BX 5500 .C5 1868 The Church establishment in Ireland Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/churchestablishmOOfree THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND. / / ( NOV i9lft THE V//''- OHUECH ESTABLISHMENT IN lEELAND. €hj Jfrwman's Icnrnal C^wJ Commission. FIAT JUSTITIA." DUBLIN: JAMES DUFFY, 15 WELLINGTON QUAY, AND LONDON: 22 PATERNOSTER ROW. 1868. DUBLIN : 2, Crampto.\-quat. TO THE PEOPLE OF THE CITY OF THE CONFEDERATION Cl^is JJolumc, AX HUMBLE EFFOET MADE DURING THE PARLIAMENTARY RECESS OF 1867 TO OBTAIK RELIGIOUS EQUALITY FOR THE IRISH NATION, IS BY THEIR FAITHFUL FRIEND ASD REPRESENTATIVE, JOHN GRAY. Fkbbmam's Joubnal, DuBLix, March, 1868. TABLE OF COxNTENTS. FIRST REPORT. TITHES. The pre-Reformation period— Catholic Ireland— Burke on English measures to sustain the supremacy of Rome — Dr. Brady and Froude on the introduction of Anglicanism, 18. Ecclesiastical revenues — Confiscation of monasteries — Site of Trinity <'ollege, 19. Tithes, 20. Dr. Doyle (J.K.L.) and Primate Beresford on the origin of tithes — the "splendid bribe" — fourfold division of tithes, 21. A variable, not a fixed charge, 22. Grattan on tithes — a tax on industry and not on property, 23, 24. Tithe bills — . Tithe Composition Act — nature of tithes still unchanged, '25. Tithe massacres — the million loan to the clergy and the bribe to the landlords-^the Act of 1838, 26. The Rural Dean of Connor- Tithes paid by tenant — Landlord a paid agent for collection, 27. Objects of " Our Church Commission," 28. The Presbyto ian Church — Regium Donum, 28, 29. The Penal code — past and present position and persecution suffered by the Catholic Church, 29, 30. SECOND REPORT. UNITED DIOCESES OF CASHEL, EMLY, AVATERFORD, AND LISMOBE. Cashel, 31. " The Rock," 32. Destruction of Catholic edifices, 33. Banishment of Catholics, 34. Religious denominations in Cashel, 35. The Palace, 36. Ecclesiastical history of the See, 37. See lands and their tenants, 39-41. Church Temporalities Act, 42. Population and religious denominations in united dioceses — Tabu - lar statement — Inchiquin's massacres — Parsons and the Court of Wards, 43. The penal laws, 44. Average cost per Anglican head, 45. Analy.sis of benefices, 46. Cost per Anglican head in twenty. five benefices, 47. Vlll TABLE OF CONTENTS. THIRD REPORT. UNITED DIOCESES OF CASHEL, EMLY, WATERFORD, AND LISMORE — Continued. Summary of Second Report, 49, 50. Churches and amount expended on. Church accommodation, 51, 52. Tabular statement of bene- fices, showing anomalies, 53. Particulars of the sixteen benefices which have no church, 54, 55 — Pluralists, the Archdeacon of Cashel, 55. The Rector of Killenaule, 56. The Rector of Toem. the Treasurer of Lismore — .the^Bishop, 57- The palace — the Most Rev, Dr. Leahy and the Incumbent of Thurles, 58. The Catho- lic Church — Persecution of Catholics, 59, 60. Catholic Church edifices, 61 — Educational Establishments, 62, 63. Present Condi- tion of the two Churches, 64. Execution of Dr. O'Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel, 65. FOURTH REPORT. DIOCESE OF MEATH. Aleath Diocese, ancient kingdom of Meath, 66. Area and population of diocese — Clonmacnoise, first and second Anglican Bishops — alienation of See lands, 67- Ancient sees of which Meath is now- composed — the nine benefices corresponding with these ancient sees, their Catholic population and income, 68. See lands of Meath, average receipts per acre, 69. Loftus and Dean Maguin- ness, alienators of See lands, 70. Population and religious deno- minations of the diocese, 70. Analysis of Anglican parochial population, 71, 72. Former and present number of churches — number of benefices — Catholic population of seven benefices com- pared with Anglicans in entire diocese, 72. Diocesan corps — revenue and average cost per Anglican head, 73. Dr. Stopford, — his family --the Coote family, 74. Anomalous patronage in the diocese, 74, 75. Table illustrative of proportion of duty to revenue, 75. Expenditure on See house — on churches — church accommodation, 76. Ardbraccan benefice — the palace, 77. Kells, SS. John and Mary, Kells — the Book of Kells, 78. Archdeacon De Lacy, 79, 80. Growth of Dissenters — growth of Catholicity, educational institutions, and amount expended by Catholics, 81, 82. FIFTH REPORT. UNITED DIOCESES OF OSSORY, FERNS, AND LEIGHLIN. " The City of the Confederation" — the Cathedral of Kilkenny, 83. St. Mary's of Ossory, 84. The Black Abbey, 85. Priories of TABLE OF CONTENTS. ix FIFTH REPORT —Continued. SS. Francis and John— Catholic spirit — New churches— the Most Rev. Dr. Walshe, 87- The Cant wells of Cantwells Court, 88, 89. Area of united dioceses — See lands, rent and actual value of— Episcopal income, 91. Population and religious deno- minations — Tabular statement — cost per Anglican family, 92. Most Rev. Dr. O'Brien, his " case," 93. Religious denomina- tions in Ossory, with per centages — Tabular statement, 94. Amount received by Dr. O'Brien during his episcopate, 95. Catholic Callan, sketch of— Position of Catholics, and cost per Anglican head therein, 97, 98, 99. Result, 100. Analysis of Anglican parochial population, 100, 101. Analysis of eighteen benefices, 102. Pluralists extraordinary, 103. Catholic educa- tion, St. Kyran's College— Leighlin College — St. Peter's, Wex- ford — Enniscorthy Grammar School, 104, 105, 106. SIXTH REPORT. UNITED DIOCESES OF CORK, CLOYNE, AND ROSS. Celebrated men of, 107, 108— Father Mathew, 108. The penal code in this district, 109, 110, 111. The Coppinger family, 112. Ec- clesiastical history of Cork — Failure of the Reformation in the South — Bishop Dixon, 113. Complaints of M'Grath and Loftus, 114. Population and religious denominations in the united dioceses — Tabular statement — Bishop Gregg's calumnies, 117. Area — See lands, average receipts per acre and their real value — the Boyle family, 118. Eleven Incumbents, and what they do, 119 to 123. Cloyne population and religious denominations in, with per centages, 124. Suspended benefices — Benefices with less than 25 and less than 50 Anglicans, 125. The solitary Anglican of Nathlash, and what he has cost in five years, 125. Analysis of Cloyne benefices, 127. Cost per Anglican family in forty- seven Cloyne benefices, 128. SEVENTH REPORT. UNITED DIOCESES OF CORK, CLOYNE, AND ROSS — Continued. Bandon-bridge — Historic sketch — Present aspect, social and religious, 129 to 132. Youghal— Raleigh— the potato, 133, 13-1. Prohibi- tion of Catholic education, 135. Spread of education, 136. Nano Nagle and the Presentation Order of Nuns — the Sisters of Mercy — The Sisters of Charity — Ursuline and Loretto Convents, 137. St. Coleman's College, Fermoy — Presentation Brothers' schools — TABLE OF CONTENTS. SEVENTH REPORT— Continued. Christian Brothers' schools, number of pupils, and cost of erec- tion, 138. Vinceiitian Fathers' schools, Sunday's Well — Analyti- cal summary of statistics, 139. Summary of former report, 140. Sum expended on Church fabrics, 141. Cost of Church requisites for six years, 142. Catholic Church in Cork, its progress and power, 144. Cost per Anglican family in united dioceses, 145. EIGHTH REPORT. UNITED DIOCESES OF KILMORE, ARDAGH, AND ELPHIN. Bedell, Bishop of Kilmore — Prayer of the Catholics over his grave, 146. Bedell, his life, imprisonment, and death — His letter to Laud, 147, 148, 149. Celebrated men connected with these dio- ceses, 150. Meaning of name — Counties comprised in diocese, l.oO. Varieties of race — ^See of Ardagh, 151. Ancient and modern Bishops, 152. War of 1641, and its causes — the penal code — Success and subsequent defeat of the Catholics — Anglican perse- cution, 153, 154, 155. Tabular statement of population and religious denominations in dioceses, 156. Comparison of Catho- lics in single benefices with Anglicans in dioceses, 157» 158. Diocesan corps, 158. Number of clergymen, 159. Analytical tabular statement of livings in united dioceses. See lands — See lands and sum received from — Episcopal tenants and their origin, 159. The Beresford family, 160, 161. Lines by Moore on Rev. Mr. Lyons and Primate Beresford, 162. The Maxwell family — the present Bishop, Dr. Verschoyle, 163. Analysis of fifteen benefices, 164. Result of attempt to force Anglicanism on the people, 165. NINTH REPORT. UNITED DIOCESES OF KILLALOE, CLONFERT, AND KILFENORA. Dr. Fitzgerald, the present Bishop, 166. " Brian the Brave" — the Palace of Kincora — Ancient churches of the diocese and their founders, 167, 168. Historic Sketch — Rinuccini — William III. the Union — Pitt — O'Connell — the Clare election— the "gallant forties," 169 to 172. Population and religious denominations^ with the per centages — Tabular statement — Kilfenora, 173, 174. Kilmacduagh, Clonfert, 175. The Irish Church Missions and the Rector of Aughrim, 176. " Romantic statistics" — Counties in- cluded in diocese, 177. Analysis of Anglican parochial popula- tion — the See House — Episcopal income and patronage, 188. TABLE OF CONTENTS. NINTH REPORT— Continued. Anomalous patronage — the Cathedral of Killaloe — Sum expended on churches — Episcopal and parochial revenue, 179. Tabular statement showing anomalies in benefices, 180. Statistical review —translation of Bishops to more opulent Sees, 181. Growth and progress of the Catholic Church, 182, 183. Summary, 183, 184. TENTH REPORT. UNITED DIOCESES OF ARNAGH AND CLOGHER. Essentially a Catholic district, 185. Plantation of Ulster, 186, 187, 188, 189. Tenant-right of Ulster, its origin, 189, 190. Popu- lation and religious denominations in united dioceses — Tabular statement, 191. Ditto in the five borough towns, 192. Analy- sis of Anglican parochial population— seven livings, and the Catholics therein — Ecclesiastical endowments — Average per benefice and per Anglican clergyman, 193. The Primate — his dignitaries, 194. Anglican and Catholic Archbishops of Armagh — Persecution of Catholic Bishops, 195. Good- acre — Adam Loftus and his mode of conversion— his reward, 196, 197. Ulster Tenant-right, 198. Letter of Bishop Oliver Plunkett, 198, 199. Historical events in these dioceses — Battle of Bealanathbuy — of Benburb, 199. Ussher — the " Judgment of the Bishops," 200, 201. The Beresfords, 201, 202, 203. Anglican and Catholic Bishops of Clogher, 203. The Palace, and sum expended on it — number of clergymen, and value of livings, 204. Analysis of twenty livings — Tabular statement — Livings in the gift of Trinity College — Tabular statement, 205. Sinecures — See lands and their tenants, 206 — Glebe lands — Churches, and sum expended on, 207. Church requisites — Pres- byterians and other Dissenters — Regium Donum, 208. Develop- ment of Catholicity in these dioceses, 208, 209. ELEVENTH REPORT. UNITED DIOCESES OF DOWN, CONNOR, AND DROMORE. Home of Presbyterianism— the " bounty," 211. Landing of Presby- terian congregations — Templecorran — Holy wood, 212. Spread of Presbyterianism in these dioceses, and its cause, 213, 214. Dis- tribution of Presbyterians — the Regium Donum, 214, 215. Popu- lation of and religion in united dioceses — Tabular statement, 216. Distribution of Protestants of all denominations in Ireland — Tabular statement illustrative of their local character, 217- Xll TABLE OF CONTENTS. ELEVENTH REPORT— Continued. Analysis of this table, 218, 219, 220. Expulsion of Catholics and their return to this district, 221, 222. Proportion of Catholics in Shankill parish to Anglicans in six of the Ecclesiastical divisions — to aggregate in 1 1 dioceses — to Presbyterians in 26 counties, 223. Dissenters — Income of united dioceses, 224. The Palace — Diocesan corps, 225. Number of Livings — number of clergymen — Proportion of Anglicans to each Living — to each clergyman — value of Livings — See lands, their tenants and their origin, 226. Sum expended on churches, 227. Exempt jurisdiction of Newry and Morne, 228, 229. Anglican and Catholic Bishops of Down and Connor, 229, 230. Ditto Dromore, 230. Toleration and subsequent persecution of Presbyterians, 231. Persecution of Catholics, 232. The Presbyterian church— Regium Donum, 232, 233, 234. Transplantation of Catholics — Official instruction relative to, 235. Their journey to the West, 236, 237, 238. TWELFTH REPORT. UNITED DIOCESES OF TUAM, KILLALA, AND