business, a capacity to learn and judge^ and an attachment to equity and justice." But Hume was utterly incapa- ble of estimating the religious side of the young king's character, and so he adds this oracular de- cision : — "He seems to have contracted, from his education, and from the genius of the age in which he lived, too much of a narrow prepossession in matters of religion, which made him incline some- what to bigotry and persecution ; but as the bigotry of Protestants, less governed by priests, lies under more restraints than that of Catholics, the effects of this malignant quality were less to be apprehended if a longer life had been granted to young Edward." If, indeed, a longer life had been granted to him, both England and Ireland might have been spared many calamities. But God ordered it otherwise. Fortunately, the Bishoprics of Ireland had been filled during the later years of the reign of Henry VIII. by men who were determined to uphold the principles of the Reformation. Before the Royal Supremacy had been firmly established, appointments to Bishop- rics were made by Papal nomination, the tempor- alities of the See being granted to the new Bishop by Reformation. 57 the king's writ. After the king had asserted what he believed to be his legitimate right, the appointmentr proceeded from the Crown, and if (as in a few cases) the Pope interfered, the nomination was rendered valid by the confirmation of the king, consequent on the oath of allegiance being taken, or homage being done, or submission being made, and fealty sworn to the king by the ecclesiastic selected to fill the vacant See. During the eleven years which intervened from 1536 to 15i7, thirteen vacancies occurred. In four cases appointments were made by provision of Paul III., and confirmed by the king, on submission beinc) formally plighted. These wei-e Clonmacnoise, 1539 ; Down and Connor, 1541 ; Clonfert, same year ; and Clogher, 1542. On the other hand, in nine cases, the appointments were primarily and entirely of the king's nomination and donation. These were Tuam, Cork and Cloyne (united), and Clonfert, 1536 ; Kildare, 1540 ; Ardagh, 1541 ; Armagh, and also Emly, 1543; Elphin, 1544; and Killaloe, 1546. In certain cases there were rival appointments by the Pope ; for instance, Cork and Cloyne, 1536 ; Clonfert, same year ; Kildare, 1540 ; Armagh, 1542; but these were rejected, and rendered null, by the king's authority, and the Bishops of the royal nomination were settled in their respective Dioceses, except Clonfert, where the king preferred Dr. Nangle; but "one Rowland Burke," says Bishop Mant, ** purchased Bulls from the Bishop of Piome, whereby he expulsed the king's presentee." How- 58 The Church of Ireland. ever, Burke, who had been advanced to the See by the Pope's Bull, afterwards submitted and swore fealty to the king, and obtained the royal assent in October, 1541, the Pope's Bull having previously been cancelled. It will be seen from the foregoing statement that when Edward VI. succeeded to the throne, the several dioceses of Ireland were ruled by Bishops who were for the most part attached to the principles of the Reformation, and who upheld the Royal against the Papal Supremacy. Bishop Burnet remarks that the Reformation made but small progress in Ireland during the reign of Edward VI. " It was received/' he says, " among the English, but I do not find any endeavours were used to bring it in among the Irish." The shortness of the reign, the youth of the king, and his delicate health ; above all, the political troubles which were brought about by some of his own rela- tions, will sufficiently account for this. Something, however, was done. Men of high character were appointed to the Episcopate, the English Reformed Liturgy was introduced, preparations were made for its translation into Irish, the Bible was more freely circulated than it had ever been before, except in the days which preceded the English Settlement, and every encouragement was given to those of the clei'gy who were known to be active in preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Bishop Bale took a very prominent part in the ecclesiastical history of this reign. He was one of Reformation. 59 the most zealous .and decided antagonists of Romish ^ abuses in Ireland, and one of the most strenuous advocates of the Reformed Religion. He was edu- cated first at the Carmelite Convent at Norwich, and afterwards at Jesus' College, Cambridge, at which time, by his own confession, " ignorance and blind- ness had wholly possessed him." During the reign of Henry VIII. he was thrown into prison for preach- ing against the invocation of saints, and the worship of images. He withdrew to Germany as soon as he obtained his liberty, and on the accession of Edward VI., he returned to England. Soon after his return, the king selected him to fill the See of Ossory, and he, at once, betook himself to Kilkenny, where he patiently and perseveringly preached the Gospel. Of his own preaching he gives the following account: — "I earnestly exhorted the people to re- pentance for sin, and required them to give credit to the Gospel of salvation ; to acknowledge and beHeve that there is but one God ; to Him alone, without any other, sincerely to offer worship ; to confess one Christ for an only Saviour and Redeemer, and to trust in none other man's prayers, merits, nor deserv- ings, but in His alone for salvation." He also used every exertion to have the Book of Common Prayer introduced into the Churches of his diocese, but he found, to his great vexation, that the opposition of his clergy made these endeavours in many cases un- successful. Bishop Burnet calls King Edward VI. " that 6o The Church of Ireland. incomparable young priuce." He was, at the time of his death, sixteen years of age, " and was counted," so the bishop tells us, " the wonder of that time. He was not only learned in the tongues and other liberal sciences, but knew well the state of his kingdom. . . . He had, above all things, a great regard to religion. He took notes of such things as he heard in sermons which more specially concerned himself, and made his measures of all men by their zeal in that matter. This made him so set on bring- ing over his sister Mary to the same persuasions with himself, that when he was pressed to give way to her having Mass, he said, that he would not only hazard the loss of the Emperor's friendship, but of his life, and all he had in the world, rather than consent to what he knew was a sin ; and he cited some passages of Scripture that obliged kings to root out idolatry ; by which he said he was bound in conscience not to consent to her Mass, since he believed that it was idolatry ; and did argue the matter so learnedly with the bishops, that they left him, being amazed at his knowledge in Divinity. So that Cranmer ' took cheek by the hand'* upon it, and said, 'he had reason all the days of his life to rejoice that God had honoured him to breed such a scholar.^ All men who saw and observed these qualities in him, looked on him as one raised by God for most extraordinary * " Took cheek by the hand," a current phrase of that day, signifying, felt greatly encouraged. Reformation, 6i ends ; and when he died, conchided that the sins of England must needs be very great that had provoked God to take from them a Prince under whose govern- ment they were like to have seen such blessed times. He was so atfable and sweet-natured that all had free access to him at all times ; by which he came to be most universally beloved, and all the high things that could be devised were said by the people to express their esteem of him. The fable of the Phoenix pleased him most ; so they made his mother one Phoenix, and himself another, rising out of her ashes. But graver men compared him to Josiah ; and long after his death I find, both in letters and printed books, they commonly named him Our Josias; others called him Edward the Saint." On the death of Edward VI., the Crown devolved, according to the will of Henry VIII., and the Act of Parliament passed in the thirty-fifth year of his reign, on Edward's eldest sister, Princess Mary. The story of Lady Jane Grey's brief reign of ten days, and subsequent execution, is too well known to need repetition here. Queen Mary made a triumphal entry into London, and when she reached the Tower, her first act was to restore to liberty the Duke of Norfolk, Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, the Duchess of Somerset, and Lord Courtney, who were all zea- lous Roman Catholics. The English Liturgy, which had been introduced into Ireland in 1551, was imme- diately, on the accession of Queen Mary, pushed aside to make way for the Roman MissaL Several 62 The Church of Ireland. Protestant bisliops, too, were " deprived," and their places filled by Papal emissaries. Amongst others, Archbishop Browne was removed from his See, and Dr. Hugh Curwen, who received his consecration in St. Paul's, London, was sent over to take his place. Primate Dowden made himself specially active in the restoration of Popery ; and a Provincial Synod was held (1554) in St. Peter's Church, Drogheda, at which enactments were passed which were destruc- tive, so far as they went, of the principles of the Reformation. The following year (1555) a Jubilee, intended to express joy at the return to what was called " the old religion," was held all over Ireland. In 1556 a second Provincial Synod was held in Drogheda, in or.ler to confirm the acts of the Synod of 1554. During the same year a similar Provincial Synod was held in Dublin. The earliest acts of the Irish Parliament directed against the doctrines of the Reformed Church were passed on the 1st June, 1556. Everything seemed to indicate that the authority of the Pope was to be restored all over England and Ireland. In England fire and sword were mercilessly resorted to. Philip of Spain, the consort of Queen Mary, breathed forth " threatenings and slaughter" against all heretics, with all the violence that marked the action of the " Holy Roman Inquisition " in the land of his birth. Rogers, Pre- bendary of St. Paul's ; Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester ; Tayloi', Parson of Hadley ; Ferrar, Bishop of St. David's ; Ridley, Bishop of London ; and Latimer, Reformation. 63 Bishop of Worcester, with an immense numher of persons of inferior station, were publicly burned. Altogether, 277 persons, including 55 women and 4 children, were brought to the stake ; and a mixed multitude of all classes suffered punishment by im- prisonment, fine, and confiscation. When this had been done, a solemn embassy was sent to Rome to report progress. It consisted of Sir Anthony Brown, who had been created Viscount Montacute, the Bishop of Ely, and Sir Edward Carne. Pope Paul IV. then filled the Papal chair. He told these three English ambassadors plainly that he was grievously off'euded at Queen Mary retaining among her titles that of Queen of Ireland. It was his prerogative, he said, to erect new kingdoms and to abolish old ones ; but in order to avoid all disputes with his new converts, he consented to erect Ireland into a new kingdom, and he then admitted the title as if it had been originally granted by himself. Another point in discussion was not so easily settled. The Pope insisted that the property which had been alienated from the Church should be re- stored to the uttermost farthing ; and the queen, when the demand was made known to her, not only consented to restore all the Church lands which were in the possession of the Crown, but actually un- dertook to erect several new convents and monasteries. Some members of her Council ventured to object to this measure, but the queen replied that she valued the salvation of her soul more than any earthly 64 The Church of Ireland. possessions, and no further objection seems to have been made. Ireland escaped the furious persecution which for nearly five years raged fiercely in England. Indeed, notwithstanding the well-known cruelty of the queen and her Spanish husband, Protestantism actually made some little progress among the people of Ire- I land. At last the queen determined to take steps to compel submission to the Papal yoke all over Ireland ; and so she sent over Dr. Cole, one of her commissioners, with special orders to do here what Bonner and Gardiner had so effectually done in England. Cox, the historian, relates how strangely the queen's plans were frustrated ; and because the story may appear to some untrue or exaggerated, he takes care to inform us that he vouches for the truth of it on the authority of "the Most Reverend and Learned Primate, Archbishop Ussher, and the Me- morials of the Most Noble and Illustrious Pilchard Earl of Cork." It appeared first in the Life of Arch- bishop Browne. Dr. Cole, we are told, on his way to Ireland, stop- ped at Chester, and being in conversation with the Mayor of the city, he took out of his travelling bag a leather box, and said to him : " Here is a com- mission that shall lash the heretics of Ireland." The words were heard by the Mayor's wife, who had a brother living in Dublin. Watching her opportunity, this clever woman — she must have been an Irish- woman— took the commission out of the leathern case, Reformation. 65 and put into it a pack of playing cards, the knave of clubs being uppermost. In due time Dr. Cole arrived in Dublin. Lord Fitzwalters, the Lord Deputy, sum- moned the Privy Council to receive the queen^a com- mands. Dr. Cole made a speech. He told the Council why he had been sent over, and opening his despatch-box, proceeded to lay before the assembly his commission. But the commission had disap- peared, and in its place all that could be found was the pack of cards. Then the Lord Deputy made answer : " Let us have a new commission, and we will shuffle the cards in the meantime." The Doctor, we are informed, was greatly troubled in his mind. He soon after returned to England, where he ob- tained from the Court another commission. There were in those days no City of Dublin mail steamers, or North Wall boats, and there were no railway trains. The unfortunate Doctor had not only to travel slowly by coach in England, but he had to wait a long time at Holyhead for a favourable wind to carry him across the Channel. Meanwhile news arrived that the queen was dead. Dr. Cole did not think it worth his while, under these altered circum- stances, to encounter the perils of the deep, to face what Archdeacon Dennison so graphically called, some years ago at the Church Congress held in Dublin, our " sixty miles of stormy water;" so he remained in England ; " and thus," says the chroni- \ cler of the^e interesting events, " God preserved the Protestants of Ireland." F 66 The Church of Ireland. The heroine of this incident in Ireland's history was Elizabeth Edmonds. Queen Elizabeth, when she heard the story some time afterwards from Lord Deputy Fitzwalters, determined that the ingenuity of her namesake should not go unrewarded ; and so she settled on her a pension of £A0 a-year for life. Queen Mary died November 17th, 1558. She was succeeded by her sister Elizabeth. The education of Queen Elizabeth, as well as her personal predilections, led her to favour the Reform- ation. She determined at once to undo all that had been done by her predecessor to favour the advance of Romanism. Before long, the English I Liturgy was restored in the Church of Leland. ; Christ Church and St. Patrick's, the two Dublin Cathedrals, were repainted, and texts of Scripture on the walls took the place of pictures of Popish mira- cles. Both in England and in Ireland the queen determined to make her power felt. Parliament was summoned to meet in January, 15G0 ; and an Act was, at once, passed, restoring to the Crown the ancient jurisdiction of the State over the Church, and " abrogating all foreign power re- pugnant to the same." This was plainly a blow aimed at the pretensions of Rome. " Good Queen Bess," as she has often been called, inherited much of her father's imperious nature. She was not a woman who would allow her com- mands to be disobeyed, or her dignity to be trifled with. She was just as ready to box the ears of a 'Reformation. 67 courtier, as to " unfrock a bishop," and, therefore, it could not be doubted that the Church to which she adhered would be, in the strict and legal sense of the word, " established " throughout her dominions. Measures were accordingly taken to make the Protest- ant Episcopal Religion — represented in this country by the Church of Ireland — the " Establishment :" and no greater tribute to the genius and foresight of Queen Elizabeth can be paid than to say that the Church with which she cast in her lot is still the National Church of England, and, although rudely severed from all connection with the State, the Na- tional Church of Ireland. But now the question arises, so far as Ireland is concerned : Were the advisers of Queen Elizabeth, and those of her immediate successors, anxious to promote pure and Scriptural religion among the Irish people, or was their object simply to advance English interests ? No other answer than this can be given. The responsible Ministers of the Crown in England were anxious to consolidate their rule in Ireland, and they used the Church, whenever they could do so, as a tool to further their own ends. " But the weapon they chose " — to quote the words of Dean Macartney — " was a fearful one, and it recoiled upon them- selves. Popery, Mohammedanism, Buddhism," he says truly, " any form of falsehood, from the worship of the monkey to the abstractions of philosophic Deism, may be made, and has been made with im- punity, the tool of the tyrant or of the demagogue, but God's own truth may not thus be played with." 68 The Church of Ireland. Religion was at a very low ebb in Ireland during the forty-four years which comprised the reign of Queen Elizabeth. We confess it with shame and sorrow ; but we must confess it. We must speak the truth at all risks. The principles which persecution never would have rooted out were sufi'ered to decay, and almost to die away altogether, by the indolent clergy of these un- happy days. Eminent and zealous men there were in Ireland, of course ; but they were comparatively few in number. Most of the clergy were careless about their duties ; utterly indifferent to the spiritual welfare of their flocks ; unacquainted with the lan- guage of the people ; English in their feelings ; English in their prejudices ; completely wanting in sympathy towards those to whom they ministered in spiritual things. Not a few of them lived in Eng- land, and spent in England the revenues which they derived from their benefices in Ireland. In all this they were, alas ! encouraged by their Bishops. It was not without reason that Dean Swift (and his cha- racter was not, by any means, an exemplary one) afterwards said, in the language of deep scorn, that the men who were sent over to fill the Irish Sees by the English Government were invariably robbed of their Letters Patent by the highwaymen on Houns- low Heath, and that the highwaymen came over and personated them. It was this deplorable indolence and rapacity of the Irish Bishops and clergy that was the cause of the disastrous failure which we now Reformation. 6g mourn over, and which lay at the bottom of all the misfortunes of this unhappy country. In this sad fact lies the explanation of the present religious con- dition of Ireland. The sins of the fathers have been visited on the children. We see now very clearly the consequences of this unpardonable neglect on the part of those who went before us. In England and Scotland, the history of the Eeformation is the history of the past. In Ireland, the work of the Reformation has yet to be done. It is the work which demands our special attention now, and which will require all our energy for very many years to come. " The Church is strong," as Archbishop Trench said, some years ago, in a Charge to the Dublin Clergy, "in the fact that the great English people, despite all the disappointments of the past, are not prepared finally and for ever to resign the hope that the Reformation, source of countless blessings to England, shall yet be accepted by the whole Irish people, and that, through it, they shall be partakers of the same." In proof of the foregoing statement, that the work of preaching the Gospel in Ireland was fearfully neglected by the bishops and clergy of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, let me quote here a portion of a letter written to the queen in 1576, by Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland. The letter will be found in Bishop Mant's History. Sir Henry says : — " The lamentable estate of the most noble and principal limb thereof, the Church I mean, as foul, deformed, and cruelly crushed, as any 70 The Church of Ireland. other part thereof by yonr only gracious and religious order to be cured, or at least amended, I would not have believed had I not for a great part viewed the same throughout the whole Eealm ; and was adver- tised of the particular estate of each church in the ■ Bishopric of Meath, being the best inhabited country of all this Eealm, by the honest, zealous, and learned Bishop of the same, Mr. Hugh Brady, a godly minis- ter of the Gospel, and a good servant of Your High- ness, 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 now leased out for years, or in fee-farm to several farmers, and great gain reaped out of them above the rent, which Your Majesty received : 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 In many places the very walls of the churches down ; very few chancels covered, windows and doors ruined or spoiled. There are 52 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. Reformation. 71 " If this be tlie estate 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 I truly believe it. " If I should write unto Your Majesty what spoil hath been and is, of the Archbishoprics, of which there are four, and of tlie Bishoprics, whereof there are above thirty, 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 ; and competent living for the ministers being well chosen." A more melancholy picture than this could hardly have been drawn ; and, unhappily, although it refers mainly to the Diocese of Meath, the writer of it hints plainly enough that it may be taken as an accurate description of the Church as it was in his day, all over Ireland. 72 The Church of Ireland. We now come to a crisis in the history of the Church of Ireland. The queen's supremacy, like that of her Royal father, having been established and accepted by a large number of her subjects, an Act of Uniformity was passed which enjoined that all ministers should use the Liturgy as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer. Strange to say, however, a step was taken in con- nection with this Act which could only have been taken by a Parliament composed of men who had signally failed to understand the Irish question of their day. The following clause was inserted in the Act : — " And forasmuch as in most places of this Realm, there cannot be found English ministers to serve in the Churches, or places appointed for Common Prayer, or to minister the Sacraments to the people ; and that if some good men were provided, that they might use the Prayer, Service, and Administration of the Sacraments, set out and established by this Act, in such language as they might best understand, the due honour of God should be thereby much advanced, and for that also, that the same may not be in their native language, as well for difficulty to get it printed as that few in the whole Realm can read the Irish letters ; we do, therefore, most humbly beseech Your Majesty that with Your Highness' favour and Royal assent it may be enacted, ordained, established, and provided, by the authority of this present Parliament, Reformation. 73 that in every sucli Church or place where the common minister or priest hath not the use or knowledge of the English tongue, it shall be lawful for the same common minister or priest to say and use the Matins, Evensong, and Celebration of the Lord's Supper, and Administration of each of the Sacraments, and all their common and open prayer, in the Latin Tongue." The force of folly could scarcely have gone farther than this. English-speaking Irishmen, who were in Holy Orders, were not easily obtained; and, moreover, there were some difficulties to be overcome by those who desired to have the Prayer Book and the Bible printed in the L-ish or Celtic character. The prob- lem is, therefore, solved, the Gordian knot is cut through, by ministering to the people in Latin. That was the very language in which the Roman Mass was always said. It was a language which, of course, was unintelligible, and which is still unin- telligible, to the Irish peasant. But what we are con- cerned with at this epoch in the history of our Church is the dense ignorance, the want of common sense, of the legislators who submitted such an enactment to Queen Elizabeth, and of the queen herself who gave the enactment her Royal assent. The reasoning of these wise lawgivers amounts to this : — You Irish peasants do not understand English ; we cannot get any one to teach you the truths of the Christian Religion in Irish, neither can we be at the pains to -get types in which to print Irish books ; but be of 74 Tha Church of Ireland. good cheer ; Ave shall take good care not to neglect you altogether. If you will only go to Church as dutiful subjects of Her Majesty, you shall hear the Bible and the Liturgy read to you every Sunday in Latin. If Shakspeare, the great dramatic poet of Eliza- beth's reign, had had this circumstance present to his mind when he wrote the words which he puts into the mouth of Brutus in his Julius Ccesar, he could not have more exactly hit off the condition of affairs in Ireland, both ecclesiastical and political. He says — " There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries." It is not at all likely that Shakspeare was think- ing of the Irish Act of Uniformity when he wrote these words; but in his inimitable way he has stated a great truth which is in every respect appli- cable to the period of which I am writing. Queen Elizabeth and her ministers in their dealings with the Irish people failed to take the tide " at the flood;" and now, after more than three hundred years of turmoil, we find ourselves still " bound in shallows and in miseries." We are suffering now because of the intense stupidity of our ancestors, and we may well describe our position in the words of 1 Reformation. 75 the same great genius — words which immediately follow those which I have quoted above : "On such a full sea are we now afloat ; And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures." CHAPTER IV. HOSTILE CAMPS. WHATEVER may have been the faults of Queen Elizabeth, and however grave the defects of the sj'stem which she adopted for the government of Ireland, she certainly conferred on this country one great and signal benefit. In the year 1591 she founded the University of Dublin ; and the world hardly needs to be told that some of the greatest men who have ever lived have had their latent powers developed, have been in the highest sense of the word educated, within the walls of " Old Trinity," which in the days of Queen Bess stood " near Dublin," " On the 3rd March, 1591, a College was incorporated by Charter or Letters Patent as the Mother of an Uni- versity, under the style and title of ' The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, near Dublin.' The object of the foundation of the Society is stated in the Charter to be ' for the education, training, and instruction of youths and students, that they may be the better assisted in the study of the liberal arts, and in the cultivation of virtue and religion. Since that period several Royal Charters have been granted by succeeding sovereigns extending the privileges of Hostile Camps. 77 the University, and making such alterations in the Statutes and Constitution of Trinity College as were from time to time deemed necessary."* The Church of Ireland has, in an especial manner, benefited by the advantages held out to diligent and talented students in Trinity College. No country in Christendom can boast of a more illustrious succes- sion of scholars and divines, reaching down to the present moment, who have upheld, in the midst of great difficulties, the standard of the Christian Faith in Ireland. These men derived their earliest inspira- tion from the lessons learned in Trinity College, Dublin ; and then, entering the sacred ministry of the Church, they taught those lessons to their parish- ioners in remote country towns, in obscure villages, and in hamlets far from the busy haunts of men. These men have given the Church of Ireland all the eclat and all the spiritual influence which she undoubtedly possesses now. When the Church oi this country ceases to draw the main body of her clergy from the ranks of the graduates of our ancient University, and is content with the ministry of men, however estimable, who possess little or no general culture, she will be overthrown by the ar^ul devices of shallow-minded sceptics and noisy upholders of " science falsely so called." On the 24th March, 1603, Queen Elizabeth died ; and her long reign was productive of less religious * Introduction to Dublin University Calendar. 78 The Church of Ireland. improvement in her Irish dominions, and of less accession to the well-heing of the Church of Ireland, than might have been expected from her strong Pro- testant prepossessions, and from the innate force of her character. " Her vigour," says Hume, " her constancy, her magnanimity, her penetration, vigil- ance, address, are allowed to merit the highest praises, and appear not to have been surpassed by any person that ever filled a throne ; a conduct less vigorous, less imperious, more sincere, more indul- gent to her people, would have been requisite to foi'm a perfect character. By the force of her mind she controlled all her more active and stronger qualities, and prevented them from running into excess. Her heroism was exempt from temerity, her frugality from avarice, her friendship from partiality, her ac- tive temper from turbulency and a vain ambition." One cannot help wishing that some of these ad- mirable traits in her character had been displayed in her treatment of her Irish subjects. There was, however, one great advantage enjoyed by Irish Pro- testants during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It ■was this : that the work of Eeformation was sanctioned and carried on by those who had authority in the Church. " They enjoyed," the Picv. Robert King tells us, " the sanction and co-operation of their Prelates, for when the Pope's jurisdiction was renounced, and the work of the Pieformation was established by the enactment of the Parliament of 1560, two 07ily out of nineteen Hostile Camps. 79 of the Irish Bishops who ivere present refused to sanction this enactment. These two were Walsb, Bishop of Meath, and Leverous, Bishop of Kildare, both of whom refused to take the oath of supremacy. They were in consequence deprived of their bishop- rics With the exception of these two individuals, all the Irish Bishops of that time re- mained in their respective Sees, and from them the present orthodox or Protestant Bishops have derived their Orders, being the true and unquestionable suc- cessors of the Ancient Irish Church." Elizabeth was the last Tudor monarch of Eng- land. James 1. was a Stuart ; the great-grandson of Margaret, elder daughter of Henry VII. Elizabeth, ■with her dying breath, had recognised his title to the throne. It might have been expected that James 1. would inherit the Popish predilections of his unhappy mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, but he stood before the world in the attitude of an uncompromising Protestant. Dr. Robertson, in his History of Scotland, tells us that " though Elizabeth would never permit the question concerning the right of succession to the Crown to be determined in Parliament ; n€)r declare her own sentiments concerning a point which she wished to remain an impenetrable mystery ; she had, however, formed no design of excluding the Scottish king from an inheritance to which his title was un- doubted. A short time before her death she broke the silence which she had so long preserved on that 8o The Church of Ireland. subject, and told Cecil and tlie Lord Admiral, * that her throne was the throne of kings ; that she wGuld have no mean person to ascend it, and that her cousin, the King of Scots, should be her successor.' This she confirmed on her death-bed." " As his " (the king's) " presence was absolutely ne- cessary in England, where the people were extremely impatient to see their new Sovereign, he prepared to set out for that kingdom without delay On the Sunday before his departure he repaired to the Church of St. Giles, and after hearing a sermon in which the preacher displayed the greatness of the Divine Goodness in raising him to the throne of such a powerful kingdom without opposition or bloodshed, and exhorted him to express his gratitude, by pro- moting to the utmost the happiness and prosperity of his subjects ; the king rose up, and addressing himself to the people, made many professions of un- alterable attachment towards them ; promised to visit Scotland frequently ; assured them that his Scottish subjects, notwithstanding his absence, should feel that he was their native Prince no less than when he resided among them ; and might still trust that his ears should be always open to their petitions, which he would answer with the alacrity and love of a parent. His words were often interrupted by the tears of the whole audience, who, while they exulted at the king's prosperity, were melted into sorrow by these tender declarations." It can hardly be said that James I. fulfilled the Hostile Camps. 