Chapter 2 - IRELAND AT THE CLOSE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

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BEFORE we continue our story, let us glance at the Ireland into which Ussher found himself born in 1581. Let us first say something more about his native city as it was then and for some time later, and supplement, in some degree the picture we have already given from the pen of Ussher himself. Dublin, as we have already seen, was then a small place hemmed in on every side by its walls. The adult population at the close of the century could not have been more than 8000 souls; in 1644, four years after Ussher had left Ireland for good, the adult city population was counted at 5551 Protestants and 2608 Roman Catholics. [1] The city was lighted at this time with lanterns and candles set in every fifth house.

[1] Gilbert's Ancient Records, iii. p. xxxi. The religious requirements of the people were met by nine churches and the two cathedrals.

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The city gates were closed at nightfall by beat of a drum and the tolling of the bells of St. Andrew's Church. The keys were then carried off to the mayor, and particular watch was kept on "the Irish” and all “masterless people." Armed watchmen under captains patrolled the city every hour. [2] During the raging of the plague in 1604-5, it was ordered that "for the better purging of the air" every inhabitant “should burn a faggot at his door on the nights of Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays."

The city was governed by a mayor and alderman, and the records of the time show that the municipal hospitality was on a profuse scale. From early morn till dewy eve and later, the wine barrels were tapped and the ruddy juices flowed copiously. The days of temperance and Sunday closing had not yet come, and the wines were choice clarets, sack, malmsey, and muscadel. Civic order was strictly observed; and the aldermen and the officers appeared according to their several ranks in scarlet, violet, and Turkey gowns. They were proud of their "yoong London" as they called it, and aped the latest London fashions. Campion, of St John’s College, Oxford, visited the city in 1571, and gave it as his opinion that "for state and change and bountiful hospitality the mayoralty of Dublin exceeded any city in England except London."

[2] Gilbert's Ancient Records, iii. pp. xiv.-vi.

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But there is another side to this picture. The city was undoubtedly not clean: neither was it sober. It was "dirty Dublin” in Ussher's day. The official who did duty as the city scavenger in 1617 was, strange to say, a widow - Kate Strong, who seems to have enjoyed a vested interest in her office. Like other civic officers, she took an oath to do her duty, but failed in the obligation. She "scarce kept the way from the Castle to the church clean, or that from the mayor's house to the church, and, neglected the rest of the city, which she cleaned but sparingly, and very seldom." "The more that she was followed the worse she grew, and kept the streets the fouler,” The pigs that ran about the streets freely, did not make things better. Bailiffs were told off to kill them with pikes and throw their dead bodies into carts. The "unringed swyne" did much damage on Hoggan Green, and hindered the increase of fish in the strand. Others were frequently issued not to allow "doong" to accumulate in the thoroughfares. It was also one of the "car-drivingest" cities in the kingdom, a reputation it still maintains. The carmen of that day, we learn, rode up and down the streets upon their cars and car horses, with such speed that they endangered the lives of the citizens, especially in the crowded parts about Wood Quay and Merchant Quay.

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The numerous brewers’ carts were also a great nuisance. To control the carmen who “pestered" the streets, it was ordered that they should wear badges, with the arms of the city, "after the London fashion." [3]

The excessive number of taverns in the city was a third feature. They were resorted to by “vagabonds, bad livers, and idle persons, to the infamy and disgrace of the Government." By an order of the Lord-Deputy and Council in 1586-87, no keeper of an inn or tavern was to admit a Fellow, student, or scholar of Trinity College, without the written permission of the Provost. For having violated this order Eliza Jones, an alehouse keeper, was fined £40, and obliged to stand doing penance on a market-cross from 9 to 10 A.M., bearing on her head with the ominous inscription: “for harbouring a collegian contrary to the Act of State.” [4] We have said there was no Sunday closing. We read in the pages of an author; [5] who published “A New Description of Ireland in 1610," that "during the time of divine service and in the time of the sermon forenoon and afternoon, every filthy ale-house was thronged full of company.”

[3] Gilbert’s Anc. Records, iii. pp. xv.; xxiii.-iv.

