MELLIFONT IN TROUBLOUS TIMES.
"But I must needs confess
That 'tis a thing impossible to frame
Conceptions equal to the soul's desires;
And the most difficult of tasks to keep
Heights which the soul is competent to gain."
(_Wordsworth._)
Sixty years of uninterrupted prosperity have passed over Mellifont, during
which period it has been honoured by princes and people alike, and even
the English Kings have marked their esteem for it by heaping fresh favours
on it. It was still flourishing in 1201, when Thomas O'Connor, Archbishop
of Armagh, whom the Annals of St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin, style "a noble and
worthy man," chose it as his burial-place, and was buried there with great
honour. He was brother to Roderick O'Connor, King of Connaught. It was at
his instance that Joceline wrote his Life of St. Patrick.
In 1203, King John "of his own fee" granted a new charter confirming that
given by his father some years before, and also giving the monks free
customs, together with the fishery on both sides of the Boyne.
In 1206, Benedict and Gerald, monks of Mellifont, were deputed by Eugene,
Archbishop of Armagh, to wait on the King and to tender him, on the
Archbishop's behalf, three hundred marks of silver and three of gold for
restitution of the lands and liberties belonging to that See. It was the
King's custom to appropriate the revenues of the vacant bishoprics, and on
the confirmation by the Pope of the bishop-elect, he issued a writ of
restitution of the temporalities, or episcopal possessions and rights. The
King, in order to keep the temporalities the longer, often refused his
"_conge d'elire_," without which an election was invalid by the civil law.
Soon after the Invasion, King Henry II. held in his possession, pending
the appointment of new prelates, one archbishopric, five bishoprics, and
three abbeys, here in Ireland.
In 1211, Thomas was Abbot, and seven years later, Carus, or Cormac
O'Tarpa, Abbot, and presumably immediate successor to Thomas, was made
Bishop of Achonry, which See he resigned in 1226, and returned to
Mellifont, where he died that same year, and was buried there. Some
two-and-one-half miles north of Mellifont, and one-half mile east of
Collon, between that village and Tinure, there is a crossing of the roads
still popularly known as "Tarpa's Cross." Local tradition has it that this
Cormac O'Tarpa, when Abbot, was wont to walk daily from the monastery to
this spot.
About that time, or in 1221, Mellifont, from some unrecorded cause, fell
from its first fervour, but only for a very brief period; for the remedy
applied effected a thorough reform. In the Statutes of the Order for that
year, the General Chapter authorised the Abbot of Clairvaux to set things
right by bringing in monks from other monasteries, and so, as it were,
infuse new and healthier blood into the monastic life there. As no further
mention is made of the matter, the trouble, whatever its nature was, must
have been permanently removed.
In 1227, Luke Netterville, Archbishop of Armagh, was buried here. It was
he who, three years previous, founded the Dominican monastery in Drogheda,
of which, now, only the Magdalen Tower remains. And in that year (1227),
Gerald, a monk of Mellifont, was elected Bishop of Dromore.
In 1229, the King granted to the Abbot and Community of Mellifont a
Tuesday market in their town of Collon.
In 1233, the General Chapter authorised all the Abbots of the Order to
have the Word of God preached on Sundays and festivals, to their servants
and retainers, in some suitable place. And in 1238, the King gave a new
confirmation to the monks of Mellifont.
In 1248, the General Chapter granted permission to the English and Irish
Abbots of the Order, to hold deliberations on important local matters in
their respective countries. The Abbots of Mellifont, of St. Mary's Abbey,
Dublin, and of Duiske, Co. Kilkenny, were empowered to convoke all the
other Irish Abbots of the Order for consultation; the assembly thus
somewhat partaking of the nature of a Provincial Chapter.
In 1250, no Englishman would be admitted to profession at Mellifont. In
1269, David O'Brogan, who had been a monk of this house, and afterwards
Bishop of Clogher, was buried here. In 1272, Hore Abbey, near Cashel, was
founded from Mellifont. In 1275, the General Chapter decreed that in the
admission of novices into the Order there should be no question of
nationality.