8i expectations which were formed of him when he suc- ceeded to the throne. Dr. Warner, in his Ecclesias- tical History, says of him that he was " naturally mild, humane, and afiable, without affectation, easy of access, and without pride or cruelty As to his religion, he may be said to be neither Papist nor Protestant. It was a motley faith, peculiar, I believe, to himself. Properly speaking, James had no other religion than what flowed from a principle which he called kingcraft." Bishop Burnet, on a review of his character, says : — " It is certain no king could die less la- mented or less esteemed than he was. His reign in England was a continued course of mean prac- tices. The great figure the Crown had made in Queen Elizabeth's time, who had rendered herself the arbiter of Christendom, and was the wonder of the age, was so much eclipsed, if not quite darkened, during this reign, that King James was become the scorn of the age ; and while hungry writers flattered him out of measure at home, he was despised b}' all abroad, as a pedant without true judgment, courage, or steadiness, subject to his favourites, and delivered up to the councils, or rather corruptions, of Spain." The Royal family of the Stuarts, from whom James I. was descended, was partly of Irish blood, and the Sovereign himself was not only of Irish ex- traction, but he was of the Royal line, and he was entitled by Irish law to be King of Ireland : and so, the jealousy which the Irish people felt at the power G 82 The Church of Ireland. exercised ovei* tliem by England, it was hoped, would be allayed by the consideration tliat now they had become the subjects of their rightful hereditary king. The state of the country, too, was favourable to tranquillity. The great lords had submitted every- where to Royal authority, and the number of native Irish had been diminished by unsuccessful rebellions. Many were miserably poor, and utterly incapable of offering any resistance to the Government, even if they had been inclined to do so. Some restless spirits, however, determined to give the king as much trouble as possible. It was the custom in those days to obtain from the Universities of Europe decisions on controverted questions in law or divinity. Cranmer had adopted this course when the legality of the marriage of Henry VIIL and Catherine of Arragon was under discussion. This question was, therefore, submitted to the Universities of Salamanca and Valladolid in Spain — Is it lawful for " Catholics " to obey a Protestant Monarch ? As might have been expected, both the Universities replied — " No ; it is not :" and advantage was at once taken of this reply to rouse a rebellious spirit among the people. Disturbances took place in Cork, Waterford, Clonmel, Wexford, Limerick, and Kil- kenny; but they were soon put down with a high hand, and order was restored. The year after the king's accession (1604), Sir Arthur Chichester was sworn in as Lord Deputy of Ireland, and he held the reins of Government firmly. Hostile Camps. 83 Up to this time Roman Catholics, in large num- bers, had attended the services of the Church of Ireland ; they were known throughout the country as " Church Papists." The Jesuits, however, soon in- terfered to prevent this, and one can hardly blame them for doing so. But they went much further than this. They actually took upon themselves to meddle with the administration of justice in the Courts of Law, " reviewing," Bishop Mant says, *' and deciding causes which had been determined in the King's Courts, and compelling their subjects, on pain of davmation, to obey their decisions, and not those of the Law." Acting under the influence of these Jesuits, the people took' possession of a number of the Parish Churches, and erected besides in several places Abbeys and Monasteries. Among the churches seized were those of Multifarnham (Westmeath), Kilconnell (Galway), Piossariell (Mayo), Buttevant, Kilkrea, and Timoleague (Cork), Quin (Clare), and the churches of the cities of Waterford and Kil- kenny. The object of the seizure, it was said, was to "restore the splendour of religion." At last Government was compelled to interfere. The remedy applied was a very severe one, but not more so than the circumstances of the case appeared to justify. A Proclamation was issued on the 4th July, 1605, commanding " all Popish Priests to leave the Kingdom before the following 16th December, unless they would conform to the laws of the land." 84 The Church of Ireland. The Proclamation, however, was not enforced. Eoman Catholics were encouraged to offer resistance by a Bull of Pope Paul V. (Camille Borghese), dated 7th December, 1605. This Bull contained "an ex- hortation and remission to the Catholics of Ireland," declaring it to be as safe to ofi'er sacrifice to idols as to be present at the Common Prayer. It also promised a great force of Eomans, Germans, and Spanish by next harvest, and a great store of arms to enable the people to set the Royal authority at defiance. One person only, Robert Lalor, Vicar-General (so- called) of Dublin and other dioceses in the Province of Leinster, was apprehended for disobeying the King's Proclamation. He was indicted under the Statute 2 Eliz., c. 1, for " advancing and upholding foreign jurisdiction within this Realm." He sub- mitted, and made recognition of the king's authority 071 oath. He was then allowed some liberty, and his friends were permitted to have free access to him. He certainly would have been liberated next term, had he not privately repudiated what he had pub- licly sworn, on the ground that the king's authority extended only to temporal, not to spiritual, causes. It was a clear case of what the Jesuits call " mental reservation." The next step taken was to try him under the Statute of Praemunire, 16 Richard II., c. 5. He was found guilty. Sentence was passed upon him, but it was never carried out. What ulti- mately became of him we are not told. The very year that the Proclamation mentioned Hostile Camps. 85 above was issued the Gunpowder Plot was discovered. Every one knows the history of this atrocious con- spiracy, which, if it had been successful, would have thrown the whole administration of religious and political affairs, for a time at least, into the hands of the Roman Catholic party. The Plot, however, re- coiled mercilessly on its authors. Everywhere Popery came to be regarded as synonymous with disloyalty to the Crown. Nearly twenty years after, in 1622, the whole Pro- vince of Ulster, by a remarkable series of incidents, became a stronghold of Protestantism, and of devotion to the reigning monarch. Ulster had gradually fallen into the possession of the Crown by the attainder of rebels.* A company was therefore formed in London for the purpose of planting new colonies in that part of Ireland. It was called the " Irish Society." I need hardly say that this must not be confounded with a Society which bears the same name, and which was founded early in the present century, for the purpose of promoting the Scriptural Education of the Roman Catholics, chiefly through the medium of the Irish language. The Directors of the Irish Society, of which I am now speaking, were wealthy merchants, who were connected with the various guilds for which the City of London is so celebrated. The property in Ulster was divided into small shares, the largest not * A large area of land, consisting of 511,465 acres of Irish or Plantation measure, equal to 818,344 acres of English or Statute measure, was forfeited to the Crown. 86 The Church of Ireland. exceeding 2,000 acres. Tenants were brought over from England and Scotland. The Scotch tenants were, of course, for the most part Presbyterians. The Irish were removed from the hills and fast- nesses, and settled in the open country ; they were taught agriculture, of which they knew very little ; they were compelled to obey the law ; and before long, Ulster, which had been the most wild, uncivi- lized, and disorderly province in Ireland, became the most peaceable, loyal, and well cultivated. It has continued so ever since. At this moment it forms a striking contrast to the turbulent and ever-restless provinces of the South and West. In some respects Ulster is superior even to Leinster, with all its advan- tages. In commercial activity and in population, Belfast is fast outstripping Dublin. Among the advantages which Ulster derived from the Settle- ment " of James I., was that of grants of Church lands for the support of the clergy. These were re- cently dealt with under the provisions of the Irish Church Act (1869). It was during the reign of James I., and under his sanction and patronage, that our " Authorized Version " of the Holy Scriptures was produced. The Dedication, written by the Translators, is, m'c must confess, rather fulsome in its flattery of " the- Most High and Mighty Prince James but there is one sentence in it which we cannot read without a feeling of deep thankfulness. It is this : " Among all our joys, there was no one that more filled our hearts, Hostile Camps. 87 than the blessed continuance of the preaching of God's Sacred Word among us ; which is that inesti- mable treasure which excelleth all the riches of the eai'th ; because the fruit thereof extendeth itself, not only to the time spent in this transitory world, but directeth and disposeth men unto that eternal happi- ness which is above in heaven." Every effort was made during the reign of King James I. to impart this " inestimable treasure " to the people of Ireland. So far as the dwellers within the "Pale" were concerned, these efforts were at- tended with a considerable amount of success ; but outside, especially among the Irish-speaking people, the conditio-n of affairs was truly deplorable. After all the grants which were made in 1622 in the Northern Counties of Ireland, it would appear that there were in seven Dioceses of which re- turns were furnished to the king's ministers, 304 churches in good repair, and 481 in ruins. Under the head of " good repair," are included buildings covered with thatch, the churches being three times as numerous on the whole as the glebes. When the people were blamed for taking their children to the Roman Catholic clergy to be baptized, their excuse invariably was that they had ' ' no curate of their own religion near to them." But not only was there an insufficient supply of clergy. Many of those who filled the position of parish ministers were very poor and very ill-educated. " The incumbents," says Sir John Davis, Attorney- General, " both parsons and 88 Tlie Churcli of Ireland. vicars, did appear to be such poor, ragged, ignorant creatures, as we could not esteem any of them worthy of the meanest of those Hvings, albeit many of them are not worth above forty shillings per annum." In Derry, one of the incumbents is described by his diocesan, Bishop Downham, as " an honest man, but no licensed preacher, notwithstanding to catechize and to speak and read Irish, and sufficient for a parish wholly consisting of Irish." He describes another as " an Irishman of mean gifts, having a little Latin and no English, but thought by my pre- decessor sufficient for a parish consisting wholly of Irish." One advantage, however, the men referred to in the foregoing quotations certainly possessed. Their general education may have been neglected, but they could speak Irish and teach in Irish. This very few of the clergy of that time could do, and therefore the people gradually slipped away from the grasp of the Church. Out of sixty clergymen in the diocese of Armagh, only three could read Irish ; out of fifty- four in Kilmore and Ardagh, only four. In many dioceses it was impossible to find an Irish-speaking parson. During a visitation of the Counties of Monaghan, Fermanagh, and Cavan, undertaken by the Lord Deputy and the Attorney-General, it appeared that the churches were for the most part utterly waste ; that the king was the patron of all the livings ; and that many of the incumbents were Roman Catholic Hostile Camps. 89 priests, instituted by bishops deriving their authority from Rome, yet many of them, Hke other old priests of Queen Mary's time in England, " ready to yield to conformity." The bishops were not better than the clergy over •whom they were placed. Bishop George Mount- gomery, a Scotchman, and Dean of Norwich, was appointed Bishop of Derry, Raphoe, and Clogher. Two years after his appointment, he was still in England, and was not even thinking of coming over to look after his three dioceses. Notwithstanding this shameful neglect, he was allowed, on resigning Derry and Raphoe, to retain the bishopric of Clogher with that of-Meath, and also his Deanery of Norwich. He died in 1620. We cannot help coming to the conclusion, that during the whole of this reign the Church of Ireland was fearfully neglected by those who were placed in authority over her. Her members were left in a con- dition of lamentable destitution, as to the means of assembling for public worship and instruction, or of receiving the aid of pastoral guidance for themselves or their children. The country districts especially presented a picture of misery and desolation. There was really no attempt made by the Church, as a Church, for the instruction of the people through the means of the Irish language. There were some exertions put forth, it is true, by individual incum- bents or curates, but these were feeble efforts after all ; and they were completely baffled, as might have go The Church of Ireland. been expected, by the activity of Roman Catbolic priests. No effort worthy of the name was made during the reign of James I. to instruct the people in the truths of the Reformation, to bring them back to the faith professed by St. Patrick. " The Irish," says Lord Macaulay, " were the only people of northern Europe who had remained true to the old religion. This is partly to be ascribed to the circumstance that they were some centuries behind their neighbours in knowledge. But other causes had co-operated. The Reformation had been a na- tional, as well as a moral, revolt. It had been not only an insurrection of the laity against the clergy, but also an insurrection of all the branches of the great German race against an alien dortiination. It is a most significant circumstance that no large so- ciety of which the tongue is not Teutonic has ever turned Protestant, and that wherever a language de- rived from ancient Rome is spoken, the religion of modern Rome to this day prevails. The patriotism of the Irish had taken a peculiar direction. The object of their animosity was not Rome but Eng- land ; and they had especial reason to abhor those English sovereigns who had been the chiefs of the great schism, Henry the Eighth and Ehzabeth. During the vain struggle which two generations of Milesian princes maintained against the Tudors, reli- gious enthusiasm and national enthusiasm became inseparably blended in the minds of the vanquished race. The new feud of Protestant and Papist in- Hostile Camps. 91 flamed the old feud of Saxon and Celt. The English conquerors meanwhile neglected all legitimate means of conversion. No care was taken to provide the vanquished nation with instructors capable of making themselves understood. No translation of the Bible was put forth in the Erse language. The Govern- ment contented itself with setting up a vast hierarchy of Protestant Archbishops, Bishops, and Rectors, who did nothing, and who, for doing nothing, were paid out of the spoils of a Church loved and revered by the great body of the people." Some allowance must be made here for Lord Macaulay's Whig and Dis- senting proclivities ; but, after all, candour compels us to acknowledge that his indictment, in its main points, has been sustained by clear and incontro- vertible evidence. In 1625 James I. died, and was succeeded by his only son, the unhappy Charles I. Throughout the greater part of this reign we tind the Church of Ire- land utterly neglected ; and we hear the same old story of ruined churches, ignorant clergymen, and rapacious prelates. There were, however, some very bright exceptions. Archbishop Ussher and Bishop Bedel shed a lustre upon the Church which would have enlightened the whole land if their lives had been prolonged. James Ussher was appointed to the Bishopric of Meath in 1620, and was raised to the Primacy in 1625. His diligence in study enabled him to ac- quire an extraordinary degree of learning ; and he 92 The Church of Ireland. was as remarkable for bis piety as for bis tolerant spirit. He visited England sbortly before tbe Re- bellion of 1641, and never returned. He died in England in 1655. William Bedel was a native of Essex. In 1593 be became a Fellow of Emanuel College, Cambridge ; and graduated B.D. in 1599. He is said to bave possessed a singular knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He filled for some time tbe office of Cbap- lain to Sir Henry Wotton, Ambassador in Venice, and tbe intimate friend of Fatber Paul Sarpi, wbo wrote tbe History of the Council of Trent. He was appointed in 16'27 Provost of Trinity College ; and consecrated Bisbop of Kilmore and Ardagb in St. Peter's Cburcb, Drogbeda, February 7tb, 1641. Izaak Walton, tbe autbor of tbat quaint old book, TJie ComjAete Angler, wrote, among otber lives, tbat of Sir Henry Wotton. He says : — " Sir Henry having, after some sbort time and consideration, resolved upon Venice, and a large allowance being appointed by tbe king for bis voyage tbitber, and a settled maintenance during bis stay tbere ; be left England, nobly accompanied tbrougb France to Venice, by gentlemen of tbe best families and breeding tbat tbis nation afforded : tbey were too many to name ; but tbese two may not be omitted, Sir Albertus Morton, bis nepbew, wbo went as bis Secretary j and William Bedel, a man of cboice learning and sanctified wisdom, wbo went as bis Cbaplain." Hostile Camps. 93 Ussber and Bedel lived in troublous times. Botb England and Ireland, during tbe reign of Cbarles I., had to endure all tbe borrors of Civil War. Lord Macaulay, in bis Essay on Milton, tbrows tbe wbole blame of tbe war on tbe king, wbom be denounces in language so severe tbat it can only be accounted for by remembering tbat Lord Macaulay was a very violent political partisan, and, altbougb be must take rank as one of tbe most brilliant writers of tbe nine- teenth century, be was sadly deficient in tbat calm- ness of judgment and impartiality wliicb are required in a historian. He says of Charles I. : — " We cannot, in estimating the character of an individual, leave out of our consideration his conduct in tbe most important of all human relations ; and if, in that relation, we find him to have been selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we shall take the liberty to call him a bad man, in spite of all bis temperance at table, and bis regularity at chapel." The Etkon Basilike, or Portraiture of His Majesty King Clmrles I., goes very far to prove that Lord Macaulay was utterly wrong in his estimate of the king's character. This remarkable book, which there can be little doubt was written by the king himself, was published in 1648, and passed through fifty editions tbe first year. A reprint has recently appeared (1879), from which T shall give an exti-act or two when I come to speak presently of tbe rebellion in Ireland. Let me, first, however refer to the important ser- vices which were rendered to the Church of Ireland 94 The Church of Ireland. during this reign by two men wliose characters have been grossly misrepresented in nearly all our modern popular Histories of England, Archbishop Laud and Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. These men were persecuted, imprisoned, and finally beheaded, because they manfully upheld Episcopacy and Mon- archy against Puritanism and Republicanism ; and the only real blot on the character of Charles I. is this, that he weakly sacrificed them to popular cla- mour, and gratified their enemies by signing the warrants for their execution. Spoliation, sacrilege, and criminal neglect had, as I have ah'eady said, left the Church of Ireland in a most miserable condition. The attention of Arch- bishop Laud was called to this lamentable state of affairs by Bishop Bedel, and on the suggestion of Primate Ussher, Archbishop Laud resolved to obtain, if possible, from the king a restitution of all the Irish impropriations which had been granted by the Crown to laymen. The time was very unjn-omising for such a step as this. The Exchequer was nearly emptj% and the necessities of the king were urgent. But the king, at once, assented to the proposal. The plan was energetically carried out by Lord Deputy Wentworth, and thus the Church recovered a con- siderable portion of her revenues. The Lord Deputy said in one of his letters: "Just at this present, I am infoi-med that My Lord Clanricarde hath engrossed as many parsonages and vicarages as he hath mort- gaged for ii-1000, and £80 rent. But, in faith, have Hostile Camps. 95 at him, and all the rest of the Ravens. If I spare a man of them, let no man ever spare me. Hovvbeit, I foresee, this is so universal a disease that I shall incur a number of men's displeasure, of the best rank among them. But were I not better lose these, for God Almighty's cause, than lose Him for theirs?" I have made the foregoing statement on the authority of the Rev. C. W. Le Bas, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Professor in the East India College, Herts, who, fifty years ago, published a Life of Archbishop Laud, which bears upon its pages the impress of truth, and which gives a view of the Archbishop's actions and opinions very different from those which are currently believed among us. One fact is undoubted, that the Church of Ireland owes a debt of gratitude to both Laud and Wentworth for their praiseworthy exertions in her behalf, at a time when she was trodden under fogt by her enemies, or neglected by those who called them- selves her friends. " It is almost needless to state that this," says Mr. Le Bas, " like almost every other public act of Laud, was afterwards voted to be traitorous. It was said to intimate a design for the abolition of all im- propriations, and, therefore, was evidence of a desire to usurp no less than a Papal power ; and it was treasonable , to the king, inasmuch as it amounted to a robbing of the Crown.'' Archbishop Laud stated that although the propo- sition had originated from himself, it had been 96 The Church of Ireland. explained to the officers of the Exchequer. The mat- ter had been patiently considered ; and the free con- sent of the king had been obtained. There was, therefore, no " robbing of the Crown." But then, sajs Laud, " The increase of Popery is complained of in Ireland. Is there a better way to hinder this growth than to place an able clergy among the inhabitants ? Can an able clergy be had without means ? Is any means fitter than impropriations restored ? My Lords, I did this as holding it the best means to keep down Popery, and to advance the Protestant religion. And I wish, with all my heart, I had been able to do it sooner, before so many impropriations were gotten from the Crown into jfvivate hands." In September, 1633, the connexion between the Archbishop and the Church of Ireland had become more intimate than it had been before, in conse- quence of his election to the Chancellorship of the University of Dublin. It appears from his corre- spondence with the Lord Deputy that he had accepted this honour with great reluctance. He wished that the Lord Deputy should himself occupy that import- ant post, on the ground that his commanding influ- ence, and his presence on the spot, would render him the most effectual guardian of that learned body ; but when his election had actuallj' taken place, he applied himself with great vigour to the new duties which had been cast upon him, and eventually he procured for Trinity College a new Charter, together with a Code of Statutes for its better government. He also Hostile Camps. 97 felt himself engaged bv his closer relatinu to the University to a more vigilant care for the honour and the efuciency of the Church of L-eland. The College Calendar thus refers to Archbishop Laud in the List of the Chancellors of 'the University : " 1633. William Laud, D.D., Lord Archbishop of Canter])nry. Educated at St. John's College, Oxford, of \Yhich he was elected a Fellow in 1593, and President, 1611 ; Archdeacon of Huntingdon, 1615; Dean of Gloucester, 1616; Prebendary of West- minster, 1620 ; Bishop of St. David's, 1621 ; trans- lated to Bath and Wells, 1626 ; London, 1628 ; Canterbury, 1633; elected Chancellor, Sept. 14th, 1633. The Code of Statutes of Charles L, at pre- sent (for the most part) in force in the University, was drawn up, under the king's order, by his direc- tion, and each page of the parchment volume is signed by him. He was beheaded by order of the Long Parliament, Jan. 10th, 164.4-5, in the seventy- second year of his age." "Articles of Religion" had been adopted by the Church of Leland in the Convocation which had been held during the reign of James I., in 1615. These Articles, however, in many important particu- lars differed from the Articles which had been adopted by the Church of England in 1562 ; and the effect of this was, that the two Churches exhibited the spec- tacle, not of sisterly concord, but of unseemly dis- sension ; and both of them became objects of bitter scorn to the Koman Catholics. It was therefore 98 The Church of Ireland. of the highest importance to the honour and peace of both, that the Church of Ireland should accept the articles which had been agi'eed upon in Eng- land. There was no difficulty in the way which was not easily overcome. The Archbishop of Can- terbury, and the Lord Deputy of Ireland, worked harmoniously together to bring about this arrange- ment : and at the Convocation held in Dublin in 1G84, the English Articles and Canons were received in their full integrity, and the two National Churches were brought into a state of entire conformity with each other. The Articles remain to this day un- altered ; but the Canons have been modified of late years, in consequence of the changed position which the Church of Ireland has occupied since the legal bond which united her to the Church of England was severed. I must now briefly touch upon one of the greatest calamities that has ever befallen Ireland. I do so because it cannot be dissociated altogether from the history of the Church. In 1641, Roger More, who is described by Hume as " a gentleman of narrow fortune, descended from an ancient Irish family, and celebrated among his countrymen for valour and capacity," formed a resolution to expel all the English from Ireland, and to assert the independence of his native country. He succeeded before long in enlisting the aid of all the principal Irish chieftains ; and Sir Phelim O'Neale agreed to head the insurrection in Ulster. Hostile Camps. 99 An attempt to take possession of Dublin Castle failed ; O'Connolly, an Irish Protestant, having given timely information to the authorities. Before the news of this failure reached Ulster, O'Neale and his fellow-conspirators had raised the standard of re- bellion. " The Irish, everywhere, intermingled with the English " — here I quote Hume — " needed but a hint from their leaders and priests to begin hos- tilities against a people whom they hated on account of their religion, and envied for their riches and prosperity. The houses, cattle, and goods of the unwary English were first seized. Those who heard of the commotions in their neighbourhood, instead of deserting their habitations, and assembling for mutual protection, remained at home, in hopes of defending their property, and fell thus separately into the hands of their enemies. After rapacity had fully exerted itself, cruelty, the most barbarous that ever in any nation was known or heard of, began its operations. An univerml massacre commenced of the English, now defenceless, and passively resigned to their inhuman foes. No age, no sex, no condition, was spared. The wife, weeping for her butchered husband, and embracing her helpless children, was pierced with them, and perished by the same stroke. The old, the young, the vigorous, the infirm, under- went a like fate, and were confounded in one common ruin. In vain did flight save from the first assault ; destruction was, everywhere, let loose, and met the hunted victims at every turn. In vain was recourse 100 The Church of Ireland. had to relations, to companions, to friends ; all con- nexions were dissolved, and death was dealt by that hand from which protection was implored and ex- pected. Without provocation, without opposition, the astonished English, living in profound peace and full security, were mussacred by their nearest neigh- hours, with whom they had long upheld a continual intercourse of kindness and good otTices. But death was the slightest punishment inflicted by those rebels. All the tortures which wanton cruelty could devise, all the lingering pains of body, the anguish of mind, the agonies of despair, could not satiate revenge, ex- cited without injury, and cruelty derived from no cause. To enter into particulars would shock the least delicate humanity. Such enormities, though attested by undoubted evidence, appear almost in- credible. Depraved nature, even perverted religion, encouraged by the utmost licence, reach not to such a pitch of ferocity ; unless the pity inherent in human breasts be destroyed by that contagion of example which transports men beyond all the usual motives of conduct and behaviour." These enormities have been " attested by un- doubted evidence," and yet, with an audacity to which it would be hard to find a parallel, Mr. A. M. Sullivan, in his Story of Ireland, actually denies that any such massacre was ever perpetrated. He says that the " Puritanical Executive in Dublin Castle started the story of an awful, bloody, and altogether tremendous massacre of Protestants. To be sure, they knew Hostile Camps. lOI there had been no massacre — quite the contrary ; but this made little matter," An easy way, this, of getting rid of a troublesome difficulty. Charles I., at any rate, believed that his English subjects were ruthlessly massacred in Ireland in the year of grace 1G41 ; for he says in the Eikon Basi- like: " The commotions in Ireland were so sudden and so violent, that it was hard at first either to discern the rise or apply a remedy to that precipitant re- bellion. Indeed that sea of blood which hath there been cruelly and barbarously sbed is enough to drown any man in eternal both infamy and misery whom God shall find the malicious author or instigator of its effusion/' And again: "When all proportionable succours of the poor Protestants in Ireland (who were daily massacred and overborne with numbers of now desperate enemies) was diverted and obstructed here, I was earnestly entreated and generally advised by the chief of the Protestant party there to get them some respite and breathing by a cessation, without which they saw no probability, unless by a miracle, to preserve the remnant that had yet escaped. God knows with how much commiseration and solicitous caution, I carried on that business by persons of honour and integrity, that so I might neither encour- age the rel)els' insolence, nor discourage the Pro- testants' loyalty and patience.'" The memory of this frightful, this treacherous, this diabolical slaughter of unoffending Protestants still lingers iu many parts of Ulster ; and gives rise to 102 The Church of Ireland. what is erroneously called " party feeling." It is not mere political or even religious party feeling. It is much more than that. It is a deep-rooted and dismal hatred of treachery, accompanied with a fierce resolu- tion that no opportunity shall ever again be given for the perpetration of such wickedness. If Ulster Protes- tants exhibit their dislike to Popery in a very decided manner, and if they sometimes say that they cannot trust their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen, we shall find it very hard indeed to blame them so long as they have the picture of the sanguinary deeds of 1641 present to their minds. It was this awful crime that Oliver Cromwell avenged in 1619, the very year that Charles I. was beheaded. When Cromwell found himself at the head of an army of sturdy, hard-headed Protestant Republicans, he determined to teach Irish rebels a lesson which they would never forget. I must confess that I am no admirer of Cromwell. Even Thomas Carlyle, with his self-sufiicient assertions, and his barbarous English jargon, has not convinced the world that Cromwell was either a great or a good man. But Cromwell was determined, obstinate, and not easily turned aside from his purpose, whatever that purpose might be. He had determined to punish the aiders and abettors of Roger More and Phelim O'Neale, and he stopped at nothing. He struck down right and left those whom he considered to be the enemies of God and of religion ; he left the marks of his dire Hostile Camps. 