jected to the see of Rome. Considerable opposition was at first made to the new establishment, principally by the inferior clergy and the native chieftains. But pope Adrian IV., having arrogantly claimed the sovereignty of the kingdom, by a bull issued in the year 1155, formally conferred it on Henry II. of England, on condition of his reducing his newly acquired dominions to unqualified subjection to the pope's supremacy and conformity with the Romish church. By the aid of this powerful auxiliary, all opposition to the papal innovations was silenced, the Irish church was completely assimilated in doctrine and discipline to that of Rome, every remaining trace of its primitive purity and independence was speedily obliterated; and after the lapse of a century, Ireland presented the same religious aspect as the other countries of Western Europe.

As the value and importance of the Reformation can only be justly appreciated from a knowledge of the previous state of religion, it will therefore be the first object of this preliminary sketch to describe the religious condition of Ireland, during the period that elapsed from the full establishment of the papal system, till the commencement of the sixteenth century. In this country, religion had an ample share of those corruptions by which it was so lamentably defaced, and its benign influence so generally counteracted, through the rest of Europe. Here the authority of the Roman pontiff and his degenerate church, reigned supreme, as well over a bigoted and obsequious priesthood, as an ignorant and enslaved people; while the political circumstances of the country aggravated the evils which had universally resulted from such an uncontrolled and unscriptural jurisdiction.

The turbulent state of the island, and its remoteness from the seat of government, prevented the British monarch from exercising with effect that control which he claimed over the appointment of prelates to the Irish sees. These dignities were almost invariably bestowed by the pope, without the reference to the king required in the sister kingdoms, either for

his previous license or his subsequent approbation. When a vacant see lay contiguous to the English Pale, (2) or promised to be a lucrative preferment, the interposition of the sovereign was occasionally entreated by a rival candidate, and the paramount claims of the pope, though after much contention, were as often overthrown. But this salutary check was seldom exercised; and the Roman pontiff was permitted to fill all the influential offices in the church, and not unfrequently in the state, with the most obsequious of his adherents. The ready communication which, by way of France and Spain, existed between Ireland and the court of Rome, by facilitating the carrying of appeals thither, and the procuring thence of indulgences and other expensive articles of papal manufacture, contributed still further to extend and increase the power of that court, and proportionably to oppress and impoverish the people.

The prelates, therefore, were entirely devoted to the interests of the mother-church on which they were so dependent, and with which they possessed such facilities of intercourse. In other countries, allegiance to the sovereign generally counteracted, if it did not supersede, this unqualified subservience to the authority of the pope ; but the royal power was too weak in Ireland to oppose with success the continued extension of ecclesiastical domination. Accordingly, the bishops carried the authority of the church, and the privileges of their order, to an extravagant and intolerable height. They spared neither king nor people. The encroachments on the rights of the crown occasionally roused the indignation of the sovereign; (3) but

2 The Pale included the few counties immediately contiguous to Dublin, where the English first settled. This district was more or less extensive, according as they were more or less successful in their incursions on the neighbouring septs. It included the counties of Dublin, Kildare, Meath, with part of Louth, and occasionally extended as far northward as Newry.

3

Ware's Works, i. 199. The curious case here related between the bishop of Down and Edward I., clearly evinces the usurpation of the clergy in the beginning of the fifteenth century. The king called him to account, 1, for excluding, in conjunction with the primate, all clerks born in Eng

owing to the troubled state of the kingdom and the weakness of the royal authority, these were generally unnoticed. They filled the chief offices in the civil government of the kingdom, in which they were often guilty of shameless fraud and oppression. (4) They arrogantly claimed that their persons should be exempted from arrest for debt; (5) and their properties from being taxed without their own consent. On one occasion, the prelates of an entire province threatened to depose their clergy, and to excommunicate the people, because they had, without special consent of their superiors, contributed to a subsidy laid on by Parliament for the exigencies of the state. They exercised the right of pardoning felons within their diocesses, or of commuting their punishment for

land from the monasteries within his diocese; 2, for exercising in his manors all the pleas of the crown except four; 3, for claiming the eiric, or ransom, for killing a mere Irishman, or committing felony within his jurisdiction. After he had been deprived of these exorbitant encroachments, he was again brought under censure for breaking into the convent at Down, stealing thence the king's letter of license to the prior, &c., to elect a new abbot, and then forcibly advancing one of his own creatures to that dignity.

4 Ware, i. 331. Bicknor, archbishop of Dublin in the fourteenth century, was lord treasurer of Ireland for many years. He was excommunicated by the Pope, at the instigation of Edward II., for refusing to give any account of his administration of the public revenues. The sentence, however, was pronounced merely pro forma, to satisfy the king; and the delinquent was permitted to join in the performance of divine service at Rome, whilst under its operation; dishonesty being, in the opinion of his Holiness, no very flagrant crime. The archbishop was afterwards pardoned for sundry false writs and acquittances which he had fraudulently inserted in his account as treasurer; so that when he did render an account of his administration, it had not been a very correct one. The office of lord chancellor was at this time almost exclusively filled by bishops.