[4] Ibid., pp. xii.-xiii. Oxford suffered from the same state of things. See Hutton's Laud, p. 117.

[5] Barnabe Rich, who was in Dublin in 1594 when Ussher was thirteen years of age. - Cal. State Papers.

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It was a profitable business this sale of strong drink. "There is no merchandise so vendible; it is the very marrow of the commonwealth in Dublin; the whole profit of the town stands upon alehouses and selling of ale. There are whole streets of taverns.” The brewers were principally women. "The better sort, such as the aldermen's wives, are those that brew; every householder's wife is a brewer." The moral character of the sellers of strong drink is not painted in the brightest of colours; their charges are denounced as "exorbitant." [6]

Hospitality, as we have seen, was on an extensive scale; there is evidence that the leading citizens frequently entertained the Lord-Deputy and in return were entertained by him. Some of the houses must have been large and comfortable.

[6] Rich's New Desc. of Ireland, ch. xvii. p. 69-74. Strafford in his day proposed to tax the Dublin brewers. Gardiner's Hist. of Eng., viii. p. 39.

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The suburbs of the city, as it was then, are now leading streets and squares. A long lane now represented by Georges Street, led into the open country; and the same may be said of Grafton Street. St. Stephen's Green was an extensive sheep-walk, [7] and in the winter was, with the adjoining fields, shot over for snipe. Further afield was Cullen’s wood, a favourite roystering place, but always with a look-out for the enemy - the wild mountain men who came down now and again to harry the citizens in the midst of their sports. [8] Beyond were the mountains, the haunts of the O'Byrnes and the O'Tooles, clothed with thick forests and pierced with inaccessible glens - perfect terra incognita, unknown and dreaded. On the north side of the city, across the river, there stretched into the country vast hazel woods. This side of the city was more protected as being included within the Pale.

Was there any intellectual society in Dublin at this period, or was it all rough and coarse living? There are proofs that letters were not altogether neglected. Spenser, who lived in Ireland for eighteen years in all, and wrote there his great poem, had a house in the city where he lived off and on for six years. Here, too, for a time, lived Walter Raleigh, the "Captain of the Guard," and hither came Camden intent upon antiquarian research.

[7] Gilbert's Calendar of Ancient Records, iii. p 145.

[8] See Stanihurst's Description of Dublin in 1577.

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A city that numbered among its inhabitants the Usshers and Stanihursts of the day, must have had some intellectual life. Fortunately, we have a picturesque account, of a gathering of thoughtful men to discuss high problems of philosophy, which took place about 1589 at the cottage of a Mr. Ludowick Bryskett, the friend of Spenser and himself a poet, near Dublin, and which historic gathering was the original of all the literary clubs and philosophical societies that have sprung up since in the city. Hither came Dr. Long, the Primate, Sir Robert Dillon, the Chief Justice, Captain Norris, and Warham St. Leger, Thomas Smith, the mayor and city apothecary, and not least, Edmund Spenser. The subject of their discussion turned chiefly on “the ethic part or moral philosophy,” and Spenser unfolded the principle of his great poem. A meeting like this shows culture was not altogether neglected in the Dublin of that day. [9]

[9] Bsryskett's essay was published in 1606, under the title "A Discourse of Civil Life, containing the Ethike Part of Moral Philosophy." It was really a translation from the Italian of Giraldo's philosophic treatise. In the introduction is found the interesting passage describing the literary and philosophic gatherings at his cottage. The author was an Italian, probably, from Florence. He matriculated in Trinity College, Cambridge in 1559. In 1571 he was Clerk of the Council in Ireland under Sir Henry Sidney. In 1577 we find him Clerk of the Chancery in Ireland, Keeper of the Signet in which office he was succeeded by Spenser, whom he taught Greek; Spenser addressed a sonnet to him from Dublin, July 18, 1586. In 1584, Bryskett was made a burgher of Dublin, "on condition of not using any occupation which would be hurtful to any corporation of the city” - Gilbert's Calendar of Ancient Records, ii. p. xiii. and 194; Hales’s Life of Spenser, prefixed to Globe Edition of Spenser's Works, pp. xxxii.-iv.; Cal. State Papers, 1576-81.