103 vengeance on Drogbeda, on Wexford, on Clonmel, on Kilkenny, and on other towns of importance. He committed many excesses, no doubt. He transported tbousands from tbe fertile plains of Tipperary to the desolate wildernesses of Clare and Mayo, giving them their choice between " Connaught and Hell." He drove vast numbers of Irish peasants into foreign countries, caring very little whether they lived or died ; and whilst it is impossible to express approval of such merciless severity as this, it is equally im- possible to deny that the provocation which both English and Irish Protestants had received was great almost beyond endurance. When Cromwell went to Drogheda, and took it by storm, he gave no quarter ; and he justified his cruelty in a letter to the Hon. William Lenthall, Speaker of the Parliament of England, in these words : " I am persuaded this is a righteous judgment of God upon the barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood ; and that it will but tend to prevent the effusion of blood f^r the future, which are the satisfactory grounds for such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret." Cromwell certainly saved Ireland for the English Government, and he prevented the utter extinction of Protestantism in this land ; so that we need not feel much surprised at hearing, as we do sometimes in the West of Ireland, the malediction of the Irish Roman Catholic peasant, accompanying a scowl of tierce anger, uttered deliberately in these words — 104 ^^'^ Church of Ireland. *' The curse of Cromwell rest upon you." If Crom- well had not unsheathed his sword, and made the law respected, a second massacre would have com- pleted the work which the first had left unfinished. The Church of Ireland, as well as her Presbyterian ally in the North, would have perished beneath the murderous assaults of the assassins ; and Komaiiism would have been triumphant from Eathlin Island to Cape Clear. It was, however, Protestantism in the abstract, not that form of Protestantism upheld by the Church of Ireland, which Cromwell favoured. When Dublin surrendered to the Parliamentary Commissioners, Cromwell determined to make the Church feel and acknowledge his power. On June 24th, 1647, he issued an order for the disconti- nuance of the Liturgy in Public Worship. The Directory, drawn up by a Committee of English Dissenters, was to take its place. The clergy of Dublin thereupon drew up a Declaration, in which they stated that it wvis impossible for them to comply with this demand. They pleaded — (1) their Ordination vows; (2) the Oath of Supre- macy; (3) the Act of Uniformity; (4) their inde- pendence as the Clergy of the Church of Ireland, which, although in agreement with, was, neverthe- less, distinct from the Church of England ; (5) the command of Convocation as contained in the Canons of 1634 ; and (6) their inability to agree to any change which had not been made with the consent of the whole Church. Hostile Camps. The Reformetl Church of Ireland," they said, " is a free National Church, and not subordinate to or dependent on the Convocation of any other Church." They added, that the affection of the people for the Prayer Book was so great as to make it very un- likelj' that they would consent to see it set aside for any other form of worship. The Church of Ireland never had a greater enemy than Oliver Cromwell, the so-called " Protector.'^ During his usurpation, for such it undoubtedly was, bishops were banished from their dioceses, clergymen were driven from their parishes, churches were used as stables for the troopers of the Parliamentary army, and aged pas- tors, who remained at their posts, and discharged their duty to their flocks, were imprisoned for read- ing the service which they had solemnly s\v(n-n at their ordination to use in public prayer. No wonder that the Roman Catholics of Ireland looked on in astonishment, and clung the more closely to the religion in which they had been l)rought up. In 16G0 Cromwell died. That he was a man of consummate ability, no one can deny. That his policy was in any way beneficial, either to England or to Ireland, few will venture to assert. Hume says : " The domestic administration of Cromwell, though it discovers great abilities, was conducted without any plan either of liberty or arbi- trary power ; perhaps his difficult situation admitted of neither. His foreign enterprises, though full of intrepidity, were pernicious to the national interest, io6 The Church of Ireland. and seem more the result of impetuous fury or nar- row prejudices, than of cool foresight or delibera- tion." Lord Macaulay, one of his great admirers, says : " While he lived his power stood firm, an ob- ject of mingled aversion, admiration, and dread to his subjects. Few indeed loved his government ; but those who hated it most, hated it less than they feared it." I have already said that he saved the Church of L'eland from utter extinction, but he did it in such a way as to leave behind very bitter memories. A firm but gentle policy would have certainly attained the end which he had in view ; and would have smoothed down in time all those asperities which from that day to this have made Ireland the battle- field of rival political and religious parties. CHAPTER V. CHURCH AND STATE. •HARLES II. was proclaimed king in Dublin, on May 14tb, 1660 ; and one of his first acts was to restore and complete the Episcopate of the Church of Ireland. He was at this time thirty years of age, and possessed of a vigorous constitution, a manly figure, and a graceful air. He was every inch a king. No monarch ever obtained a crown under more favourable circumstances, or was more cor- dially welcomed by his subjects. He seemed dis- posed to forget all the injuries which he and his father had sufi"ered at the hands of Cromwell's friends and followers, and anxious to unite all parties in one common bond of patriotism. How signally he disappointed the expectations which had been formed of him we all know. He sank in the course of a few years into the condition of a mere voluptuary, whilst all public business was transacted by his ministers. " He detested busi- ness," Lord Macaulay says, " and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the administration." The witty Duke of Rochester hit off his character very cleverly io8 The Church of Ireland. in the following? lines, -which he proposed to place as an epitaph on the king's tombstone in the event of his death : — ' ' Hero lies our Sovereign Lord the King, Whose word no man relies on ; Who never said a foolish thing, And never did a wise one." It will he remembered that M'hen this verso was shown to the king, so far from being angry at what might have appeared to him to be the imper- tinence (jf a courtier, he was intensely amused, and remarked : — " His Grace of Rochester is quite right ; for my words arc my own, whilst my acts are the acts of my ministers." One could hardly have expected Charles II. to take an interest in the welfare of the Church of Ireland, or in the progress of true religion. He restored bishops to their Sees because he hated Puritanism, and be- cause he was naturally anxious to undo the mischief that had been done to the Church by Cromwell ; but the condition of Ireland, as regarded church accom- modation and the religious instruction of the people, remained very much as it had been during the two preceding reigns. Such efforts as were made at this time for the spread of religion were made by private individuals without any aid whatever from Government. The Ixon. Robert Boyle tried to get the Bible circulated iu the Irish language at his own expense. Dr. Church and State. log Wake, then Archbishop of Canterbury, gave him all the help he could, and so did Bishop Bedel, This good man, of whom I have already made mention, was, at this time. Bishop of Kilmore. AVheu quite advanced in years, he had made himself master of the Irish language, had written an Irish Grammar, and had translated the Old Testament into Irish. The New Testament and the Book of Common Prayer already existed in Irish. All that was wanted, there- fore, was that the hooks should be got into general circulation, and the people taught to use them. This was just what Mr. Boyle tried to do, but with com- paratively little success. Here and there attempts were made to establish services in Irish, but owing to the want of Irish-speaking clergymen, these attempts were fitful and uncertain, and generally ended in failure. Nothing was done on any largo scale to promote the instruction of the people in the Holy Scriptures. All that could be seen was an occasional gleam of light, not a general illumination of the national mind. The people in places remote fntm towns, at any rate, understood no language but Irish. Their hearts and their consciences could not be reached through the medium of English or Latin. If Bishop Bedel had been able to do all that he wished and lunged to do, Ireland would now have been, for the most part, Protestant, and the Church of Ireland would have been the Church of the majority of the dwellei's in this laud. Jiishop Mant says of him : " The history no The Church of Ireland. of the whole Church of Christ does not, in all pro- bability, contain a more perfect pattern of a Chris- tian bishop than may be contemplated in the life of Bishop Bedel, as to the care with which he supplied all vacancies within his diocese ; the strictness with which he conducted his examinations for Holy Orders; his constant refusal to admit any without a title to a' particular flock ; his studious observation of the be- haviour of his clergy, mixed with paternal tenderness and compassion for their weaknesses ; his earnest endeavours in counteracting pluralities, and in pre- vailing on all to observe parochial residence ; and his constant business at his visitations in investigating the state of his Diocese, and in giving good instruc- tion and advice both to the clergy and the laity." And let me add this. Whilst Bishop Bedel at- tended to his own clergy, and to the laity of his Diocese, he was not unmindful of the spiritual wants of the Roman Catholics by whom he was surrounded. A striking proof of this was given when at his grave, around which stood multitudes of mourners, a priest of the Roman Church, unrestrained by the presence of many members of his flock, spoke of him as " nl- timus Anglorum ;" and added, " Sit anima niea cum Bedelio." We have now arrived at a period in the history of both Church and State in Ireland which, so long as the world lasts, must be regarded by all Protestants with feelings of most devout thankfulness to Almighty God. Church and State. Ill James II., the brother of Charles II., his equal in duplicity, his superior in talent, was placed on the throne in 1685. In three short years he was hurled from power, and the house of Stuart placed for ever under a ban, so far as the Royal dignity was con- cerned. The instant James II. took the reins of govern- ment into his own hands, Roman Catholics were put in possession of the Council Table, of the Courts of Judicature, and of the Bench of Magistrates. The charters of Dublin and of all the Corporations were annulled ; and new charters were granted, sub- jecting the Corporations to the will of the Sovereign. Protestant freemen were expelled. Roman Catholics were introduced into their places. The Act of Settle- ment was the only obstacle to their obtaining pos- session of all the property throughout the country. Hume tells us distinctly that " Lord Tyrconnel had formed a scheme for calling a Parliament to reverse that Act, and empower the king to bestow all the lands of Ireland on his Catholic subjects." Protestants in Ireland are sometimes reproached even now with the severity of the penal laws enacted and enforced during the reigns of the first three Georges ; but let it never be forgotten that these laws, heavily as they undoubtedly pressed upon our Roman Catholic countrymen, were, after all, merely protective, and therefore quite justifiable. Even in these enlightened days, even in this nineteenth century, can it be doubted by any one who knows 112 The Church of Ireland. anything of the histoiy of the past, that if it were pos- sible to assert Roman Catholic supremacy in Ireland, it would be utterly impossible for any Protestant to live here with any degree of comfort for twenty-four hours ? Romanism and Protestantism are antagon- istic forces, and one can only flourish at the expense of the other. In Ireland, Romanism has never ex- hibited a tolerant spirit ; and, therefore, Protestants have been driven, in self-defence, to acts of repres- sion, and sometimes of actual tyranny. James II. tried to compel his Irish Protestant subjects to submit to his will ; but there were other forces at work, the power of which he did not cal- culate upon, and to which, in the end, he had to submit, not graciously, but ignominiously. In 1688 matters came to a crisis. From his predecessors James II. had inherited two prerogatives, the dis- pensing power, and ecclesiastical supremacy. By means of the dispensing power he was enabled to admit Roman Catholics, not only to civil and mili- tary, but also to siuritnal (offices ; and by means of his ecclesiastical suj)remacy, he endeavoured to force Popery upon the Church of England. He was au- thorised by law, he maintained, to repress spiritual abuses, and the first spiritual al)use which he deter- mined to repress was the liberty which the Anglican clergy made use of to defend their own religion, and to attack the doctrines of Rome. Is it any wonder that, when this rumour got abroad, the Protestant spirit of England, and, iu an especial Church and State. 113 manner, that of Ireland, was roused into action ? Froni the moment that it appeai-ed quite clear that this was the king's policy, his dethronement, and the assertion of Protestant principles, were deter- mined upon by a large and influential party, both in the Church and in the State. His own son-in-law was made the instrument of his ruin. William Henry filled the proud and honourable position of Prince of Orange Nassau. " His name" — I quote Lord Macaulay — "at once calls up before us a slender and feeble frame, a lofty and ample fore- head, a nose curved like the beak of an eagle, an eye rivalling that of an eagle in brightness and keenness, a thoughtful and somewhat sullen brow, a firm and somewhat peevish mouth, a cheek pale and thin, and deeply furrowed by sickness and by care. That pen- sive, severe, and solemn aspect could scarcely have belonged to a happy or a good-humoured man. But it indicated, in a manner not to be mistaken, capacity equal to the most arduous enterprises, and fortitude not to be shaken by reverses or dangers." In May, 1688, the Prince of Orange was sum- moned, by the unanimous voice of the Protestants of England and Ireland, to undertake their deliverance from the yoke of Eome, and the tyranny of James II. Nobly he responded to the call. On the 16th Oc- tober of the same year he took a solemn farewell of the States General of Holland. On the 5th Novem- ber he reached Torbay ; and landing on the next day, I 114 The CJnirch of Ireland. he displayed his banner, on which were inscribed these words: — "The Liberties op England, and THE Protestant Religion, I will maintain." Then followed, in quick succession, the flight of James II., and the proclamation of William and Mary — February 13th, 1689 — as United Sovereigns of this Realm. In the month of June, 1690, William III., who had long been impatiently expected in Ireland, landed at Currickfergus ; and within a month after his landing he had fought and won the Battle of the Boyne — July 1st, 1690. James II. had returned to make one last desperate effort in defence of his Crown. Before the battle was well over, he fled from the field to Dublin. Thence he started with all haste for the County Wicklow, from which, at sunrise on July 3rd, he reached Waterford. From Waterford he found his way to Kinsale, and after that across the water to Brest. The history of the Stuarts virtually ends here. His son and his grandson tried in a feeble way to retrieve their fallen fortunes, but they signally failed : and the world would long since have forgotten them if the memory of their romantic adventures had not been preserved to us by that great master of / romance. Sir Walter Scott, Eleven days after the Battle of the Boyne, on Sunday, the 12th July, 1690, the battle of Augln-im was fought. General Giuckel, who commanded for King William, completely defeated General St. Ruth, who fought for James II. with a courage worthy of a better cause. The triumph of the Prince of Orange, Church and State. 115 of civil and religious liberty, and of Protestantism, was now complete. Nearly two centuries have passed away since then : and at the present moment a mil- lion and a half of Protestants in Ireland may thank God for raising up William III. as their deliverer ; whilst four millions of Roman Catholics may be equally thankful for the success achieved by the Pro- testant party at the Boyne and Aughrim. Roman Catholics in Ireland have long since shared with Protestants all the blessings of freedom. All now equally enjoy the protection of the law, and all have the satisfaction of knowing that they live under the rule of a queen who has endeared herself to her subjects, in every rank of life, by the uprightness of her conduct, by the integrity of her character^ by the sympathy which she has always shown for the poor or the afflicted, by her many domestic virtues, and by the wisdom which she has displayed in the management of the affairs of her great Empire. The House of Orange, and subsequently the House of Brunswick, have been the means of raising the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to the proud position which that kingdom now occupies among the nations of the earth ; and all classes of Irishmen have participated in the blessings which have been enjoyed by their English and Scottish fellow-subjects. How different the position of Ireland would have been now, if James II. had proved victorious at the Boyne. The iron rule of Rome would have crushed out all enter- prise, would have defeated every attempt to promote ii6 The Church of Ireland. social and intellectual progress, and religion would have been a mere synonym for superstition and priestcraft. That this would have been the fate of Ireland no one can doubt who looks at the present condition of Spain, or who knows what was the con- dition of " the Kingdom of the two Sicilies " during the reign of the Bourbons. From this intense de- gradation Ireland was saved by the heroes of 1690, foremost amongst whom must ever stand, William, Prince of Orange. The political events of the three j'ears of James the Second's reign were disastrous to the Church of Ireland. Archbishop King, when consecrated Bishop of Derry in 1691, found that, in consequence of the ravages to which his Diocese had long been subject, " its villages and plantations were all destroyed ; its churches burned or dilapidated ; its clergy with- drawn, and its parishes forsaken ; the poverty of the people, and the want of tillage and cattle, being in- sufficient for the support of a resident ministry." With the accession of William and Mary came a change for the better. Good men and true, in many parts of the country, exerted themselves to do their duty faithfully and diligently in the midst of all the difficulties by which they were surrounded. The truth of God was upheld. The Bible was read and appreciated. The appointments to bishoprics and to parishes were, on the whole, such as would commend themselves to Christians anxious for the advancement of " pure and undefiled religion." There was still Church and State. iiy much to create sadness, no doubt, but there was a great deal for which to be thankful. The Church began to be regarded as a religious institution, rather than as a political engine ; and the clergy made every effort to extend the influence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, rather than that of the English Govern- ment. And yet, so far as the native Irish were concerned, matters remained very much as they had been for the previous sixty or seventy years. The Church did not seem to realise at this time the dignity of her position as a National Church ; and instead of pro- claiming to the world by active work and loving counsels that she was really the Church of Ireland, she was content to be regarded as the Church of England in Ireland. " The public records of the early part of the 18th century," says the Rev. William Fitzpatrick (Clerical Secretary of the Irish Society), in his account of the early attempts to convert the Roman Catholics of Ireland to the Established Religion, " very clearly express the history of the various missionary efi'orts devised by the State and by the Irish Church at that time." Mr. Fitzpatrick then recounts the proceedings of the Irish Houses of Con- vocation, as given in the narrative of the Rev. John Richardson, of Belturbet ; and on reviewing the whole state of the case, he asks — "What were the results? It would be hazardous," he replies, " for us to venture to assert that there were none, or even that ii8 The Church of Ireland. they were few. It is often impossible for us to trace the connexion between cause and eifect. As in tlie processes of God's government of the natural world, we cannot necessarily trace the special result of the shower that waters the earth, or of the sun that shines, or of the wind that blows, or the limit of the influence of counteracting causes, or the results of* a multitude of other causes known or unknown to us, which are in operation and under the control of Him who is the Cause of causes, for some wise purpose, and some beneficent result ; so in the operations of the kingdom of grace we cannot pronounce of any action that is in accordance with His will, that it produces no good." The results at this time, however, were not very clearly visible. Just as the 18th century dawned, William III. was succeeded by Anne, Princess of Denmark. It cannot be said that during her I'eign nothing was done for the spread of true religion in Ireland, because we know that strenuous eiforts to circulate the Holy Scriptures were made by pious and zealous individuals here and there : and as Mr. Fitzpatrick very properly remarks in the passage which I have'given above, we cannot say of " any action that is in accordance with God's will, that it produces no good." But the Church, as a Church, had not yet taken a correct estimate of her Divine mission ; and political feuds would have hindered her progress even if she had made any determined effort to move onward. Church and State. iig Bisbop Mant says: — " The Statutes passed in tlie reign of William and Mary, with relation to the Church, testify, on the part of the Government and Legislature, their sense of the dangers from which they had escaped and to which they were still exposed from the unrestricted spirit of Popery. To represent these enactments " — here the Bishop gives the words of Burke, as quoted by Plowden — "as the manifest effects of national hatred and scorn towards a con- quered people whom the victors delighted to trample upon, and were not at all afraid to provoke, as cal- culated to harass and ruin a set of people who were looked upon as enemies to God and man, and, indeed, as a race of bigoted savages who were a disgrace to human nature itself, is language which may be em- ployed for the purposes of a political partisan, but is utterly at variance with the fact. They " (the Statutes) " were calculated, indeed, to promote not only the security of the Protestant, but the benefit of the Papist ; especially that which had for its object to counteract the restless intrusion and domineering influence of Popish ecclesiastics. If the prudence which dictated that enactment had been followed up with corresponding wisdom, vigilance, and vigour in its execution, effective provision having been made withal for the ministrations of the clergy in a degree commensurate with the occasion, the deluded victims of a fond superstition might have been weaned from their blind attachment to a foreign religious dictator, and have become, by God's blessing, reasonable and I20 The Church of Ireland. enlightened members of the Reformed National Church." Queen Anne's ministers, instead of adopting the wise policy of William III., used such influence as they had for the degradation of the Church of Ireland. On the death, for instance, of Bishop Foy, of Water- ford, who appears to have been a good man, the Lord Lieutenant's chaplain, a perfect stranger, who had been only a few months in Ireland, was appointed. Writing about this incident, February 28th, 1708, Archbishop King observes :—" You will not expect from me any account of how it is relished here. Some say that if General Laureston had been Primate, it would not have been so." The Arch- bishop probably meant that such a disgraceful step would not have been taken in the army ; and that if anything of the kind had been done, there would have been a strong protest against it from military men. When, about the same time, the See of Cork and Ross became vacant, the notoriously profligate Earl of Wharton was anxious to get one of his own favourites appointed ; but this case was so very flag- rant that the two English Archbishops interfered, and the appointment was not made.* ♦ Bishop Burnet, in his Life and Times, writing of the English gentry of the reign of Queen Anne, says :— " The gentry are not early acquainted with the principles of reli- gion ; so that after they have forgot their Catechism, they acquire no more new knowledge, but what they learn in plays Church and State. 121 They were, however, not equally successful in their endeavours to keep Dean Swift out of the Irish Church. He was spoken of for the Bishopric of Hereford, but the profaneness and profligacy of his writings, even in that immoral age, made it impos- sible to admit him to the company of English pre- lates ; so he was sent over to Ireland, and made Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, and Vicar of Laracor in the Diocese of Meath. Bishop Mant remarks upon this : — " Preferment in Ireland may have been judged a further mitigation of the ofi'ence against propriety by removing him to a sequestered posi- tion." So little was then thought by English states- men of the Church of Ireland, that the Dean of St. Patrick's was considered to be not a person of dig- nity and influence, but one occupying " a sequestered position." and romances. They grow soon to find it a modish thing that looks like wit and s^jirit, to laugli at religion and virtue, and to become crude and unpolished infidels. This," he adds, " is a dismal representation of things." We can hardly find, when we look at the ecclesiastical his- tory of England in the early part of the eighteenth century, any divine, except Bishop Beveridge, who has been called " the restorer and reviver of primitive jjiety," who held and taught these two capital articles of the Gospel ; Justification by faith in the atonement made by Christ, and Sanctification by the Holy Spirit. Arianism and Socinianism were i>reached by many leading clergymen of this time, the former heresy notably by Dr. iSamuel Clarke, Rector of St. James's, West- minster. With such pastors to guard them, we cannot much wonder that the sheep went astray. 122 The Church of Ireland. When these facts are known, we can hardly wonder at Archbishop King saying as he does : — " I think I could demonstrate that the Church has lost more hearts and ground these last four years in Ireland, than she did since King James came to the Crown ; and I have put it to some scores of the admirers of that ministry" — the ministry of Queen Anne — "to give one instance of one single step taken in all that time for the good of this kingdom in general, or the Chui'ch in particular, and I never could get an an- swer. I think I could show many to the detriment of both." That the Church of Ireland was at this time able to exercise any spiritual influence, is due entirely to the fact that there were within her communion many excellent persons who used their influence for the spread of true religion among their fellow-country- men. Foremost among these was the Rev. Nicholas Brown, Kector of the parishes of Donacavey, Dro- more, and Rossory, who devoted himself to mis- sionary work in several Irish-speaking districts, and persevered in his undertaking for several years with great zeal and energy. He possessed a tho- rough acquaintance with the Irish language, and was able to express himself in a manner which was both intelligible and agreeable to his hearers. By his great kindness, too, and by many works of charity among the poor, he gained their good- will and affection ; and thus he took advantage of the great delight which he observed in them at Church and State. 123 hearing the prayers of the Church offered up in their own tongue. He sought the people out in their own dwellings ; he held public meetings ; he attended at the places where they usually assembled to hear Mass, taking care to be present just as Mass was ended, and before the congregation had dispersed. Then he seized every opportunity of instructing them by reading to them chapters out of the Old and New Testaments, and reading the prayers of the Church out of an Irish Book of Common Prayer. In all this he was encouraged by his Diocesan, Dr. St. George Ashe, at that time Bishop of Clogher, and by Mr. Audley Mervyn, one of the Knights of the Shire for Tyrone. At the same time a similar work was carried on in the South by the Rev. Walter Atkins, Treasurer of Cloyne Cathedral, and Vicar of Middleton. When he was appointed to his benefice, he had some know- ledge of Irish, and he set to work at once to in- crease his acquaintance with the language. Having quahfied himself to minister in Irish, he began to hold regular services, and, as opportunity offered, he visited the sick, baptized children, married the living, and buried the dead, always using the Irish Prayer Book. He, too, was greatly helped by Dr. Charles Crowe, Bishop of Cloyne. Such was the effect produced by the labours of these two exemplary clergymen, that the Upper House of Convocation sent the following communi- cation to the Lower House : — " That this House, 124 ^^^^ Church of Ireland. considering with great compassion the condition of the recusants of this Kingdom, and conceiving gi-eat hopes from the present junctui-e of affairs, that many of them may be prevailed upon to join themselves in communion with the Established Church, do think themselves obliged to thank God for putting such favourable opportunities into their hands, and to use more than ordinary endeavours at this time to im- prove it." It was thereupon resolved : — " That the Holy Bible and Liturgy of the Chui-ch be printed in the Irish language, in the English character ; that some person be appointed to prepare a short exposition of the Church Catechism, particularly fitted for the instruction of the Popish recusants, and that the same be printed in Irish and English ; that fit per- sons be provided and encouraged to preach, catechize, and perform Divine Service in the Irish tongue, by the direction of the Ordinary, and with the consent of the Incumbent ; that such clergymen in each Diocese as are qualified by their skill in the Irish language for this work, and are willing to undertake it, have the preference, not only in their own parishes, but in any other parts of the Diocese ; that priests con- verted from the Popish religion, and judged qualified by the Ordinary, may be employed in the work, and encouraged by an addition to the allowance already settled on them by Act of Parliament ; that, to sup- ply the cures of clergymen employed in this work, or to perform it where there are no beneficed clergymen Church and State. 125 or converted priests qualified for it, one or more ministers be provided in each Diocese, who shall be engaged in the service of no particular cure ; that the ministers of each parish be required to return the number of Popish families within their respective parishes to the Bishop in three j'ears ; that, to defray the charges of pursuing the foregoing measures, the Parliament be applied to for necessary provision ; and that application be made to Her Majesty for granting Letters Patent to erect a Corporation, capa- ble of receiving and disposing of charitable contribu- tions for promoting the conversion of Papists in this Kingdom." The aid of the University of Dublin was enlisted in the same good cause. Dr. Hall, the Vice-Provost, agreed to support at his own charge a person quali- fied to teach Irish privately to such of the students as desired to learn that language ; and under the patronage of the Archbishop of Dublin, and with the consent and approbation of the Provost and Fellows, a Professor of Irish was appointed to teach the lan- guage publicly. The Irish language has been taught in Trinity College, Dublin^ ever since ; and, for the encourage- ment of the study of the language, the Board some years ago placed the sum of ^620 at the disposal of the Professor of Irish, to be given to such students as shall " distinguish themselves in the Irish language." The Irish Society, moreover, which has for one of its objects the circulation of the Holy Scriptures in the 126 The Church of Ireland. Irish language, has, with the sanction of the Pro- vost and Senior Fellows of Trinity College, founded four scholarships in the University, which are deno- minated " the Bedel Scholarships," and placed un- der the superintendence of Trustees named by the founders. The Scholarships are designed for such students only as give reasonable hope that they will be competent on their ordination to preach in the Irish language. So far, then, as Trinity College is concerned, every encouragement has been given to the study of Irish ; but the missionary work of the Irish Church, which it was proposed to carry on during the reign of Queeu Anne in the manner set forth in the foregoing re- solution, remained undone, until in comparatively recent times it was undertaken by the Irish Society, which founded the Bedel Scholarships. Of this im- portant work I shall have something to say fur- ther on. Queen Anne ruled over the destinies of the kingdom for thirteen years. She was a zealous Protestant, and really anxious for the spread of true religion ; but she had little or no personal influence. Her ministers and favourites had very much of their own way ; and the last thing they ever thought of was the circulation of the Bible in Ireland, or the religious instruction of the Irish-speaking portion of the population. In the autumn of 1714, George I., Elector of Hanover, was proclaimed King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Church and State. 