ACHONRY. Counties comprised in— Area— first Bishop— The Cathedral, 239. Population and religious denominations — Tabular statement, 240. Analysis of Anglican parochial population — Episcopal and paro- chial population — cost per Anglican family, 241. Five last Bishops— Lord Bishop Plunket and the amount he received, 242. Anglican and Catholic Bishops, 243. Archbishop M'Hale — See lands and their tenants, 244. Condition of Tuam town, 244, 245, 246. Diocesan corps and number of clergymen — immense extent of somebenefices, 246. Proportion of Anglicans to Catholics in eight benefices — Tabular statement, 247. Analysis of some benefices, showing Anglicans, Catholics, value and cost per Angli- can family thereon, 248. Transportation of priests to Island of Buffin — Order to Colonel Sadlier — Kilmoylan benefice, 249. Churches and sura expended on, 250. Missionary Associations — " The Irish Society" — " The Society for Irish Church Missions to Roman Catholics" — West Connaught Church Endowment Society"— " Irish and Coast Society," 250, 252, 253. The Bishop of Winchester, Canon Wordsworth, Dr. Stopford, Rev. Mr. Garnett, and Archbishop Trench on the working of these Societies — Dr. Stopford's statistics examined, 255, 256, 257. Population and religious denominations in 1834 and 1861, 257. Analysis of these statistics, 258, 259. Hon. and Rev. Mr. Plunket's " short visit," 259. Cromwellian Transplantation^ 259. Persecution of Catholics, 260. Summary of Missionary labours, 261, 262, 263. Tuam Mission-house song, 262, 263. TABLE OF CONTENTS. Xlll THIRTEENTH REPORT. UNITED DIOCESES OF DERRT AND RAPHOE. The siege, 264, 265. Historical sketch, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269. Area of and counties comprised in united dioceses, 269. Devas- tations by Mountjo}-, 270. Treaty of Melifont, 271 — its violation — the Act of Uniformity — Condition of counties included in these dioceses at opening of the 17th century, 272. *' The flight of the Earls" — execution of Sir Phelim M'Devitt — seizure of Innishowea by Chichester, 273. Plantation of Derry — Bishop Montgomery, 274. Patronage of Trinity College — importation of Anglican and Presbyterian congregations, 275. Glebe lands, 276. Angli- can and non- Anglican population of united dioceses, 277. Popu- lation and religious denominations — Tabular statement — income of united dioceses — See lands, 278, Cost per Anglican family in twelve benefices, 279. Livings in the gift of Trinity College — Glebe lands and tithes of — Anglicans and Catholics therein, 280, 281. Catholic population in these and six other benefices, 282. Religious denominations in Londonderry city, 283. Toleration and subsequent persecution of Presbyterians — their petition to the Long Parliament, 284, 235. Absentee Incumbents, 285. Foreign character of Anglican Church, 286. Amount expended on churches — Bishop Campbell — Montgomery — his private memoir, 287. Bishops Babington, Hampton, Farmer, and Dowuham, 288. Complaint of Bishop Downham and his persecution of Catholics, 289. Growth of Catholicity, 290, 291. FOURTEENTH REPORT. UNITED DIOCESES OF LIMERICK, ARDFERT, AND AGHADOE. Historical Sketch, 292-9. St. Minchin, 293. Destruction of Ecclesi. astical edifices, 294. Walter Wesley and his descendants — Bishop Casey and their descendants, 294, 295. The Cathedral and its vicissitudes, 295, 296, 298. Early history of Limerick, 298. The first "church mission," 299. Lord Leonard Grey, his banquet to the Geraldines, and its ending, 299, 300. Introduction of Angli- canism into Ireland, 301. The Lord Deputy's mode of evangeli- sing these districts — his letter, 302, 303, 304. Struggles of the Catholics against the new dogma, 305. Siege of Limerick by Ireton — Bishops and priests condemned to death by him Transplantation of Catholics, 306. Siege by William Treaty of Limerick — its violation — the penal code, 307, 308. Popula- tion and religious denominations — Tabular statement, 309. Analysis of Anglican parochial population, 310. Parishes with XIV TABLE OF CONTENTS. FOURTEENTH REF OUT— Contu^ued. less than twenty-five Anglicans — Catholics therein, 311, 312. Analysis of twenty-seven benefices — Tabular statement, 313. See lands, 314, Sum expended on churches — Protestant dissent in these dioceses, 315. Ardcanny and Adare benefices, 316. The Precentor of Limerick and his various appointments, 317. Catholic spirit — growth of churches, convents, schools, 318, 319. Birth place of O'Connell — the wild geese — first relaxation of penal code, 320, 321. FIFTEENTH REPORT. UNITED DIOCESES OF DDBLIN, GLENDALODGH, AND KILDARE. Dublin metropolis of Pale, 332. Glendalough — Historic sketch of — ancient city and diocese, 322, 323, 324. Kildare, 324. Dublin — growth of the See, 325. George Browne, first Anglican Arch- bishop, 326. The Supremacy act — confiscation of monasteries. 327. Spiritual peers removed from parliament, 328. Confisca- tion of the monastery of Thomas Court (the Liberties) — Chief Justice Brabazon and Lord Meath — a retrospect and a prospect, 328, 322. Lord Deputy Grey's Evangelising Campaigns, 329. Browne and the Lord Deputy, 330, 331. Destruction of Catholic relics, 332. Appointment of Curwin as Archbishop by Mary — continued by Elizabeth. 333. Expulsion and death of Leverous, Bishop of Kildare, 333. Banishment of Walsh, Bishop of Meath Loftus, 334. Foundation of Trinity College, 335. Persecu- tion, torture, and execution of Dr. O'Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel — letters to Walsingham — Stephen's Green — Catholic University, 336 to 343. SIXTEENTH REPORT. DUBLIN, GLENDALOUGH, AND KILDARE — Continued. Sir John Perrot, Lord Deputy, and the " mass-mongers," 344. Death of Loftus, 345. ''Obstinate papists" and "church papists" — Demoralised condition of Anglican church, 345. Paucity of Anglicans outside Dublin, 346. Sir John Davies on the state of the church, and his character of churchmen — Earnestness and numbers of Catholics, 347. The town bellman and the parochial appointments, 348. The Bishop of Derry on desecration of churches — The vicar keeps a tenis court in one — maids and apprentices in Christ Church, 349. Foreign relations influence the persecutions, 350. Ussher and his policy produce the national TABLE OF CONTENTS. XV SIXTEENTH REFORT— Continued. war of 1640 — Dublin Aldermen fined for non-conformity — " Papist clergy" ordered into exile, 351. Tlie successors of Loftus, 351, 352, 353. Anglican Archbishop Bulkoley heads the military to hunt priests — is beaten off — Cook-street Chapel demolished — fifteen others closed, 353, 354. The three immediate successors of Browne— active Episcopal persecution for 100 years, 354, 355. Catholic population of Dublin in early part of 17th century — National government in Kilkenny, 355. Loyal to the King as to religious freedom — hopes of freedom defeated by intrigue — Cromwell's iron hail storm — thet ransplantation — the " crow's nest" and Catholic University — School of medicine, 356, 357. Lord Trimbleston's tomb — Dublin Catholics all conform save *' one," 257, 258. Expulsion of *' popish coopers" and " popish shoemakers" who had not conformed in time — forty-three popish artificers permitted to live in Clonmel — the number limited in Kilkenny to forty — all transplanted from Dublin, 358, 359. Present population, 360. Statistics, 361, 368. Voluntary Anglican churches, 369. Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness and St. Patrick's, 370. SEVENTEENTH REPORT. VOLUNTARYISM. Catholic Church a voluntary association as regards the state — Its position as regards its own members — Its Constitution — number of Bishoprics, 372. Number of Parishes — Number of Parish Priests and of Curates, 373. The Regular Clergy, 374. Number of mon- asteries and convents and their inmates, 375, The Monks of the third order of St. Francis, 376. The Christian Brothers — Tithe rent-charge and who pays it — Sum expended on erection of build- ings in 28 dioceses since 1860, 377- Total sum sospent, 378. Annual Revenue — Episcopal revenue, 379, 380. Parochial re- vemie, 380, 381. Support of Regular Clergy, 382. Maintenance of churches, 382,383, Manitenance of hospitals, orphanages, etc., 383, 384. Maintenance of colleges, schools, etc., 384, 385. Main- tenance of Christian Brother schools, 385, 386. Omissions in these calculations, 386. Summary of Catholic expenditure in Ireland since 1800, 387. PREFACE. The following papers on the Established Church in Ireland appeared in the Freemaris Journal during the late Parliamentary recess, under the head " Our Church Commission." At the request of the eminent publisher under whose auspices they now appear in a more permanent form, I sought for, and obtained, the permission of the conductors of that Journal to collect and issue them in a Volume. Early in the last Session the question of the Irish Church was brought before the House of Commons by the Member for Kilkenny city. His motion, that the House do go into Committee on the subject, was defeated, on the previous question being moved, by the narrow majority of twelve. That result was univer- sally accepted as an indication that in the opinion of tlie country the time had come for permanently set- tling the future political and social status of the An- glican Church in Ireland. The announcement made by Lord Derby during the same Session, that he had resolved to issue a Royal Commission to enquire into 2 PREFACE. the position of the Irish Church, afforded conclusive evidence that the postponement of discussion was the only means by which ministers hoped to be able to pro- long the existence of the Church Establishment. As the Session advanced, this feeling became more and more distinctly impressed on the public mind, and before the Session closed, it was the settled conviction of the Liberal party that the Royal Commission was intended solely as a means of securing, for yet a little time, postponement of the inevitable issue between the rival principles of sectarian ascendancy for a few, and perfect religious equality for all. Some months elapsed after the Session closed, and, the Government Commission being yet unissued, there appeared in the Freeman s Journal of the 24th of September, 1867, an article, to which more than ordinary prominence was given, announcing that the conductors of that Journal, after careful and anxious consideration, had resolved to issue a commission to examine into, and report on, the past history and present condition of the Established Church in Ireland, as a political and social institution. To the position confided to me in connexion with that Commission, rather than to any special fitness I can claim to possess, I attribute my being asked by the Pub- lisher to superintend this issue of the collected results of " The Freeman s Journal Church Commission^ The personal relation in which I stood towards the PREFACE. 