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When, we turn from the city to the country at large we find it in a transition state, slowly passing from a condition of barbarism into one of parative civilisation. The old order was by degrees giving place to the new, but the pangs of political and religious childbirth were acute. Ireland did not give up her free and easy ways, nor surrender her tribal rights without a struggle.

The Irish chiefs viewed with jealousy and apprehension the growing power of the English colony. Two dangerous conspiracies had already threatened the stability of the Queen's Government, and were being put down with the usual amount of severity. As a child, Ussher must have gazed with an inward horror at three heads rotting over gates of Dublin Castle. They were the heads of the two Desmonds and Fitzmaurice, their cousin. [10] These frequent outbreaks and summary acts of vengeance left the country might be supposed, in a deplorable condition.

[10] See Froude's History of England, xi. p.249: also Gilbert's Calendar ii. p.20, where notice is taken of a similar and later exhibition of savage vengeance. The Castle was in this respect, the Temple Bar of Dublin.

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Even the Pale afforded little protection to the isolated English and Protestant settlers. [11] Dublin itself was insecure. Those who dwelt "even within the sight of the smoke of the city" were not subject to the laws. [12] No man could venture "half a quarter of a mile" out of Cork without danger of his life. [13] It can be well understood how insecure in country parts must have been the lives and properties of all well-disposed persons. Nor were the seas safe. Spanish ships were continually hovering about the southern and western coasts and threatening descents.

Twenty years before Ussher was born, Sir Henry Sydney had made a viceregal progress through all Ireland, and, in a letter to the Queen, he gave a graphic account of what he saw and heard. Let us see what he says of the Pale and its immediate neighbourhood - supposed to be the most civilised part of Ireland. Louth was impoverished by the continual passage of soldiers to the north. Meath was "cursedly scorched on the outside." Westmeath was "spoiled and wasted by the rebels."

[11] "In the Pale a very large proportion of the population were Papists and malcontents." - Carew MSS., 1589-1600, p. 106.

[12] Sir George Carew to Heneage, November 1590.

[13] St. Leger to Burleigh, January 1580. Cork was then a small place, "but one street not half a quarter of a mile in length."

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Kildare was "greatly impoverished by thieves and the O'Mores”. Carlow was “more than half wasted." Wexford was in like condition. King's County was “spoi1ed and wasted by the decay of English tenants." [14] If these things were done in a green tree, what was done in the dry? "This country," writes St.Leger to Perrot, April 22, 1582, “is so ruined as it is near unpeopled by the murders and spoils done by the traitors on the one side, and by the killing and spoiling on the other side, together with the great mortality in town and country, which is such as the like has never been seen." "That part of Ireland” says another authority, "which is nearest to England is most civilised; the other part is brutal" "The inhabitants live in wooden huts, covered with straw. A large part of them herd with their cattle in the fields." [15] Andrew Trollope, writing to Walsingham, September 12, 1581, gives an astonishing picture of the degraded and miserable condition of the peasantry: "The Irishe men, except [in] walled houses, are not Christyans, cyvell or humane creatours, but heathen, or rather savage and brute bestes.

[14] See Brewer's Introduction to the Carew MSS., 1589-1600, pp. lxxii.-iii.

[15] Theiner's Monumenta, p. 521.

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Many of them, as well women as men, goe, commonly all naked, saveing onely a loose mantle hanging aboute them. If they can gett no stolen fleshe, they eat, if they can get them, leek blades, or a three leaved grasse which they call shamrocks, and for want thereof carryon and grasse in the fields, with such butter as is loathsome to descrybe." [16] Camden and Spenser have been taken to task for drawing what have been condemned as extravagant pictures of the miseries and wickedness of Irish life at this time, but they are fully justified by the sober State Papers of the period. [17]

If such was the political and social condition of the country, its religious condition was no better. The manner of working out the Reformation in Ireland gave a blow for the time to any religion that remained in the country. The seizure of the abbey lands and the demolition of monasteries gave a shock to all ecclesiastical property. The churches were in ruins, and bishops and chieftains contended for the spoil.

[16] Cal: State Papers of above date.