127 The history of the Churcli of Ireland during this reign may he learned, Bishop Mant tells us, from the character and conduct of several of the Irish Bishops who lived at this time. This, it may he ob- served, is hardly a fair criterion of the condition of the whole Church ; but it may be possible to ascer- tain, from an examination of the actions of the rulers of the Church, something of the general drift of aifairs. Dean Macartney says : — " We have seen that hitherto the conduct of successive rulers led us to believe that the Church was regarded as an instru- ment of government rather than a means of con- veying Divine Truth ; but it remained for this i-eign" — the reign of George I. — " openly to make that avowal, and for a Prelate to be the unblushing pro- claimer of that disgraceful fact." He then quotes Archbishop King, who, writing in 1714, says : — " We have many candidates for these ; and 'tis be- come a custom with us, that whoever pretends to any preferment, he immediately posts away to London. We have crowds there, and I find more are going, and some have waited two years, hunting for promo- tion Your Grace is well apprized what a dis- couragement it is to men that reside and attend their cures, and, by that, support religion, to see others preferred before them, merely for attending at Court and neglecting their churches ; the mischiefs that attend this practice are so many and great, that I will not pretend to enumerate them in a letter." All the ecclesiastical records of this reign go to 128 The Church of Ireland. prove the truth of Archbishop King's statement. Even Dean Swift says in a letter to Bishop Atter- bury : — " We have recommended to a Bishopric one whom you would not allow to be a Curate in the smallest of your parishes." And the qualifications of a clergyman who was appointed Bishop of Elphin — his name is not mentioned — are thus described in a letter to Archbishop Wake : — " He was a great master of painting in little water colours, and by that greatly recommended himself to men in power and ladies, and so ivas early made a hishop." As a rule. Englishmen were at this time promoted to Bishoprics and Deaneries in Ireland, whilst meri- torious Irishmen were passed over ; but this would have mattered but little, comparatively speaking, if these English dignitaries had set to work diligently to preach the Gospel, and to discharge the other duties connected with their sacred calling. They did not do so. They lived, for the most part, in idleness. They neglected the work of the ministry. They were mere worldlings, who fattened on the " loaves and fishes " of their office. The Irish people saw in the heads of the Church a body of strangers placed in positions of influence and authority ; and at the same time they saw the offices of religion either altogether neglected by the beneficed clergy, or dis- charged by a half-starved Curate.* In a parish of * It is recorded of Dr. Savage, who about this time tra- velled to Rome with the Earl of Salisbury, that the king asked him one day at a levee how long he had resided in Church and State. 129 considerable importance in the Diocese of Meath, I have mj'Self seen the following entry in the register, an entry made in the beginning of the reign of George I. : Date: then the words: — " No service to- day, as I was absent in Dublin." After this follows " Ditto, ditto," for twenty-six consecutive Sundays, exactly six months ; and then with grim irony this model parish clergyman has written these w^ords af the foot of his record of absenteeism : — " Lord, I have loved the habitation of thine house, and the place where thine honour dwelleth." (Psalm xxvi. 8.) There does not appear to have been much improve- ment, if any, during the reign of George II., which lasted from 1727 to 1760, thirty-three years. Pri- mate Boulter certainly did something to promote the well-being of the Church. He employed the revenues derived from his See freely, bountifully, and benefi- cially for Church purposes ; and especially encouraged the establishment of schools for the children of mem- bers of the Church. In these schools the Bible was carefully taught, and so was the Church Catechism ; but he does not seem to have done anything to kindle zeal or piety among the clergy, and he completely ignored missionary work among the Roman Catholics by whom he was surrounded. Rome with his Lordship . Upon Dr. Savage's answering the kiiig, and telling him how long he had been in Rome, " Why," said the king, '"'you staid there long enough ; how is it that you did not convert the Pope ? " " Because, Sir," replied the Doctor, " I had nothing better to offer him." 130 The Church of Ireland. What might have been done to win Roman Ca- * tholics over to the principles of the Reformation is clear from their conduct towards the Established Church when, during the reign of George II., Ireland was threatened with a French invasion. Dr. Smollett tells us that, " however the Court of Versailles might have flattered itself that their invading army would, in Ireland, be joined by a great number of the natives, in all probability it would have been disappointed in this hope, had their purposed descent ever been car- ried into execution, for no signs of disaffection to the reigning family appeared at this juncture. On the contrary, the wealthy individuals of the Romish per- suasion offered to accommodate the Government with large sums of money, in case of necessity, to support the present Establishment against all its enemies ; and the Roman Catholics of the City of Cork, in a body, presented an address to the Lord Lieutenant, expressing their loyalty in the warmest terms of as- surance." It is true that some dissatisfaction was expressed in Dublin when this loyal declaration of the citizens of Cork was made known to them. It is also true that there was some resistance made to the authority of the Viceroy ; but it was put down with- out difficulty, and the example of insubordination did not spread to any of the provincial towns. On October 25th, 1760, George II. died very sud- denly ; and George III. " reigned in his stead." It is a somewhat remarkable fact that the three longest reigns in British history are those of three Church and State. 131 kings, each of -whom was the third of his name, Henry III. reigned 56 years; Edward III. 51 ; and George IIL 59. This circumstance is alluded to in the following lines by an anonymous author : — Chaste, pious, steadfast, merciful, and just. His pride, his people ; and his God, his ti-ust : To the third George approving Heaven ordained A life unblemished, and a death unpained ; In goodness, greatness, years, his reign exceeds Henry's mild life, and Edward's laurelled deeds." During this long period many stirring events took place in Ireland. The country passed through poli- tical troubles of no ordinary kind ; and in the midst of strife and rebellion the Church found it very hard to carry on the work assigned to her. The personal character of the king was above all praise. It far exceeded what might have been expected from the age in which he lived, and from the circumstances in which he was placed. He believed in Christianity with his whole heart, and his life was pure and blameless. Even his bitterest enemies, if he ever had any, must have been compelled to admit that he was a pattern of all the domestic virtues. He looked upon his dominions, too, much in the same way as he looked upon his household. He regarded himself as the father of an immense family, for whose com- fort he was bound carefully to provide. And yet, such was the indifference of his advisers to the condi- tion of the people of Ireland, that it does not appear 132 The Church of Ireland. that anything more was done during the reign of George III. for the enlightenment of the masses of the people of this country than was done during the reign of Henry VIII. Nothing was less dreamed of than the progress of true religion. So long as the Government of England could hold Ireland against every enemy, as a valuable possession of the Crown, it mattered little what religion the people professed, and what amount of secular education was imparted to them. Good appointments were, no doubt, occa- sionally made to posts of importance ; but everything goes to prove that excellence of character was no recommendation, and worthlessness was no bar to promotion in the Irish Church at this period. The experiment of converting the Irish to Protestantism, and its consequent loyalty, had failed. But it will be said, What ought England to have done ? She ought to have watched over not merely the stability, but the elBciency of what should, from the days of the Reformation, have been regarded as a missionary church. She ought to have sent over to Ireland, not the worst, but the best, of her sons ; and in every case where it was possible to do so, she ought to have selected Irish-speaking bishops and clergymen to fill dioceses and parishes. She ought to have aided the Irish Church in every legitimate elFort to educate and to evangelize the Irish people. If she had done this, Ireland would now have been the grateful friend and the trusted ally of England, instead of being a source of incessant anxiety, and of Church and State. 133 ever-increasing perplexity. England did not do this. For three centuries, at least, she tried to degrade the Church of Ireland by making her a political tool ; and, instead of helping her to circulate the Holy Scriptures, and to preach the Gospel, she did her very best to crush out every manifestation of spiritual life within her own bosom, and every efibrt to carry on missionary work among the Roman Catholics in the midst of whom she was placed. And what has been the consequence of this policy ? Listen, ye British statesmen, to the words of as honest a Eoman Catholic as ever lived, one who was a true Irish patriot, a Member of the Imperial Par- liament, and a man of culture. Listen to the words in which he describes the result of the labours of your predecessors in this unhappy land. I quote from the recently published pamphlet of the late Mr. P. J. Smyth, M.P.— r/(e Priest in Politics— 1885. " One of the most eminent Catholic divines in Europe, contemplating the spectacle which Ireland presented lately, is reported — and I believe correctly — to have said that the Catholic Church had failed as a moral teacher in Ireland." "As the individuals composing a nation are, such the nation is. If, individually, they are truthful, honest, kindly, virtuous, and brave, the nation which they compose will manifest in all its actions the same noble qiialities. If, individually, they are untruthful, tricky, fraudulent, cruel, cowardly, and deceitful, the same qualities will characterize the nation, and be 134 ^^^^ Church of Ireland. photographed in all its public acts. The future of the Irish nation is in the hands of the priests, for with them, above all, is the power to mould, for good or ill, the character of the people." Let them impress on the minds and hearts of their people that the Decalogue underlies all ritual, and all Church organisations, all civilisations, all politics, all govern- ments, and all laws. It corresponds in theology with natural facts in physical science. Ignore those facts, and the material structure falls — a house built upon the sand. Ignore the Moral Law, the Ten Com- mandments, and every religious system falls, the solidarity of the human race perishes, society dis- solves, and humanity itself, losing its spiritual ele- ment, ceases to be human."* These are words of truth and soberness. Let us lay them to heart. England for three centuries placed every impediment in the way of the Church of Ireland, and almost crushed her out of existence. England left the Erse or Celtic population of Ireland for the whole of that time under the dominion of Eome ; and now the priests of Rome in Ireland are * The pamphlet from which this qviotation is taken was written by Mr. P. J. Smyth a short time before lus last illness. On his death-bed he expressed a wish that it should be published " before the meeting of the Bishops in Rome.'* The solemn and sacred duty then rested on his widow to carry out his dying wish ; and at the risk of incurring the anger of the Roman priesthood, and being held up to repro- bation by the Ultramontane press, she has nobly done her duty. Church and State. 135 England's avowed and relentless enemies, whilst the people, encouraged hy their priests, are sinking fast into the abyss of Communism. Almost every Irish priest is, by virtue of his calling, an Irish agitator, one grand aim of whose life is to make Ireland altogether independent of England ; and for this state of affairs England has only herself to blame. CHAPTER VI. UNION ■WITH ENGLAND. ^HE Union of Great Britain and Ireland was 1 proposed in the Irish Parliament on January 22nd, 1799. It was rejected by the Commons of Ireland on January 24th ; the votes being 105 for, and 106 against the Union — a majority of one against the proposal. At the same time three divisions took place in the English House of Commons, the num- bers being 140, 141, and 149 /or the Union, and 15, 25, and 28 acjainst. On February 5th, 1800, Lord Castlereagh detailed the plan of the Union in the Irish House of Lords, founded on the resolutions of the English Parliament, upon which a majority of Irish votes was obtained. In the Irish House of Commons, however, some resistance to the measure was displayed. Mr. Henry Grattan, although suffer- ing from severe illness, made one of his most eloquent and powerful speeches against the Union. The debate which followed lasted sixteen consecutive hours. In the end the votes were 158 for, and 115 against. This sealed the fate of the Irish Parlia- ment. On July 2ud, 1800, the Act of Union passed, and on January 1st, 1801, it took effect. From that Union with England. 137 day to this the proper style and designation of the Kingdom has been " The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland." Let it be here carefully noted that the 5th of the Articles establishing the Union — I quote from Gifford's Edition of Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws and Comtltiition of England — is as fol- lows : — " That the Churches of England and Ireland be united into one Protestant Episcopal Church, to. be called the United Church of England and Ireland; that the doctrine and worship shall be the same ; and that the continuance and 'preservation of the United Church as the Established Church of England and Ireland shall he deemed an essential and funda- mental PART OF THE Union ; and that, in like man- ner, the Church of Scotland shall remain the same as is now established by law, and by the Acts of Union of England and Scotland." It was reserved for the Right Honourable William Ewart Gladstone, M.P., nearly three quarters of a century later, to break through this solemn compact between two independent countries. President Garfield, a man, as all the world knows, of the highest integrity, once said, when referring to the payment of the United States National Debt in greenbacks instead of gold : — " It is a fearful thing for one man to stand up in the face of his brother- man and refuse to keep his pledge ; but it is a forty- five million times worse thing for a nation to do it. It breaks the mainspring of faith." The Church of Ireland. No words could describe more accurately than these last words do the action of Mr. Gladstone and his followers with reference to the Church of Ireland. They have broken " the mainspring of faith." The Act of Union had been preceded by the terrible Rebellion of 1798. Seven years before the rebellion actually broke out, Theobald Wolfe Tone, a clever barrister, formed the "Society of United Irish- men" in Belfast. A popular agitator in the Dublin Corporation, James Napper Tandy, founded a branch of the Society in the metropolis. These " United Irishmen " were intensely Republican. They had evidently been carried away by the lawless spirit which the French Revolution had evoked all over Europe, and they were animated, though they hardly knew why, by undying hostility to England and her political institutions. Each year the chasm between the two countries became wider and wider. In September, 1795, the battle of " the Diamond " was fought in the County Armagh. Then came the land- ing of the French in the West of Ireland. At last, in ninety-eight — a year that can never be forgotten in the history of this unhappy country — the storm broke in all its fury. Fearful crimes were perpetrated on both sides. Protestants and Roman Catholics, Loyalists and Rebels, were involved in one common ruin, and the seeds of political and religious rancour were sown, which at this moment are bearing bitter fruit. Of course, in the end mihtary discipline pre- vailed over the wretched tactics of peasant hordes, the Union with England. 139 law asserted its supremacy, and the kings Govern- ment triumphed over the leaders of a wild rabble. But the intense hatred of England, which was kindled by the RepubHcan party, and fanned into a flame by the rebellion, has not yet burned out. The Act of Union was carried against the wishes of an ^ overwhelming majority of the people of Ireland, and there are vast numbers now living in Ireland who would wish to see that Union dissolved. They cry out loudly for Eepeal. They would, if they could, pronounce, as the Divorce Court does in the case of a union of quite another kind, a decree of separation a memd et thoro. No really patriotic Irishman, however, ought to desire a separation between the two countries, now that the Union has taken place, and has lasted for the greater part of a century. England and Ireland have been mated " for better or worse ;" and if they will but make allowance for each other's faults and foibles, they may jog on very happily together, as other couples do, with only an occasional breeze to ruffle the placidity of their domestic sky. Whilst granting to the fullest extent that force, and fraud, and bribery, and chicanery were brought into full play in order to bring about the Union, it must, after all, be acknowledged, even by the most violent political partisan, that separation would now be dis- ' astrous to Ireland. In Union lies the strength of | each country. Ireland is geographically, and by na- j tronality, as much a part of the "United Kingdom" as Scotland is. Scotchmen have their national J 140 The Clmrch of Ireland. predilections, and look back with pardonable pride to the warlike deeds of their forefathers ; and yet they lose nothing, but rather gain everything, by their intimate connection with their friends " across the Border." Why should not Irishmen maintain their nationality, and, at the same time, make common cause with their friends " across the Channel " ? I have, perhaps, wandered away a little from my subject, but not so far as a merely superficial reader might suppose. For the political union between England and Ireland is very closely connected with the union between the Clutches of the two countries. The political union remains in force, and long may it remain so. The ecclesiastical union, so far as ex- ternal arrangements are concerned, has been severed. But there is a union in doctiune, in discipline, in worship, in sentiment, in sympathy, and in charity, which no Act of Parliament can for a moment touch or interfere with. The Church of Ireland is still, to all intents and purposes, one with the grand old Church of England, which is now, notwithstanding the Romanising tendencies of an insignificant minority of her members, thoroughly Protestant. From a very early period, the clergy, both in England and in Ireland, had been supported by means of tithes. The circumstances of Ireland at the beginning of the present century were such that the levying of tithes for the support of the Protestant clergy was deemed to be a grievance ; and it is im- possible to deny that, as matters then stood, it was a substantial grievance. Ujtion with England. 141 Lord Castlereagh, in bis proposals for the Union of the two countries, held out a hope that a remedy would, beforft long, be applied by the Imperial Parlia- ment ; but the realisation of this hope was so long deferred, that discontent sprang up on all sides. Not only were tithes obnoxious to the people generally, but the manner in which they were collected was most offensive. The Irish Parliament had thrown the burden of this impost on land under tillage, and consequently, for the most part, on small farmers. Except in some few cases, where special agreements for an annual payment were made with the Incum- bent or his agent, the value of the tithes levied on each holding was ascertained by persons called tithe proctors, who visited the farms, walked through the fields, and determined what the cultivator or owner should pay. The latter had the option of accepting the valuation or throwing aside the tenth of the pro- duce in the harvest field for the parson or his servant to carry away. The proctors were often hospitably entertained, and even bribed, in the hope that they would be lenient in their valuation ; but they some- times accepted both hospitality and bribes, and, in the end, severely mulcted the unfortunate farmer. It is hardly necessary to say that few, if any, really respectable men cared to become proctors, for they were hated with the most bitter hatred, and the Church of Ireland gained nothing in popular estima- tion by being associated with their odious exac- tions. 142 The Church of Ireland. In 1832 tlie agitation against tithes became for- midable. A regular "Tithe "War" was waged. The resistance was universal. George IV., whose visit to Ireland had been the means of kindling among all classes a spirit of loyalty to the Throne, was dead. His successor was the j^opular Duke of Clarence, his brother, William IV., the " Sailor King;" but even he, with all his popularity, could not enforce the levying of tithes. He and his Government were compelled to resort to severe measures. Soldiers were employed to discharge duties from which, as soldiers, they naturally shrank, and which, in their inmost hearts they abhorred. They obeyed only because military discipline required them to do so. They were to be seen driving cattle, sheep, and pigs from the farmsteads to the Parsonages all through the country ; and it is on record that in the County of Kilkenny a company of Hussars was seen driving before them a flock, consisting of twelve geese. Meetings for " Repeal," and " No Tithes," were held every Sunday. Mr. W. J. O'Neil Daunt says : " The meeting frequently comprised the inhabitants of many parishes. The dark multitudes streamed from the hills to the common centre ; many on horseback, but the greater number on foot. There was a proud thrill in every man's heart ; all felt the exhilarating consciousness that a nation was muster- ing to demand its rights. The chairman was often a Protestant, whose hatred of tithes was not less intense than that felt by the Catholic concourse around him." Union with England. H3 It was quite clear that such a state of affairs could not last long. If the " Establishment " was to be maintained, X some concessions were due to public opinion. The Legislature came to the rescue. Tithes were converted into a rent-charge, payable by the landlords, and the clergy were required to saci'ifice one-fourth of their annual income. To the clergy the change was most beneficial. Not only were they enabled to avoid coming into collision with their Roman Catholic and other dissenting neigh- bours ; but their income, although only three-fourths of the amount that it had been, was henceforward made secure. To the landlords the change was not unwelcome, for they received twenty-five per cent, of what had been the parson's income in return for the trouble of writing a couple of cheques in the course of the year. By the farmers the Tithe Commutation Act was regarded as a great boon because they were under the delusion that they had ceased to pay any tithe to the " Protestant Minister ; " little dreaming, poor souls, that the commuted value of the tithe was, as a rule, included in the amount which they paid as rent to " His Honour." On the whole, the land- lords were the chief gainers by the transaction. The arrangement, however, possessed this great merit, that it put an end to the agitation which had disturbed the country for many years ; and it prevented any future collision between the clergy of the Church and those who conscientiously objected to receive their ministrations. In order to relieve the distress from 144 The Church of Ireland. •which many of the clergy suffered during " the had years/' as they were called, Parliament granted what was spoken of as a loan, but what really was, and was intended to be, a gift of one million pounds sterling. My narrative would be incomplete without some reference to the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. In connection with this movement the burly figure of Daniel O'Connell comes to the front. The move- ment was preceded by one for the Repeal of the Union. On September 18th, 1810, a large number of influential gentlemen, some of them Protestants, met together in Dublin to petition Parliament for the Repeal of the Union, which had taken place in 1801. From this movement O'Connell and his followers stood aloof. They regretted afterwards that they had done so. English Liberals advised the leaders of the Irish Roman Catholics to endeavour first to obtain emancipation from the political and religious disabilities under which they laboured ; and after- wards to demand the Repeal of the Union with England as a right. Emancipation u'as obtained, but by that time Irish Protestants had ceased to desire the Repeal of the Union. From 1810 to 1829 nothing was thought of, nothing was spoken of in Ireland, but " Emancipation." At last, mainly through the perseverance and the clever tactics of O'Connell, the Roman Catholics of Ireland were permitted to aspire to the honour of a seat iu Union with England. 145 the British Parliament, and were declared to be en- titled to many other privileges from which they had hitherto been debarred. In a letter written to the Earl of Shaftesbury, when the Royal assent was given to the Emancipation Act, O'Connell said : — " For more than twenty years before the passing of the Emancipation Bill, the burden of the cause was thrown upon me. I had to arrange the meetings, to prepare the resolutions, to furnish replies to the cor- I'espondence, to rouse the torpid, to animate the lukewarm, to control the violent and inflammatory, and to avoid the shoals and breakers of the law." No one who is animated by the spirit of a true Christian can doubt that the Roman Catholic Eman- cipation Act was an act of simple justice. So long as it was necessary to repress disloyalty, severe measures, no doubt, were required ; but when large numbers of Roman Catholics in Ireland had become loyal to the sovereign, and obedient to the law, it was only right that they should be freely admitted to all the privileges of citizenship. In 1830 Lord Grey was called upon by the king (William IV.) to form a Cabinet after the fall of the Wellington administration. He did so, and one of his first acts as Prime Minister was to announce that he would adopt a policy of " peace, retrenchment, and reform." Some modern writers on political subjects, and nearly all modern journalists, attribute the introduction of the policy which is expressed in the three mystic words quoted above as due to L 146 The Church of Ireland. Mr. Gladstone ; but Earl Grey was the first English statesman who used them, and professed to carry out the views which they indicate. One of the institutions which Earl Grey tried to reform was the Church of Ireland. It is very much to be feared that his object was not to reform the Church, but to please those to whom she was an object of dislike ; and accordingly the Acts 3 & 4 William IV., c. 37, and 4 & 5 William IV., c. 90, were passed for the purpose of reducing the number of Archbishops and Bishops. The Sees had been classed in Provinces ; as Armagh, Dublin, Cashel, and Tuam. The two latter Arch- bishoprics were extinguished on the death of the pre- lates then holding the office ; and Cashel and Tuam thenceforward became Bishoprics. The eighteen Bishoprics were reduced to twelve, the number which the Church possesses now, and a body called " The Board of Ecclesiastical Commissioners " was formed to administer the property of suppressed Sees and other Church revenues. This body continued to exercise its functions until it was superseded by the Church Temporalities Commissioners, appointed under the Irish Church Act, 1869. From 1832 to 1869, a period of forty-two years, no changes of importance occurred in the Church of Ireland, so far as her connection with the State was i concerned. The period, however, was one of great internal activity. It was then that most of the religious Societies connected with the Church began to come prominently into view. Several of them had Union with England. 147 been founded quite early in the century, but it was not until tAe time above-mentioned that they attained to anything like strength and vigour. It was then that great preachers and scholars arose within her communion to rival the fame of those who had made her so celebrated throughout Christendom in the early days of her history. When the enemies of the Irish Church were bent on disestablishing and dis- endowing her, they used very harsh language about her, forgetting apparently that there never was a period in her history when she less deserved the cowardly epithets that were hurled at her. By the eminent statesman who is I'esponsible for her Dis- establishment she was called a " Upas Tree but says the Rev. Dr. Brooke in his Recollections of the Irish Church, " To us in this country who have ever — God. He knoweth — found her sweet shade not like that of a deadly upas, but rather that of a green-spreading oak-tree ; to us who have lodged in her beloved branches from infancy to manhood, and sat with oui children under her shadow with great delight, the reading of all this unmanly invective from an assembly of ' men of honour and of cavaliers,' could not but fill us with a sensation as much of astonish- ment as indignation." Just thirty years ago (1855) the Irish Church Journal was started in Dublin by two distinguished scholars, the Rev. William Fitzgerald, D.D., ex- Fellow of Trinity College, and Professor of Ecclesi- astical History, and Vicar of St. Anne's, Dublin, 148 The Chiircli of Ireland. afterwards Lord Bishop of Cork, and subsequently of Killaloe ; and the Rev. J. G. Abeltshauser, LL.D., Professor of French and German in Trinity College, and Prebendary of St. Audoen's, Dublin. The Jour- nal, after being published for two years under the title given above, had its name changed to that of United Church Jotmial. This periodical contains much valuable information on ecclesiastical matters, and to it I am indebted for an account, written by an anonymous contributor, of the circumstances which brought about the formation of a Society still in ex- istence, and of which the L-ish Church may reasonably be proud — the "Association Incorporated for Dis- countenancing Vice, and Promoting the Knowledge and Practice of the Christian Religion." That there was abundant need for such an Associa- tion is painfully evident from the information given by the writer of the articles, entitled, " Ireland as it was, and as it is." The writer says : — " It has so often been asserted with such unhesitating boldness that the former da} s of Ireland were the period of her glory, and that her progress, during the past sixty or seventj' years, has been downward, the nation sinking gradually lower and lower in the scale of wretched- ness, that he who should dare to question the fact runs the chance of being stigmatized as altogether ignorant of the history of these times ; and if per- chance he should not only question it, but undertake to establish that, on the contrary, the country has improved during that time, in some respects sensibly Union with England. 149 improved, there will be many, probably, who will give him as little credit for wisdom as for accuracy of information." He then goes on to show that there bad been a manifest improvement in the morals of the people, and in the regard paid to religion ; and he justly attributes the improvement to the influence exercised by the " Association." The first meeting of the Association, he tells us, was held on October 9th, 1792. There were present only three persons, the Rev. Dr. O'Connor, the Rev. Singleton Harpur, and Mr. William Watson. It has been remarked that a political revolution was effected in America through the agency of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and J. Arnold, a bookseller, a farmer, and a horse-dealer. In Ireland, a moral revolution was brought about by a Fellow of Trinity College, a Dublin curate, and a bookseller. Dr. John O'Connor was the son of a gentleman of small fortune in the County of Meath. He obtained a Fellowship in Trinity College in 1762, accepted the College living of Arboe in 1773 ; and afterwards removed to Castleknock, near Dublin. Mr. Harpur was for twenty-seven years curate of St. Mary's, Dublin ; Mr. Watson was a bookseller. It was at his house, in Capel Street, that the first meeting was held. The Resolutions adopted at the meeting were three in number: — " 1. Resolved, that the rapid progress which infidelity and immorality are making through- 150 The Church of Ireland. out the kingdom calls loudly on every individual, both of the clergy and of the laity, who has at heart the welfare of his country, or the honour of God, to exert all his powers to stem the baneful torrent. But, as many may be disheartened by considering the importance of separate attempts to discounten- ance vice, and to promote the cause of religion and piety, it appears to be advisable to associate for that laudable purpose. 