LITERATURE: THE IRISH REFORMATION. See Nos. 1, 2, 8, 23, 24, in vol. i, pp. 649, 650, and compare the following with the literature referred to in each: 1. Reid, J. S. Hist. of Presbyterian Church in Ireland. 3 vols. Edinb., 1834-37; 2d ed., 1853; 3d ed., 1867. Has appendix of documents. Valuable. 2. Mant, R. Hist. of the Church of Ireland from the Reformation to the Revolution. 2 vols. Oxf. and Lond., 1839-41. Prot. Episcop. 3. King, R. Church History of Ireland. 3 vols. Dubl., 1841; 5th ed., bound in 2 vols., 1867. Prot. Episcop. 4. Moran, P. F. Hist. of Catholic Archbishops of Dublin. Dubl., 1864. Monasticum Hibernicum. Dubl., 1873. Hist. of the Irish Church. Lond., 1874. Spicilegium Ossoriense. 2 vols. Dubl., 1874-78. A collection of original documents. Roman Catholic. 5. Richey, A. Sects: Lectures on the Hist. of Ireland. 2d ser. Lond., 1870. 6. Dwyer, Canon. The Diocese of Killaloe from the Reformation till the Close of the Eighteenth Century. Dubl., 1878. Prot. Episcop. Excellent. See Church Quar. Rev., vii, 492. 7. Malone, S. Church Hist. of Ireland. New ed. Dubl., 1880. Roman Cath. 8. Bagwell, R. Ireland under the Tudors. Lond., 1885. 9. Seddall, H. The Church of Ireland. Dubl., 1886. 10. Hassenkamp, R. Geschichte Irlands von der Reformation bis zu seiner Union mit England. Leipz., 1887. See R. Buddensieg in Church Rev., N. Y., Sept., 1887, p. 383. Transl., Lond., 1888. 11. Ball, J. T. The Reformed Church of Ireland, 1537-1886. Lond. and N. Y., 1887. History of the Episcopal Church in Ireland, chiefly in its legislative and administrative aspects by an Episcopalian layman. Admirable. See T. Witherow, in Presb. Rev., 1887, 753. 12. Hamilton, Thos. Hist. of the Irish Presbyterian Church. Edinb., 1887. See John Hall, in Presb. Rev., N. Y., viii, 357. 13. Irwin, C. H. Hist. of Presbyterianism in South and West of Ireland. Lond., 1890. 14. Morris, W. O'C. Ireland, 1494-1868. Lond., 1896. 2 CHAPTER XIII. PRELUDE TO THE IRISH REFORMATION. ANTECEDENT ANARCHY. THE interval from the establishment of English rule and the Roman system in Ireland to the Reformation was marked by broils, disturbances, troubles-a time of political and religious anarchy. Between the exaction of the secular lords on the one hand and the spiritual on the other, the poor Irish were ground as between millstones. To the spiritual lords was now given an increasing power. The pope encouraged the clergy to refuse submission to lay tribunals, and required them to reserve all matters like wills and titles to their own courts. An instance of the justice for which the Irish might look to their masters appears in PERIOD OF the case of Widow le Blunde. Her petition to Edward I declares that property awarded her by the king's judges had been detained by the archbishop of Cashel (MacCarwill, 1253-1289); that this prelate had killed her father, imprisoned her grandfather and grandmother until they perished by famine, and starved to death her six brothers and sisters, who claimed a share of the inheritance of which the archbishops retained possession. She says that the writs obtained by her in the king's courts had been rendered useless by the bribery of the oppressor, and that she had been obliged to cross the Irish Sea no less than five times to seek redress.' Even if we allow that the petitioner has exaggerated, an indictment remains sufficient to brand with infamy such an administration of trust. Then by the power of excommunication the spiritual courts had a menace which indeed made them formidable to the luckless wight who provoked their ire. An instance of the power of the Church occurred in 1267, when the mayor and citizens of Dublin made an 'Leland, Hist. of Ireland, i, 234; Killen, Eccl. Hist. of Ireland, i, 237. ' Hallam says that temporal penalties attached to Church censures were an established principle in Europe in the Middle Ages: "By our common law an excommunicated person is incapable of being a witness or of bringing an ac. tion; and he may be detained in prison until he obtains absolution. By the Establishments of St. Louis (Ordonnances des Rois, i, 121), his estate or person might be attached by the magistrate. (He might, however, sue in the lay, though not in the spiritual, court.) These actual penalties were attended by effort to reduce the fees of the clergy. The archbishop denounced the arrangement, and placed the city under an interdict.' The POWER OF pope's legate confirmed this. The privy council then THE CHURCH. interfered, and a compromise was effected in these terms: For a public sin a citizen should make satisfaction by a sum of money; in the case of a second transgression he should be cudgeled about the Church; for a third, a public cudgeling attended by a procession; and if he still proved incorrigible he should be exiled from the city or cudgeled through it. The unhappy victim, who for some offense had been made obnoxious to the heavy financial claims of the clergy, was thus saved from too heavy drafts by an institution to which as an Irishman he could not greatly objectthe shillalah." IRELAND OVERRUN With the papal and English heel on Ireland, the Church was at the mercy of foreigners. English and Italian ecclesiastics overran the country and seized upon all the offices and benefices. Very often these men did not reside in the country, but took its revenues without any service in return. Finally the Irish could not stand this injustice, and in 1250 passed the resolution that no Englishman should be admitted canon into an Irish church. King Henry appealed to the pope, who at WITH ECCLE- marks of abhorrence and ignominy still more calculated to make an impression on ordinary minds. The excommunicated were to be shunned, like men infected with leprosy, by their servants, their friends, and their families. Two attendants only, if we may trust a current history, remained with Robert, who, on account of an irregular marriage, was put to this ban by Gregory V, and these threw all the meats which had passed his table into the fire (Velly, t. ii). Indeed, the mere intercourse with a proscribed person incurred what was called the lesser excommunication, or privation of the sacraments, and required penitence and absolution. In some places a bier was set before the door of an excommunicated individual, and stones thrown at his windows-a singular method of compelling his submission (Vaissette, Hist. de Languedoc, t. iii, App., p. 350; Du Cange, v. Excommunicatio). Everywhere the excommunicated were debarred of a regular sepulture, which, though obviously a matter of police, has, through the superstition of consecrating burial grounds, been treated as belonging to ecclesiastical control."