[17] A MS. of  Ussher's in the Library of T.C.D. distinguishes the three kinds of Irish that held the country in his time. (1) The ancient Irish. (2) The mixed, descended from Irish mothers, and who in language habit, and custom conformed to the Irish. (3) The English Irished, who, hold not Irish customs or language - the merchants and traders of towns, and some knights and gentlemen of East Meath and about Dublin and in the Pale. - See Hogan's Irishmen of the Sixteenth Century, P.355.

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The begging friars, who alone preserved a spark of spiritual feeling in the land, were hunted and scattered. [18] The religious houses with their inmates disappeared, and there was nothing to take their place. "Nothing is more common, nothing is more frequently reiterated by the deputies or by others who joined in their hostings or circuits, than passionate outcries at the ruinous condition of the churches, not only in regions beyond the Pale, but within the very heart of it." [19] We find one official writing to another: "There are here so many children dispensed withal to enjoy the livings of the Church, so many laymen, as they are commonly termed, suffered to hold benefices, without cure, so many clergymen tolerated to have the profit of three or four pastoral dignitaries, who being themselves unlearned are not meet men though thought willing, to teach and instruct others, as whoso beholdeth it must not choose but make it known." [20]

[18] “These preachers, little better than outcasts themselves, still kept up in their own rude way the feeble sparks of religion. They were the true priests of the native Irish population. Brewer's Introduction to the Carew MSS., 1589-1600, p. xv.

[19]  Brewer p. ix.

[20] William Johnes to Walsingham, July 14, 1584. This sounds incredible; but it was so. Even bishoprics were held by laymen. - See Kelly's. Dissertations, p. 370. We find Spenser writing, in 1598 (Ussher being then in his seventeenth year): “The Irish priestes, who now enjoye the Churche livinges there, are, in a manner meere laymen, go lyke laymen, live lyke laymen, and followe all kinde of husbandrye and other worldly affayres as thother Irish men doe. They neither reade scriptures, nor preache to the people, nor minister the sacrament of communion, but the baptism they doe, for they christen yet after the popish fashion, and with popish ministration." Archbishop Loftus, in I594, presented his nephew, a layman, to the archdeaconry of Glendalogh. - Elrington's Life of Ussher, p. 114. Spenser himself seems to have held a Church dignity in Elphin. - See Cal. State Papers, December I586.

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We find the Primate, Dr. Long, writing in 1585: "Many souls daily perish whose cure are committed to boys and to open wolves." [2l] The country clergy, testifies another, are "idols and cyphers." The whole Episcopal system had broken down. It was proposed to give bishoprics to soldiers as a means of restoring peace in the country. [22] While some of the bishoprics, as, for example, those of Ross and Kilfenora, were held by laymen, we find a boy student at Oxford, Maurice O'Brien, put in possession of the temporalities of Killaloe, the excuse made being that it was a good thing to propitiate a powerful Irish clan like the O'Briens, and that if the bishopric were not given to him, no other would be suffered to hold it.

The majority of the bishops who held their sees during the reigns of Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth could scarcely have had strong religious convictions of any kind. They changed with the changing times; now they were Protestants, now they were Roman Catholics. But this state of things could not last, and by degrees the two Churches emerged from the ecclesiastical chaos. At the close of Elizabeth's reign we come on what may be called the watershed of Irish Church history. A line drawn due north and south through the centre of Ireland will roughly divide the island for our purpose. To the east of this division a considerable minority of the population, representing chiefly the English settlers, were members of the Reformed Church. This Protestant population was further increased by the immigration of Scotch settlers into the northeast corner.

21 Archbishop Long to Perrot, in 1585. Even the sacrament and baptism seems to have been intermitted in many places, and the people suffered to lapse into a condition, of absolute heathenism. Sir H. Sydney to Elizabeth. - Brewer's Introduction to Carew MSS., p. lxxx.