2. That we will meet once a week, or oftener, if convenient, to consult upon the most likely means, under Providence, to restore the belief and practice of religion and virtue. 3. That, to guard against the danger of enthusiasm, it be established as a fundamental principle, that nothing be attempted contrary to the doctrine or discipline of the Estab- lished Church, or that shall lead, in the smallest degree, to a separation from the same." The Journal from which I am now quoting proves clearly that the task which these three excellent members of the Church had set themselves to accom- plish was by no means an easy one. Some idea, we are told, may be formed of the state of manners in Ireland about fifty years pre- vious to the time at which the Association was established, from the following extract, taken from Bishop Berkeley's Discoiirse addrpssed to Magis- trates and Men in Authority. He says : — " There cannot be a higher or more flagrant symptom of the madness of our times than that execrable fraternity of blasphemers lately set up within this city of Union with England. Dublin. I^lasphemy against God is a great crime against the State. But that a set of men should, in open contempt of the laws, make this very crime their profession, distinguish themselves by a peculiar name (Blasters), and form a distinct society, whereof the proper and avowed business shall be to shock all serious Christians by the most impious and horrid blasphemies uttered in the most public manner ; this surely must alarm all thinking men. It is a new thing under the sun reserved for our worthy times and country." Such a frightful social ulcer must have been re- garded with the utmost abhorrence by a prelate who was himself so remarkable for piety and integrity that Pope, without using the language of exaggera- tion, ascribed to him " every virtue under heaven and of whom Bishop Atterbury wrote : — " So much understanding, so much innocence, and such hu- mihty, I did not think had been the portion of any but angels, till I saw this gentleman." We are further told that one sign of the corrup- tion of the times was the prevalence of perjury. Sir Jonah Barrington, in his Memoir, mentions some of the ingenious expedients resorted to by those who wished to evade telling the truth. A favourite plan, he says, was to put a finger through a button-hole, and then the witness thought he might say, no matter how far removed from the truth his evidence was, " I swear it is true " (through). As might have been expected, little or no attention was paid at this 152 The Church of Ireland. time to the ohservance of the Lord's Day. Faulkner's Journal, January 18th, 1770, contains this notice: — " There will be no Levee at the Castle until Sunchiy, 4th February next, as His Excellency, the Lord Lieutenant, proposes spending a few days in the country." The Very Rev. Richard Graves, D.D., Dean of Ardagh, said in one of his sermons : — " Six days in seven are not deemed sufficient, by the upper classes, to waste in vain ostentation and unsatisfactory plea- sure, when the morning of the Sabbath, like every other morning, after perhaps a careless visit to the temple of religion, rather to see and to be seen, to admire and criticise some popular preacher, than to fullil the duties of humiliation and prayer — when, I say, after this, the whole of the Sabbath, like every other day, is consumed in the parade of ceremonial visits, and the display of dress and equipage ; and its evening again collects the same light and dissipated crowds as every other evening, to bow and gaze, and to disperse again, to consume their hours not, perhaps, round the card table — some remnant of religious decorum generally, though not universally, excludes tliis favourite gratification — but in employ- ments equally unprofitable, in frivolous conversation, in unmeaning compliments, or in uncharitable cen- sure." Lord Cloncurry, in his Personal Recollections, confirms the statement of Dean Graves. He tells us that it was " the custom on Sundays for all the great Union with England. 153 folk to rendezvous in the afternoon upon the North Circular Eoad," and to spend the evening " in pro- menading at the Rotunda." He adds : — " I have frequently seen there of a Sunday evening a third of the members of the two Houses of Parliament." The classes who ranked lower in the social scale could not be expected to care much about religion when the nobility and gentry set them such a bad example. Of all the abominations of those days lotteries were among the worst ; and so far was the rage for lotteries carried, that one was started in 1770, in order to obtain funds for the purpose of erecting steeples on St. Mary's Church and St. Thomas' Church, in Dublin. Drunkenness, too, and the fleshly lusts which usually accompany it, were so common all over Ire- land, that they had almost ceased to attract observa- tion. Profane swearing was habitually indulged in by every one who aspired to the character of a gen- tleman accustomed to good society. Even ladies •were sometimes heard to interlard their conversation with fashionable oaths. All this time Bibles and Prayer Books could only be had at a price which placed them beyond the reach of all but the wealthy classes. It was clear that it was time to do something to stem the torrent of vice, and to pi-omote virtue and rehgion. The "Association" founded by Dr. O'Con- nor, Mr. Harpur, and Mr. Watson, in seven years and a-half, from 1792 to 1799, distributed 22,225 154 The Church of Ireland. Bibles and 36,668 Testaments, besides large num- bers of Prayer Books. After this, examinations in Scripture and the Church Catechism were established in Dublin and in many parts of the country ; Sunday Schools were founded, pure literature was circulated, and altogether a vast amount of good done. Newlaud, in his Apology for the Church of Ire- land, shows how the Association became in time a living witness to the wisdom and energy of our bishops and clergy, for its history, he says, is a proof "that all the Societies of late years founded for the circulation of the Bible, for the establishment of Sunday Schools, for the dissemination of the Scrip- tures in the Irish language, for the institution of Spinning Schools, and for the improvement of Prison Discipline, were unknown in this country till the bishops and clergy of the Established Church led the way, and set the bright example in the formation of all these numerous institutions, and showed by their example what could be effected even in this benighted land." This, however, was only the first step in a great • religious movement which began to be felt early in the present century, and which now gives such vitality and energy to the Church of Ireland as she never possessed before. In 1831 the " National Board," the State-school system of Ireland, was established by the late Lord Derby, who then, as Lord Stanley, filled the office of Chief Secretary. Union with England. 155 ( This National Board sj'stem gave rise to a contro- versy which at one time threatened to shake the Church of Ireland to her very foundations. The system was objected to by most of the leading clergy, and by many of the influential laity of the Church. Some clergymen conscientiously supported and ap- proved of it ; and as not a few of these clergymen were promoted to Deaneries and even to Bishoprics by the Crown, a " National Board man " came to he regarded in every case as one who was looking to the Government for preferment. Few controversies of modern times have created such bitter feeling, and have given rise to so much acrimonious language on both sides. Now that we can soar into a calmer region, and look down upon what was formerly the scene of con- flict, we must admit that the opponents of the National Board fought in a good cause. They fought on the side of Religion against mere Secularism. The National Board system was devised to estab- lish a common ground on which Protestants and Roman Catholics could meet. That common ground could only be a ground from which all religion was carefully banished ; and the result was that zealous Protestants and zealous Roman Catholics were equally dissatisfied, and have remained so to this day. It was argued with great truth on the Protestant side that the system ignores History, and is there- fore to be repudiated as unpatriotic. The principle which banishes the Bible from the public instruction 156 The Church of Ireland. of the National School banishes also our country's history. The legislation which excludes the God of Kedemption excludes also the God of Providence. If the history of England and that of Ireland, fairly and impartially written, had formed from the be- ginning an essential part of the course of study in National Board schools, our peasantry would now have been too well instructed to be carried away by the appeals of demagogues, who may safely calculate on their ignorance of the past. Then again, the National Board system ignores Conscience. It is based on a most defective view of human nature. It elevates the methods of intellectual culture above the processes on which the development of an upright character depends. It endeavours to strengthen the intellect rather than to influence the moral faculties, and so it subordinates the greater to the less. The only authority which can arouse the conscience and bend the will is the Divine authority as expressed in the Bible. But from all National Board schools in Ireland no reference whatever is permitted to the Bible during the hours allotted to secular instruction. Morals may be taught, it is true, on human authority alone ; and " by this method," to use the words of Lord John Russell, " the difficulty is apparently got over, but in reality only to fall into a yet more serious one, that of attempting to teach morality without admitting that all morals derive their sanction from the Immortal Book, that our duties and obligations are derived Union with England. 157 from a higher than a natural source." The National Schools of Ireland, bereft of the Bible and of all authentic History, are powerless for good. Their ten- dency is decidedly in the direction of Deism. They want that moral lever by which alone nations can be elevated and permanently upheld. That is the rea- son why Ireland has produced such institutions as the " Land League," and its successor the " National League." The National system superseded the schools of the " Kildare Place Society," in which the daily reading of the Holy Scriptures was considered by the advo- cates of the National Board to be a vital defect. The original design was to give a united secular and separate religious education; but Archbishop Whately, who was then Archbishop of Dublin, soon felt and ably argued that the system could not work without a religious element; and accordingly the design was so modified as to include a united secular and non- sectarian religious and moral education, together with a separate denominational religious education for the children in attendance. Seven Commis- sioners were appointed to carry out this plan ; three Avere members of the Church of Ii'eland, two were Eoman Catholics, one was a Presbyterian, and one a Unitarian. The Book of Scripture Extracts was compiled. Sheet by sheet it was carefully examined, and at last unanimously approved by the Members of the Board. It was then transmitted by Archbishop Murray, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, 158 The Church of Ireland. to Rome, and it actually received the sanction of the Pope. I make these statements on the authority of the late Rev. J. Y. Rutledge, D.D., Ex-Fellow of Trinity College, Rector of Armagh, as I find them given in a speech delivered by him at the Annual Meeting of the Church Education Society, held in Dublin, on April 10th, 1867. Besides the Scripture Extracts, a little Book of Sacred Poetry was com- piled, and a work was written on the Truths of Christianity. These books were intended to form in every school the basis of the non-sectarian religious and moral education of the children. The result was, at first, supposed to be most gratifying. In their Report for 1811 the Commissioners said : — " We have not only thousands of schools under us, and hundreds of thousands of children attending them ; but we have succeeded in compiling several works which contain a series of lessons grounded on Holy Writ, and which are used in the general in- struction afforded in all our schools." Very severe censure was passed on the Bishops, Clergy, and Laity of the Church of Ireland, because they refused to lend their sanction to this scheme. They insisted on having the Bible, the ivhoh Bible, and nothing but the Bible. They were told that " half a loaf was better than no bread but they could not see their way to be content with the half loaf, when they be- lieved that they had a claim upon the whole. They were right. In 1853 the Ultramontanes made their first successful attack on the principle of united Union with England. 159 non-sectarian religious and moral education. Arch- bishop (afterwards Cardinal) Cullen then announced that it was " contrary to the spirit and practice of our Holy Church to sanction united religious instruc- tion, or to sanction any instruction on matters con- nected with religion given to Catholics by persons who themselves reject the teaching of the Catholic Church." The key-note was struck, and Ultramon- tanes in all quarters caught up the sound. At last, a majority of the Commissioners, notwithstanding the strenuous efforts in a contrary direction of Arch- bishop Whately, Lord Chancellor Blackburne, and Baron Greene, succeeded in banishing the Book of Scripture Extracts, the Book of Sacred Poetry, and the Truths of Christianity from the hours of united education. Archbishop Whately charged the victo- rious majority with having broken faith with the Government, with the Patrons of schools, with the parents of the children, and with the children them- selves. It was all of no use ; and after two-and- twenty years of devotion to the system, and the ut- most diligence in carrying it out, he was compelled to sever his connection with the Board. He wrote these words in explanation to the Lord Lieutenant : " I am convinced that nothing could be gained, very much the reverse, by my continuing a Commis- sioner under such an abandonment of the system hitherto pursued." Baron Greene also resigned, and so did Lord Chancellor Blackburne. The latter explained the reasons for his resignation in words i6o The Church of Ireland. similar to tliose of Archbishop Whately. He said : " I joined the Board under the conviction that it ■would afibrd a large and valuable amount of religious combined with secular instruction. That was my reason for joining the Board. ... I have very little confidence that this system will remain intact after they have taken away so important a part of it." Archbishop CuUen and the Ultramontanes had gained a s-ignal triumph. Very soon the influence of the Roman Catholic Bishops and Clergy became so great that the Board seemed to act entirely ac- cording to their instructions. Against this change a large majority of the Bishops and Clergy of the Church of Ireland protested, and in order to ensure that Protestant children should at any rate be taught the Bible, the Church Education Society was founded. In 1854 a petition, signed by 5,414 persons, was presented to the House of Lords by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in that document it was em- phatically declared that " the Irish Clergy, in their steadfastness in refusing to connect themselves with the National Board, under conditions which would prevent them from instructing in the Holy Scriptures every child in attendance, have only acted in accord- ance with the principles of the Church, and in strict fulfilment of their ordination vows," I do not hesitate to say that the influence of the National Board on the moral character of the people of Ireland, because of its attitude towards religion, cannot but be injurious in the extreme. The Bible Union with England. i6i alone can purify tlie heart, can quicken the con- science, and can render the life conformable to God's will. No mere human books, unless indeed they derive their inspiration from the Bible, can do this. The National Board of Education in Ireland ignores the Bible. It withers where it should give beauty, it paralyses where it should give moral strength, and it, therefore, is gradually ripening the people for the wild anarchy of revolution. To no conclusion does the philosophy of history more certainly point than this, that the greatest calamities which have befallen nations have been the result, not of the want of in- tellectual culture, but of the want of moral principle. This opinion, it is most satisfactory to know, has been expressed in forcible language by one of the greatest Protestant divines of this century, the Rev. Dr. Chalmers, of the Church of Scotland. He said, a good many years ago, in one of his public speeches: " Knowledge, it is said, is power ; and if knowledge be associated with religion, it becomes a power for the virtuous and the good, and tells with the best and most beneficent influence on the well-being of society. But, if knowledge be dissociated from re- ligion, this destroys not the truth of the maxim that knowledge is power, but that is a power emancipated from the restraints of principle ; and such a power let loose on society, like the deep policy of an artful tyrant, or the military science of a reckless conqueror, would have only the effect to enslave and destroy. Yes, gentlemen, we mean to have our schools, but M l62 The Church of Ireland. we mean in the economy of these schools to ahide by the good old ways of our forefathers. We mean to have the Bible the regular and daily school-book. We mean to have the Catechism for a regular and daily school exercise. And these shall be taught openly and fearlessly ; not dealt with as contraband articles, and smuggled into a mere hole and corner of our establishment ; not mended or mutilated by human hands, that the message of the Eternal may be shaped to the taste and prejudices of men ; not confined to the odd days of the week, or made to skulk from observation into a bye-room, lest the priests of an intolerant faith should be offended. No, gentlemen, we will place the Word of God in the forefront of our system of education, and we will render it the unequivocal, the public, the conspicuous object that is becoming a Christian and a Protestant nation." Noble words these, and worthy of our most careful attention at the present time. I have now brought down the history of the Church of Ireland to a period immediately antecedent to her Disestablishment and Disendowment. It will be seen, as we proceed, how her enemies clamoured for her destruction ; how Romanists and Protestant Dis- senters entered, like Pilate and Herod of old, into an unholy alliance, that they might, if possible, crush her out of existence; how, notwithstanding all their devices, she emerged from the conflict in which she was compelled to engage more glorious than ever; and how she now stands before the world "fair as Union with England. 163 the moon, and clear as the sun," bearing aloft the Divine Light in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation. I have shown, I think, that the modern Church of Ireland is the lineal descendant, in succes- sion and doctrine, of the Church founded by St. Patrick. I have shown, too, that it was not until near the close of the twelfth century that she first formally connected herself with the See of Rome, and became enslaved to a foreign ecclesiastic ; and that she subsequently returned to the primitive fuith to which she now adheres. She is now what she was fourteen centuries ago ; pure and apostolic : pure in the doctrines which she teaches, apostolic in the episcopal government which she upholds ; the guar- dian of the Holy Scriptures, and the teacher of those imperishable truths " once delivered to the saints ;" Catholic in her constitution, and yet Protestant in her resistance to the innovations of Home. CHAPTER VII. THE COMING STRUGGLE. IN 1868 an important document was published which placed before the world the exact position of the Irish Church, so far as her revenues and her parochial arrangements were concerned. It was the *' Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners on the Revenues and Condition of the Established Church (Ireland). Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty." The Commissioners were Earl Stanhope, the Earl of Meath, Viscount de Vesci, Sir Joseph Napier, Bart., Colonel Shafto Adair, Right Honourable John Thomas Ball, LL.D., E. P. Shirley, Esq., George Clive, Esq., and Edward Howes, Esq. They were authorized to inquire and report as to the several Archbishoprics, Bishoprics, Dignities, and Benefices ; and also as to the several Ecclesiastical Corporations aggi-egate, existing in Ireland, and as to the revenues, property, and emolu- ments belonging to the same respectively." They reported that " the Irish Branch of the United Church of England and Ireland " consisted of two Archbishops, ten Bishops, thirty Corporations of Deans and Chapters, twelve Minor Corporations, or The Coming Struggle. 165 quasi-corporate bodies connected with Cathedrals, thirty-two Deans, thirty-three Archdeacons, one thousand five hundred and nine Beneficed Incum- bents (including within this term Perpetual Curates), and more than five hundred Stipendiary Curates. The number of persons returned by the census of 1861, as belonging to the Communion of the Church, was 693,857. They further reported that the annual net revenues of the Church amounted to about ^581, 000, of which about ^364,000 arose from Tithe Rent Chai'ge, about ii204,000 from the rents received from lands, and the residue from Government Stock, or other sources. Of these revenues, a considerable portion (about ^113, 000 a-year) was administered for Church purposes by the Central Board of Eccle- siastical Commissioners. About ^19,000 a-year be- longed to the Capitular Bodies, and was applied by them for the maintenance of the Cathedral fabrics and services. The residue supplied the endowments of the bishops, dignitaries, and beneficed clergy. The Commissioners added this observation : — " The property of the Church has been derived from various sources before and since the Reformation. We have not considered it to be within our province to enter upon a historical inquiry into these sources ; nor if it had been, would the limit of time permit us to complete such an inquiry. But with respect to the property acquired after the Reformation from Royal or Parliamentary grants, and property that i66 The Church of Ireland. since the same period has been the gift of private individuals, we have inserted in the Appendix to this Keport such particulars as appear in the Patent Rolls in Chancery, or in the Diocesan Registries." These gifts of private individuals were specially dealt with by the Church Temporalities Commissioners, ap- pointed under the Irish Church Act of 1869. There were in Ireland in 1868, according to the Report of the Royal Commissioners, 1075 Benefices, the net income of which was under £300 a-year. About 355 of those were above £200, about 420 of the remainder above £100 a-year, and about 300 under £100 a-year. Among these were many with a large Church population ; some in important towns, and others so circumstanced that a supplementary provision for suitable Church ministration was much needed. The recommendations of the Commissioners amounted, in the aggregate, to twenty. Among other changes, they recommended — but not unanimously — that in future there should be only one Archbishop in Ireland, the Archbishop of Armagh ; that the Arch- bishopric of Dublin should be reduced to a bishopric, the bishop having precedence over all other bishops of the Church of Ireland ; that the income attached to the Primatial See of Armagh should be £6,000 a-year ; that if Dublin be retained as an archbishop- ric, an income of £5,000 a-year be provided, and if reduced to a bishopric, £4,500 ; that every other bishopric have an income allotted to it of £3,000 a-year, with an additional allowance of £500 for such The Coming Struggle. 167 of the bishops as in each year attend Parliament. These incomes and allowances, it was recommended, should be free from any tax or deduction for eccle- siastical purposes. It was proposed, too, that the number of Sees should be reduced to eight; and that, as there did not seem any sufficient reason for maintaining a larger number of Cathedral establishments than of Sees, it was suggested that, with the exception of eight, all the existing Corporations of Deans and Chapters be dissolved. Then again, it was thought, and very properly too, that the number of archdeacons — thirty-three — was a good deal in excess of what was required. It was, moreover, considered advisable that, with a view to carry out these and other recommendations, and for the purposes of a more effective management of ('hurch property, the constitution of the Board of Ecclesiastical Commissioners be improved, and its powers enlarged ; and that more stringent and sum- mary powers of enforcing residence be given to the bishops and Ecclesiastical Courts. If the recommendations of the Royal Commis- sioners had been carried into effect, the Church would, undoubtedly, have been rendered more efficient as a religious institution ; and no one would have suffered any injustice. But a political storm was brewing at the very time the Report from which I have quoted above was published ; and that storm burst over in Ireland in the course of the following yeai*. 168 The Church of Ireland. The year 1868 was rendered memorable in the history of the Church of Ireland by the meeting of the Church Congress in Dublin. The Congress was graced by the presence, and moved to enthusiasm by the eloquent speeches, of several distinguished English bishops, clergymen, and laymen ; whilst, at the same time, the Church of Ireland was worthily represented by some of her most eminent scholars and orators, both lay and clerical. On Tuesday, September 29th, the Very Rev. W. C. Magee, D.D., then Dean of Cork, now, and for many years past. Bishop of Peterborough, preached " the Congress Sermon " in St. Patrick's Cathedral, to a very large congregation. It was a celebrated sermon, founded on the text (Luke v. 7) : — " And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them." On Thursday, October 1st, the late Eight Rev. Samuel Wilberforce, D.D., the talented and eloquent Bishop of Oxford, preached in the same Cathedral a sermon in aid of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the Church Missionary Society. He took as his text St. John xvii. 26 (part) : — " I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it." Among the speakers who took part in the proceed- ings of the Congress were the President, His Grace the Right Hon. Richard Chenevix Trench, D.D., who was then, and until very recently, Archbishop of Dublin ; The Coming Struggle. 169 Hon. and Rev. William C. Plunket, now Lord Plunket, Archbishop of Dublin ; Right Rev. Robert Daly, D.D., Bishop of Cashel ; Ven. George A. Denison, Arch- deacon of Taunton ; Very Rev. Maurice Day, D.D., Dean of Limerick, now Bishop of Cashel ; Very Rev. Hugh M'Neile, D.D., Dean of Ripon ; Right Hon. Robert R. Warren, Attorney-General for Ireland, now Judge of the Court of Probate ; Rev. George Salmon, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity in Trinity College, Dublin; Rev. C. P. Reichel, D.D., now Bishop of Meath ; Rev. J. C. Ryle, now Bishop of Liverpool ; the Right Rev. William Alexander, D.D., Bishop of DeiTy ; with many others too numerous to mention, but equally celebrated as sound theologians and dili- gent workers in the cause of religion. Among the subjects discussed at the Congress was that of " Church Work and Life." The opening paper was read by the Very Rev. John C. Macdonnell, D.D., Dean of Cashel, now Rector of Misterton, in the Diocese of Peterborough. The Dean said, and said very truly, that " there is no fallacy greater than that which represents the Church in Ireland as the Church of the rich. It is true that the great majority of the landowners are members of it ; but, unfortunately, the wealthiest proprietors are generally non-resident. The clergyman often does not know the faces of one- half of those who own the soil of his parish. In most cases, those who are rich are not resident, and those who are resident are not I'ich ; and in works of charity the contributions come (with a few bright lyo The Church of Ireland. exceptions) from the struggling residents, not from the wealth}' absentees. Such is the work of the country pastor ; and though at the end of the year he may be able to point out few tangible results of his labours, though, perhaps, he has lost some of his best and most hopeful disciples by emigration, he knows that he has not been idle, that he has been doing work which ought to be done, and which he would not have been justified in neglecting to do ; and that if he can point to no signal instance of work done, he has been raising the standard of piety and civihzation, and mixing a savour of heavenly things with the more worldly life with which he has been encompassed." The Dean said further : — " There is a life, a real and, I believe, a growing, religious life and Church feeling among us. And these small congregations are not only trustees for the Church of the future, keepers and witnesses of that truth which, we hope, will one day shine upon all ; but they exer- cise, even now, an amount of indirect influence upon the Nonconforming population around them which is generally undervalued, but which is still the main instrument of progress and enlightenment in Ireland. Our lights may be faint lights sometimes — shining in a dark place — but yon 7vill not hasten the coming of day by their extinction." Never were truer words spoken, and never were words more required, than these were at the very time that they were spoken in the hearing of the Congress assembled in Dublin. The Coming Struggle. 171 The subject opened Dean Macdonnell was con- tinued by the late Rev. Alexander Irwin, M.A., Rector of Armagh — a man whose memory will be revered as long as the Irish Church lasts. Mr. Irwin, reviewing the history of the Church during the first sixty years of the present century, observed, very justly, that " when religion is making progress in a country, there will be vigorous efi"orts made to provide suitable and becoming places of worship, sufficient in number and in size for the congregations ; and also to pro- vide an adequate supply of ministers to attend to the spiritual wants of the people. " How then," he asks^ " do matters stand in these two respects ? Within the last sixty years," he replies, " more than 500 additional churches have been erected. And besides these new churches which have been built, 242 old ones have been enlarged. And superadded to these churches, 172 schoolhou-ses and other buildings are licensed by the bishops to be used for Divine Service. That is to say, there are 672 more places in which the public worship of God is statedly conducted than there were in the year 1806. It is to be borne in mind, moreover, that during the last thirty years emigration has been thinning the numbers, not merely of Roman Catholics, but of the members of the Established Church ; yet the attendance on Divine Worship has, in many parishes, so much in- creased, that new churches have had to be built, and old ones enlarged Within the last thirty- five years more than ^370,000 have been contributed 172 The Church of Ireland. by Irish Churclimen for building, enlarging, improv- ing, and endowing churches. And this, without including the munificent sum of ^150,000, which Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness laid out on the restora- tion of St, Patrick's Cathedral. If that sum were included, more than half a million of money has been expended by the members of the Church in Ireland on their places of worship ivithin the last f ve-and- thirty years." Then, as regards the supply of clergy, Mr. Irwin stated that since the year 1806 they had been in- creased by 919. The attendance of the people, not only at Morning and Evening Service, but at the Administration of the Holy Communion, had also largely increased ; and great attention was being paid to Church music, and to the publication of hymns adapted to encourage congregational singing. On the support of schools which did not receive any grant from the State, members of the Irish Church, in thirty-seven years, expended no less than ^1, 049, 000. Sunday Schools had been established all over the country ; and in the Province of Armagh alone there were in 1868, according to Mr. Irwin, 60,260 scholars, and 5,532 unpaid teachers, all under the superin- tendence of the clergy of the Church. There were in 1868 thirty-five Protestant Orphan Societies in Ire- land connected with the Church ; and since these Societies were established, Irish Churchmen had, up to that date, contributed more than ^400, 000, and had provided for more than 10,000 orphans. The Coining Struggle. 