3 author of '^Our Church Commission," as well as my intimate acquaintance with every detail of the working out of the project, enables me to say that the chief objects aimed at were: — the recording, in as concise a form as was consistent with clearness, the origin of the Anglican Church in each locality— the progress made — the means used to secure that progress — the statistics of its present position as to the absolute numbers of its adhe- rents and as to the gross charge it entails on the public — and the demonstration thereby that, though more critical enquiry might increase our knowledge as to minor details, no further information was requisite for the determina- tion of the principle on which future legislation on the subject ought to be based, and that, in the interest of the Empire as well as of Ireland, no further delay in arriving at that determination should be tolerated. It was conceived that general statements as to the means used to establish Anglicanism in Ireland, how- ever accurate and unexaggerated, could not create that distinct and well-defined impression which a special fact, associated with the names of the actors and of the locality in which it occurred, and the date of the event, never fails to produce. Each of the twelve Ecclesiastical divisions into which the Establishment is territorially divided was, for this reason, separately dealt with. Each locality had its own peculiar history — a separate date to which the introduc- 4 PREFACE. tion of the new form of faith within its hmits could be assigned — a separate apostle — and its own special inci- dents and circumstances. The character of the men who went forth to evancrelize — the acjencies used to convince or to convert — the amount and nature of the resistance offered — and, the moral aspect in which the new faith was presented, were not the same in any two localities; and each of these particulars was calculated to impart distinct phases to the progress, and to the final result, of the attempted reformation. In Limerick, the sword of the Lord Deputy was the first evangelizing agency employed. The policy of forcing the natives into "conformity" was adhered to throughout in that district, save in the case of the abortive transplantation. Force begat resistance, and the last military effort of the Irish nation to secure freedom of worship was made around the walls of that patriotic city. In Ulster, the process was different, and the special characteristics of the result were determined by the process adopted. The crushing of the native septs of Ulster, by fire, sword, arid artificially-created famine, which followed on " the flight of the Earls," gave James I absolute control over the district; and, having seized for the alleged treason of Tyrowen and TyitcoN- NELL, lands in which they had only a life estate, he evicted the native occupants, and "planted," over the PREFACE. 5 broad lands of Catholic Ulster, English and Scotch colonists " well affected in religion." The extirpation, not the conversion, of the Northern Catholics, was the chief agency relied on for the evan- gelisation of Ulster; and Anglicanism was propagated in that province by colonisation, rather than by the forced conformity of the natives. The siege of Derry and the siege of Limerick are evidences of the different results of these different processes. The descendants of the colonists" who plundered, and of the ^' natives" who were plundered, obeying the immutable law of nature, took their respec- tive sides with the same elective precision with which the atoms of chemical reagents obey the laws of affinity. In the South, a few bold adventurers possessed them- selves by confiscation of the lands of the local chiefs, and Anglicanism depended for its ^' congregations" on the forcing of the Catholics, whose labour they required, by fine and imprisonment, and the terrors of still greater penalties, to assume the aspect of conformity. In the Plantation counties of Ulster, the natives, forced to conform like their brethren in Munster, were driven to the heights of the barren mountains, to make room for the vast congregations and their ministers who were imported to be *' planted" in the rich plains and vacant churches. Even at this day, a tourist could in many dis- tricts tell, by looking at his aneroid barometer, whether (j PREFACE. he Stood in a Catholic Celtic village or in the village of imported Protestant colonists and their descendants. In the South and West, the Catholic, bereft of his property and forced to conform, retained the semblance of adherence while the naked sword hung over his head. In the North, Scotch and English colonists, fanatics in zeal, had their convictions confirmed by the rich plunder conferred on them. The exclusive privi- leges bestowed on their descendants naturally secured their devotion to a system w^hich conducted their fathers to a land flowing with milk and honey, and promised to secure it to their own posterity from generation to generation. These instances illustrate the motives which deter- mined the policy that each district should be specially examined, or be grouped with districts essentially ana- logous in the general character of the mode of intro- ducing, and of propagating, the "alien" system. It was hoped, that, by this arrangement, the various phases presented by Anglicanism in Ireland would be reflected in the several sections or reports now^ collected in this volume. The colonisation method of rooting Anglicanism in Ireland is illustrated by the northern dioceses- The modern system of proselytism is illustrated by Tuam. The savage use of torture and of punishment in person and in property is illustrated by Dublin — the various PREFACE. 7 j liases of the Penal Code are brought out by reference to local events in other dioceses — the series being designed to develop in the form of local reports the ^^eral characteristics of the system as a whole. The dealing with subjects as they presented, them- selves in each locality — the absence of obtruding for- mality — of rigid adherence to routine — of an effort either to systematise by rule or to draw general con- clusions from local facts, were the special features aimed at in these papers. It was equally a portion of the original plan, that the several parts should be framed with such scrupulous regard to unity of purpose and design that while each paper might possess such an amount of completeness as regards the locality to be treated of, and the features to be developed, as not to require the aid of another to give it purpose and mean- ing, it might also form a consistent part of one whole. The persistent effort to force the religion of the ' conquerors" on the " conquered" has been the fatal b.under of the Irish policy of England from the days of Henry VIII to those of Victoria. That policy per- vaded, coloured, and influenced every measure of the Legislature, every act of the Executive, and even the most minute detail of municipal regulation. The laws affecting property were tainted by it — the relations be- tveen landlord and tenant were corrupted by it — the domestic affections were severed — parental authority 8 PREFACE. was set aside — the son was put against his father, and the wife against her husband — the holiest of ties were loosened and the most sacred obligations set at nought to sustain that policy. That policy has at various times assumed different forms, but the object has been ever the same. In the days of Henry and Elizabeth confiscation, torture, and death, were the agencies employed, under Episcopal supervision, for producing " conformity" amongst the native Irish and the Catholics of the Pale. In the days of James I, to sweep the land as with a besom and plant it with stranger colonists was the main feature of Eng- land's Irish policy — the enforcing of conformity amongst the natives, though persistently carried out, being sub- sidiary to the bolder idea of supplanting them and their faith in their own land by colonising it with strangers. Cromwell battered, and stormed, and butchered, to bring "this savage people to a knowledge of salvation," and shut them up behind the Shannon, as a herdsman would fold off the plague-stricken to prevent the spread of infection while the cure of the distempered was being effected. After the Revolution, the more civilised pro- cess was adopted of banishing the priests and dooming the people to ignorance by statute. These laws were counteracted by the mountain mass" and the '* hedge- school," from which the " felonious" worshippers and the stealthy scholars could alike scatter over the fielcfe, PREFACE. 9 leaving behind no visible evidence of their '^guilty" and criminar' practices, whenever the trusted scouts gave warning that the hunters were on the trail. Under this regime the son was taucrht to rob his father — the wife to betray her husband — the mother to desert her children — hypocrisy and treachery were exalted and rewarded as the highest virtues — paternal obe- dience, and truth and honour in the social and family circle, were dealt with as offences against the law, and the interests of " religion." But whatever phase the persecution assumed, the leaders and principal in- stigators were the Anglican Prelates under the Mon- archy, and the Puritan preachers under the Common- wealth. The traditionary knowledge of these facts to no small extent explains the deep sense of wrong univer- sally felt by Catholics at the continued political and social supremacy of a creed, which owes its existence in this country to the injustice and cruelty practised by its first teachers on the native population and on their spiritual instructors. In our day, the motto of Anglicanism is, " Don't coerce but educate" them into " conformity." Open and avowed proselytism has been abandoned by the State, and, indeed, by all, save a few fanatics; but " conformity" is still eagerly sought by other means, and many of our most liberal men are the unconscious agents of the policy, ^yhatever may be said in favour 10 PREFACE. of having youtlis of different persuasions brought into contact in schools, colleges, or universities, no reflect- ing mind can fail to see that instruction in " common Christianity" is, in fact, instruction in Protestantism. Catholicism is ^' common Christianity " plus the special dogmas of the Catholic faith. Protestantism is Catho- licism minus these special dogmas, or, in other words, " common Christianity." To teach " common Chris- tianity" to all youth is therefore, in fact, to educate to- wards " conformity and the objections to this stealthily instilled " conformity" constitute, in reality, the edu- cation question of the day in Ireland — the old Church question in another form; The financial injustice involved in allowing the small minority of about one-eighth to monopolise the entire Ecclesiastical revenues of the country, is a grievance so palpable that no denunciation of it in terms could be stronger than the mere statement of the fact. In several of the dioceses there are large numbers of the parishes in which there is not a single Anglican, and these are not, as has been represented, small and insig- nificant civil districts, in which the absence of Anglicans is due to the general absence of populations of any mag- nitude. In one diocesan division — Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe — in the Report on which is given the popu- lation of a group of parishes that do not contain one Anglican, the Catholic population of the same parishes PRKFACE. 11 actually exceeds by more than a thousand the entire Anglican population of the united dioceses. Far more important, however, as an illustration of the financial anomaly, are the tables showing the large number of henefices in which the Anglican population amounts only to one, two, three, or five families, and in which the cost to the public ranges from twenty to fifty, eighty, and up to one hundred or more pounds per annum, for the spiri- tual instruction of each Anglican family. In order not to extend this Preface beyond reasonable limits, I have, instead of grouping the results of these tables here, to refer the reader to the several Reports, and to ask him to analyse and group the tables for himself. The financial anomalies that exist within the Estab- ishment, and the financial wrong inflicted on the Irish nation by the confiscation of all the property conferred by Catholic benefactors on the ancient Irish Church, and bestowing it, together with the local revenue raised in each parish from the general public, on the ecclesiastical teachers of a small minority — unendurable as they are — are as nothing compared with the sense of indignity felt at the continuance of the badge of con- quest, and the brand of degradation, which Church ascendancy, and the denial of perfect religious equality, involve. Till these be removed there will not be, there cannot be, there ought not be, contentment in Ireland. The Church question lies at the root of all the other 12 PREFACE. grievances of Ireland. Like many of the deep-seated diseases to which the human frame is liable, this great social evil developes itself in many forms, and produces many distressing symptoms. The education grievance and the desire to protestantise the people of Ireland, has its root in the anxiety to create congregations for the Established Church, and to maintain its ten rotation Peerages, with their large attached incomes, and its fifteen hundred offices of dignity and emolument, as rich prizes for the younger sons of the eight thousand individuals whose progenitors, by means of the Church, sprang, per saltern, into the ownership of the soil of Ireland. The obstacles to a fair settlement of the land grievance — a symptom more distressing than the origi- nal disease itself — have their origin in the same root. The Church must be sustained, and political power to sustain it must not be permitted to pass from the hands of those whom the Church allows to possess the ancient Episcopal lands of the nation, at mere nominal rents, as their fee for services done for, and expected by, the Church. The skilful physician often deems it necessary to devote his attention first to the removal of the acute sympathetic symptoms which immediately threaten the life of his patient. The statesman who looks only to symptoms may deem it prudent to deal first with the land or with the education question ; but, as the skilled phy- sician would not content himself with abating symptoms PREFACE. 