22 Sir Edward Waterhouse to Walshingham, June 14, 1574.

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On the western side of this line the vast majority of the people, however shaken they may have been for a time, at length settled down into what they called "the old religion." [23]

[23] Throughout these conflicting changes the Episcopal succession remained as a matter of course with the Reformed, that is to say, the State Church. Some of the bishops were deposed by Mary, chiefly on the ground that they were married men; two were deposed by Elizabeth for refusing the oath of supremacy, but the succession went on uninterruptedly. In the same way the cathedrals and parish churches were held by those who, at least outwardly, conformed to the new order. It was no more necessary in Ireland than in England to pass Acts of Parliament, transferring the Church property. "There was no moment," says Professor Freeman, "when the State, as many people fancy, took the Church property from one religious body and gave it to another . . . The general taking from one religious body and giving to another, which many people fancy took place under Henry VIII or Elizabeth, simply never happened at all." - Disestablishment and Disendowment, pp. 17, 20. These words are equally true of the Church of Ireland. When the Jesuit counter-reformation had begun to tell, and the majority of the people had ceased to be "Church papists" as they were called, the Pope saw his way to introduce by degrees a new hierarchy from abroad, and this was the origin of the present Roman Catholic Episcopate in Ireland. Things went exactly on all-fours in the two Churches. The bishops in England and Ireland alike continued to discharge their Episcopal functions during the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, or else were deposed, but the unbroken continuity of the Episcopate remained. Unnecessary anxiety seems to be manifested by Irish Roman Catholic writers to prove that their Church retains the old Episcopal succession, seeing that, according to its authorities, there can be no higher Episcopal grace than that which flows from St. Peter through the Popes. This is a succession untroubled by the interference of princes. - See remarks by Brewer, Carew MSS., 1589-1600, p. 1.

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Very much the same story is to be told of the clergy. For a time the priests wavered, conformed, said the Reformed Liturgy, and retained their churches. But the Bull of Pius the Fifth, followed as it was by the counter-reformation of the Jesuits, forced their hand, and by degrees they returned to their old ways. The bishops as a rule took the oath of allegiance, but many of them in their hearts remained Roman Catholics. A remarkable proof of this may be found in Sir Henry Sydney's account of his progress through the country. He tells us how "the bishopps of the province of Cashel and Theweme [Thomond], albeit they were Papists, submitted themselves unto the Queen's Majesty, and unto me, her Deputy, acknowledging that they had all their

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patrimony of the Queen's Majesty, and desired humbly that they might (by her Highness) be inducted into their Ecclesiastical prelacie." [24] It was only by degrees that this class of bishops was weeded out, and that chiefly by the introduction of men of English and Scottish descent and education.

[24] See Ulster Archeological Journal, where this interesting paper of Sydney's is given at length, iii. p. 312. It would be a mistake to confound the oath of supremacy with conformity. It was only in later days, after the Reformation, that the supremacy of the Pope was made an articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae. As a matter of fact English kings assumed the title of "Vicars of Christ" before it was taken by the Bishops of Rome. No new thing was introduced when Henry VIII was declared to be the Supreme Head of the Church alike in England and Ireland. It was not required that a man should be a Protestant to maintain that the Pope had no right to tithes or to nominate bishops in the Queen's dominions. In these respects Mary was every whit as strong a Protestant as her sister. She clung to the title "Defender of the Faith," and would allow of no provisoes from the Roman Court, and maintained, at least till towards the end of her reign, her royal title as "Supreme Head over the Church in all things temporal." - See Carew MSS., 1589-1600, Introduction, p. xxi.; Collier's Records, lxviii; and Ecclesiastical History, vi. P.38: Perry's Church History, ii. p. 223, note; Denny’s Anglican Orders and Jurisdiction. pp. 153-9.

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It has constantly been brought as a charge against the Government that they put English and Scotch divines into Irish bishoprics; but they had no alternative. The supply of Irish bishops was not forthcoming. There was no university or college to educate them. "The Cleargye there, (except some few grave fathers which are in high place about the state and some fewe others which are lately planted in theyr Newe Colledge) are generally badd, licentious and most disordered." [25] On the other hand, many of the English clergymen who came over to Ireland were little better. "The most parte of such English as come over thither of themselves, are either unlearned, or men of some badd note for which they have forsaken England." [26] We find the, Queen herself observing this state of things and complaining of the small number of persons of the clerical calling in Ireland who “were able to teach especially in the functions of a bishop." [27] All the schools and places of learning up to this time had been in the hands of the Roman Catholics, and in addition teachers of the nonconforming clergy were largely recruited from foreign universities. It was only by degrees that the recently established college "near Dublin" could supply the want.