Hitherto, the Cistercians confined themselves, in discharging the offices
of their sacred ministry, to their guests, servants, and the sick poor in
the hospitals at their gates; but now, the altered circumstances of the
times demand a change in their usages and impose fresh burdens on them,
for which they get no credit. The new Orders of St. Francis and St.
Dominic had settled down in this country, and were attracting a large
percentage of the young men, who, till then, entered the ranks of the Lay
Brethren, and managed the granges, or outlying farms, under the Cellarer.
In consequence, therefore, of the insufficiency of their numbers to work
the farms profitably, it was found necessary to lease these granges to
tenants, and hence the origin of many villages and towns that, in several
instances, arose on the site of the granges. The chapel attached to the
grange (for every grange had its chapel for the use of the Brothers in
charge) was converted into a parish church for the new population that
clustered around it. Of this church the monks became the pastors, except
when it lay at too great distance to be served from the monastery; in
which case, the monks employed secular priests. They built schools also,
where the children of the tenants and dependants received _gratuitously_
from the monks themselves, an education similar to that at present
imparted in our primary schools.
Though the study of Sacred Scripture, Theology, and Canon Law was
encouraged in the Order from its foundation; yet it was not until 1245
that studies were fully organised by drawing up a curriculum that should
be obligatory. In that year it was ordained by the General Chapter that in
every Province there should be a central monastery to which the monks
should repair to read the prescribed course of studies under members of
the Order, who had graduated at some university. We are not told which of
the Irish monasteries was selected as the House of Studies; but, in 1281,
the General Chapter decided and decreed that in all the larger abbeys such
Houses of Studies should be established.
There is an entry in the Annals of St. Mary's Abbey, at the year 1281,
giving the price of cattle at that time. As it is interesting it is given
here: viz., twenty shillings each for a horse, a cow, or a bullock.
In 1306, Mellifont first experienced the baleful effects of racial
jealousies and bickerings; for the monks could not, or would not, agree to
elect an Abbot; and during their dissensions, the King seized the
possessions of the monastery. We are not informed how matters terminated
on that occasion.
In 1316, the General Chapter ordered that the English, Welsh, and Irish
Abbots should send some of their monks, in proportion to the number in
their respective monasteries, to the University of Oxford, to be educated
there. A few years previous, the Earl of Cornwall endowed at Oxford the
College of St. Bernard (now St. John's), for the Cistercians. How far the
Irish monks availed of this college cannot be known; probably those within
the Pale did largely benefit by it. One who obtained an unenviable
notoriety by his intemperate invectives against the Mendicant Orders, was
educated there--Henry Crump, an Englishman, and monk of the Abbey of
Baltinglas. But it is very dubious that the "_mere_ Irish" ventured to
cross its threshold. They would abstain from doing so from prudential
motives.
The fourteenth century was ushered in by the repetition of feuds between
the Anglo-Irish and the Irish; and, as it grew older, the former fought
amongst themselves, with Irish auxiliaries on both sides. It may be here
remarked, as a curious historical fact, that it was the Irish who fought
the battles for the English Crown in Ireland; it was they, too, who
retained their country subject to that dominion, according to Sir John
Davis (_Discoverie_, p. 639); for no army ever came out of England from
the time of King John, except the expeditionary army of Richard II. The
few forces subsequently sent over, until the twenty-ninth year of Queen
Elizabeth, were to quell the rebellions of the English settlers.
The most disastrous calamity in Ireland in this century, next to the great
plague of 1348, or the "Black Death," as it was called, was Bruce's
invasion in 1315. Friar Clyn tells us in his Annals, that Bruce and his
followers "went through all the country, burning, slaying, depredating,
spoiling towns and castles, and even churches, as they went and as they
returned." As a result the country was visited by a dreadful famine, and,
moreover, the Pope, writing to the Archbishops of Dublin and Cashel in
1317, alludes to scandals, murders, conflagrations, sacrileges, and
rapine, as following from that invasion. Though Bruce failed in his object
to overthrow the English power in Ireland, yet he so far succeeded, that
he weakened it considerably.