13 without also eradicating tlieircause, so must the states- man who aims at the permanent pacification of Ireland, while removing every dangerous symptom developed in the body politic by the action of the original virus, aim at the eradication of the fons et origo malorum,'' as his final and not remote triumph. . Since the first pages of this Preface were written, one of England's most distinguished statesmen has retired from the conduct of public affairs, and nominated his lieutenant as his successor. In the elevation of that successor to a position of greater power than belongs to a king — England, Ireland, Europe, will recognise the just reward of genius, perseverance, boldness. When occupying a position in which he could less afford to exhibit freedom of conception and boldness of design, the distinguished statesman who is now Prime Minister of this great Empire described the Established Church in Ireland as an ^' alien Church" — indicated that the only seeming remedy — revolution" — was rendered im- possible by the position in which England stood in rela- tion to this country, and pronounced the great truth, that it was the duty of a "strong Government" to effect for Ireland, by wise and bold legislation, all that could be accomplished by a successful revolution. Mr. Dis- raeli is now in power; and if he believe that his Government is not sufficiently strong to free Ireland from the incubus of '^an alien Church" — if he have 14 PREFACE. the courage and self-reliance to act, as he once had the boldness to speak, the nation will supply him strength to triumph. These papers were published at stated intervals in a widely circulated Journal during the past five months. Several communications were received — some complain- ing of the object aimed at, others strongly condemning the policy of the Commission, but not one correcting any material statement, historical or statistical. Two or three minor personal corrections only were made — a fact which I venture to refer to as an indication, if not a proof, of the care with wdiich every important detail was investigated, and the statistical tables compiled and 'Brranged, as a portion of the duty the responsibility of which devolved on me. I cannot conclude without acknowledging the assis- tance received from valued friends during the progress of this work. To each of them I beg to tender publicly the thanks already endeavoured to be expressed in private, for their co-operation. The important and interesting paper on " Voluntary- ism," as exemplified in the working of the Catholic Church in Ireland, is wholly a contributed paper, the production of one who has already earned high distinc- tion in the service of his country, and is, no doubt, destined to accomplish still greater services. FREFACE. 15 The generous encouragement received from the English and Scotch Liberal Press, especially of London, Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, and the cordial support accorded to the labours of " The Commission" by the Provincial Press of Ireland, demand the warmest acknowledgments. E. G. THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND. BY THE COMMISSIONERS or THE freeman's JOURNAL. FIRST REPORT. TITHES. That dense population in extreme distress inhabited an island where there was an Established Church which was not their Church, and a territorial aristocracy, the richest of whom lived in dis- tant capitals. Thus they had a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien church, and, in addition, the weakest executive in the world. That was the Irish question. Well, then, what would honorable gentlemen say if they were read- ing of a country in that position ? They would say at once— the remedy is revolution — Right Hon. B. Disraeli Hansard, vol 72, p. 1016. The Anglican Church Establishment in Ireland has passed through so many phases during the three cen- turies and a quarter of its existence that, in order to avoid needless repetition, it seems advisable to make our First Report a brief summary of some of the leading facts and modifications which preceded and led to the form and condition which that Institution now presents to the inquirer. The ludicrous question raised by a distinguished member of the Judicial Bench, as to whether or not St. Patrick was a Protestant, cannot be entered into, as such enquiry might trench on the 18 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND. forbidden ground of polemics. The result of the inquiry, if admissible, would, however, be of very little impor- tance, as it is confessed by even the most zealous Anglican advocates that the Bishops, Priests, and People of Ireland were one and all Catholics in com- munion with, and acknowledging the supreme authority of the See of Rome, when the Reformation was com- menced in England ; that the Anglican system forced on this country, as a matter of State policy, was never accepted by the Irish Prelates and Clergy as a body, and that the Irish people steadily resisted it, suffering the most dire persecutions because of their refusal to accept the State Creed. Burke — whose statue will shortly adorn the Elizabethan University, and whose authority can hardly be questioned by the divines of that distin- guished seat of learning —states that from the Invasion of Reformation the Kings of England and their Irish Deputies and Officials aided in sustaining the universal recognition of the supremacy of Rome. They omitted," he says, no measures of force or " policy to sustain the Papal authority with all the " distinguishing articles of religion connected with it, " and to make it take deep root in the minds of the " people over whom they exercised authority in Ire- ^' land." The recent historical controversy conducted with such ability by the Rev. Maziere Brady, D.D., Pro- testant Hector of Donoughpatrick, and Froude, the celebrated historian, determines the fact that, to intro- duce Anglicanism, the managers of the Reformation had to import Bishops from England and intrude them TITHES. 19 into the Sees, from the temporalities of which the Non- conforming Irish Bishops were driven by force. Accepting, then, the historical fact that the Anglican system was imported into this country in the sixteenth century, it is desirable to ascertain what ^as the desti- nation of the Ecclesiastical Revenues of Ireland prior to that period. The Ecclesiastical Revenues consisted of Landed Property in the shape of Bishops' or See Lands, Glebe Lands, Cathedral, Abbey, and Monastic Lands, and Tithes. These were all enjoyed by the Catholic Church and people, for there were in Ireland at that period no professing Christians who were not Catholics in com- munion with the See of Rome. The Irish Chieftains outside " the Pale," and the English rulers of the Pale," concurring in nothing else, agreed in one parti- cular — they all professed the same creed, acknowledged allegiance to the same Ecclesiastical Superior, and, in their relations with the Catholic Church of Ireland, adopted the same policy — the maintaining and securing- for the Catholic Ecclesiastical body the revenues then and now known as ^' Church Property." The several classes of Church Lands, the Bishops' Lands, the lands belonging to Religious Houses and Foundations, and the Glebe Lands allotted to the Parochial Clergy, were all in the occupation of the Secular and Regular Clergy and of the Catholic Houses or Communities at the opening of the 16th century. The Bishops' Lands and Glebes situated within the Pale, so far as the Royal authority was able to effect it, were handed over at once to the imported Anglican Clergy and Ecclesiastics, 20 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND. or to those who conformed to the imported faith ; while the Abbey and Monastic Lands belonging to the Catholic Religious Houses and Communities were, for the most part, seized by the Crown, and sold or distributed as payment for supposed services amongst its retainers and adherents. Some of these confiscated lands were conferred on individuals whose families or transferees now enjoy them as private domains, and some on public bodies, as the Monastery Lands of All Saints, on which Trinity College now stands, to the Anglicanized Cor- poration of Dublin, who further to advance the Refor- mation, granted a part of the property as a site for the Elizabethan Seminary. In the local reports these lands and their appropriation will be occasionally referred to under their different heads. The Tithe Revenue, however, stands in a somewhat different position, and has, from time to time, assumed so many various phases that a more extended notice of it here is essential. Antiquarians may dispute at their leisure as to the period at which the system of Tithes was first introduced into Ireland. It formed a portion of the Jewish Ecclesiastical polity, and was adopted at a very early period of the Christian Church. The Irish records of earlier centuries were not preserved with great care, and so few of those which were preserved survived the sack and pillage of internal strife, and the fire and sword of foreign invasion, that it is difficult to affirm at what time the formal recognition of Tithes occurred. Two remarkable men, however, one a dis- tinguished Catholic Prelate, whose name will be immor- tal in Ireland — Dr. Doyle, Bishop of Kildare and TITHES. 21 Leighlin — the other, the present Primate of the Angli- can Church in Ireland — seem to agree as to the date of the more formal recognition and general enforcement of the system, and the date on which they agree may therefore be reasonably adopted for all practical pur- poses. Dr. Doyle attributes the general enforcement of Tithes to the time of Henry II., while he speaks of them as having been partially adopted previously ; and Dr. Beresford, Archbishop of Armagh, speaks of them as part of " the splendid bribe given by Henry II. for *' the purpose of inducing the Irish Church" to acknow- ledge the supremacy of the Pope, and his right to make a grant of Ireland to the English King. By a strange process of logic the Lord Primate concludes that this same "splendid bribe" belongs now of right to the Anglican Church, whose special and distinguishing dogma is a denial of the supremacy of the See of Rome. The uses to which Tithes were allocated, and the precise character of the Tithes themselves, are, however, topics of far more importance to this inquiry than the date of their introduction. These uses were confessedly four-fold — one part was allocated to the building and maintenance of the Church fabrics, one to the support of the Clergy, one to that of the Episcopacy, and one for the poor. While the Tithes were enjoyed by the Catholic Church these divisions were adhered to, and the poor were generously relieved out of that public fund. So long as that rule prevailed there was no need of Poor Laws either in this country or in England. The transfer to the Anglican Church, how- ever, at once altered this four-fold appropriation. The 22 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND. poor were no longer cared for, the Church fabrics were suffered to fall into ruin, and the Tithes of Ireland w'ere deemed too little for the personal requirements of the imported and conforming Clergy. It is above all important to determine ah initio as a matter of fact what Tithes were, and what property was subject to the impost. This is essential, as the most strenuous efforts have been persistently made of late to lead the public to believe that Tithes are paid by the owners of landed property alone, that the}' con- stitute a rent-charge on the land, and are not in any way paid by the tenantry. This strange hallucination is pushed to the extent of asserting that they are paid as a rule by the members of the Anglican faith — that Catholics, Presbyterians, and Dissenters do not pay more than one-ninth of the entire, and that even that ninth they do not really pay, as they for the most part ov\'n land not by inheritance but by purchase, and bought their lands subject to this rent-charge, and therefore did not pay for the portion represented by the Tithe Rent-charge. This ingenious but fallacious argument renders it necessary to trace the Tithe system throug its several stages, a process that will conclusively de- monstrate that Tithes were a variable and uncertain charge upon the industry of the agricultural population, and that the amount increased or diminished annually in proportion to the extent of that industry and the fruits reaped therefrom. It will also demonstrate that the Tithe Composition was a compromise for that annual variance based on averages, and that the present Rent-charge is a composition on that composition by TITHES. 