[25] Spenser's View of the Present State of Ireland, p. 647 (Globe Edition).

[26] Spenser.

[27] Morrin's Calendars, ii p. 31.

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We can thus understand how the political and social demoralisation of the times found its counterpart in a disorganised and distracted Church. [28] Many of the bishops who accepted the new order of things and outwardly conformed, were altogether unworthy of their positions. One of these was the notorious Miles Magrath, "that wicked bishop" (as Strafford calls him, in a letter to Laud), and who lived well into the times of Ussher. Originally an Irish Franciscan, in the earlier part of Elizabeth's reign he is found the Roman Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor. He then conformed, and, strange to say, proved a special favourite with the Queen, visiting her Court frequently. He became Bishop of Clogher in 1570, and subsequently Archbishop of Cashel. After having held the archbishopric of Cashel and bishopric of Emly for thirty-six years, the two cathedrals were found in ruins. [29]

[28] We must not forget that the Church of England at the same period was passing through a very similar state of chaos, though the ultimate result was different. - See for a condensed account, Green's History of the English People, ii. pp. 306-308.

[29] Captain Bodley, brother of the founder of the Bodleian Library, writing to Sir Henry Sydney, describes Cashel Cathedral as he saw it in Magrath's time, as "no better than a hog-stye." - Carew MSS., 1601, pp. 12,13. The same writer, in an account of a journey he made into Ulster in 1603, charges the Archbishop with the vice of drunkenness. "The Bishop of Cashel and others, men and women, pour usquebaugh down their throats by day and by night - Ulster Journal of Archaeology, ii, p. 85. Bryan O'Rourke, Prince of Breffney, when about to be executed at Tyburn for treason, refused the Archbishop's ministrations on the ground that he was a bad man. Magrath carried off much of his ill-gotten spoil to England. Fenton reports to Burleigh, May 26, 1593, that the Archbishop had suddenly departed out of Ireland "with great sums of money, besides plate and jewels." - Cal. State Papers.

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Twenty-six livings were held by his sons or near relations, and in nearly every case there was no provision for divine worship. The Archbishop himself held more than twenty-six livings, and received the profits "without order taken for the service of the Church." In the two dioceses there, was not one preacher or good minister to teach the people their duty. In addition to the above sees, Magrath managed to get possession likewise of the bishoprics of Waterford and Lismore. [30]

No wonder, when men of this type were misrepresenting the Reformation in Ireland, if Protestantism speedily decayed, so that a bishop like Lyon of Cork could complain in 1595 that, whereas he once had a congregation of a thousand when he preached, he had not now five, and that his communicants had declined in proportion.

[30] See Ware's Bishops, i. pp. 485-6; State Papers, 1607; Regal Visitation of 1615. Sir John Davies, writing to Cecil, February 20, 1624, says Magrath "held twenty-seven livings besides his four bishoprics, Cashel, Emly, Waterford, and Lismore."

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Lyon had then been thirteen years a bishop. [31] Writing again, July 6, 1596, Lyon says, "the best name that they (the Roman Catholics) give unto the divine service appointed by Her Majesty in the Church of England and Ireland (sic) is the Devil's Service, and the professors thereof devils; and when they meet one of the profession they will cross themselves after the Popish manner. . . . . I have provided books for every church through my diocese, as Bibles, New Testaments, Common Books, both English and Latin, and the Injunctions, but none will come to the church at all, not so much as the country churls." [32] It is almost a bootless labour for any man to preach in the country but in Dublin for want of hearers." [33] "Nothing in truth could exceed the general squalor, wretchedness and poverty, with all their kindred evils, under which the Protestant Church of Ireland thus laboured in all respects. The wonder is that the Reformation ever succeeded, that there should be an Irish Protestant Church at al1." [34]

[31] Lyon to Burleigh, September 23, 1593 - Cal. State Papers.

[32] Bishop Lyon to Lord Hunsden - Cal. State Papers.