In the year 1316 (according to Ussher), O'Neill addressed his famous
Remonstrance to Pope John XXII., in which, amongst other complaints, he
remarked, that the religious communities were prohibited by the law from
admitting anyone not an Englishman into monasteries within the Pale. In
response to this, the Pope sent two Cardinals to investigate the matter,
and also wrote a letter to King Edward II., exhorting him to adopt
merciful measures towards the Irish. The letter had not much effect, and
the cruelties and injustice continued; but, about twenty years later,
there was exhibited an unprecedented tendency on the part of the
Anglo-Irish and the Irish towards incorporation. The Irish people clung to
the great Geraldine family with a romantic affection which that chivalrous
race fully reciprocated. So, too, did they lean towards the rivals of the
Geraldines, the Ormondes, and to other Anglo-Irish barons, who, likewise,
had adopted Irish customs and sirnames. English power in this country had
grown to be regarded as merely nominal, and the administration of the law
and the office of Lord Deputy could no longer be committed to one or other
of the two principal families (the Geraldine or Ormonde), to whom the
Deputyship had been usually entrusted. To preclude the danger of these
haughty noblemen attempting to arrogate the state of the independent
native chieftains, and to firmly establish the English power, a
Parliament, which assembled at Nottingham, in the seventeenth of Edward
III. (1343), enacted laws for the reformation of the Irish Government. A
few months previous to the sitting of this Parliament, Sir Ralph Ufford
had been sent over as Lord Deputy, to stamp out this incipient spirit of
independence, and to impede the fusion of the two races. This nobleman, by
rigid and cruel measures, executed the nefarious intentions of the English
Parliament. He appropriated the goods of others, plundered, without
discrimination, the clergy, the laity, the rich and the poor; assigning
the public welfare as a pretext. He broke down the pride of the Earl of
Desmond, and for a while seized his estates; but, on Ufford's recall to
England and the appointment of Sir Walter Bermingham as his successor,
Desmond was restored to royal favour. Gradually the old animus was
revived, and old dormant jealousies between the two races were awakened,
until, in the year 1376, the "Statute of Kilkenny" threw the whole nation
into a state of commotion and chaos, and aroused a fierce hatred between
the Anglo-Irish and the later arrivals from England, who were styled by
that Act, "the English born in England." The latter despised the former
and called them "Irish Dogg;" the Anglo-Irish retorted, giving them the
name of "English Hobbe," or churl. These bickerings were reprobated by
the said Statute, which, at the same time, banned the whole race of the
native Irish. Sir John Davis writes of it: "It was manifest from these
laws that those who had the government of Ireland under the Crown of
England intended to make a perpetual separation between the English
settled in Ireland and the native Irish, in the expectation that the
English should in the end root out the Irish." And another Englishman
writes of this Statute: "Imagination can scarcely devise an extremity of
antipathy, hatred, and revenge, to which this code of aggravation was not
calculated to provoke both nations" (Plowden, _Historical Review of the
State of Ireland_.) The foregoing summary of the condition of affairs in
Ireland in the fourteenth century has been given, in order to illustrate
and explain the bald historical facts handed down to us having reference
to Mellifont during the same period.
It will be remembered that in the year 1316, O'Neil complained to the Pope
that Irishmen were by law excluded from entering monasteries within the
Pale; accordingly, we read that in 1322, the monks of Mellifont, amongst
whom the English element then prevailed, would admit no man to profession
there who had not previously sworn that he was not an Irishman. Cox, who
derives his information from some old document in the Tower of London,
tells us that in 1323, the General Chapter of the Order strongly denounced
this pernicious practice, but there is no such decree, nor is there any
allusion to it in Martene at that date. That spirit seems to have been
gratifying to King Edward II.; for, in 1324, he complained to the Pope of
the violation of the law of exclusion, and Nicholas of Lusk, who was then
Abbot, was superseded; very likely, was summarily deposed, for the
infraction of it.