5 Ware i. 482. Cox. i. 222. exemption began to be limited. synod held at Limerick, to the debtors without danger of incurring the sentence of excommunication-the usual penalty for so heinous a sacrilege., "The clergy made," as might be expected," a grievous outcry against this canon, as an infringement and violation of their ecclesiastical privileges."

It was not till the year 1529, that this Power was then given, by a provincial mayor of that city, to imprison clerical

6 See this case in Ware, i. 478.

money. (7) To increase their influence, they studied to transfer almost every litigated case from the civil to the ecclesiastical tribunals. Their own disputed claims, however, were sometimes adjusted, not by the verdict of the law, but by the chances of single combat, in which bishops did not hesitate to engage by delegated champions. (8) The various orders of the clergy, too, were repeatedly encroaching on the privileges of each other, and were frequently embroiled in the most unseemly contentions. Bishops opposed the jurisdiction of their metropolitans; (9) and the latter, in their turn, oppressed, and sometimes even openly assaulted, their suffragans.(10) The inferior orders were not less refractory and disputatious than their superiors.(11) The regular or monastic clergy laboured to undermine the popularity and diminish the dues of the secu

7 See note 3.

8 Cox, i. 76. Ware, i. 406. A bishop of Ossory, in the year 1284, prosecuted his right to a manor by combat, and gained it, his champion overcoming that of his adversary.

9 Ware, i. 508. The following charges, exhibited against a bishop of Limerick in the latter end of the fourteenth century, will corroborate the above assertion." That when Torrington, the archbishop of Cashel, came to redress the grievances of the Franciscans, and cited this bishop to answer them, he laid violent hands on the archbishop, and tore the citation from him with such force that he drew his blood-that the bishop having been a long time excommunicated for debts due to the apostolic see, paid no regard thereto, but acted as usual—that the archbishop having cited him for heresy, was, together with his attendant clergy, in danger of being assaulted, if he had not run away; and that, after he had retired, the bishop, clothed in his pontificals, entered the city of Limerick, and by bell, book, and candle, publicly excommunicated every person who had supplied the archbishop with food or entertainment." See also Ware, i. 528-9, for the turbulent conduct of a bishop of Waterford towards the bishop of Lismore and the archbishop of Cashel.

10 Ware, i. 533. An archbishop of Cashel, in the middle of the fourteenth century, assaulted a bishop of Waterford, by night, in his lodgings, grievously wounded him, and many others who were in his company, and robbed him of his goods. See also Cox, i. 91.

11 So late as 1525, a bishop of Leighlin was murdered by his archdeacon, on the high-way," because he had reproved him for his insolent obstinacy and other crimes, and threatened him with further correction." Ware, i. 461.

lar or parochial clergy; while the latter inveighed in the bitterest terms against the idleness and profligacy of the mendicant orders.(12) The clergy of native extraction opposed their English brethren, and did not hesitate to charge them with corrupting the entire clerical order, by the vices which they introduced into the country.(13) To so great a height were these animosities carried, that the king was frequently obliged to interfere, in order to secure admission for his countrymen into vacant benefices in the Irish church. (14) They who thus invaded the rights of the sovereign and of each other, could not be expected to be very scrupulous in their encroachments on those of the laity. The people, indeed, were the victims of unmitigated oppression; and both their persons and their properties were treated by the priesthood, as if placed at their absolute disposal.

The wealth of the Irish clergy, the chief cause and evidence of their corruption, (15) was not so exorbitant as in Britain, in consequence of the general poverty of the kingdom. The

12 See these contentions related at large, in Ware, i. 82 and 332; ii. 86. Cox, i. 148, and in Mason's history of St. Patrick's cathedral, 133-4. Fitzralph, archbishop of Armagh from 1347 to 1359, was the most vigorous opponent of the mendicants, for which he was charged with heresy, and suffered no little hardship. It is remarkable that the year in which he died, Wycliffe, who was acquainted with his writings, took up the same controversy in England, which was the first occasion that brought this celebrated reformer into prominent notice, and led him to adopt that cardinal principle of Protestantism—the sufficiency of Scripture for all purposes of faith and duty. Bellarmine charges Fitzralph with heresy, and states that Wycliffe derived from the archbishop's writings several of his alleged errors. Bishop Davenant gives the following as an opinion of Fitzralph:-" Armachani opinio est, quod si omnes Episcopi essent defuncti sacerdotes minores possent ordinare." Several very interesting particulars in his life may be seen in Anderson's "Sketches of the Native Irish," pp. 14—18. 13 Ware's Annals, ad an. 1185, and Works, i. 439.

14 See the interference of the king, in the case of the bishop of Down, in note 3. It thence appears that both the primate and he excluded all Englishmen from benefices in their dioceses.

13 It was an old saying and a true one," Ecclesia peperit divitias, et filia devoravit matrem,"