173 " Where there is spiritual life in a Church," Mr. Irwin also observed, " it will manifest itself in hearty efforts to extend the knowledge of the Gospel beyond its own borders, and to spread the religion of Christ among those who never heard His name. Church work in Ireland includes this department also." He then went on to inform his audience, who, long before he had concluded his paper, must have been filled with astonishment, that, during the sixty years imme- diately preceding, the Church of Ireland had raised nearly £188,000 for the Church Missionary Society and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts ; ±126,593 for the Society for Pro- moting Christianity among the Jews; ±'126,644 for the Irish Society engaged in circulating the Scrip- tures in the Irish language ; besides other sums, the amounts of which are not specified, in aid of other Societies. "And yet," he added, " it is when the Irish Church is thus busily engaged in Christian labour of every kind, when it is manifesting so much activity and zeal and usefulness, that it is assailed with reproaches as being a cumberer of the ground that has borne no fruit, and therefore ought to be cut down." The discussion of this important subject at the Church Congress was continued by the Hon. and Rev. William C. (now Lord) Plunket, Archbishop of Dublin ; Rev. Henry Jellett, D.D., now Archdeacon of Cloyne ; Rev. Dr. Salmon, F.T.C.D. ; the Lord Bishop of Derry ; the Dean of Ripon ; Colonel R. S. 174 The Church of Ireland. Adair; and the Lord Bishop of Oxford. The last words spoken on this subject were uttered by the Bishop of Oxford. They were as follows : — " I shall venture to say that I cannot believe it possible that a Church containing men capable of speaking and acting as this morning has shown you can speak and act, possessed by the highest Christian principles, understanding and rising in the knowledge and the application of all the deep rules which the Church of Christ has received and embodied — I cannot believe it possible that such a body can really be approaching to any great destruction of her usefulness, or any lasting diminution of her fame." It was all of no use. The cry of Disestablishment and Ijisendowment had been raised for party po- litical purposes, not by Irish or English Roman Catholics — it is important to bear this in mind — but by the Radical Dissenters of England, who hoped that as soon as the Church of Ireland had been dis- posed of, it would be comparatively easy to attack and to overthrow the Church of England.* Delenda est Carthago, This was the rallying cry of the political party which arrogates to itself the title " Liberal," and which was determined to try the experiment of governing Ireland " according to Irish ideas ! " * Preparations are at this moment (1885) being made for an oi-ganized attack on the Church of England by tlie Liberation Society; and a fierce contest may be expected next year. The Coining Struggle. 175 Scipio Africanus appeared in the person of Mr. Gladstone. During the early part of his career Mr. Gladstone had been the bold and uncompromising champion of the Church, both in England and in Ireland, as an " Establishment." Speaking in the House of Com- mons, in 1835, he said : — " There is no principle upon which the Church Establishment can be rightly or permanently upheld, but that it is the Establish- ment which teaches the truth. The Government, as a Govcimncnt, is bound to maintain that form of belief which contains the largest portion of truth with the smallest admixture of error. Upon that ground the Government of this country maintains the Protestant and declines to maintain the Roman Catholic Religion." And in Mr. Gladstone's Essay on the State in its Relations with the Church, the fourth edition of which was published in 1841, he said : — " When foreigners express their astonishment at finding that we support in Ireland the Church of a small minority, we may tell them that we support it on the high ground of conscientious necessity for its truth It is a question of spiritual truth in Ireland, arrayed against a Church which we sorrowfully hold to have hidden the light that is in her amidst the darkness of her false traditions, and which adds to the evils of false doctrine those of schism A common form of faith binds the Irish Protestants to ourselves ; while they, on the other hand, are fast linked to Ireland, 176 The Church of Ireland. and thus they supply the most natural bond of con- nection between the two countries. But if England, by overthrowing their Church, should weaken their position, they would no longer be able, perhaps no longer willing, to counteract the desires of the ma- jority, tending, under the direction of their leaders, to what is called national independence."*^ It will be recollected that this Essay was severely criticized soon after its publication by Lord Macaulay ; so severely indeed that his criticisms were felt by many to be dictated by a feeling of personal dislike to the writer. In the course of time Mr. Gladstone's views veered completely round. On March 30th, 1868, he said in the House of Commons : — " One of the arguments generally ad- vanced for the maintenance of the Irish Church is that to disestablish it would be contrary to the assu- rances of the Koman Catholic party. Now, I cannot consent that any such assurance should bind me to uphold what I conceive to be unfair to the Catholics, and injurious to the empire. In this matter I say we should exercise our own freedom, and judge what is for the common good ; and it is for the common good I ask you to consent to the disendowment of the Established Church in Ireland. . . . We think the time has come for this great and beneficial change to be brought about in Ireland, and we com- * See recent speeches of Mr. Parnell and other members of the so-called Irish Parliamentary party. The Coming Struggle. 177 mend it most earnestly to the accejjtance of this House, as a step that is alike needed for the honour of Parliament, for the satisfaction and contentment of Ireland, and for the purpose of removing a stain from the name and good fame of the State, the Law, and the People of this country." At Wigan, on April 27th, 1868, Mr. Gladstone said of the Church of Ireland : — " It is there as a tall tree of noxious growth, lifting its head to heaven, and darkening and blasting the land so far as its shadow can extend." And again, in the House of Commons, on the introduction of the Irish Church Bill, March 1st, 1869 :— " Of the Established Church of Ireland, I will only say, that although I believe its spirit to have undergone an immense change since those evil times, yet unfortunately it still remains, if not the home and the refuge, yet the token and symbol, of ascendancy ; and so long as the Establishment lives, painful and bitter memories of ascendancy can never die." I am indebted for these extracts to the valuable papers published in 1869 by the Central Protestant Defence Association for Ireland. It would, of course, be wrong to assert that on im- portant social, political, or religious subjects, a man may not sometimes see fit to change his mind ; but for any change of opinion on such subjects good and substantial reasons ought to be given. Mr. Gladstone appears to have been influenced, not by reason, but The Church of Ireland. by passion ; not by sound argument, but by tbe desire to advance the interests of the political party with which, in the latter part of his public life, he has identified himself. And therefore the late Bishop of Ossory (Eight Rev. Dr. O'Brien) was quite justified in saying of him as he did : "I know, indeed, no sadder spectacle than that of a man of high gifts under the influence of causes which disturb the judgment, and sometimes unconsciously warp the reason, disappointing, as life advances, all the promise of his earlier years, gradually withdrawing his great powers from the worthy objects to which they were dedicated in his youth, and concentrating them upon some lower aims, exerting them at the bidding of the hard taskmasters to whom he has bound himself; and so, it may be, with new associates, employing them to overthrow some great cause which they were formerly devoted to maintain : — ' Like captive Samson, making sport for all Who feared his strength, and triumph in his fall.'" It must be carefully borne in mind, that although Mr. Gladstone speaks of the Church of Ireland as a *' badge of ascendancy," it was not regarded in that light, at any rate in 1866, by the Tablet, the principal organ of Roman Catholic opinion in England. In an article published January 27th, 1866, the Tablet said : — " The wound of Ireland is, that whereas the great majority of the population are Roman Catholics, The Coming Struggle. 179 such a large proportion of the soil belongs to Pro- testants, and that Protestants form so large a portion of those classes which, by superior wealth and superior advantages, are raised in social station above the rest. We are convinced," adds the Tablet, " and on evidence than which demonstration could scarcely be more conclusive, that if the Legislature were to confiscate to-morrow every acre of laud, and every shilling of Tithe Rent^Charge now belonging to the Protestants of Ireland, and were to deprive the Protestant Bishops and clergy of every legal advan- tage which they now possess by virtue of belonging to the State Church, they would not have abated the Irish grievance or cured the Irish disease ; they would have only caused a change in the form of words by which the complaints of those who feel aggrieved find expression." Mr. Gladstone knew perfectly well when, in 1869, he propounded his scheme for Disestablishment and Disendowment, that enlightened Roman Catholics did not regard the Church of Ireland with disfavour ; but it was absolutely necessary, for party purposes, to satisfy the demands of Mr. Miall and the Liberation Society; and so the Irish Church Bill was framed. As a specimen of the unfairness manifested by some English Dissenters towards the Irish Church, I cannot help referring to a lecture delivered by the Rev. Thomas Michael, in the Mechanics' Hall, Halifax, on July 9th, 1868, in reply to an address on the Disestablishment of the Irish Church by the Rev. W. i8o The Church of Ireland. Robert Morrison, M.A., Incumbent of St. James', Halifax. The lecturer quotes largely in support of his views from Lord Macaulay, who, as I have said, elsewhere, was a Dissenter, and whose prejudices against the Church were very strong; but not content with this, he quotes also, as authorities on his side, the Rev. Sidney Smith, the witty Canon of St. Paul's," whose jokes may be laughed at, but who certainly was no authority on Irish Church matters, and the Rev. Dr. Brady, a clergyman of the Irish Church, who, years ago, " went over " to Rome. Mr. Michael's own anivnis may easily be seen in the following words which I quote from his lecture. He says : " Mr. Morrison reiterates his opinion that the Irish Church possesses capacities for work in opposing Romanism, and shows that in the Diocese of Cork alone, some eight or nine Churches have been erected within the last few years ! That these things should be done in the very stronghold of Roman Catholicism is to him a most substantial proof of the vitality of the Irish Church, and that she ' might .yet, with God's grace, accomplish great things for Ireland.' With God's grace is the saving clause of the paragraph before us. With the favour of courts, with the land and money of Hibernia, the Irish Church has done little or nothing, but, with God's grace, she may accomplish great things for Ireland. Yes ; with that grace leading her to see the injustice of quartering herself on a people who refuse her doctrines, and think meanly of her ritual ; The Coming Struggle. i8i with that grace moving her to cast herself upon the gifts and self-sacrifice of those who accept her teach- ing ; with that grace bringing her to unreserved reliance upon Him who said, ' I hate robbery for a burnt offering,' the Irish Church may yet develop her capacities, and communicate her ' vitality,' to an extent of which her friends have never conceived." The past history of the Church clearly proves that this language is altogether unjustifiable ; but the statements of Mr. Michael will appear very tame when placed beside many which were published by the supporters of the " Liberation Society," during the three years immediately preceding the passing of the Act of Disestablishment. . On Monday, March 1st, 18G9, Mr. Gladstone moved — " That the Acts relating to the Established Church (Ireland), and to the College of Mayuooth, and the first Resolution of the House of Commons, in the Session of 1867-8, relating to the Established Church (Ireland), be read." The Clerk then read the titles of the Acts and the Resolution referred to, after which the House went into Committee. Mr. Gladstone then rose and said : — " The motion. Sir, which, in concluding, I shall propose to the Com- mittee is, that the cliairman be directed to move the House that leave be given to bring in a Bill to put an end to the Established Church in Ireland, and to make provision in respect to the temporalities thereof, and in respect of the Eoyal College of May- nooth." l82 The Church of Ireland. For three hours and a half he held the House si^ell- bound with his eloquence. The peroration of this remarkable speech showed clearly that the speaker regarded the subject with which he had been dealing as one of supreme importance ; but it is impossible to conceal from ourselves that he handled it in the spirit of a partisan rather than in that of a patriot. " We are undoubtedly asking," he said, " an edu- cated, highly respected, and generally pious and zeal- ous body of clergymen to undergo a great transition ; we are asking a powerful and intelligent minority of the laity of Ireland, in connection with the Estab- lished Church, to abate a great part of the exceptional privileges they have enjoyed : but I do not feel that, in making this demand upon them, we are seeking to inflict an injury. I do not believe they are exclu- sively, or even mainly, responsible for the errors of English policy towards Ireland. I am quite certain that in many vital respects they have suffered by it. I believe that the free air they will breathe under a system of equality and justice, giving scope for the development of their great energies, with all the powers of property and intelligence they will bring to bear, will make that Ireland which they love a country for them not less enviable and not less beloved in the future than it has been in the past. As respects the Church, I admit it is a case almost without exception. I don't know in what country so great a change, so great a transition, has been pro- posed to the ministers of a religious communion The Coining Struggle. 183 which has enjoyed, for many ages, the preferred posi- tion of an Established Church. I can well under- stand that to many in the Irish Establishment such a change appears to be nothing less than ruin and destruction. From the height on which they now stand, the future is to them an abyss ; and their fears recall the words used in King Lear, when Edgar en- deavours to persuade Gloster that he has fallen over the cliffs of Dover, and says : — ' Ten masts at each make not the altitude Which thou hast perpendicularly fell ; Thy life 's a miracle.' And yet, but a little while afterwards, the old man is relieved from his delusion, and finds that he has not fallen at all. So, I trust, that when, instead of the fictitious and adventitious aid on which we have too long taught the Irish Establishment to lean, it should come to place its trust in its own resources, in its own great mission, in all that it can draw from the energy of its ministers and its members, and the high hopes and promises of the Gospel that it teaches, it will find that it has entered on a new era of existence, an era bright with hope, and potent with good." I have taken the foregoing quotation from a full and accurate report of Mr. Gladstone's speech, pub- lished in the Dally Express of Wednesday, March 3rd, 18G9. Commenting on the speech, the Times said that no one could have listened to Mr. Gladstone's .184 The Church of Ireland. speech without admiring the art of arrangement he displayed. The order of procedure was so marshalled that the scheme of the Ministry was made intelligihle to every one." The Baily Telegraph said that "Mr. Gladstone never before displayed a more vigorous grasp of his subject, more luminous clearness in its development, earnestness more lofty, or eloquence more appropriate or more refined." Most of the daily papers praised the manner in which Mr. Gladstone handled his subject. The Herald, however, said that " the speech fell far short of the occasion. Mr. Gladstone aimed at the sublime, and once or twice came near it, but throughout generally dwelt in the region of commonplace, and was tedious." Several other papers endorsed this opinion. Within the limits of the space which I have pre- scribed to myself it will be impossible for me to do more than to touch, briefly, upon a few salient points of the discussions which arose in both Houses of Parliament, as the Bill passed through successive " readings." One expression of opinion I cannot think of omitting ; that of Mr. Disraeli (afterwards Earl of Beaconsfield). He made one of his most brilliant speeches in the House of Commons on the third reading of the Bill. After referring to the Fenian conspiracy, and to the political discontent visible in Ireland, he said : — " Ireland is discon- tented again ; Ireland is disturbed again. There is one remedy for that discontent, and that disturbance. It is the abolition of the Protestant Churchj and the The Coming Struggle. 185 confiscation of its revenues. Have we evidence that if we abolish that Church, and confiscate its revenues, we shall render Ireland contented and tranquil ? Sir, so far as I can form an opinion, that evidence does not exist. I receive myself a great many letters every day upon the state of Ireland. We have learned from a gentleman, during these recent debates, how much he was applied to in the same manner. I don't know whether his correspondence exceeds mine, but mine is of two kinds, I have a correspondence from gentlemen, and also from ladies (a laugh). Though you may smile, if I were to read some of those letters to the House, you would find that they are of a har- rowing character. There are letters which I have received from Irishmen and Irishwomen, describing a state of affairs which would make every counten- ance serious if you heard them. The writers are extremely alarmed, and I am not in a position to relieve them, or to remove their alarm. I receive a great many letters from clergymen of the Estab- lished Church in Ireland. They are alarmed at Her Majesty's Government (a laugh). They are not alarmed at the state of the country. Some of those clergymen live in Tipperary, and others of them live in Westmeath ; but not one of them tells me that he V is in danger, that his life is menaced, or that he is under the least apprehension of offence or personal attack from his Irish fellow-countrymen. Though almost every week we have accounts of outrages in Ireland, I have not heard that any clergyman of the i86 The Church of Ireland. Established Churcli lias been a victim (hear). No Irish clergyman of my acquaintance has ever alluded to disturbance. Then, I say, what is the evidence that if we abolish the Irish Church, and confiscate its revenues, we shall cause any diminution of the dis- content and disturbance which prevail among a por- tion of the Irish people, inasmuch as it does not appear that the discontent and disturbance arise from any of the accidents of the Irish Church ? Surely if the abolition and confiscation of the Church and its property would be sufficient to remove that discontent and disturbance, we should have some accounts of assaults on the persons of the Irish clergy (a laugh). Will the Hon. gentleman who laughs be good enough to explain why it is that the landlord should be as- sassinated, while the clergyman is left unharmed ? If the persons who commit these outrages are discon- tented with the landlord, or with the class to which he belongs, and prove their discontent in the manner that has lately been exhibited, why should they not assault the clergyman if they are discontented with him, or with the class to which he belongs ? But, on the contrary, the clergyman is in a state of com- plete security ; he makes no complaint of the circum- stances under which he passes his existence ; and so far as his letters are concerned, you would never suppose that his country was disturbed. I ask again then what evidence have we that this violent remedy will efi'ect the cure for which it is brought in ? But in itself, the objections to it are very considerable, The Coming Struggle. 187 totally irrespective of those general ones to which I have alluded. If the Eight Hon. gentleman proposed to confiscate the property of the Protestant Church, and apply it to the Roman Catholic Church, though I should consider it au unwise and unjust measure, it would he an intelligible proposition. It would be a proposition for which arguments could be urged, and which, at least, would be consistent with the principles which the Eight Hon. gentleman professed in introducing this measure. But what does the Eight Hon. gentleman say ? I propose to confiscate the property of the Protestant Church because the Eoman Catholic Church is discontented. What does that amount to ? To a recognition of the principle of Socialism. A man comes forward and says : — ' I am a poor man, and I am discontented because another man has au estate and a park. I don't want his estate and park, because I know that every man cannot expect to have an estate and a park; but take them away from that other man, and I shall be content.' Well, that is Socialism, and it is the policy which Her Majesty's Ministers now propose to adopt." Mr. Disraeli concluded his really eloquent speech in these words : — " We are going, if we agree to this Bill to-night, so far as the House of Commons is concerned, to give a vote which will be the most re- sponsible public act that any man, on either side of the House, ever gave (continued cheering). You may have a great majority now ; you may cheer, you i88 The Church of Ireland. may indulge in all the jubilation of party triumph ; but this is a question as yet only begun (hear, hear), and the time will come, and come ere long, when those who have taken a part in the proceedings of this House this night, whatever may be their course, and whatever their decision, will look upon it as the gravest incident of their lives, and the most serious scene at which they have ever assisted. I hope that when that time shall come, none of us, on either side of the House, will feel that he has, by his vote, contributed to the disaster of his country" (cheers). In the foregoing speech Mr. Disraeli, with an inaccuracy which one would not have expected from so eminent a statesman, and so great a master of language, uses the expression " abolition of the Irish Church but the Irish Church had arrived at the determination that she would not be " abolished." The legal bond which united her with the Church of England, and with the State, might be severed, and she might be deprived of all her property ; but she could not be blotted out of existence by any Act of Parliament. Whilst the House of Commons was plotting her destruction, she gave a marvellous proof of her vitality. A Conference, summoned by her two Archbishops, met in Dublin on the 13th and 14th April, 1869. Delegates, both lay and clerical, attended from every Diocese in Ireland, and resolutions were moved and seconded by some of the ablest men within her communion, and carried unanimously. The speeches The Coming Struggle. 189 in which these resolutions were commended to the approval of the Conference are masterpieces of eloquence. I proceed to give mj readers a few extracts from them ; but the space at my disposal compels me to quote only the most remarkable of these utterances. His Grace the Lord Primate (Right Rev. Marcus Gervais Beresford, D.D.), in opening the proceedings, stated that during the previous ten years strenuous exertions had been made by the Irish prelates to obtain the revival of the Irish Convocation. These efforts had not been successful. His Grace added : — " In an assembly composed of such very great numbers of persons from all parts of the country, coming together to discuss a subject in which the innermost feelings of their souls are most deeply aroused ; assembled as they are to defend that which they hold dearer than life, not only for themselves, but for posterity, it cannot be but that their feelings will be aroused to the uttermost ; and, therefore, I would impress upon the meeting, and upon every individual of it, the necessity of putting a restraint upon themselves, and of endeavouring to meet these unparalleled circumstances in which we are placed with calmness, with moderation, with dignity, with determination, and with firmness. We should be glad that every person in Ireland, and in England too, knew how dearly we value our privileges ; but that, however deeply our feelings are hurt, we can speak with the firmness of men, and with the I go The Church of Ireland. moderation of Christians. There is one thing that this meeting must clearly understand — namely, that this Conference has no reference, in the remotest degree, to Mr. Gladstone's Church Body. "We studiously avoided giving this idea the slightest countenance in any way whatever. This is an assembly met together for the specific purpose of considering this Bill, of pointing out its injustice, and protesting against it. That done, we shall dissolve. We shall leave no nucleus whatsoever out of this assembly to form a Church Body to assist in passing this Bill. Neither are we here for the purpose of any compromise. We are not come here to amend Mr. Gladstone's Bill, or to throw out any suggestions respecting it. We cpri- demn it utterly, from first to last, in principle. We look upon it as confiscation ; we regard it as as- sailing the prerogative of the Crown ; as unjustly dealing with the property of the subject, and as injuring all property by — for the first time, I believe — destroying what is the best of all titles, that of prescription. I recollect, and I recollect it but dimly — I wish I could remember the exact words — a magnificent illustration of Mr. Plunket's. In some case or other in which the title was defective, he pleaded for prescription, and I think his words were something to this eff"ect, at least this was the figure : he said, that Time was armed with an hour-glass, as well as a scythe. With the scythe, he cut down the muniments of our property, and destroyed the records The Coming Struggle. 19 1 of our possession ; but with the hour-glass are meted out the hours that give us a better and more assured title. Now, what this Bill does is this : it denies the justice of the hour-glass, and submits us only to the severity of the scythe" The Earl of Longford moved a resolution em- bodying an earnest protest against the Bill. In the course of his speech the noble Lord said : — " For argument against this so-called Irish Church Bill, we may refer the Ministers who now advocate it to the former speeches of their former selves. They have been so often quoted that I do not think it ne- cessary to repeat to you extracts on this occasion. But, setting aside the ancient historical arguments, which, we believe, are all entirely in our favour — we may point to them as the enactments of 1801 and of 1829 — we can point out to them the book written in 1835,* the Ministerial declaration made by them in Parliament in 1863 and 1865, on which we have been wont to rely as absolute recognitions of the sacred character of the Institution now doomed to destruction. Their answer to that is, that it is all explained by autobiography, that the advancing pro- gress of thought, more mature reflection, the altered circumstances of the times, have produced certain modifications in their views. ' Though we are open to charges of inconsistency,' they say, ' the cause of good government, and the stern sense of public duty * Mr. Gladstone's book on Church and State, referred to ia a former part of this chapter. 192 The Church of Ireland. which now actuates us, induce us to bring forward this change in the condition of the Church in Ire- land, which shall tend to the improvement of the mutual relations of all classes.' Our rejoinder, and I believe it is the only rejoinder we can make, is, we do not surrender. We do not accept your inevitable. YoiL were right in 1865 ; you are tvrong noiv. We protest against your Bill." The Right Hon. Sir Frederick Shaw, Bart., Re- corder of Dublin, said : — " I am an old man, and all my prospects and interests are inseparably connected with the welfare of Ireland, and I sincerely believe that if the three branches of the British Legislature assent to the passing of this Bill to disestablish and disendow the Irish Church, the effect will be to en- courage and to aggravate that spirit of disafiection and antagonism to the law which, unhappily, prevails amongst a large portion of our Irish peasantry, and' that the rest, with the exception of the Whig and Roman Catholic gentry, who are political adherents of the present Government — and they are compara- ■ tively but a handful — that among that influential and intelligent class which has long been conspicuous for loyalty, and have been the habitual supporters of law and order : I do in my heart believe that if the three branches of the Legislature assent to the passing of this Bill, it ivill produce among them, generally, a sentiment towards British Laxv and British Government of distrtist and alienation." The Dean of Clonfert (Very Rev. James Byrne, The Coming Struggle. 193 D.D.) said:— "The modern history of Ireland is mainly a record of alternate rebellion and confisca- tion ; but this is the first time in our annals that rebellion has been followed hy the confiscation of the property of the loyal. On former occasions it was held that those who had cast off their allegiance to the State might be considered as having forfeited that tenure of their property which the State secured ; but now the principle is introduced that when a fraction of the population has risen in revolt, and the revolt has been quelled, the pains and penalties of rebellion are to be inflicted on the most strenuous upholders of order and law. It is now to be adopted as a maxim in our policy that when the enemies of the Queen's Government have been most active in drilling their forces, and collecting their ammuni- tion, and alarming the country with outrage and bloodshed, those on whom that Government has relied in every hour of difficulty and peril as its staunchest and truest friends, are, when the disturb- ance is past, in order to soothe the disaffected, to be humiliated and despoiled. I ask, my Lords and Gentlemen, what loyalty or security can there be in a country governed on such principles as these ? . . . All the elements of Irish discontent will, after the disestablishment of the Church, be as strong as ever, and to them will be added the indignation of the Protestants of Ireland, continually renewed by the long process of spoliation, as in each parish the holders of life interests drop, and the old endow- ments pass away. Such are the results to secure 0 194 ^^^^ Church of Ireland. •which the interests of religion are to he imperilled, the foundations of property shaken, and the very structure of society dislocated, by punishing loyalty and rewarding rebellion. Against such legislation we protest as reckless and unjust." Dr. Traill, F.T.C.D., said :— " I hope, my Lord, that this day Mr. Gladstone will receive such an answer from our Church throughout the length and breadth of the land ; that he will hear such a re- sponse from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear, such a reverberation from Macgillicuddy^s Eeeks to the Mountains of Mourne, as will convince him that, all-powerful though he be with his giant majority in the House of Commons, that tlwvgh he be gifted with the strength of Samson, xvhilc, we must all admit, afflicted ivith his blindness, he still will find that the Protestants of Ireland will not endeavour to smooth the rugged path upon which he has chosen to enter ; but that every obstruction which ingenuity can de- vise or exasperation can suggest, will be thrown in the way of this nefarious scheme of robbery and con- fscaiion." I have room for only one more quotation from these really valuable, eloquent, and interesting speeches. It will foi-m, I think, a fitting conclusion to this chapter. The Lord Bishop of Derry (Right Rev. William Alexander, D.D.) said :— " You remember the fa- mous resolutions of the New England Puritans : ' Resolved— That the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof. The Coming Struggle. 