23 which the landlord has become the Tithe Proctor for an agency fee of 25 per cent., giving, as security to the Incumbent for punctual collection and payment, a first- charge upon the fee-simple of his land. " Uncertainty," said Grattan, when pleading for the adoption of a modus for the rating of Tithes as a means of checking the extortions practised on the humble farmers — " un- *' certainty aggravates that oppression, the full tenth " ever must be uncertain as well as oppressive, for it is "the fixed proportion of a fluctuating quantity, and ** unless the High Priest can give law to the winds, and " ascertain the harvest, the Tithe, like the harvest, must ** be uncertain." The mode adopted by the Anglican Incumbents for collecting Tithes in Ireland against which Grattan then protested in an exclusively Pro- testant Parliament, possessed, however, features more objectionable than its uncertainty. It was made a direct tax on the industry of the peasant, a penalty on labour, a prohibition against agricultural improvement, an exaction from the humble cottagers who cultivated the soil in favour of the wealthy owners who grazed bullocks on their rich pastures. The poor man's potato garden, his plot of flax, his rick of turf, his corn, his hay — all had to pay Tithe to the Anglican Incumbent, from whom he received no " blessing" in return ; but the wealthy proprietors, the men of that class who now boast that they generously pay all the Tithe themselves, exempted their own sheep walks and grass farms from Tithe by a special Act of Parliament, which abolished the Tithe of agistment. It was when denouncing the impediment to improvement and the oppression of this 24 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND. tax on industrial labour that Grattan used the memo- rable words, " Conceive the Pastor looking over the hedge like a spy to mulct the extraordinary labour of " the husbandman. Conceive him coming into the ^' field and saying, ' You are a deserving husbandman. ^' ' You have increased the value of this field by the ^' ' sweat of your brow. Sir, I will make you pay for *' ' that. I will take your tenth sheaf, and, if you chose ^' ' to vex me, your tenth hen, and your tenth egg, and ' your tenth goose.' Not so with the Apostles." The practice of tithing differed in various parts of Ireland at this time. In the Catholic South the practice at the close of the last century was to take the Tithe of potatoes, of hay, of flax, of everything produced by the humble farmer. In the semi-Protestant North, hay, flax, and potatoes were exempt. But Grattan did not venture to hope for equal justice for North and South, and in the bill he then prepared for flxing a modus for tithing, in Munster it was proposed that the Tithe of the five principal items of agricultural produce should be valued — potatoes at 6s., wheat at 6s., barley at 5s., meadow at 3s., and oats at 3s. per acre. The abolition of the Tithe of agistment, which freed some of the richest land in Ireland from the impost, and the whole practice of the Proctor, whether he carted off the tenth sheaf, and the tenth potato, and the tenth lamb, and the tenth pig of the cottager, or took a money com- promise in lieu therefor, demonstrate that Tithe was in fact a tax not of a tenth of the value of the land, a tax not on the land at all, but a tax of a tenth on the year's produce of the industry of the population, and on the TITHES. 25 year's increase of their stock. It was not a land tax — it was a tax on the labour of the peasant, and as such it was universally hated by the Irish people. It was the last item in the fiscal list of tenant oppressions — the culminating point which goaded the peasantry into tumultuous risings and outrages on person and on property. Half the time of the Irish Parliament was occupied in legislating against the evils it produced, and the result justified the taunt of the orator who said, The most sanguinary laws on your statute book " are Tithe Bills." The Commutation of Tithe could not alter its nature. The Composition of Tithe under the Tithe Composition Act left its character unchanged, and professed to be what it in fact was, a means of rendering the impost less odious by rendering it less uncertain and more facile of collection, by taking the average of the value of the Tithes of a district for a series of years and distributing the total value over the acreage of that district. It was an alteration in the mode of collecting but not in the basis of the impost, or of the principle on which it was payable. It rendered it unnecessary for the pastor to spy over the hedge of his parishioner to ascertain the extent and value of his labour, but it was still "Tithe" — Tithe collected, not by carting away the tenth part of the produce or of the animal increase, but by levying from the industrial occupiers the com.position value of the tenth sheaf and tenth calf, and tenth lamb, and tenth hen, as ascertained by the average of the value of those tenths for a series of years. That composition did not alter the feelings with 26 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND. wliich the Catholic peasant viewed the demand of the Proctor for the annual stipend for the maintenance of the Anglican Minister, whose only return was to malign the creed and wound the feelings of the man the bread of whose children he ate. Newtownbarry and its twelve ghastly corpses, martyrs to the system, tell how ardent was the peasant's hatred of Tithes, which Tithes, though altered in name and outward form, were un- changed in their essential nature. Knocktopher and its twelve police martyrs, who fell before an impassioned and infuriated mob, tell the same story. Archdeacon Ryder, the widow who was his debtor for Tithes, and the orphans who became his debtors for the desolation with which their future was blasted by the death of the peasant farmers who fell in the Tithe-massacre of Rathcormac, tell how lasting was that hatred; while the million loan and the bribe of more than £100,000 a-year, given by a landlord Parliament in the hour of panic that followed these events to the landed gentry of Ireland for becoming the Tithe Proctors of the Anglican pastors, tell how nearly successful was the national resistance to the odious impost. The Act of '38 contains in itself the refutation of the assertion that the Tithes are now paid by the landlords, for that solemn but unfortunate instrument opens with the declaration that it is expedient to '* substitute" Rent- charges for Composition for Tithes, a reasonable allow- ance being made for the greater facility and security of collection arising out of the transfer of liability from occupiers to owners, and gives to the owner as his com- mission on collection twenty-five per cent., the ordinary TITEES. 27 agency fees for collecting farm rents in all parts of the country being only five per cent. The primary liability was transferred to the landlord, for the acceptance of which Parliament awarded him a most exorbitant bonus, while he gave the most perfect security for the faithful performance of his duty. To adopt the words used in his '* facts" by one of the latest imported champions of the Anglican Establishment in Ireland, the Rural Dean of the diocese of Connor — " The landlord, indeed, is bound to pay the Rent-charge to the incumbent, but for hearing this responsibility the handsome allowance oj 25 per cent, is made to him'' This last transfer of liability from the occupier to the owner, like the transfer of responsibility from the potato garden and piggery of the Irish peasant to the whole area of his holding, was a part of the policy sug- gested by the ^' wisdom of the serpent," which the Church Militant learned by its disadvantageous position " in the world," which, according to apostolic precept it assumed to be not of." Vestry Cess, Ministers' Money, the forced payment by Catholics of the bellringer who tolled the merry peal for the Protestant's marriage, chimed his infant to the font, and rang his parting knell when death summoned him to another world; of the clerk, who saved him the trouble of repeating the re- sponses, and of the sexton who dug his grave — are all in like manner given up. But it is only " in like "manner" that they are given up; for, by a similar Parliamentary device, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners pay, from Irish Church revenues which were once the property of the Catholic Church, for the sexton and the THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND. bellman, for the clerk and the organist, for the sacra- mental elements which impart spiritual zeal and the fuel which gives physical warmth, for the pew-opener and the pew-duster, for the very mops used to wash, and the very brooms used to sweep the edifice. It is the Anglican Establishment, as thus modified to render it less hateful, we are commissioned to inquire into, and it will save much of the time of those who will follow your Commissioners in their local visitations, and of the space which you would otherwise have to allocate to their reports if the actual condition of the Anglican Church, as regards the facts referred to in this First Report, be borne in mind and applied to the details of all succeeding Reports from your Commissioners. Your Commissioners found it requisite themselves, in exami- ning into the details of the condition of the three Churches in the several localities^lready visited, to keep these facts continually before their minds, and concluded that a summary statement of them would assist the readers of their future Reports, as it did themselves in their inquiries, and thus prevent the necessity of repe- tition whenever a special fact was to be recorded or discussed, which any portion of this Report may apply to. The Presbyterian Church, by the numbers of its members, the persecutions it once suffered from the partizans of the Anglican system, and the position of dependence it has latterly assumed, must form an in- teresting portion of the investigation. The inquiry, so far as it has proceeded with respect to that Church, has not yet been very extensive. The broad feature which TITHES. 