At that very time, some of the other Cistercian monasteries under the
protection of the native chieftains, and totally composed of Irishmen,
were in a most prosperous condition, and merited the genuine esteem of
princes and people. Thus, the Abbey of Assaroe, or Ballyshannon, under the
fostering care of the Princes of Tyrconel, attained celebrity by the
regularity of its monks and the learning and sanctity of its Abbots, three
of whom were made Bishops at no distant intervals. Of Boyle Abbey, Co.
Roscommon, the same can also be said; for it throve and flourished without
royal favour or charter. On the other hand, Mellifont had a plethora of
charters, for which the monks there must have paid dearly. But, surrounded
as it was by covetous and not over-scrupulous neighbours in lawless times,
such safeguards were decidedly necessary. So, in 1329, Edward III. granted
them a confirmation of all former privileges, together with the right of
free warren in all their manors; and again in 1348, he gave them a fresh
confirmation, with the right to erect a prison in any of their lands in
the Co. Meath, and also the power to erect a pillory and gallows in their
town of Collon. The Abbot then, as a temporal lord over his own manors,
had power of life and death over his vassals therein; but he never
exercised the authority so vested in him by condemning anyone to death,
nay, even, he refrained from adjudicating on civil matters, as is seen by
dispensations granted by Popes to Irish Cistercian Abbots freeing them
from the obligation of acting as Justices.
It is recorded that in 1329, in the battle in which the Louth men killed
their new Earl, John Birmingham, "there fell Caech O'Carroll, that famous
tympanist and harper, so pre-eminent that he was a phoenix in his art, and
with him fell about twenty tympanists who were his scholars. He was
called Caech O'Carroll because his eyes were not straight, but squinted;
and if he was not the first inventor of chord music, yet of all his
predecessors and contemporaries, he was the corrector, the teacher, and
director."
How it fared with Mellifont during the fearful pestilence that ravaged all
Europe in 1348, is not related. Friar Clyn, the Franciscan Annalist, wrote
of it:--"That pestilence deprived of human inhabitants, villages and
cities, and castles and towns, so that there was scarcely found a man to
dwell therein." The mortality in the religious houses was very great, and
in some instances, only a few monks were left out of large and numerous
communities. It is said that in these countries the religious Orders never
recovered from the loss of the best and most learned of their members who
were then swept away.
In 1351, Abbot Reginald was charged, as if it were a crime, and found
guilty, of having within two years collected of his own money, and from
the Abbots of Boyle, Knockmoy, Bective, and Cashel, and of having remitted
the sum of 664 florins to the Abbot of Clairvaux, while war was being
waged between England and France. But there was no treason or treasonable
intent in that; for the money was to defray the current expenses of the
Order, and was levied off every monastery in proportion to the resources
of each. Richard, Coeur de Lion, Alexander II. of Scotland, and Bela IV.
of Hungary had, in their day, contributed largely to this fund.
In 1358, the Abbot of Mellifont made good his claim to three weirs upon
the Boyne, at Rosnaree, Knowth, and Staleen; but, in 1366, he was indicted
at Trim, for erecting an unlawful weir at Oldbridge, when the Jury found
against him, and he was ordered to reduce the weir to a certain breadth
and space, and he, himself, was sentenced to a term of imprisonment; but,
on his paying a fine of L10 to Roland de Shalesford, the sheriff of the
Co. Meath, this sentence was commuted. Ten years later, John Terrour,
successor to this Abbot, was sued for obstructing the King's passage of
the Boyne.