195 ' Resolved — That tlie Lord hath delegated His power to His saints. ' Resolved — That tec are the saints.' " Shall we never have three parallel Resolutions ? " Resolved — That the churches of the Irish Pro- testants are National monuments. " Resolved — That ive are the Irish Nation. " Resolved— That the churches belong to us." Then, after ably criticising some of the clauses of the Bill, his Lordship added : — " While jou are Protest- ants, intensely if you will, Protestants in resisting the usurped Supremacy of Rome, in holding to the Word of God, in believing that we are justified before God only for the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in removing every veil between the sinful soul and the Great High Priest ; while you are this, hold also to old formularies, unadul- terated and unchanged ; to the Catholic Faith, to the Catholic Church, in communion with your Bishops and Priests — a threefold cord not easily broken. Then you may be told, that your Church is dead ; but she shall only be dead (to use the noble thought, if not the very words, of my great predecessor, Bram- hall) as the gold is dead when it is in the furnace, as the sun is dead when he goes down behind the clouds ; dead only as the tree is dead when the leaves are swept away in winter. It shall live, and you with it ; drinking from that fountain of life which is in our Incarnate Lord, which is deep as eternity, and inexhaustible as God." CHAPTEE VIII. DISESTABLISHMENT. ON the last day of May, 1869, a majority of one hundred and fourteen Members of the House of Commons set the seal of their solemn approval on Mr. Gladstone's plan for the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Irish Church. The cheers of the -victorious party completely drowned the voice of the Speaker as he put the question, " That this Bill do now pass." A fortnight later the Bill was introduced into the House of Lords. Many were the opinions expressed as to what would be its fate in the Upper Chamber ; but those who were most conversant with the politics of the day predicted that " the Lords would give in," and so they did. Several leading Peers, no doubt — notably the late Earl of Derby — spoke very strongly against the measure ; but their arguments failed to convince their opponents. Forty years before, on the 18th March, 1829, Lord Palmerston, speaking in the House of Commons, had expressed himself in these words : — " I never can bring myself to believe that there would at any time be found in this House a suflSciently powerful and numerous Protestant party so profligate in principle, so dead to everything which Disestablishment. 197 would be due to themselves and to their country, as to barter away the religious establishment of any part of the Empire for the gratification of political ambi- tion. But supposing again, this combination of probabilities to occur, and such a vote to be extorted from this House, I trust there would still be found in the other House of Parliament, and, above all, in the indignant feeling of a betrayed people, barriers amply sufficient to protect the Protestant Establish- ment of the Empire from profanation by such sacri- legious hands." The lapse of forty years had greatly weakened the strength of the barriers on which Lord Palmerston relied for the protection of the Established Church. On the second reading of the Bill in the Upper House it was clear that the Government would prove triumphant. Nearly forty Conservative Peers de- serted their party, and voted in the majority. Three Peers, however, who were considered to be of Liberal politics voted in the minority. These were Earl Leitrim, who voted as Lord Clements, Viscount Gough, and Lord Blantyre. The Bishop of St, David's voted for the Bill ; and the Archbishop of Dublin, with fifteen English and Irish Bishops, against it. The two English Archbishops and ten English Bishops did not vote on this occasion. Four temporal Peers also abstained from voting. The division took place in the fullest house which has assembled within living memory, 325 Peers having personally recorded their votes, while 18 paired. igS The Church of Ireland. On tlie 19tli June the House went into Com- mittee. It was useless to expect, after the division on the second reading, that the Bill would eventually be thrown out, and therefore the policy adopted by Lord Salisbury, Lord Cairns, and other Peers who sat on the Opposition benches, was to introduce such amendments as would to some extent mitigate the severity of the Bill. In this they only partially suc- ceeded. The Bishop of Peterborough made very great efforts to secure some adequate compensation for the " Minor Incumbents and Curates." His brilliant oratory shed a lustre over every debate, but it did not produce the result which might fairly have been expected. Earl Grey pointed out the consequences which might in the course of time follow in England ; and propose I as a remedy the jilan of concurrent endowments. " Of all the plans proposed," his Lord- ship said, " he believed that of building houses, and apportioning a moderate amount of glebe land, would, considering the self-denying habits of the Roman Catholic clergy, afford the greatest amount of prac- tical benefit to them and their flocks, and he now ventured to submit to their Lordships that it was their duty not to let this Bill pass out of their hands without including some system of provision for the Romai Catholic and other religious communities of Ireland. He was persuaded that it was a policy that would tend to the future peace and welfare of that country." He added : — " Some persons have treated with Disestablishment. igg scorn the notion that tliis measure will prove dan- gerous to the English Church ; but he believed that as it now stands it is full of danger to our Estab- lished Church. It proceeds on the argument that there is i^rovision for the religion of the majority of the people in England, and likewise for the majority in Scotland ; but that in Ireland, where the majority is Roman Catholic, no such provision is to be granted When he observed how certain it is that an attack is to be made against our own Church, and when he looked at the frank declarations of the Liberation Society, he confessed it did appear to him a suicidal policy that we should now put into their hands the great advantage of being able to point to a Parliamentary declaration in favour of the soundness of the voluntary principle, and to urge f'lat we ought to deal out to England what has been' dealt out to Ireland. He considered this danger the more serious, because he could not forget that a person of no less political influence and command over public opinion than the Prime Minister, in the re- markable pamphlet not long ago published under the title of A Chapter of Auiuhiography, has laid down principles and stated arguments which, if fol- lowed to their natural and logical conclusions, must necessarily lead to an attack on the Established Church of this country. And when he considered how rapidly that honourable gentleman's education has gone on under his present allies, both in poli- tical and religious opinion, since a few years ago. 200 The Church of Ireland. when very different views were advocated, he could hardly doubt that if Parliament passes this Bill in its present shape, before many years — probably before many months — we shall see that Right Honourable gentleman at the head of a combined force similar to that which he now leads, at the head of forces which include Cardinal Cullen and Archbishop Manning, Mr. Miall and the Liberation Society, leading the same motley army to an assault on our own Church," It is doubtful whether the authorities of the Eoman Catholic Church would then have accepted, or would now accept, any pecuniary aid for the clergy from the State. At any rate, Earl Grey's proposal was never pressed to an issue. His prediction, how- ever, respecting the assault on the Church of England has been verified. Mr. Spurgeon's Metropolitan Tabernacle has become the Temple of the Liberation Society, and his monthly journal, The Sword and Trowel, one of the means by which the opinions of the Society are disseminated. In the number of this journal for April, 1885, under the heading, " A Word in Season to Nonconformists," these words occur : — " With an immensely increased electorate, with two millions of newly enfranchised voters, drawn mainly from the class which has felt the galling tyranny of the Church and the Hall, the Liberation Society, in view of a speedy General Election, has rendered a splendid and timely service to all who are jealous for the crown rights of the Saviour, by its Disestablishment. 201 recent publication of the handbook entitled. The Case for Disestablishment." Early in July, Earl Granville moved in the House of Lords the third reading of the Bill, upon which the following Protest was entered and signed by forty- seven Peers, temporal and spiritual : — " Dissentient. 1. Because this Bill, for the first time since the foundation of the British monarchy, introduces, so far as Ireland is concerned, the prin- ciple, unrecognised in any country in Europe, of an entire severance of the State from the support of any and every form of Religious Worship. " 2. Because the adoption of this principle, with regard to Ireland, cannot but give great encourage- ment to the designs of those who desire its extension to every part of the United Kingdom. " 3. Because it is a violent stretch of the power of Parliament to resume a grant made by itself in per- petuity; still more to confiscate property held by long prescription, and by a title independent of Par- liament. " 4. Because if this principle be well founded, as regards private property, it is still more so with re- gard to that which has been solemnly set apart for the purposes of religion, and the service of Almighty God. " 5. Because the legislation attempted in this Bill tends to shake confidence in all property, and espe- cially in that which rests upon a Parliamentary title, heretofore considered as the most unassailable of all. 202 The Church of Ireland. " 6. Because it is impossible to place a Church disestablished and disendowed, and bound together only by the tie of a voluntary association, on a foot- ing of equality with the perfect organisation of the Chui'ch of Rome, whereby, especially in Ireland, the laity are made completely subservient to the priest- hood, the priests to the bishops, and the bishops themselves are subject to the uncontrolled authority of a Foreign Potentate. " 7. Because this Bill will be felt as a grievous injustice by the Protestants of Ireland, who, through their Irish Parliament, surrendered their political independence by a Treaty, the fundamental condition of which was the greater security of the Protestant Establishment. "8. Because while this measure will tend to alien- ate those who have hitherto been the firmest sup- porters of the British Throne and British connection, so far from conciliating, much less satisfying, it will only stimulate to fresh demands that large portion of the Roman Catholic population of Ireland which looks forward to ulterior and very different objects, and, above all, to ultimate emancipation from the control of the British Legislature." This was a noble protest. It was dignified, it was logical, it was accurate in every statement. But it availed nothing. The " tyrant majority " carried all before it. The voice of reason was drowned. The voice of political party clamour alone was listened to Before the month of July came to a close, the Irish Disestablishment. 203 Churcli Bill bad become a very important part of tbe Statute Law of tbe Realm. Tbe preamble stated that it was " expedient tbat tbe union created by Act of Parliament between tbe Cburcbes of England and Ireland, as by law established, should be dis- solved, and tbat tbe Church of Ireland, as so sepa- rated, should cease to be established by law." It was therefore enacted that " on and after the first day of January, 1871, tbe said union, created by Act of Parliament between the Cburcbes of England and Ireland, shall be dissolved, and the said Church of Ireland shall cease to be estahlisJied by law." About a year and a half was granted to the Church to enable her to make sucb arrangements as might be rendered necessary by tbe altered circumstances in which she was placed. Three " Commissioners of Church Temporalities in Ireland " were appointed under tbe Act — Viscount Monck, tbe Right Hon, James Anthony Lawson, one of tbe Judges of tbe Court of Common Pleas, and George Alexander Hamilton, Esq. Mr. Hamilton died soon after his appointment, and bis place was not filled up. Tbe Commissioners were empowered " to decide all questions whatsoever, whether of law or fact, which it may be necessary to decide for the purposes of the Act." Tbe 22nd section of tbe Act states tbat " if at any time it be shown to the satisfaction of Her Majesty tbat the bishops, clergy, and laity of tbe said Church 204 The Church of Irelmid. of Ireland, or the persons who, for the time being, may succeed to the exercise and discharge of the episcopal functions of such bishops, and the clergy and laity in communion with such persons, have appointed any persons or body to represent the said Church, and to hold property for any of the uses or purposes thereof, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty, by Charter, to incorporate such body, with power, notwithstanding the Statutes of Mortmain, to hold lands to such extent as in this Act provided, but not further or otherwise." Accordingly, on October 19th, 1870, " The Re- presentative Church Body" was incorporated by Piojal Charter. It consists of three classes — Ex- officio Members, Elected Members, and Co-opted Members. The Ex-officio Members are the Arch- bishops and Bishops of the Church for the time being. The Elected Members consist of one clerical and two lay representatives for each Diocese or Union of Dioceses presided over by one bishop. The Co-opted Members consist of persons equal in number to the number of such Dioceses, for the time being, elected by the Ex-officio and Elected Members. The Elected Members and Co-opted Members retire by rotation, but are eligible for re- election. The total number of members at present is sixty, made up as follows : — Ex-officio, twelve ; Elected, thirty-six ; and Co-opted, twelve. The Lord Primate, in the Charge which he de- livered to the clergy of Armagh and Clogher, in the Disestablishment. 205 autumn of 1869, gave the following excellent ad- vice : — " To occupy/' His Grace said, " the short period that remains to us before the completion of this great transition in vain recriminations or com- plaints as to the conduct of our adversaries, or the failings of our friends, would be but weakness and folly. The past is irrevocable ; it is beyond our power ; the present is ours ; and to the future we may look with hope if we use that present well. I need not add that in the circumstances of the pre- sent there is enough to demand all our energies, and to employ all our exertions." The Church of Ireland, accordingly, braced up all her energies to make arrangements for her future guidance, and provision for her future maintenance. The " General Convention " met on Tuesday, Feb- ruary 15th, 1870, in the Antient Concert Rooms, Dublin, to enact laws for the government of the Church in the time to come. After the " Standing Orders" had been passed, the new " Constitution" of the Church was framed; then the draft of the Charter, incorporating the Representative Body (al- ready referred to), received the assent of the Con- vention, and, finally, several resolutions relating to finance were adopted. The " Constitution " was preceded by an important Preamble and Declaration. It was declared : — 1. That the Church of Ireland accepts, as here- tofore, and unfeignedly believes, all the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, as given 2o6 The Church of Ireland. by luspiration of God, and containing all things necessary to salvation, and continues to profess the faith of Christ, as professed by the Primitive Church. That she will continue to minister the Doctrine and Sacraments of the Church, as the Lord hath com- manded ; and will maintain inviolate the Three Orders of Bishops, Priests, or Presbyters, and Dea- cons in the Sacred Ministry. But as a Eeformed and Protestant Church, she re-affirmed her constant witness against all those innovations in Doctrine and Worship whereby the Primitive Faith has been, from time to time, defaced or overlaid, and which the Church disowned and rejected at the Reformation. 2. That the Church receives and approves the "Thirty-nine Articles" as they had been received and approved in 1G34 ; and approves and adopts the " Book of Common PraAer " as approved and adopted in 16G2 : and will continue to use the same, subject to such alterations as may be made therein, from time to time, hy the lawful authority of tlie Church. 3. That the Church will maintain Communion with the Church of England, and with all other Christian Churches agreeing in the principles of this Declaration. 4. That the General Synod shall have chief legis- lative power in the Church, and such administrative power as may be necessary for the Church, and con- sistent with its Episcopal Constitution. Then followed the " Statute " concerning the Gene- ral Synod, Diocesan Synods, Parishes, and Parochial Disestablishment. 207 Organisation ; of which I can only give here a hrief summary. The General Synod (according to this Statute, which has so far remained unchanged) consists of three distinct Orders, viz., the Bishops, the Clergy, and the Laity. It consists of Two Houses, the House of Bishops, and the House of Representatives. It will be seen that this is analogous to the constitu- tion of the two Houses of Parliament — Lords and Commons. The House of Bishops consists of all the Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of Ireland for the time being. The House of Representatives consists of 208 clerical and 416 lay members. Every clergyman of the Church of Ireland, who is in priest's orders, is qualified to be elected as a clerical representative, whether he reside in the Diocese for which he may be elected or not. Every layman of the age of twenty-one years, being a member of the Church, and a Commim'icant, is qualifxcd to be elected as a lay representative for any Diocese. The members of the House of Representatives all vote together, unless, on a division being called, ten members then present, of either order, require by a requisition in ivriting the votes to be taken by orders; whereupon the votes are taken accordingly. Each Diocese has its own Diocesan Synod. The Synod consists of the Bishop, the Beneficed and Licensed Clergymen of the Diocese, and, at least, one 5 208 The Church of Ireland. Sjnodsman for each Parish and District Parochial Church in the Diocese. The number of Synodsmen which each Parish is entitled to return to the Dio- cesan Synod is two for each of its officiating clergy- men. Every layman who is twenty-one years of age, a member of the Church, and a Communicant, is qualified to be a Diocesan Synodsman. The persons entitled to vote at the election of Diocesan Synodsmen are the " Registered Vestry- men " of the Parish. A Registered Vestryman must be twenty-one years of age, a resident or owner of property in the Parish, and an accustomed member of the congregation at- tending the Church of the Parish or Parochial Dis- trict for Divine Worship. The Register of Vestrymen is revised once in each year, at such time and in such manner as appointed by the Diocesan Synod. In every Parish there is a " Select Vestry," con- sisting of the Incumbent and his Curate or Curates (if any), the Churchwardens, and not more than twelve other persons annually elected by the Regis- tered Vestrymen. Subject to any regulation of the Diocesan Synod, the Select Vestry has the control and charge of Parochial, Charity, and Church Funds; and has to provide from the funds at its disposal all the re- quisites for Divine Service, and to keep the Church and other Parish buildings in repair. The foregoing summary will give some idea of the Disestablishment. 209 waj' in which the General Convention legislated for the government of the Church ; and the experience of fifteen years has shown that the Statutes enacted in 1870 were wise and eminently practical. On October 3 1st, 1870, His Grace the Duke of Abercorn moved at the Convention : — " That a Com- mittee be appointed to consider whether, without making any such alterations in the Liturgy or For- mularies of our Church as would involve or imply a change in her Doctrines, any measures can be sug- gested calculated to check the introduction and spread of novel doctrines and practices opposed to the prin- ciples of our lieformed (Church, and to report to the General Synod in 1871." A Committee was thereupon formed. It consisted of thirteen Clerical and thirteen Lay Members. It was generally known as " Master Brooke's Com- mittee," the Chairman being the late lamented W. Brooke, Esq., Master in Chancery. An interesting debate arose in the Convention on the " Bishops' Veto ; " a clause which empowered a majority of the House of Bishops to reject a measure which had received the approval of the House of Ke- presentatives. It was clear that the Bishops' Veto, like the power to withhold the Koyal assent from an Act of Parliament, could only and would only be exer- cised on occasions of the greatest importance, and under a sense of deep responsibility; and yet it was regarded by some with suspicion, and by others with ill-concealed dislike. For a moment the harmony p 210 The Church of Ireland. that had prevailed in the Convention was disturbed ; but only for a moment. The Bishops consented to this arrangement : that while a simple majority of both the other Orders should be required to pass a measure, it would require a majority of seven out of the nine Bishops then able to attend the Convention to pass the Episcopal Veto. The 29th clause of the Draft Constitution on which this debate turned, as finally amended on the motion of the Duke of Abercorn, ran as follows : — " No question shall be decided except by a majority of the Bishops present (if they should wish to vote on such question), and a majority of the clerical and lay representatives pre- sent, whether voting conjointly or separately ; pro- vided that no measure shall pass if it have a majority of seven of the Bishops present against it." Subse- quently a resolution of the Duke of Abercorn's was agreed to, placing the absolute veto in the hands of two-thirds of the Episcopal Bench present and voting. A great deal of good resulted from this sifting of the question of episcopal authority to its very foundation. The task of defining that authority in the future Synods of the Church was immensely facilitated ; and now it may be said, without the slightest fear of contradiction, that in no Church throughout Christendom are the Bishops more deeply seated in the affections of Churchmen than they are in Ireland. The amount of learning and eloquence displayed throughout the whole of this debate would Disestablishment. 211 have done honour to any legislative assembly in the world. Laymen and clergymen alike vindicated the ancient claim of Ireland to be the land of eloquence, and carried on the discussion with an amount of propriety and good feeling which are not always pre- sent when a matter of supreme importance is debated in the British House of Commons. Another interesting discussion arose on the ques- tion of Patronage, and after very careful consideration and debate the plan of the Church of New Zealand was adopted. It has remained unchanged until the present time, and has been found to work on the whole satisfactorily. Appointments to parishes are made by a Board consisting of seven persons : three Diocesan Nominators (two clerical and one lay) ap- pointed by the Diocesan Synod ; three Parochial Nominators (lay) appointed by the Parish, with the Bishop as President. The Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette, reviewing the work of the Convention (March 20th, 1870), said, and said very truly : — " Of the Convention itself we cannot speak too highly. Such a representative assembly has never before been seen in Ireland. It had to contend against singular difficulties. It was a novel and consequently an unorganized and un- trained assembly. The subject-matter of its discus- sions had never, till very lately, occupied the thoughts of many of its members. Let us imagine a House of Commons composed entirely of new members, who had no experience of legislation or of 212 The Church of Ireland. the forms of the House, and who were summoned to discuss questions which had hitherto lain entirely beyond the region of legislation. Would such an assembly be likely to make as rapid strides in self- government and in effective legislation as the Con- vention has done ? We say, in all sober earnestness, that the Convention will bear comparison in many respects with any popular assembly that has ever existed. It has been, no doubt, noisy and impulsive ; but if that be a fault, it is a small one. It has been singularly intolerant of personalities, and no word likely to wound the feelings of any one has escaped in the ardour of debate for which the speaker was not at once called to order by his auditors, while every such slip was sure to be followed by profuse and genuine apologies. In truth, the good done to the Church by the Convention can be measured very imperfectly by its legislative work, though by this, no doubt, it will be judged elsewhere. It has done a service, which we cannot now estimate, in the education of Irish Churchmen. For the first time in their history they have been allowed to bring themselves, their opinions, and their prejudices into the arena of free discussion. And what has been the result ? We doubt not that when the dust and heat of these first controversies have passed away, it will be found that barriers apparently insurmount- able have been broken down ; that prejudices have been dissipated ; that we have learned mutual tolera- tion and mutual concession ; and that the foundation Disestablishment. 213 has been laid strongly and firmly of a Church Polity, cemented not only by common interests and laws, but by the feelings of indissoluble brother- hood," This prediction has been abundantly verified in the history of the last fifteen years. A fact which may well find record here shows that every act of the Convention was watched, and every word noted down, by our brethren in England ; and it is gratifying to know, that on the 2ud March, 1870, a letter was read in the Convention, which had been addressed to His Grace the Lord Primate by the two Archbishops of the Church of England. The Arch- bishops said : — " We beg to assure you that our efforts shall not be wanting, whenever you may call upon us, to render such assistance on this side of the Channel as we may be able to do to our beloved sister Church. We have hitherto abstained from any public action in the matter, deeming it best that the Church in Ireland should first frame her Constitution, and should then suggest to us the manner in which we may best serve her interests. But we have watched with sincere sympathy all that has passed amongst you ; and we are sure that we express a feeling that is wide-spread and deep in the English people, when we wish you every blessing and support from above, and when we assure you that we shall always regard the members of the Church of Ireland with sincere love as our brethren in Christ, united to us by a strong bond of a common faith and hopes of salva- tion." 214 The Church of Ireland. To this letter was appended an address, signed by the Archbishops, by Lord Devon, Lord Kutland, and 3,777 other members of the Church of England. The General Convention brought its work to a close before the end of April, 1870. At this critical period in her history, the Church of L-eland had good reason to be proud of her bishops ; but especially had she reason to be thankful to God that the Primatial See of Armagh was filled by such a man as Archbishop Beresford. With his three-score and ten years upon him, he looked the very picture of the Hebrew Lawgiver of old. " His eyes were not dim, nor was his natural force abated." Those who heard his eloquent speech on the mode of appointing to the Primacy in the future, a question beset with difficul- ties, will not soon forget it. The rapturous applause which greeted the conclusion of it gave ample evi- dence that the hearts, as well as the minds, of his hearers had been influenced by what he had said. The Archbishop of Dublin (Eight Rev. Dr.. Trench) did not, by any means, use exaggerated language when, on the last day of the session, he said : — " We must all have admired the readiness, the ability, the gallant manner in which the Primate acted, whatever was his own view ; and the way in which he clearly showed how deeply penetrated he is with the solemn obligation of the episcopal office which he holds." One great and important step had been taken. Careful preparation had been made to meet the changes which the lapse of a few months would not Disestablishment. 215 fail to bring about : and Archbishop Trench, when returning thanks for himself and the Primate, and bringing the proceedings of the Convention to a close, struck a key-note of hope for the future. He said : — " It is now something for us to have taken our share in such a meeting as this has been, and whatever are the issues, may God grant that they shall be all that we desire and venture to hope. No one can deny that they are issues which will make themselves felt in this Church of Ireland ; will make themselves felt, not merely for ourselves, but for many generations after we have passed away. No doubt, our work, the work of man, has the marks of human infirmity cleaving to it ; no doubt, none of us have had all our will here, none of us have seen everything done that we desired to do ; yet, I believe we shall return to our homes determined and resolved to make the very best of everything ; determined that the Church of Ireland, by God's blessing, shall work with her new Constitution for the blessing of the present, and many coming generations of our people." Early in the year 1870 (January 28th), the Irish Church lost one of her bishops — the Right Rev. Hamilton Verschoyle, D.D., Bishop of Kilmore, Elphin, and Ardagh. He died at Torquay, where he had been ordered to spend the winter months on account of his delicate health. Bishop "Verschoyle was the eldest son of J. Verschoyle, Esq., of Stillor- gan House, Co. Dublin. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin ; obtained a Scholarship in 1823 ; 2l6 The Church of Ireland. and proceeded B.A. in 1825 ; M,A., B.D., and D.D. in 1862. He was appointed Curate of Clongisb (Newtownforbes, Co. Longford) in 1829 ; and In- cumbent of tbe Episcopal Cbapel, Baggot Sti'eet, Dublin, in 1835. Tbis post he held for twenty-seven years. His ministry in Dublin was greatly valued, and he is now, and will long be, held in afl'ectionate remembrance by many friends. In 1862 he was appointed Dean of Ferns, and the same year he was consecrated to the See of Kilmore, in Kilmore Cathe- dral, by the Archbishop of Dublin (Whately), and the Bishops of Killaloe (Fitzgerald) and Cashel (Daly). He lived to preside over his three United Dioceses only seven years. He died at the age of sixty-seven. By his death the revenues of the See of Kilmore, amounting to the gross value of aG6,856 a-year, were lost to the Church, and went to swell the amount of which she was deprived by the Irish Church Act. Besides that, the new bishop could not be appointed by the Diocesan Synod of Kilmore, as it could not come into existence until January 1st, 1871. All that could be done was to petition the Crown to appoint a bishop temporarily, the petition to be presented by the Primate, or by three of the bishops of the Pro- vince, but the bishop [locum tenens) was not to be entitled to the emoluments of the See beyond the first of January. The net value of the See was ^5,255. A petition was presented to the Crown, and by a " Queen's letter," the Kev. C. Leslie, the eldest son of Disestablishment. 217 a former bishop of the Diocese, was appointed. He was at the time Rector of Drung, in the Co. Cavan. His income, after the first of January, was made de- pendent on the will of the General Synod. Bishop Leslie only lived to enjoy his new dignity three months. He was succeeded by the Very Eev. Dr. Carson, Dean of Kilmore and Vicar-General, who was also appointed, by a Queen's letter, on the re- commendation of the Primate. I would willingly, if I could do so, at this point in my narrative, pass over all mention of a painful controversy which convulsed the whole Church of Ireland during the Spring of 1870 ; but I should, in that case, be charged with unfairness. The impartial historian must, sometimes, record facts to which it is painful to refer. An insignificant little book, written by an English clergyman, en- titled. Short Prayers for those icho have little time to pray, was placed in the hands of a young servant girl, attending a confirmation class, by a Dublin clergyman, who is undoubtedly one of the ablest, most devoted, and most conscientious among the many able, devoted, and conscientious clergy of the Church of Ireland. The book is popularly known as Portal's Manual. It was, to say the least, an incau- tious act ; for the Manual does contain statements which are entirely at variance with the opinions commonly accepted as true by the members of all Protestant Churches. If a few simple and kindly words of remonstrance had been addressed to the 2i8 The Church of Ireland. giver of the book, and the objectionable passages pointed out, there can be no doubt that it would at once have been withdrawn from circulation, and the world would have heard no more about it. But in- stead of this course being adopted, public attention was drawn to the Manual through the newspapers, and, in the course of a few weeks, thousands of copies were flying about all over the country, doubtless to the intense delight of the publishers; meetings were held in nearly every country parish, country squires, village shopkeepers, and small farmers suddenly^ de- veloped into learned theologians; speeches were made, petitions were drawn up, protests were signed, and such a ferment was kept up that, at one time, it seemed as if the excitement would become greater than it had been even during O'Connell's agitation for the Repeal of the Union. This, however, was not alK It was sought to elicit from Archbishop Trench an ex cathedra opi- nion on the objectionable phrases or passages which the Manual certainly contains. Nothing could be more unfair, when it is recollected that this little book formed no part of the authorized formularies of the Church of Ireland ; and moreover, it really is possible, by the exercise of a little Christian charity, to explain those passages in such a way as to deprive them of a good deal of their poison. Besides, an expression of opinion delivered by a private and irresponsible person, is something very different from a judgment delivered by a responsible dignitary of a Disestablishment. 