the ancient monastic system was gradually superseded. The monasteries of the modern foundation, to the property of which alone the Church of Rome can pretend to shew any original title, were modelled on the Roman system, and not on that of the ancient Irish Church. The large property in land and tithes which these monasteries acquired between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, was confiscated at the Reformation, and is now in the hands of lay impropriators, and not in that of the Church. Would then the Church of Rome seek the restitution of that property in Ireland, to which alone she can seem to have any original title, it is not to the Church, but to the large landed proprietors that she must look for the restitution of it.

10. And in truth these lay-impropriators were one of the chief causes why the Church did not gain over the mass of the people to her communion, as we shall now proceed to shew. Before the Reformation, the clergy were divided into two classes, the secular and the regular. The seculars, as is well known, were the parochial ministers engaged in active ministerial service; the regulars resided in the monasteries. The constant state of petty warfare in which the chieftains of Ireland were for many centuries engaged, tended continually to increase the riches and importance of this latter class. In times of public disquietude the parochial clergy fled to the safety of these monastic institutions. On becoming inmates of the monastery, they entered into a compact with the abbot to resign to him the larger proportion of their tithes, and thus the monasteries became invested with the rectorial portion of their revenues. See King's "Primacy of Armagh," p. 3.

Q

To attend to the spiritual duties of the parish, a vicar was appointed, for whom a special stipulation was made with the abbot that he should receive a portion of the tithes for the performance of his pastoral office.

In the reign of Henry VIII. the number of vicarages had so largely increased that at that period onehalf of the entire tithes of Ireland had passed into the hands of the monasteries *. By two Irish Acts of Parliament (28 Hen. VIII. c. 16, and 33 Hen. VIII. c. 5) all the revenues pertaining to these monasteries, and the landed property belonging to them, were transferred to the Crown; not absolutely, but on certain conditions under which Parliament assented to the appropriation. Egregious tyrant as Henry VIII. was, he dared not wrest this property from the Church, without its seeming assent; and the studied phraseology observed in these statutes brings to our notice the important fact that the Church resigned this property to the King, and that he was forced to assume the virtue of moderation although he did not possess it; from which it is evident that even Henry VIII., in the very height of his despotic power, dared not seize on the property of the Church and devote it to other uses, till the Church itself had been induced (by what means it matters not for our argument) to resign it to him, and that therefore whatever power the State may possess "to adjust from time to time. the incomes and emoluments of the clergy, so as to produce within the Church the greatest amount of efficiency possible," it has no power whatever to confiscate any part of the corporate property of the

* See Dean Newland's "Apology," p. 217.

1 Vide Sir Hugh Cairns' Speech at the Down and Connor Conference of 1863, "Report," p. 32.

Church, or to apply it to other purposes without its own consent. To do so would be to perpetrate an act of injustice which even Henry VIII., in the plenitude of his power, and with a Parliament eager for a share in the spoils that awaited them, dared not attempt m.

11. But we have in the next place to consider the conditions under which Parliament assented to this transfer of the property of the Church to the Crown. When the Parliament passed the statute referred to above, they laid down the distinct principle that His Majesty became possessed of it under the same conditions as those on which the monasteries formerly possessed it: "The King shall have and enjoy all such monasteries and tithes, in the same manner, form, state, and condition as the abbot had, or of right ought to have had, the same at the time of the dissolution.". Since then, as we have seen, the abbot was bound to provide for the spiritual duties of the parish, in the same degree was the King under a similar obligation. Moreover, whatever rights were reserved to the Church when they were presented to the King, the same rights remained when the King conferred these revenues on other persons; for it is expressly stated "that the taker from the King shall have and hold them in the like manner, form, and condition ;" and to secure "that an able person should be appointed and limitted within every of the said

m The Statute, 28 Hen. VIII. c. 16, expressly states "that all such monasteries and religious houses, as have been given to his Majesty by any abbot, prior, abbess, or prioress, &c." And 33 Hen. VIII. c. 5, unequivocally declares that they surrendered their property "of their own free and voluntarie mindes and assents, without restraint, co-action, or compulsion of any manner, person, or persons."

...

parish churches;" a special Act (33 Hen. VIII. c. 14) was passed, which Act "endowed the same vicars with the same mansions, tythes, portions, and oblations in pure almes for ever." But although the King's grants to the impropriators were only of what had been possessed by the religious communities or their members, "the great patentees in many instances made encroachments on the parochial incumbents, under the pretence that the property encroached on was parcel of the ancient appropriation, to the further impoverishment of the parochial cures, and several of the patentees seized vicarages as well as rectories, as if they also were impropriate, and either left the cures unprovided for, or afforded small and insufficient stipends to the stipendiary curates "."

It will thus be seen that the lay impropriators were bound to provide out of the Church property granted to them for the spiritual duties of the parishes from which this property was derived, instead of which they alienated it to secular uses, the spiritual interests of the parishes being wholly neglected by them. It is truly wonderful that the Irish Church survived at all after the spoliation it then received. The rectorial tithes of 562 parishes passed into the hands of laymen, and in addition 118 parishes became wholly impropriate; the lay impropriators also became possessed of 1,480 glebes belonging to the Church. And what was the natural consequence? "Churches ruined, glebe lands violently seized, the clergy without houses, their lives threatened by the land-owners, lest they should perchance resist although without houses, and thus recover the spoliated pro

Report of Royal Commissioners of Ecclesiastical Inquiry, 1831, p. 7.

No won

perty or prevent further encroachments"." der that Sir Thomas Ryves had to remark in 1704, "the Church of Ireland lies buried under a heap of impropriations P." And Dean Swift adds this testimony: "The clergy having been stripped of the greatest part of their revenues, the glebes being generally lost, the tithes in the hands of laymen, the churches. demolished, and the country depopulated, it was necessary to unite vicarages" and to such a fearful extent had this spoliation been carried, that Archbishop King in a letter to Dr. Gibson (quoted by Bishop Mant), tells us, "that in many dioceses £200 per annum is near a fifth part of the maintenance of the clergy of the whole diocese: and to make up £50 per annum very often ten parishes must be united; and after all," he significantly adds, "an ill or insufficient clergyman does ten times more mischief in Ireland than in England."

8

12. At the time of the restoration of Charles II. Ireland had passed through a series of revolutions. The title of all landed property in the kingdom was in confusion. The well-known Act of Settlement " was therefore passed, which is still the fundamental law of property in Ireland. The estates of thousands are now held on the very same tenure as that of the property of the Church. By the 102nd clause of this Act of Settlement, it is enacted "that all and every the mannors, lands, tenements, and rents whereof any archbishop, bishop, dean, or dean and chapter, or any other ecclesiastical person or persons whatsoever in his or their politic capacity, or any of

• See King's "Church History," p. 1864. Vicar's Plea," p. 1.

Church History, ii. 289.

P "Poor

9 Swift's Works, vol. iv. p. 71.

s 14 and 15 Car. II. c. 2.