-Middle Ages, chap. vii, pt. i, standard ed., N. Y., 1880, i, 643; Lond. ed., ii, 171, 172. In the East it was a universal opinion that the dead bodies of excommunicated persons never decay, austere Mother Earth refusing to mix with their contaminated flesh ! 1 On the interdict, see above, i, 765, note. . Harris, Ware's Bishops of Ireland, 1322-23; Killen, i, 260. No offense intended. To whatever other forms of violence the Irishman may plead guilty, of the institution of lynch law anywhere in his island he must in justice be fully acquitted. PAPAL once annulled the proposition.' The position of Ireland gave the pope an excellent opportunity to levy on her limited resources, when stronger and more independent kingdoms resented his exactions. In addition to his ordinary revenues he obtained special assessments four times in forty years, three being to help him carry on his war against Germany, and the fourth to assist him in contending against the king of Aragon.' Italian cupidity went farther. "Those who laid violent hands on the clergy could not obtain absolution except from a legate charged with that special commission. And such a legate seldom left the island without a very substantial addition to his wealth. Jacobus, who arrived in 1220 or 1221, and who was sent, according to the annalists, 'to regulate and constitute the ecclesiastical discipline,' is said to have collected horseloads of gold and silver from the clergy of Ireland by simony.' The patience with which the people submitted to such barefaced rapacity supplies evidence as well of their spiritual as of their political degradation. To satisfy the demands of these greedy foreigners the ecclesiastics were sometimes obliged to sell the ornaments of their churches, and the laity were compelled to deprive themselves of their ordinary comforts."" Some Catholic writers ascribe the compliance of the Irish to their attachment to the holy see, but Killen is much nearer the truth when he says that it obviously proceeded from their helplessness." The attitude of the pope to the Irish attempts at independence is interesting. The Irish who lived in the Pale, that is, that part of eastern Ireland actually occupied and ruled by the English, were the victims of a rapacious and cruel tyranny. They were denied the benefits of the English law, and they were out of reach of the Brehon code. Their position was something like that of the Jews of the Middle Ages-men whom no law protected, who might be exploited according to the opportunity of any who had the desire. The Irish were robbed of their cattle, stripped of their lands, might even be killed by any Englishman, and in all cases had no redress. They often petitioned the English king to admit them to the privilege of the English laws, but the English in the Pale always defeated their application. Irish troubles with England go back far beyond the establishment of Protestantism, and for the heavy score of this Niobe 1 See this bull in Liber Munerum Publicorum Hibernicæ, pt. iv, 55, 56. * These levies were in 1229, 1240, 1247, and 1270.-Mant, Hist. of the Church of Ireland, i, 13. Ibid., p. 263, note. 3 Killen, i, 264, 4 of the islands against her English sister she may thank a Roman Catholic people who forged her chains and a brutal pope who closed the last link. When Robert Bruce had won the independence of Scotland on the field of Bannockburn, June 24, 1314, the Irish in TROUBLE ENGLAND. despair invited him to come over and interfere for them. His brother, Edward Bruce, responded to the call, liberated them, and for three years, 1315-18, reigned king of Ireland. But famine so weakened his forces that he was overthrown and slain, October, 1318. Yet no sooner did their deliverer appear than the pope thundered his excommunications against him and his adherents. The noble appeal which the Irish made to the pope had no effect. "By means of base and wicked scheming they have so far prevailed against us that after expelling us violently from our spacious habitations and patrimonial inheritances, they have forced us to retire for the preservation of life to mountains, woods, bogs, and barren moors, and even to the caves of the rocks, and there like wild beasts to dwell for a long period. Nay, even there they were incessantly molesting us and exerting themselves with all their might to drive us away; and recklessly seizing for their own use every spot where we reside, they mendaciously assert, in the extreme frenzy that blinds them, that we have no claim to any free dwelling place in Ireland, but that of right the whole property of the country belongs to themselves. Because of these and many other things of the same description, there have arisen between us and them implacable enmities and perpetual wars. . . . From the time of the grant [of Adrian] to the present more than fifty thousand people of both nations have perished by the sword, besides those who have fallen victims of famine, to grief, and to the rigors of captivity. These few facts concerning the general history of our forefathers, and the miserable condition to which the pope of Rome has reduced us ourselves, may suffice for this occasion.”1 The memorial calls attention to the deprivation of their rights by the English. Though anyone could go to law with an Irishman, no Irishman, except a prelate, could commence an action with an Englishman. If an Englishman killed an Irishman of any degree, no punishment was awarded. English monks said it was no more sin to kill an Irishman than it was to kill a dog, and This appeal was addressed by King Donald O'Neill, who styles himself "king of Ulster and true heir to the throne of all Ireland by hereditary right,” to Pope John XXII (1316–34), in the name of the nobles and people of Ireland. The original is in Fordun, Scotichronicon, A. D. 1318.-Killen, i, 275. |