219 Church, on a matter quite outside the teaching of the Church, as contained in her recognized Articles and Forms of Devotion. A Protest, to which a very large number of most respectable signatures v^as attached, was forwarded to the Archbishop ; and when that Protest is read, it is impossible to come to any other conclusion than that those who signed it were influenced by the highest and purest of motives. There was un- doubtedly a sense of alarm and insecurity, but it was hardly justifiable under the circumstances. The Archbishop's reply was, as might have been expected, firm and dignified, and at the same time calculated to dispel all alarm. He, doubtless, felt that in avoid- ing one extreme it was possible to fall into another. " Inciclit in Scijllam, qui vidt vitare Charyhdiiii." I quote only the coucluding words of the reply. His Grace said:— "For myself I can only say, that I would a hundred times sooner cease from the office which I hold, than become the ignoble instrument of narrowing the limits of our Church, and making untenable in it the position of many of its most earnest and devoted children." I cannot better conclude this portion of my subject than by quoting a few passages from a leading article which appeared in the Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette, on May 23rd, 1870 ; and I am neither afraid nor ashamed to say, even at the risk of being misunderstood in some quarters, that I give the following quotation because I thoroughly endorse it. 220 The Church of Ireland. The Gazette said : — " It is with pain and regret we have witnessed the unmanly, unchurchmanUke, and, ■worse than all, unchristian attacks which have been made on this estimable Prelate of the Irish Church [Archbishop Trench]. The Archbishop, whether rightly or wrongly, refused to narrow the limits of our Church beyond what is required by the language of her authorized formularies, and for this and for not recognizing the interpretation put upon certain passages quoted from Portal's Manual, in the now famous Protest, as quite fair either towards the Manual in question or the Prayer Book, he has been overwhelmed with an amount of obloquy, un- precedented in the history of religious contro- versy." The Gazette further said : — " No one, we suppose, will doubt for a moment the Protestantism of that distinguished Irish Churchman, Professor Jellett " [now Provost of Trinity College] , "whose eloquent voice was ever raised on the side of the Protestant people of Ireland during the many debates that took place in the Convention. Yet, Professor Jellett, in a sermon preached by him at the Advent Special Services in St. Patrick's Cathedral last year, gave counsel that might well have been followed by some of those who have joined in the popular tumult against the Archbishop. His prescient mind only too truly foresaw a danger to the Church in her newly-found liberty, which has since been unhappily realized. He was speaking on the subject of ' The Disestablishment. 221 Church of Ireland, a Catholic Church.' ' I have no fear,' he said, ' for the Protestantism of the Irish Church, but I do think that her Catholicity is in some danger.' ' At such a crisis,' he went on to sav, ' I should ill discharge my duty if I did not warn you that we have always to dread the upspringing of a despotism, as bad as any despotism, I mean the despotism of a majority. We have to fear that the representatives of one school of religious thought, finding themselves to be the most powerful, may desire to have exclusive possession of the Church, and to banish from it, by some new system of tests, by articles more numerous and more rigidly defined, every form of thought but their own Perhaps you may think that there are points of doctrine upon which the Church ought to have pronounced a sen- tence more decisive ; perhaps you may feel confident enough in the truth of your own belief to deny even plausibility to that of your opponents ; and it may be that those who think with you are strong enough to procure an authoritative declaration, rendering ac- quiescence in your creed essential to admission into the Church. But before you take that almost irre- vocable step, I ask you to think earnestly and prayerfully of what you are doing. Can you say that on tlie question which separates you from your brother Protestant, a right belief is necessary to salvation ? And if you cannot, are you justified in driving from your communion, for that, men who are serving the same Master as bravely and as 222 The Church of Ireland. faithfully as you are ? And are you justified in doing what in you lies to degrade to the position of a sect, that Church which has so long gloried, and rightly gloried, in the name of Catholic ? ' " I may be pardoned for quoting here a few words from a pamphlet which, soon after the Portal Manual controversy had subsided, was published by another distinguished Irish Churchman, the Rev. Dr. Salmon, Eegius Professor of Divinity, Trinity College. It was entitled, " Thoughts on the Present Crisis of the Church of Ireland." Dr. Salmon said : — " If we exhibit ourselves unable to keep together the moment we are freed from State control, wrangling among ourselves, and splitting up into new sects, it will seem to have been proved by experiment that private judgment is essentially an- archical : and those who might have been induced to cast off the Papal yoke ivill resign themselves to it with a sigh, as their only security against endless schism." I willingly turn to a more agreeable subject. Just before the year 1870 came to a close, the restored Cathedral of St. Fin Barre, Cork, was consecrated. It was in every respect a noteworthy event. There were present the two Archbishops of the Irish Church, and the Bishops of Meath, Down, Limerick, Derry, and Tuam ; and with them, one who, although a Bishop of the Church of England, is a very eminent Irishman, the Plight Rev. Dr. Magee, Bishop of Peter- borough. The Irish Ecclesiastical. Gazette, in an Disestablishment. 223 article describing the ceremonial (December 23rcl, 1870), said : — " The proceedings, on the last day of November, and the first two days of the present month, certainly, gave no intimation that our Church had suffered so seriously through Disestablishment and Disendowment, that her recovery in the future was problematical. On the contrary, there was a hopefulness, a conscious self-reliance, in all that took place during those three memorable days that must inspire much confidence for the future. No words of despair, or of craven fear, were uttered ; there were no vain and useless regrets for the past ; no timid counsels for the morrow. More than one of the Eight Eev. preachers took a wise advantage of the occasion to press upon their audience the duty of self-denial in the cause of their Church, and we are sure their words were not thrown away. More than this was hardly said that in any degree bore upon the present circumstances of the Church." The Guardian, which does not always exhibit a friendly spirit towards the Church of Ireland, noticed the event in these words : — " On Wednesday last, the Feast of St. Andrew, this noble Cathedral— the noblest that has been raised by any Reformed Church since the Eeformation — was consecrated to the service of God. It is now nearly six years since the founda- tion-stone was laid by the present Bishop of Cork " Eight Eev. John Gregg, D.D.— " and he has had the happiness of being permitted to consecrate the building toward the erection of which his exertions 224 The Clmrch of Ireland. and his liberality have largely contributed. It was a day to be long and thankfully remembered, not only by the Diocese over vhich that prelate presides, but by the whole Church of Ireland ; and while the Churchmen of Cork assembled in crowds to witness the solemn ceremony, nearly every Diocese in Ireland was represented by its Bishop. Nor was the sister Church of England unrepresented on the occasion. The Bishop of Peterborough, a native of Cork,* who had been Dean of Cork when the foundation of the Cathedral was laid, and during the early years of its building, responded to the invitation of the Bishop, and came to assist at the consecration. He had shared in the difficulties which beset the commence- ment of this work, and he shared in the triumph of its completion." Before I make a fresh start in this Historical Sketch, I am anxious again to impress on all my readers that we claim for this old Church of ours the distinctive title, *' Churcli of Irdavd,'" and we have good ground (so at any rate we think) on which to base our claim. The question is not one of numbers ; it is not affected by the circumstance of our being in the minority when compared with the whole population of Ireland. The question is one of historical continuity; and * Tliis statement is not quite accurate. The Bishop of Peterborough is a son of the late Rev. John Magee, Rector of St. Peter's, Drogheda, and grandson of Archbishop Magee, formerly Archbishop of Dublin, and author of the well-known book on " The Atonement." Disestablishment. 225 that continuity has remained unbroken since the days of St. Patrick. So lately as the year 1879 our right to call ourselves members of the Church of Ireland was denied by Mr. O'Neill Daunt, who stated in a letter to the Freeman's Journal that Church property was violently wrenched from the old Establishment and transferred to the new ; and a Koman Catholic Priest, about the same time, asserted at a Limerick Home Rule dinner that his Hierarchy had been here for fourteen hundred years. To these assertions a satisfactory reply was given by a well-known Irish clergyman, the Rev. Charles Crosthwaite, M.A., Canon and Vicar-General of Kil- dare, formerly Prebendary and Rector of Rathangan. The initials, C. C, V.G., appended to the clever letters which constantly appear in the daily and weekly newspapers, are as well known as those of that delightful Essayist, A. K. H. B., whose books have been read by thousands of readers, and whom the initiated know to be a very able and eminent minister of the Presbyterian (Established) Church of Scotland. Canon Crosthwaite deals with the whole question of the succession of Irish bishops in a most satisfac- tory manner. A few passages from his pamphlet, " Which Church has Orders from St. Patrick ?" will form a very appropriate conclusion to this portion of my subject. In dealing with the case before him, Canon Cros- thwaite very properly lays this down as an axiom Q 226 The Church of Ireland. to clear the way : — " Theological questions and his- torical truth are two matters quite distinct." We have to decide not whether the bishops of the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth held correct views of Scrip- ture — many of them, probably, did not — but whether they were episcopally descended from their prede- cessors. It is entirely a question of history, not of theology. Bearing this in mind, the Canon says : — " To dis- cuss the question as to whether the Marian Bishops — that is, those whom Elizabeth found on her acces- sion — continued to act as bishops afterwards, we may divide them into two classes — (1) Those appointed by Mary. (2) Those appointed by Henry VIII. after his breach with Rome, or by Edward. All the latter class, we may presume, after their former changes, were ready enough for another. We need not, there- fore, ask about any but the twelve of Mary's own appointment. Of these we know two — Walsh, of Meath, and Leverons, of Kildare — were deprived.* This leaves only ten to be accounted for. One of these was Curwen, of Dublin. Of him we need not speak. He was thoroughly Protestant, and was soon removed to Oxford. We have only nine left : viz., Ardagh, Clonmacnoise, Leighlin, Ossory, Cashel, Cork, Killaloe, Limerick, and Eoss." The Canon goes on to show that these prelates retained their places and their emoluments under This fact I have ah-eady stated in a previous chapter. Disestablishment. 227 Elizabeth ; and that whatever may have been their motives or their opinions, the historical continuity of the Church was thus preserved. " I have called on Rome in vain," he adds, " to connect her present bishops with the line of St. Patrick. I have shown that all the bishops whom Mary left in the Irish Church, except two, conformed under Elizabeth. I have no more to do until a single line is produced on the other side. If it could be shown that every single conforming bishop were a hypocritical Ro- manist in disguise, it would not weaken our orders. Intention is not a matter that we rely on. If a man plays the part of a hypocrite, the guilt rests not with those whom he deceives, but with the Creed to which he belongs— still more if it sanctions his dishonesty." The separation of this ancient Church from the State has not produced the results which were anticipated. Disestablishment has not produced peace, contentment, and prosperity in Ireland. So far from doing so, it has brought about a condi- tion of civil discord, dissatisfaction, and misery ; for political agitators now see plainly that they have only to shout long and loud enough to get all they want. The attack on the Church is, after all, only a means to an end, that end being the confiscation of all private property. Mr. Gladstone fastened upon the term, " last badge of ascendancy," to try and satisfy himself and his followers that he was doing right in depriving the Church of Ireland of her 228 The Church of Ireland. worldly status and of her property. But what have we had during the last fifteen years instead of the so- called " ascendancy" of the Church ? We have had the ascendancy of a lawless rahble, the intolerable tyranny of the Land League, followed by the Na- tional League ; we have had the legalized robbery of the classes who owned the land for the benefit of those who tilled it ; we have had the ascendancy of the revolver and the bowie-knife used to carry out the hellish purposes of the " Livincibles." This is all that Ireland has gained, socially and politically, by the Irish Church Act of 1869. The late Earl Cairns foresaw and predicted all this. Speaking in the House of Lords on June 24th, 18G7, in reply to Earl Russell, who had called for an " In- quiry into the Revenues of the Irish Church," Lord Cairns concluded an eloquent and exhaustive speech in these words : — " I think I have now established this position — that this is an agitation which pro- ceeds not from Ireland, not from Roman Catholics as against Protestants, but one which proceeds from those who are opposed to all ecclesiastical establish- ments as against those who are in favour of such establishments We have sources of dissension enough, God knows, between Roman Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, and I beseech your Lordships not to make this another of them. Look back for a moment on the history of the Church question in that country. About thirty years ago you had heart- rending accounts, day by day, of collisions between Disestablishment. 229 the peasantry and the soldiery, and of assaults, loss of life, riot, and disorder, all directly occasioned by the collisions to which I have referred arising out of the collection of tithes. But wise legislation put an end to that sad state of things, and for nearly a quarter of a century there has been perfect peace and quiet throughout the country so far as that sub- ject is concerned. The Church property has been so completely isolated, that it cannot become the cause of collisions between different classes of the inhabitants. The glebe lands are peaceably occupied by the clergy, the tithe rent-charge is paid by the landlords, and improvements have been introduced in regard to bishops' leases. But you are now asked to re-open a question pregnant with all the conse- quences which I have endeavoured to point out. My Lords, because I feel the gravity of these objections to the scheme of the noble Earl ; because I see in its conception, injustice, and even confiscation, and in its execution, strife — bitter and enduring strife and animosity ; and because, above all, I see in its result insecurity to property, and peril — perhaps not im- mediate, but not the less certain — peril to the Es- tablished Church in this country, I beseech your Lordships to give no assent, and no encouragement, to the motion of the noble Earl in its present form." This warning was unheeded. The revolutionary spirit of the age demanded a victim. Exactly two years after, Lord Cairns was engaged in a vain endeavour to lessen as much as possible the severity 230 The Church of Ireland. of the blow which the so-called "Liberal" party in both Houses of Parliament had determined to inflict on the ancient Church of Ireland. The whole strength of that party was put forth. Might tri- umphed over right ; and as the last stroke of the clock sounded twelve on the night of December 31st, 1870, the Church of Ireland ceased "to be by Law Established." CHAPTER IX. RECONSTRUCTION. WHEN the sun set on the last day of 1870, a hard frost prevailed over a very large area in Ireland. The frost continued for several hours ; but just at midnight a thaw set in, and the ice sud- denly disappeared. Next day, the following beautiful verses were written by an Irish lady, whose poetry, as we all know, abounds in what Matthew Arnold calls " sweetness and light " — Mrs. Henry Faussett, (Alessie Bond). SET FREE.* " But as for me, I will come into Thy house in the multi- tude of Thy mercy : and in Thy fear will I worship toward Thy holy temple." — Fmlmsfor the Bay. " Frozen and chill'd and stranded, they said, with an icy sneer — Black as yon tide her heavens — she will go with the dying year : But the angel came at midnight, and the grasp of ice gave o'er, And the ship moved onward grandly to her deeps from the inland shore ! * These words have been set to excellent music by Rev. A. C. Neely, M.A., with accompaniments by C. McKorkell, Esq., and ijublished by Cramer, Wood, & Co., Belfast. 232 The Church of Ireland. " The angel came at midnight, but not with the voice of death, While the last of the twelve was tolling, the land felt a living breath : Tlirongh the wintry dawn came a promise of the summer of life to be — One chain that had bound her was broken, and Ireland's Church was free. " Thousands of voices blending, pray'd the Helmsman still to keep Her course from the hidden shallows, through the dangers of the deep. I heard and I knew there were dangers, but my heart rose o'er their care, With the bound of the glorious vessel, on the mighty wave of prayer ! " And they echoed the old Psalm's music — 'We will go to Thy house, O Lord, In the multitude of Thy mercy.' We praise Thee with glad accord ! In the might of Thy Spirit's blessing we will suffer and work for Thee, Till Thou bring our ship to anchor at the mouth of the crystal sea. " The Church of Ireland had, indeed, been set free on a new career, a new mission of love to the land in which she was planted fourteen hundred years ago. On the 1st January, 1871, the Hon. and Eev. W. C. Plunket (now Lord Plunket, Archbishop of Dublin) preached a Sermon in St. Patrick's Cathedral, which was afterwards published under the title, " The Hour Reconstruction. 233 is Come." " Like everything Mr. Plunket writes," was the comment of the Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette, " there is a fervid energy in this sermon, and the same earnest claim for our Church as the National Church of Ireland, which we have met elsewhere in his pubHc addresses. Mr. Plunket is not one of those who despair of the Church of Ireland ; on the con- trary, he looks forward to a brighter and more effi- cient history than ever, yet to be hers." In the middle of March, a mandate was issued by the Lord Primate, convening the General Synod, and on Thursday, April 13th, the Synod met for the first time. One question soon forced itself to the front, and that was the question of " Prevision." We have already seen, that on the motion of the Duke of Abercorn, " Master Brooke's Committee " was appointed by the General Convention. That Committee drew up and presented to the General Synod a valuable Report, which was published and widely circulated. Some of the daily papers stupidly called the Report " Master Brooke's Pamphlet." The Report, after quoting the Duke of Abercorn's Resolution, which I have given in the chapter imme- diately preceding this, says: — "The limits of the task entrusted to us are here very clearly indicated. We were commissioned to consider and suggest such measures (and such measures only) as might tend to check, in the Church of Ireland, the introduction or spread of modern Ritualism. Alterations or addi- 234 The Church of Ireland. tions, however valuable in themselves, which have no such tendency, are excluded from the field of our inquiry. Moreover, even if we should be of opinion that a certain alteration in the Liturgy or Formu- laries would tend to check the growth of Ritualism, we are forbidden to suggest such an alteration, if it should involve or imply any change in the Doctrines of our Church The field of our investiga- tion being thus defined, we had in the next place to inquire, What are the ' novel doctrines and practices ' ■whose introduction into the Church of Ireland it is desired to check ? And here we would observe, that the two classes of errors indicated, respectively, by the words ' Doctrines ' and ' Practices ' differ widely in the kind of importance which attaches to them. Doctrines are important in themselves, and for their own sake. Practices are important, chiefly, because they symbolize doctrines ; and therefore, in consider- ing these errors and their appropriate remedies, it is desirable to commence with the doctrine in which the practice originates, and to view the symbolizing practice principally with regard to the doctrine." The Report further said : — " Before proceeding to consider more particularly the doctrines against which the Resolution of the Duke of Abercorn was pointed, we would observe, that it is no part of our duty to argue the question of their truth or falsehood on grounds derived from Scripture, or from the teaching of the Early Church. It is enough for the discharge of our present task if we can show that these doc- Reconstruction. 235 trines are ' opposed to the principles of our Reformed Church/ And no true member of our Church will need to be convinced that a doctrine which is thus opposed is neither Scriptural nor Apostolic." The Report then deals with the subject of what is commonly called Sacerdotalism. " The doctrines," it says, " which form the basis of Ritualism as held by a certain party in the Church of England, and which the vast majority of Irish Churchmen desire to exclude from the Church of Ireland, are marked by one general character, namely, that they result in the ascription to the priesthood of powers which do not belong to that office. This result, which is commonly indicated by the name Sacerdotalism, has two prin- cipal sources, both of which have engaged the anxious attention of your Committee." The first of these sources is stated to be that which has reference to " the power of the priest in the ad- ministration of the Lord's Supper and the second to " the power of the priest in the forgiveness of sins." Under these two divisions of the subject the Committee presented to the General Synod a great deal of valuable information. The conclusion arrived at, as regards the Doctrines of the Church, was stated in these words : — " It was our duty, throughout the whole of our task, to re- member that the subject of this inquiry is a book, regarded by the vast majority of Churchmen with a veneration and a love second only to that which they feel for the Bible itself. These feelings are evoked 236 The Church of Ireland. and sustained, not only by its own surpassin o F c SCO S 3 ff'^'o - co C&flSo ceo -5 o s M 00 ^ (N ^ tl o S 3 =o r=i X rC , ,j2 rf '2 g .1 |1 'bo ^ .^i o 3 o ^ 00 • . £1« P<00 •3 X> T-i CO So 02 5 2 ' _ 10 :c CD ^ CO ^ 1 =3 ■ : '6'^ ' 4) ^ K? ^ .2 fi Pi, O W -31 1^ c : r-M I ^ 1^ pq Plh DATE. j Trinity Sunday, lUh June, 1G93 2nd July, 1693 2nd Sept., 1694 Day unknown, 1694 18th July, 1695 4th August, 1695 8th Dec, 1695 22nd March, 1695-96 Dec, 1697 2nd April, 1699 4th June, 1699 July, 1701 Oct., 1702 11th June, 1703 nth Nov., 1705 18th April, 1708 PLACE OF CONSECRATION. Consecrated Bp. of Brechin, in Scotland, 1084. Trans, to Glasgow, 1684, and to Raphoe, 1693 Dunboyne Christ Church, Dublin ... No information ... Christ Church, Dublin ... Trinity College Chapel ... St. Patrick's, Dublin St. Michan's Ch., Dublin Christ Church, Dublin ... Cashel Christ Church, Dublin ... Dunboyne Christ Church, Dublin ... St. Patrick's, Dublin NAME OF SEE. Raphoe Ivillaloe Ossory Down, &c. ... ... Cloyne Cloyne Down, &c ... Limerick ... Killaloe Cloyne Down, &c. ... Cork, &c ... Raphoe Cloyne Derry Kildare Waterford, &c. NAME OF BISHOP. Alexander Cairncross ... Henry Ryder ... John Hartstrong Samuel Foley ... Tobias Pullen. Trans, to Dromore, 1695 St. George Ashe. Trans, to Clogher, 1697 ; Derry, 1714 ... Edward Walkington Thomas Smyth Thomas Lindsay. Trans, to Raphoe, 1713 ; Armagh, 1713 ... John Pooley. Trans, to RajDhoe, 1702 " ... ' ... Edward Smith ... Dive Downs ... Robert Huntingdon Charles Crow ... Charles Hickman Welbore Ellis. Trans, to Meath, 1732 Thomas Mills ... DATE. 8th April, 1710 10th May, 1713 12th July, 1713 7th Nov., 1714 16th Jan., 1714-15 June, 1716 23rd April, 1717 12th May, 1717 14th August, 1720 22nd Jan., 1720-21 Feb., 1721-22 PLACE OF CONSECRATION. No information ... St. Patrick's, Dublin Christ Church, Dublin ... Dunboyne Cons'.Bp. of Bangor, 1701-2. No information ... Dunboyne Christ Church, Dublin ... Cons. Bp. of Carlisle, 1702. Trans, to Derry, 1718 ... St. Patrick's, Dublin Drogheda Castleknock NAME OF SEE. Cork, &c Dromore Killaloe Raphoe Killaloe Kilmore Meath Killaloe Dromore ... KiUala, &c. Derry KiUala, &c. Down, &c. ... Ferns, &c. ... NAME OF BISHOP. Peter Brown ... John Sterne. Trans, to Clogher, 1717 Sir Thomas Vesey. Trans, to Ossory, 1714 Edward Synge. Trans, to Tuam, 1716 Nicholas Foster. Trans, to Raphoe. 1716 Timothy Godwin. Trans, to Cashel, 1727 John Evans Charles Carr ... Ralph Lambert. Trans, to Meath, 1726 Henry Downs. Trans, to Elphin, 1720 ; Meath, 1724 ; Derry, 1726 William Nicholson. Trans, to Cashel, 1721 Charles Cobbe. Trans, to Dromore, 1726; Kildare, 1732; Dublin, 1742 Francis Hutchinson Josiah Hort. Trans, to Kilmore, 1727 ; Tuam, 1742 ... o •6 e- " 2 1i 6 <. oofi 3C5 g, ,-•0 2i Is- O ,^ '73 q ^ o.S M : o :S : . o S c O m r So o o , 9 ;i3 r« M ^ S M M « ;^ WfiMrt o ^ .S H 5 ^ I pq o "^Ph g'W M o ^ g =<2 2-'*5T)H.3S'*^3:^.a3Sj»Oc5cSt5BOft H ^ S oSPh ^ -p 0;3 O c .2^ ^ OQ ^ S S C C cS ^ 3q ^ ^ ft p g g a si I §5 DATE. 16th October, 1763 10th March, 1765 nth August, 1765 26th October, 1765 27th April, 1766 31st May, 1707 20th March, 1768 6th July, 1771 28th July, 1771 15th March, 1772 11th October, 1772 22nd January, 1775 23rd April, 1775 PLACE OF CONSECRATION. Castle Chapel, Dublin ... St. Michael's, Dublin St. Werburgh's, Dublin ... St. Michan's, Dublhi St. Michan's, Dublin Christ Church, Dublin St. Patrick's, Dublin Christ Church, Dublin ... St. Patrick's, Dublin Castle Chapel, Dublin ... St. Thomas's, Dublin Christ Church, Dublin ... Castle Chapel, Dublin ... NAME OF SEE. Dromore ... Dromore Ossory Down and Connor ... Dromore ... Cloyne Cloyne Limerick Killaloe, &c. Cork Clonfert, &c. Ferns, &c. ... ... Kilmore Dromore ... NAME OF BISHOP. Edward Young. Trans, to Fernsj 1765 Hon. H. Maxwell. Trans, to Meath, 1706 Charles Dodgson. Trans, to Elphin, 1775 James Trail, ... William Newcome. Trans, to Ossory, 1776 ; Waterford, 1779 ; Armagh, 1795 Hon. Frederick Augustus Hervey, afterwards Earl of Bristol, Trans. to Derry, 1768 Charles Agar ... John Averell ... Robert Fowler. Trans, to Dublin, Isaac Mann Walter Cope. Trans, to Ferns, 1782 Hon. Joseph Deane Bourke. Trans. to Tuam, 1782 George Lewis Jones. Trans, to Kildare, 1790 James Hawkins. Trans, to Raphoe, 1780 tH 00 "-I J I s 03 ® 1^ C5 O t- 1- W +3 IS CO , Dubli Dublin Dublii iblin 1 HuMu: --^ 14 !ter Ph 0) '^'^ 0 02 0 Occ O !E cf 3 ^ or- £; fioWfi o . . .s ■^CM g o o s o .■2 .o H CO g i:;cH C5 ^ lo| a -s g-^ 1 1 sglll (O' DATE. 2lBt September, 1794 1st February, 1795 22nd March, 1795 7th Juno, 1795 31st January, 1790 28th Juno, 1798 3rd February, J 799 1st February, 1801 21st March, 1802 21st November, 1802 13th November, 1803 i H ■fj '<5 O o '*< o xl St. Peter's, Dublin Christ Church, Dublin ... Castle Chapel, Dublin Tuam Cathedral Trinity College Chapel ... Consecrated Bishop of St. David's, 12th June, 1794; Trans, to Armagh, 1800 St. Thomas's, Dublin St. Mark's, Dublin Tuam Cathedral St. Patrick's, Dublin NAME OF SEE. 1 Killaloe, &c. Ossory Clonfert, &c. Killala, &c. Clonfert, &c. Killala, &c. Clonfert, &c. Armagh Clonfert, &c. Clonfert, &c. Waterford, &c. Killaloe, &c. . NAME OF BISHOP. Hon. William Knox, Trans, to , Derry, 1803 Thomas Lewis O'Beirne. Trans, to Meath, 1798 Hon. Charles Brodrick. Trans, to Kilmore, 179G ; Cashel, 1802 ... John Porter. Trans, to Clogher, 1798 Hugh Hamilton. Trans, to Ossory, 1798 Joseph Stock. Trans, to Water- ford, 1810 Matthew Young William Stuart George de la Poer Beresiord. irans. to Kilmore, 1802 Nathaniel Alexander. Trans, to Killaloe, 1804 ; Down, 1804 ; Moath, 1823 Hon. Power le Poer Trench. Trans. to Elphin, 1810 ; Tuam, 1819 ... Hon. Charles Dalrymple Lindsay. Trans, to Kildare, 1804 DATE. 29th July, 1804 16tli December, 1804 24th March, 1805 2nd February, 1806 13th July, 1806 27th September, 1807 3rd September, 1809 6th May, 1810 17th November, 1811 26th January, 1812 20th June, 1813 10th October, 1813 t9th September, 1819 19th December, 1819 30th April, 1820 PLACE OF CONSECRATION. St. Patrick's, Dublin St. Peter's, Dublin St. Patrick's, Dublin Trinity College Chapel ... St. Patrick's, Dublin Onrist Onurcli, Uubnn ... St. Patrick's, Dublin Trinity College Chapel ... Armagh Cathedral ... Christ Church, Dublin ... Cashel Cathedral Castle Chapel, Dublin ... Armagh Cathedral Cashel Cathedral NAME OF SEE. Clonfert, &c. Killaloe, &c. Cork, &c. ... Ossory Limerick, &c. Cork, &c. ... Ferns, &c. ... Killala, &c. Dromore Dromore Ossory Waterford, &c. Raphoe Dromore Killaloe, &c. NAME OF BISHOP. Christopher Butson. Bishop of Kil- laloe, Clonfert, &c., 1834 Hon. Robert Ponsonby Tottenham. Trans, to Ferns, 1820 ; Clogher, 1822 Lord John George Beresford. Trans, to Raphoe, 1807 ; Clogher, 1819; Dublin, 1819; Armagh, 1822 John Kearney Charles Mongan Warburton Hon. Thomas St. Lawrence Hon. Percy Jocelyn. Trans, to Clogher, 1820 James Verschoyle George Hall ... John Leslie. Trans to Elphin, 1819 ; Kilmore and Elphin, 1841 Robert Fowler, Bishop of Ossory and Ferns, 1835 Hon. Richard Bourke ... William Magee. Trans, to Dublin, 1822 James Saurin ... Richard Mant. Trans, to Down, 1823 ; Bishop of Down and Dro- more, 1841 ... DATE. 8th October, 1820 21st July, 1822 12th January, 1823 nth May, 1823 8th October, 1826 16th March, 1828 27th March, 1831 9th October, 1831 23rd October, 1831 12th June, 1836 17th February, 1839 14th April, 1839 27th December, 1840 20th March, 1842 6th November, 1842 29th January, 1843 30th July, 1848 1st May, 1849 PLACE OF CONSECRATION. Trinity College Chapel ... Castle Chapel, Dublin ... Cashel Cathedral ... Tuam Cathedral Castle Chapel, Dublin ... St. Patrick's, Dublin Trinity College Chapel ... Castle Chapel, Dublin ... St. Patrick's, Dublin Trinity College Chapel ... Christ Church, Dublin ... Trinity College Chapel Armagh Cathedral St. Patrick's, Dublin Armagh Cathedral NAME OF SEE. Limerick, &c. Cashel Raphoe Limerick, &c. Killaloe, &c. Cloyne Killaloe, &c. Cork, &c Killaloe, &c. Dublin Killaloe and Clonfert Killaloe and Clonfert Tuam and Killala Meath Ossory and Ferns Meath Cashel and Waterford Cork and Cloyne Down and Dromore . . . NAME OF BISHOP. Thomas Elrington. Trans, to Ferns, 1822 Richard Laurence William Bissett John Jebb Alexander Arbuthnot ... John Brinkley ... Hon Richard Ponsonby. Trans, to Derry, 1831 ; Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, 1834 Samuel Kjde, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne, 1835 Hon. Edmund Knox. Trans, to Limerick, 1834 Richard Whately Stephen Creagh Sandes. Trans, to Cashel and Waterford, 1839 Hon. Ludlow Tonson Hon. Thomas Plunket ... Charles Dickinson James Thomas O'Brien Edward Stojiford Robert Daly ... James Wilson ... Robert Knox ... DATE. l.^ili .Tuly, 1849 iRt Novemhev, 1850 28t.h November, 1852 Ist January, 1854 24th September, 1854 1857 1862 1st January, 1864 1866 1866 January, 1807 Gtli October, 1867 1862 1872 25th October, 1874 March, 1875 10th December, 1870 September, 1878 24tli Felu-uary. 1884 25th April, 1884 29th September, 1885 O H O O o |i< 0 C4 O -!f E! ||f 1 1^ p . .|4q le ^ - "ce ^ '■^ i - 5 T^'^ ^ ^ • 1 ^-^1 ill i 1"^ 5 il!; «■ o S ^; . . . . W 3- o « n o H s -