29 arrested attention at the very threshold of that inquiry was the fact that from the date when its Elders and Ministers accepted the Royal Bounty of £1,200 a-year, ordered by William of Orange to be annually paid by his local collector of Belfast, its independence seemed to be merged in its desire to increase the Royal Bribe, and it has succeeded in obtaining an annual stipend of more than £40,000 paid out of the Consolidated Fund, and in losing its ancient repute for self-reliance. The steps by which this progress downwards was accom- plished, and the influence the position achieved has had upon this country, have been brought under the con- sideration of your Commissioners, and it has already been made evident that the result of the policy of pensioning the Presbyterian Clergy has had effect on the destinies of the Irish race second only in extent and mischievous importance to that produced by the estab- lishment of the Anglican Chureh in Ireland. Little need be said in this First Report with regard to the status or position of the Church of the Irish people. From being in the enjoyment of the whole of the Church revenues of the nation, the Irish Church was suddenly deprived of all its possessions by Royal com- mand and Parliamentary will. For a time the relative ; prospects of the Anglican Church and of the Church of the Irish people seemed to change and alternate, but the power of the Crown, stimulated by its ambition and by the personal greed of the heads of the Anglican party, prevailed. The Irish Church was bereft of everything save its faith. Cathedrals, Churches, Manses, Lands, Abbeys, Monasteries, Church 30 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND. Plate, Altar Furniture, and the Sacred Vessels them- selves — all were eventually seized and handed over to strangers and imported followers of the State creed. How it fared with that Church in the hour of tribulation — how it fared with her Clergy in the day of persecu- tion, with the Catholic gentry who had properties to lose under the Penal Code, with the masses of the people who had to exchange the vaulted aisles of their noble Cathedrals and Churches for the blue canopy of heaven, how that Church survived and rose again, despite persecution, to the position it now occupies, and how the old land became covered as of yore with Cathedrals, Churches, Convents, Colleges, Schools, and Hospitals, will form a necessary part of the inquiry you have directed, and a most important portion of the Reports which it will be our duty to make. All these subjects wdll, however, be more advan- tageously treated in connection with the districts to be locally reported on. SECOND REPORT. DIOCESE OF CASHEL. I have always compared the Protestant Church in Ireland to the institution of butchers' shops in all the villages of our Indian empire.' " We will have a butcher's shop in every village, and you, Hindoos, shall pay for it. We know that many of you do not eat meat at all, and that the sight of beefsteaks is parti- cularly offensive to you ; but still, as a stray European may pass through your village, and want a steak or a chop, the shop shall be established, and you shall pay for it." There is no abuse like it in all Europe, in all Asia, in all the discovered parts of Africa, and in all we have heard of Timbuctoo ! — The Rev. Sydney Smith's {Canon of St. Paul's, London) Works, vol. S, p. 500. The important Ecclesiastical division of which " Cashel of the Kings" is the centre, and from which the pro- vince takes its name, presents one of the most striking illustrations of the wreck which the religious feuds and the wars ecclesiastic, instituted to sustain Church Ascendancy in Ireland, have wrought in this country. The '^city"isnow little more than a third or fourth class country town, but even yet the grandeur and pro- fusion of its ruins confirm to the eye of the visitor all that history tells of its ancient splendour and of the glory that once belonged to it. The Royal Palace, the Cathedral with its many Chapels, the College with its srowded halls, and the citadel with its gallant knights and their faithful retainers, combined to impart to the 32 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND. famous Rock" a character for military strength, royal munificence^ piety, learning, architectural taste, and the cultivation of those arts to the possession of which by the native race the ruins of ages gone by bear such ample testimony. In few places do there exist so many records of the public spirit, the patriotism, and the piety of the Irish race as are presented by Cashel — records, imperishable even in their ruin, whose massiveness attests the highest powers of combination, and whose delicate tracery and solid workmanship tell of the civi- lisation of an age reaching back centuries beyond the date when the foot of the ^' proud invader" first trod the soil, and made the beginning of that end which the tale of Cashel's ruin tells. From this rock St. Patrick preached the gospel of peace and good will to all man- kind, and the parish in which the Royal and Ecclesi- astical remains exist bears to this day the name of " St. Patrick of the Rock." On this rock Cormac McCarthy, King of Desmond, and "Archbishop of Cashel," built the exquisite Chapel which bears his name. Hither Henry marched shortly after his land- ing, and held peaceful counsel with the submissive Irish Chieftains and the assembled Catholic Prelates. Here too, in after years, when religious strife filled to overflowing the bitter cup of foreign rule, Inchiquin and Ormonde, Cromwell and William of Orange laid siege each in his day and generation to the Archie- piscopal City, wreaking on its inhabitants the relentless vengeance of religious war, and finally leaving of "Cashel of the Kings" little more than its ruined Cloisters and battered Citadel, the tombs of its Kings DIOCESE OF CASHEL. 33 and the sacred ashes of its Saints — proud but melan- choly memorials of its former greatness ! From the introduction of the Ans^lican Church to the present time no efforts have been spared to stamp out the faith of the people, of the munificence of whose ancestors, ten centuries ago, the Rock of Cashel and its surroundings form such grand monuments. The temples were laid waste — the shock of war levelled the most stately of its crenelated towers, and the inhabi- tants, despoiled of their patrimony, became for the most part exiles or ^' hewers of wood and drawers of water" around the precincts of their loved City. The old Cathedral, grand even in its decay, was unroofed by Price, an Anglican Bishop, who found it too large for his congregation, or, as local tradition informs us, found the approach too difficult for his Lordship's hea^y equipage and person to ascend. The new and smaller Cathedral, built on the low ground near the Rock, now serves as a Parish Church for the accom- modation of the Anglican population of the City and suburbs — the number of whom amounted in 1861 to 282 individuals. Excluding from consideration the demolition of some and the wreck and sack of all the Temples, Colleges, and other Religious Houses that once clustered round the Ecclesiastical Metropolis of Munster, this a^crrefjate of adherents is the result obtained by all the efforts made to implant Anglicanism in the heart of the Southern Province. Fire and sword and confiscation, the prohibition of Education and the forcincr of Anglican tuition on the sons of o o the gentry and on the children of the poor during c 34 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND the past three centuries, have this sum total for their final trophy. Before proceeding to take a general survey of the dioceses upon which I am instructed to report, I must place before you, in contrast with the number of the Anglican population, the number of the Catholic popu- lation of the City," and one or two other matters that pressed themselves on my attention, as illustrations of the utter failure of the attempt to Protestantise the people of this district. The Reformation process of " clearing the towns" of all " Papists" is too well known to need special descrip- tion here. The edict was curtly expressed by the celebrated lines inscribed on the gates of Bandon :~ Turk, Jew, or Atheist May eater here. But not a Papist. The Bandon inscription, however, must not be con- sidereil the product of any exceptional bigotry on the part of the people of that town. It was the public pro- clamation on the " outer wall" of the law which forbade Catholics to reside within walled towns, or to trade with their inhabitants. It is but reasonable to assume that there was a time at which no professed Catholic was permitted to live within the walls of Cashel, and that it was " cleared" in common with other similarly circumstanced cities. But whether the sweeping out of the contraband religionists was more or less perfect, the relative proportions of the numbers of the members of the two Churches at this day is a remarkable illus- tration of the folly of attempting to extirpate a nation DIOCESE OF CASHEL. 35 by the sword or to force conscience by persecution. The number of Anglican inhabitants in the whole City, as I have shown, is 282. There are 25 Methodists, one Presbyterian, and 4,066, or 93 per cent, of the whole population, Catholics. Cashel at an early period was enfranchised, and empowered to return two Representatives to the Irish Parliament. The privilege of returning one member to the Imperial Parliament is retained to this day, and since the passing of the Emancipation Act it has never returned an advocate of Religious Ascendancy. To supply the spiritual wants of the Protestants who inhabit the two benefices which include the City, there is a Dean, who derives an income of £533 from the benefice of St. John's, and there are tw^o Curates, one of whom aids the Dean, and the other is the Curate of St. Patrick's of the Rock, the Anglican population of which is so small that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners deemed that it would be indecent to continue an Incumbent for that parish. The united Anglican population of the two benefices is set down in " The Church Directory," published under the Patronage of the Anglican Ecclesiastical Body, as 339, and the admitted local charge for the spiritual instruction of these few Anglicans is set down as £558, showing an average cost to the State of nearly eleven pounds annually for each Anglican family. The seven thou- sand six hundred and ninety-nine people who, according to " The Church Directory," reside in the same two ! benefices with this handful of Anglicans do not receive one shilling of the Church Revenues raised in the 36 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMEKT IN IRELAND. district, either for the maintenance of their Clergy or for their Church fabrics. They have to supply both from their private funds. They were stripped of their Church lands and houses, and income, and even the ruined fanes reared by their fathers — sacred relics, "vvhich they would guard as the apple of the eye — are in the hands of the stranger. The lands bestowed on the Church in Cashel by their lineal ancestors, and the Tithes decreed by the State, have been all transferred to the Ecclesiastics of the imported creed. On asking for the |Jshop's Palace, I found that it ^' was still there," but the Bishop " was gone." The public spent in recent times £4,720 on the Palace, now the residence of the Dean, but after the passing of the Church Temporalities Act, by which Lord Stanley, the present Lord Derby, swept two Arch- bishops and eight Bishops off the board at which he played for political power, with about as little com- punction as any gamester would sweep a pawn off a chess-board, the new Bishop, flying from the " City of the Dead " as from a haunted graveyard, took up his abode in Waterford. Passing from the City to the examination of the united dioceses, on which I have been instructed to report, I find that the Anglican Church has been as great a failure in the missionary sense, and as great a disaster politically, in the other portions of the four united dioceses as in " Cashel of the Kings." The See of Cashel, one of the most ancient in Ireland, was raised to Archiepiscopal rank at a very early period. It was filled from time to time by the DIOCESE OF CASIIEL. 