In the years 1373 and 1377, the Abbot was summoned to attend Parliaments
held at Dublin and Castledermot respectively. In the former Parliament,
one hundred shillings were ordered to be levied from him, as his portion
of the subsidy granted to the Lord Justice, William de Windesore, by the
same Parliament. In 1380, the King gave a special mandate that no _mere_
Irishman should be admitted to profession in this abbey. In 1381 and 1382,
the Abbot attended Parliaments held in Dublin, and in 1400, the King
granted a royal confirmation of all the land, manors, and liberties,
bestowed on the abbey by former charters; and in 1402, he pardoned the
Abbot and monks for their having admitted Irishmen to profession. However,
they were mulcted in the sum of L50. In 1415, Leynagh Bermingham, William
Davison, and John D'Alton were committed to the custody of the Abbot to be
kept by him as hostages for the allegiance of their respective fathers. In
1424, the Abbot, with the Archbishop of Armagh and Nicholas Taaffe, was
appointed Justice and Conservator of the Peace for the Co. Louth.
The allusions to Mellifont during the remainder of this century are very
few and uninteresting. Whether, or not, it shared the fate of many other
Irish monasteries at that time and had no regular Abbot, but one who was
called Abbot _in commendam_, is not known; but the presumption is that it
had not a regular Abbot. These Abbots _in commendam_ were not monks, or
members of any Religious Order; but secular clerics, not necessarily in
Holy Orders. Sometimes, especially when the abuse had reached its greatest
height in the fifteenth century, they were even laymen; nevertheless, they
enjoyed the revenues of the abbeys committed to them, with the style and
title of Abbots, but exercised no spiritual jurisdiction in their abbeys.
This latter was confided to regular Priors who were selected by their own
Religious superiors. When laymen held the abbeys _in commendam_ they
commonly resided in them with their wives, families, retinues, servants,
etc., to the distraction and interference with the monks in their regular
observances, and finally, to the complete subversion of discipline. At
that very time this pernicious practice had brought the whole Order to the
brink of ruin; for we find the General Chapter on several occasions
deploring the injuries inflicted on religion, and lamenting the havoc
wrought by it, and they decided to send three of their number to Rome to
implore the Pope's protection against the growing evil. Still, it
survived, more or less, in these countries till the Reformation. Scotland
suffered more from it, apparently, than Ireland did, as can be seen from
the lists furnished by Brady in his _Episcopal Succession_.
In 1476, the Abbot of Mellifont complained, that "owing to oppressions and
extortions within the County of Louth and Uriell, his monastery was
greatly indebted and impoverished." Certain it is, that for some time
previous, it had fallen from its former regularity and fervour; but,
through the zeal and tact of Abbot Roger who then governed it, it regained
its wonted prominence amongst the most observant monasteries. In 1479,
this same Roger having set forth to the King that he had "Jurisdiction
Ecclesiastical of all persons within his lands, as well secular as
ecclesiastical, the King, out of his love to the Cistercian Order,
granted to the Abbot and his successors, the _Jus de excommunicatis
capiendis_, and episcopal jurisdiction," (Stat. Roll. 19 Ed. IV., c. 5.)
The former privilege refers to the concession made to the Church by the
first clause of the Statute of Kilkenny, and which had been confirmed by
subsequent Parliaments for centuries after its first enactment. Under the
heading--"The Church to be free--Writ _De Excommunicato capiendo_," the
clause proceeds to ordain, "that Holy Church shall have all her franchises
without injury, ... and if any (which God forbid) do to the contrary, and
be excommunicated by the Ordinary of the place for that cause, so that
satisfaction be not made to God and Holy Church by the party so
excommunicated within a month after such excommunication, that then, after
certificate thereupon being made by the said Ordinary into the Chancery, a
writ shall be directed to the Sheriff, Mayor, Seneschal of the franchise,
or other officers of the King, to take his body, and to keep him in prison
without bail, until due satisfaction be made to God and Holy Church, etc."