37 O'Briens, McCarthys, Fitzgeralds, and Butlers, and richly endowed by grants from the heads of these and other illustrious Houses in the Province. M'Gibbon, the Abbot of the now ruined Cistercian Monastery of St. Mary's, Mayo, succeeded one of the Butlers in 1567, and held the See when M'Caghwell and M^Grath, the first and second of the Anglican Bishops, were appointed by Elizabeth. Cash el was united, under Queen Elizabeth, in 1568, to the Diocese of Emly, whose first Bishop, St. Albe, died in the sixth century. The small village of Emly, visible from the Limerick Railway Junction, marks the position of this ancient See. In the Catholic Church, the Archbishop of Cashel has had administration of Emly since 1718, but the sees are not canonically united. Up to the passing of the Church Temporalities Act, 1833, the United Dioceses of Cashel and Emly were under the Anglican Archbishop of Cashel, when that See, as well as that of Tuam, was degraded to mere Episcopal rank. Cashel and Emly are now united with Waterford and Lismore, which four Sees are held by the Right Reve- rend Robert Daly, brother to Lord Dunsandle, who was appointed in 1843. Lismore, founded by St. Carthage in 631, was one of the great ecclesiastical schools and monasteries of Ireland, round which the town rose. The See was united, in 1386, to Waterford, which was not made a Bishopric until 1096, when the Ostman inhabitants of the City embraced Christianity. These ^ two Sees continued united in the Catholic Church, and are suffragan to Cashel as their Metropolitan. As my instructions are to report on the four Dioceses under 38 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND. the Episcopal charge of the Right Rev. Dr. Daly, the Anglican Bishop, it may be useful to indicate the terri- torial limits and the extent of his spiritual charge. The United Dioceses embrace nearly the whole of Tipperary, the eastern side of Limerick, all Waterford, and a small portion of Kilkenny and Cork Counties, and contain an area of 1,110,364 statute acres, including therein the "Golden Vale" and some of the richest lands in Ireland. The property attached to these four Sees was formerly very large, though the personal income of each Bishop in the Pre-reformation age was small as compared with even the reduced income enjoyed by the present Angli- can Prelate. The income consisted of the "Tempo- ralities" and the " Spiritualities." The former included the lands and other fixed property conferred by the Catholic people, who invariably attached to these gifts religious trusts or obligations, as the offering up of prayers, the celebration of masses for the souls of the donors or of their deceased relatives, and the giving of alms. The *' Spiritualities" included the payment of the costs and charges of annual and other Episcopal Visitations, or commutations therefor, the fees payable by the inferior Clergy, and various gifts for the perfor- mance of spiritual duties. In the course of time there was added to the "Temporalities" a proportion of the Tithes granted by the Srate, for w^hich was afterwards substituted mensal parishes. Of the vast territorial property conferred on the many Sees of the Province, and concentrated in latter times in four Sees, there still remained in 1833 the large quantity of 33,235 acres of DIOCESE OF CASHEL. 39 profitable land. Large tracts of the Bishops' lands were, however, from time to time, alienated, not by the State or Crown, but by the Anglican Bishops themselves, who gave long leases, at nominal rents, to their sons and relatives, generally through the agency of trustees, who afterwards assigned the leases. They also frequently sold such alienations to strangers. A remarkable illus- tration of this latter process is given by Archdeacon Cotton, a very high Anglican authority in such matters, as having occurred in the Diocese of Lismore, when it was, by the special favour of the Queen, held in con- junction with Cashel by Archbishop Miler IM^Grath, the second of the Anglican Bishops appointed to the Archiepiscopal See of Cashel by Elizabeth. The Archdeacon alleges that, in gross violation of his trust, this Reforming Prelate alienated for ever, at a rent of £13 6s. 8d., the Manor of Lismore, and the noble castle built thereon by Morton when Lord of Ireland, which, for ages prior to the disgraceful spoliation, was the residence attached to the Episcopal "barony" of Lis- more. Sir Walter Raleigh was the fortunate grantee of the lease. He transferred it to one of the Boyles — adventurers who, by a series of " services" and contri- vances successfully carried out by members of that ambitious and missionary tribe, acquired enormous wealth in this country, and finally the dignity of the Earldom of Cork. From the Boyles, part of the lands of the See of Lismore, with the Castle, passed by marriage to one of the Dukes of Devonshire, in the hands of whose descendants are now vested the " Manor," some of the " See lands," and the ^' Castle " 40 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IX IRELAND. of Lismore, whicli crowns the heights of the Black water^ forming, in conjunction with its wooded slopes and the Mountains of Knockmeildown in the foreground, one of the most beautiful landscapes in the South of Ireland. No mention of this reserved rent of £13 6s. 8d., or of the alienated " Lands," *' Manor " or " Castle " is made in the report of '33 ; but the " improper trans- action," as some historians delicately call it, is one of the best authenticated of the Reforming spoliations. Mant, King — indeed all the Ecclesiastical historians complain of the scandalous and profligate transfer of Church lands to the legitimate and illegitimate transmitters of Episcopal names; and wherever I journeyed I found the feeling of disgust at the conduct of the Episcopal alienators to prevail universally amongst even the Anglican Clergy. The remnant of the See lands of these four united dioceses is now leased at very low, indeed merely nominal, rents. The 20,046 acres of profitable lands " attached to Cashel and Emly were, at the time of the last return, leased to seventeen tenants at a rent of £2,100 a-year, or about two shillings an acre. The renewal fines, which amounted to £2,430 18s. a-year, bring up the total produce to £4,530 18s., or a little in excess of 4s. per acre. Of these seventeen tenants, two were Earls, one a Viscount, and one an Honourable, whilst one of the noble Earls held by assign- ment 8,346 acres, or more than two-fifths of the whole of the profitable land of the Sees. I have ascertained that this " great tenant " of the " Church " was the son of a young gentleman of high English descent, who, DIOCESE OF CASHEL. 41 having taken holy orders, beeame Chaplain to the Lord Lieutenant, then Dean, then Bishop of Kilmore, then Archbishop of Cashel, and was, in 1606, created Earl of NoRMANTON in England. The See lands of Waterford and Lismore, amounting to 13,189 acres, not including " Lismore Manor " Castle, and other alienated tracts, were leased to twelve tenants at a rent of £2,493 18s., which, with the renewal fines of £1,453 3s. 5Jd. a-year, produced an annual income of £3,947 Is. 5id., giving a gross sum of £8,677 19s. 5Jd. as the income derived from the 33,235 profitable acres" attached to the four now united Sees of Cashel, Emly, Waterford, and Lismore. This represents a very small proportion, however, of the rents paid by the occupying tenants to the aristocratic interveners between the Anglican Church and the cultivators of the Church lands. At a very moderate estimate, these lands have been valued as worth in the land market £50,000 a-year, though probably the occupying tenants pay a much larger sum. The difference between the £8,677 19s. S^d., paid by the great tenants, and the estimated value, is the sum which the Anglican Church annually gives out of this portion of the Irish Church property to the aristocracy of the land — Peers, Members of Parliament, Deputy Lieutenants, Justices of the Peace, and other intermediate toties quoties leaseholders, for the distin- guished services rendered to the Anglican Church by their order, as priest-hunters, informers, spies, and I " presenting " grand jurors in the penal times, and for their magisterial support on the bench and in the field, 42 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND. during the great Tithe conflict that convulsed society in this country at the close of the last and the earlier part of the present century. The Episcopal income of these dioceses was not, how- ever, liaiited to the rents and fines derived from the lands. Before the union effected under the Church Temporalities Act the income of Cashel and Emly was returned as £7,355 6s., and that of Waterford and Lismore at £4,323 7s. Id.; showing £11,677 9s. Id. as the gross Episcopal income of the two Prelates, whose four Sees now constitute the united dioceses. On the suppression by the present Lord Derby of the ten superfluous Bishoprics a considerable portion of this income was transferred to the Ecclesiastical Commis- sioners of Ireland, but is still applied by them to exclusively Anglican Church purposes. The sum at present paid out of the ancient Church lands and other Episcopal revenues for the " Episcopus," or overseer of the united dioceses, is £5,190 8s. 2d. yearly. This sum gives a rate of a little more than six shillings per head for every member of the Anglican communion in the four dioceses, including the Bishop, the Archdeacons, the Deans, the Precentors, the Treasurers, the Chan- cellors and the Vicars Choral of the four Cathedrals, the Rural Deans, the Clerks, the Sextons, and the Pew- openers, as the cost incurred by the public for oversee- ing the pastors to whom the State has entrusted their spiritual care. Before proceeding to report generally on the Church revenues of the diocese, 1 deem it right to place before you a tabular statement of the absolute and relative number of the members of the several DIOCESE OF CASIIEL. 43 relicrious communities in this AnMican Ecclesiastical division Diocese. Total. Angli. cans. Catholics. Presby- terians. Other Protes- tants. Cashel Kmly Waterford Lismore 120,011 62,196 43,506 145,265 4,721 1.414 2,943 4,775 114,831 60,707 39,472 139.759 215 49 297 333 244 26 794 387 Total 370,978 13,853 354,779 894 1,451 Per Cent. ... 3-7 95-6 0-2 0-4 These 13,853 individuals in communion v^^ith the Anglican Church, out of a population of 370,978, represent the whole missionary results achieved in three hundred and thirty years by the Anglican Establish- ment within the vast area of the four dioceses included in the Ecclesiastical division under examination. The two parishes of Thurles and Tipperary, in the diocese of Cashel, contain 14,951 Catholic inhabitants, which exceeds by more than a thousand the whole Anglican Church population in the four united dioceses. Was it for such a result as this that Inchiquin butchered three thousand Catholics in Cashel, sparing neither age nor sex, and offered up within the Cathedral as sacri- fices to religious ascendancy the twenty priests who fled ! in vain for sanctuary to the very altars which his fore- fathers had generously endowed? Inchiquin, the youthful scion of the Royal Catholic house of Tho- mond, but, unhappily for his country, brought up under the Court of Wards — a device projected and presided over by Sir William Parsons, the adven- 44 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IX IRELAND. turous founder of the Parsonstown family — an institu- tion whose mission it was to act as custodians of the persons and estates of Minors — the children of Catholic gentlemen — with a view to bring them up in the Anglican creed, and train them to denounce the faith of their fathers, and to persecute their race? Was it for this miserable result that the Abbeys and Monas- teries — profusely scattered over this district — the ruins of many of which, as Hore Abbey, Holy Cross, Athassel, Thurles, are within sight of " the Rock" — were given over to the owls and to the bats? Three- and-seven-tenths per cent, of the whole population is a poor recompense for the cost in blood and in treasure of this Anglican Missionary failure. The Catholic population, whose Priests had a price set upon their heads, such as civilized men set upon those of wild beasts — whose lands were confiscated, who were banished the towns, who had to worship in the hollow rock, in the wooded glen, or on the mountain top, with faithful pickets set to watch against the surprise of the Priest- hunter, and give warning of the approach of the officers of the law, have multiplied under persecution, and now number ninety-five six-tenths per cent, of the population. Catholics who, as such were excluded from all Corporate offices, from trade guilds, and the exercise of any handicraft, who were banished by legal enactment from all walled cities and towns, and with whom ^' citizens" were prohibited from trading without as well as within those towns, have gradually fought their way back into the cities and towns of these dioceses, where they constitute not alone the overwhelming majority in DIOCESE OF CASHEL. 45 numbers, but have risen to commercial influence, wealth, professional eminence, and the corporate government of the great centres of trade and intelligence in the very towns whose former exclusively AngUcan Mayors, Sheriffs, Bailiffs, and Jurors "presented" their fore- fathers as public nuisances," for no other cause than that of being Catholics. The four united dioceses are stated by the Vene- rable Thomas Hincks, Archdeacon of Connor, in his elaborate synopsis published in the last edition (67) of the Irish Church Directory, to contain 107 Benefices and 94 Churches, leaving 13 " benefices" unprovided with Church accommodation. One Bishop or " over- seer," four Deans, four Archdeacons, four Precentors, four Chancellors, four Treasurers, Rural Deans and Vicars Choral, in all numbering 152 Clergymen, are appointed to minister to the 13,854 Anglicans at a cost to the public of £43,137. If the Anglican population were equally distributed amongst all the benefices, which it is not, it would give 25 families, including police and other civil, military, and official residents, for each benefice, and the liberal allowance of one Clergyman for every 17 families, the total number of families in the four united dioceses (544 individuals to each family) being only 2,695- I The Church revenues of the district show a cost to the State of a little more than £16 for each of these 2,695 families, and of £3 2s. 3d., yearly per head for the spiritual instruction of each' member of the Anglican Church within the district. The population is not, however, thus uniformly distributed, and Archdeacon 46 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND. HiNCKS states that of the 107 " benefices \ there are no less than 25 " benefices," or quam proxime, one-fourth of the whole number of benefices in the united dio- ceses, each of which contains " 25 members or less,'" The total number of members of the Anglican Church in the 25 '"^benefices''' does not amount to 25 per benefice, including all the Incumbents and their families ; all the Clerks and their families^ and all the Sextons and their families. The 25 " benefices" contain only 311 indivi- duals, or an average of twelve and a half for each, which would about represent the families of the incum- bent and of the clerk, and give half an average family for the sextons, domestics, and other stray inhabitants of each benefice. Thus, in point of fact, one-fourth of the benefices" in the whole of this vast area do not represent, by all their Anglican Church numbers, an average of one whole Anglican family per benefice," if the families of the incumbent and the clerk, who are paid for residing in the benefice, be not included. But even if I include the incumbent, the clerk, the sexton, the police, and other ofticials and their families, the aggregate number in communion with the Anglican Church gives only tiuelve four-tenths as the average population of each of their twenty-five benefices. I felt that it would be important in presenting these suggestive facts to be able to state whether or not the incumbents of these benefices (amounting to one-fourth in the pastoral sense of the whole united dioceses) are paid by the public for their spiritual ministrations therein, in fact for giving spiritual comfort to them- selves — their own families and domestics, the clerk, and DIOCESE OF CASHEL. 47 the family of the clerk, who is paid a separate salary from a distinct fund for aiding the incumbent in taking care of all the souls in the benefice. I have, therefore, to report that some of these benefices are perpetual curacies and dignities, and that a "net" sum of £4,673 is paid annually to the incumbents of these twenty-five benefices. To this sum should be added the difference between " net income" and the gross cost to the public and also the cost of the overseer;" that is the cost of the Bishop's supervision of one-fourth of the benefices of his united dioceses. The difference betveen the gross cost and the " net" income is I find variously 1 estimated in different dioceses. To avoid all contro- ' versy as to the standard of estimate, I have taken the basis furnished by Dr. Hincks in his returns relating to the four dioceses now under examination. The result gives an addition of a little over 25 per cent, for the cost of the Episcopal supervision, and the difference between gross cost to the public and what is called the " net" income of the incumbent. I calculate it, how- ever, at 25 per cent, only, and this gives £5,841 as the i sum paid by the public for the spiritual comfort of j these 311 souls, or £18 15s. lid., per annum for each \ individual, including the incumbents, clerks, sextons, ' and all the members of their families. Thus I find J that the cost to the public for the spiritual instruction ) of each family in communion with the Anglican Church \ resident in one-fourth of the entire number of the bene- \ fices in the united dioceses of Casliel, Emly, Water- ) ford, and Lismore, amounts to ninety- six pounds twelve t shillings and two pence halfpenny per annum. 48 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND. Other instructive and interesting matters connected with these united dioceses have come under my obser- vation, in reference to which I ask permission to submit a further report. 4 THIED KEPORT. Two hundred and eighty-five years has this Church been at work. What could have been done iu the way of authority, privileges, endowments, which has not been done ? . . . Did any other set of Bishops and Priests in the world ever receive half as much for doing twice as much ? And what have we to show for all this lavish expenditure? What, but the most zealous Roman Catholic population on the face of the earth. Where you were 100 years ago, where you were 200 years ago, there you are still, not victorious over the domain of the old faith, but painfully and with dubious success defending your ov\u frontier Macaulay. — Hansard, vol. 79, fage 653. In pursuing the examination as to the condition of the Established Church in the united dioceses of Cashel, 'Emlj, Waterford, and Lismore, already reported on by one of my colleagues, I will, for the purpose of con- tinuity, preface the detailed report I have to make by \ brief summary of the statistical review presented at the close of his comprehensive paper. In that Keport "hese facts are stated : — 1st — The whole Protestant population of the four iioceses is only 13,853 out of 370,978 persons, or ■hirty'seven in every thousand of the general popula- ion. 2nd — These 13,853 Protestants are scattered through ive Counties or parts of Counties, in 107 distinct Benefices, in which there are only 94 Churches, and -hey are ministered to by 152 Clergymen, including 50 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND, the Bishop, the EHgnitaries of four dioceses, and four complete Cathedral corps. 3rd. — Sixteen Benefices^ or 15 per cent, of the whole number, Jiave no Churchy and 25 of the 107 Benefices — 23 per cent., or nearly one-fourth of the entire, have an aggregate Anglican population of only 311, giving 12^ individuals each for nearly every fourth Benefice in the four dioceses. 4th — The annual sum expended for the spiritual instruction of the 13,853 Protestants is £43,137 — or £3 2s. 3d. for each individual, man, woman, and child, 5th — The sum annually expended on the 25 Benefices, TV'hich have an average Protestant population of less than two and a half families each, amounts to £18 15s. per head, or £96 12s. 2id. per Anglican family. 6th — Two parishes, Thurles and Tipperary, situate in one of the dioceses, contain 14,945 Catholics, or 1,092 more than the whole Anglican population of the four united dioceses of Cashel, Emly, Waterford, and Lismore. These facts present a clear and broad outline of the condition of the Anglican Church in these four i dioceses, and it will now be my duty to give you a j somewhat detailed account of the distribution of the \ Protestant population, which appears to me to be essen- j tial to a complete knowledge of the status of the two \ Churches in this extensive district. j The "Benefices" in these as in other dioceses in Ireland ; consist, for the most part, of several parishes ur.ited into one Benefice. The term formerly applied to the territorial area of an incumbei>t was Parish" when he DIOCESE OF CASHEL. 51 had a beneficial interest in the revenue of one parisli only, and " Union" when he enjoyed the income of several parishes. The term " Union" was perhaps, however, too expressive of the fact, and " Benefice" is now applied to a single parish, or to an aggregation of parishes, in the hands of one Incumbent, and even a Perpetual Curacy is now called a Benefice. The 107 Benefices of these four dioceses included two hundred and sixty-one parishes; forty of these, or 15 per cent, of the whole, do not contain one Anglican Protestant, whilst sixty-five parishes, or nearly 25 per cent., contain only from one to ten Anglicans each — that is, 105, or JO per cent, of the 2(31 parishes in the four united dioceses contain either no Anglican Protestant, or only one to ten each. The Houses of Worship of the several religious denominations engaged my special attention. The number of Anglican Churches in the united dioceses of Cashel, Emly, VVaterford, and Lismore, is given as 94 in the Parliamentary Returns, and 92 in the Church Directory, w^hile the extent of the aggregate accommoda- tion is set down as for 17,522 persons. The Churches vary in the amount of accommodation, from the Cathedral of Waterford, which affords sittings for 1/250, down to the rural Church of the Benefice of Mothel, which affords accommodation for 40 persons. This Benefice has an income of £G21 per annum, and a population of 41 individuals. In the Report of my colleague reference is made to suspended Benefices. There are ol such suspended Benefices in these dioceses, the Rent-charge of which is handed over to the Ecclesi- 52 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND. astical Commissioners, who are bound to make provision, either by the creation of Perpetual Curacies or other- wise, for the spiritual care of the Anglican inhabitants, if any, within the suspended Benefices. From the funds transferred to these Commissioners, under the Act of 1833, there come back to the several dioceses certain grants to build, repair, fit up and furnish Churches, and to pay Clerks, Sextons, and otlier officers. What the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have done in the way of building and repairing Church fabrics for the 2,695 Anglican families in these four dioceses in the 31 years, from 1834 to August, 1865, may be thus summarised in tabular form. They have expended the following sums in the manner set forth on the Churches of the united dioceses: — No. of Churches. How dealt with. Cost. 1 18 93 -- - Built Rebuilt, . Completed, Repaired. £ d. 8S7 17 2 17,694 6 II 50 0 0 89.968 7 9 Total, . 60,400 U 10 All the Church fabrics in the diocese — 92 in number, j have, therefore, been repaired at an expense of about ? £40,000, and twenty of them rebuilt or built at a cost of £20,000. If the members of the Establishment be not increasing in these dioceses, the cause must be souirht elsewhere than in the insufficient number of the Clergy provided for their instruction, in the inadequacy of the stipends, in the want of Church accommodation, or DIOCESE OF CASHEL. 53 in the pressure of the taxation which supplies all these I advantages to the Establishment. While the number of members of the Established Church in these dioceses has decreased from 19,307 to 13,853, or 28 per cent., between 1834 and 1861, the number of Churches and the extent of Church accommodation has been increased, until there are now 17,522 sittings for 13,853 persons, including infants, the aged and the infirm, less than one- half of whom, according to the usual average, are Z)hurch-going persons; so that there are nearly three 5ittin