By episcopal jurisdiction is here meant the civil rights and privileges
appertaining to the episcopal office, and enjoyed at that time by bishops
over their subjects, lay and clerical. And as to the spiritual,
quasi-episcopal jurisdiction--the Abbots of the Order had that as well as
exemption in relation to their own monks from the very foundation of the
Order; but by a Decree dated 28th September 1487, Pope Innocent VIII.
granted to all Cistercian Abbots quasi-episcopal jurisdiction over their
tenants, vassals, subjects, and servants. By this Decree, the Pope "took
all the Abbots, Abbesses, Monks and Nuns of the Order under his special
protection, together with all their goods, vassals, subjects, and
servants, and exempted and freed the same from _all jurisdiction,
superiority, correction, visitation_, subjection and power of Archbishops,
Bishops and their Vicars, etc., ... and subjected them immediately to
himself and the Holy See." This Decree is given in full in the _Privilegia
Ordinis Cisterciensis_, p. 179.
That the Abbots of the Order exercised that privilege in this country
cannot be doubted. We read an instance of it in the _Triumphalia_, so ably
edited by the late Father Denis Murphy, S.J., where, even after the
Council of Trent and so recently as 1621, a certain secular priest, who
had been appointed by the Abbot of Holy Cross to the pastoral charge of
the parish attached to that abbey and of one or more outlying parishes
subject to the same Abbot, denied after some time, that he had his
faculties from the said Abbot, but rather from the Archbishop, or his
Vicar. The controversy lasted long, but finally, it was decided in the
Abbot's favour, and Dr. Kearney, then Archbishop of Cashel, acknowledged
the Abbot's title. And again, in the _Spicelegium Ossoriense_ there is a
letter from Dr. O'Reilly, Archbishop of Armagh, written to the Propaganda
in 1633, in which he complained that the Cistercians claimed the privilege
of "_Visitation, Correction, Summoning to Synods, Approbation to hear
confessions, together with entire and absolute episcopal jurisdiction_."
And a further proof in favour of the practice is found in the fact that
laymen who acquired the suppressed monasteries of the Order claimed and
exercised that same privilege. Thus, in 1622, Archbishop Ussher in a
Report of Bective parish said it belonged to Bartholomew Dillon, Esq. of
Riverstown, his Majesty's farmer of the impropriate property. "This church
belongeth to the Abbey of Bectiffe, in the possession of the said Mr.
Dillon, who pretendeth to have an exemption from the Lord Bishop's
jurisdiction, and doth prove wills and grant administrations." And in
1744, Harris writes of Newry, where once was a Cistercian Abbey also: "A
mitred Abbot formerly possessed the lordships of Newry and Mourne, and
exercised therein Episcopal Jurisdiction, which after the dissolution of
the Abbey was done by the temporal proprietor, and at the present Robert
Needham, Esq., to whom the town and manor belong, enjoys an exempt
Jurisdiction within the said manors, and the seal of his court is a Mitred
Abbot in his Albe sitting in a chair, and supported by two yew trees with
this inscription: '_Sigillum exemptae Jurisdictionis de Viride Ligno alias
Newry et Mourne_.'" Which in English means, the seal of the Exempt
Jurisdiction of Newry and Mourne. Verily! this savours of Popery; for, it
was from the Pope the monks received their exemption. A modern example of
this Papal concession, exercised in the Anglican Church, is to be found in
the case of the Dean of Westminster who is immediately under the
jurisdiction of her Gracious Majesty the Queen, and consequently exempt
from that of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is as successor to the Abbot
of Westminster that he claims and is allowed that privilege of exemption;
for the Abbot was immediately subject to the Pope in pre-Reformation
times.
The Abbot of Mellifont was implicated in the rebellion of Lambert Simnel;
for in 1488, he received pardon from the King for his offences in that
connection. The close of the fifteenth century found Mellifont recovering
and maintaining its old prestige amongst the Religious Orders of this
country, and with the dawning of a new century, it had regained its former
level, from which a host of circumstances had conspired to drag it down
and to degrade it. These circumstances have been already detailed and need
not be here repeated.
In civil matters, Ireland in the first quarter of the sixteenth century,
presented the same, or nearly the same, condition as she did more than
three centuries before, when the English first landed on her shores. The
Pale was literally bounded by the Liffey and the Boyne, and the old feuds,
the long-protracted wars between the Anglo-Irish and the natives still
subsisted. The regular administration of the law was limited to the four
counties adjoining the capital, called the "Four Obedient Counties." It
seems incontestable that religion was in a flourishing condition in this
country during the period; for an unwonted activity and fervour animated
both clergy and people, as can be inferred from the number of religious
houses established; the frequency of Synods held denoting zeal and
regularity on the part of the prelates convening them; and the common
practice, so much then in vogue, of visiting, through a spirit of penance
and devotion, the Holy Places at home and in far-off countries. Our Annals
prove this to demonstration. But, it must be borne in mind that the spirit
of exclusion was still in full force amongst the Anglo-Irish clergy, and
no Irishman was eligible for benefices within the Pale. Learning, which is
ever the handmaid of true piety, found its home as in ancient times
amongst the two classes of the clergy, the secular and regular. The number
of learned works published at that time clearly proves it. Amongst the
many eminent men who then adorned the Church in Ireland, Maurice O'Fihely,
Archbishop of Tuam, ranks foremost. His biographers, for he had many,
inform us, that he "was eminent for his extraordinary knowledge in
Divinity, Logic, Philosophy, and Metaphysics," that he published a
Dictionary of the Holy Scriptures, and was styled by his contemporaries at
home and abroad, "The Flower of the World." He had been a Franciscan
Friar before his promotion to the See of Tuam, but did not long survive
his appointment.
Now, capital has been made by some writers out of a description of the
Church in Ireland taken from the State Papers, Part III., Vol. II., pp.
15, 16. If it reflected a true picture, a Reformation would indeed have
been needed, but not the kind introduced by Henry VIII., nurtured by
Edward VI., and propagated with fire and sword by Elizabeth. The Report
states: "Some sayeth, that the prelates of the Church and the clergy is
much the cause of all the mysse order of the land, for there is no
archbyshop, ne bysshop, abbot, ne prior, parson ne vicar, ne any other
person of the church, high or lowe, greate or smalle, Englysh or Irishe,
that usythe to preach the worde of Godde, saveing the poor fryers
beggars."... "Some sayeth"--Who were these "Some," or what was their
assertion worth? Were they parties who benefited by the disturbance of the
old order of things at the Suppression, and so suspected of having been
partial, and eager to seek any and every palliation for the State Church
as by law established. Now every student of Irish history, as contained in
our Annals, knows that that anonymous statement is unwarranted by fact. It
will suffice to take two instances, as we find them recorded in Dowling's
_Annals_ about this time, to show the fallacy of the accusation of
wholesale neglect of preaching the Word of God. Of Nicholas Maguire,
Bishop of Leighlin, 1490-1512, Dowling (Protestant Chancellor of Leighlin)
writes: "When he was Prebendary of Ullard, he preached and delivered great
learning with no less reverence, being in favour with the King and
nobility of Leinster, who, together with the Dean and Chapter, elected him
Bishop of Leighlin." And of Maurice Deoran, or Doran, who a few years
later succeeded him in Leighlin, Dowling again writes: "He was a most
eloquent preacher." It cannot be denied that at that time some Church
dignitaries affected the airs and magnificence of worldly magnates, nor
that they gave scandal to their flocks by their absenteeism. Other abuses,
no doubt, existed, but the watchful providence of God had made provision
for their removal through His authorised ministers. But, alas! a new
condition of affairs shall soon arise. The most powerful political engine
ever fabricated for the extension of the English power in Ireland shall be
introduced, one which shall eventually break up the tribe lands,
annihilate the sway of the ancient chieftains, and reduce their
impoverished descendants to the condition of serfs and menials. And this
shall be called reforming the Church! Even in this revolution, Mellifont
shall play her part, and become revolutionized and misappropriated.