[33] Loftus to Lord Burleigh, September 22, 1590 - Cal. State Papers.

[34] Brewer's Introduction; Carew MSS., 1589-1600, p. xxxix.

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Magrath's simony and rapacity and evil example did incalculable harm to Irish Protestantism." [35]

Unfortunately, also, Irish Protestantism assumed a form that was least likely to recommend it to the people. It lent itself to an extreme Puritan type, and thereby offered but little attraction to the warm, imaginative Celtic mind. [36] The abject condition in which the parish churches were allowed to remain, in itself was a repellent. Spenser, who lived in Ireland for eighteen years, notices this. He speaks of the churches "so unhandsomely patched and thatched. Men doe even shunne the places for the uncomeliness thereof." He wisely recommends that "order should be taken to have them builte in some better forme, according to the churches in England, for the outward shewe (assure your selfe) doth greatly drawe the rude people to the reverencing and frequenting thereof, whatever some of our late too nice fooles saye - 'there is nothing in the seemlye forme and comely ordere of the churche.'" [37]

[35] Bagwell's article on Magrath, Dictionary of National Biography, xxxv. p. 327. "The people of his dioceses scarcely knew if there was a God." - Davies to Cecil, February 20, 1604. See also what King - a strong Protestant authority - says on the subject. - Church History, Supp. Vol., p.  1223-4.

[36] See on the impressionableness of the Irish Celt, Gardner's Hist. of England, i. p. 389, and BalI's Reformed Church of Ireland, p. 352 and note.

[37] Spenser's View &c, p.680 (Globe Edition).

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It must be remembered, however, as, some extenuation for such a state of things, that it was not one which the Reformed Church created. It found it so. It was its misfortune, not its, fault, that it came in for the sad heritage of dismantled cathedrals and decayed churches. [38]

Thus have we reviewed the general condition of the country as Ussher grew up into manhood. The Roman Catholic Church was straining every nerve to recover her lost position, and under the guise of religion was fostering with assiduity all efforts made to overthrow the Queen's authority. [39]

[38] Nothing proves more clearly the renewed and vigorous life of the Irish Church at the present time than the zeal with which it has of late gone about repairing its waste places. Within the past quarter of a century it has restored and otherwise improved nearly all its ancient cathedral churches, while two of them have been rebuilt from their foundations. In the north, the cathedrals of Derry and Armagh; in the west, of Tuam, KillaIoe, and Limerick; in the east, of St. Patrick's, Christ Church, St. Lazarian, St.Canice, and Holy Trinity, Waterford; in the south, of St. Colman and St. Finbarre, all testify to this zeal for the houses of God in the land. The parish churches have likewise shared in this general desire for re-edification and adornment, and some of them have been rebuilt in a sumptuous style by private liberality.

[39]The questions of religious belief and of civil allegiance are inextricably connected at this period, and it is as impossible for us as it was for Elizabeth to treat them as really separate." - Bagwell’s Ireland under the Tudors, iii. pp. 460-1. As a proof of this we may refer to the fact that on February I3, 1596, Cornelius Ryan, Papal Bishop of Killahoe, is found advising the Pope to "separate Ireland from England for ever," and hand it over to Tyrone. - Cal State Papers.

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One Deputy after another was seeking to cope with the tremendous difficulty of governing the country and extending the blessings of religion and civilisation. They met with but indifferent success; they were hampered and countermanded from London by persons who did not realise the gravity and difficulty of the problem. The English Government never knew its own mind for long and perpetually vacillated and halted between indulgence on one side and severity on the other. Ireland was the grave then, as since, of more than one noble reputation. Lord Sussex, Sir Henry Sydney, Lord Grey de Wilton, Sir John Perrot, and others went down before the apparently insoluble problem. Still withal the country and its people had a strange fascination for English governors. No Englishman ever tasted the bitter-sweet of the Irish Deputyship but sighed and prayed to leave it, and then sighed and prayed to return to it. They were political moths, and Ireland was the candle in which they singed their wings and sometimes lost their lives. [40]

[40] See Brewer's Introduction to Carew MSS., p. xxviii., and the graphic picture drawn by Dean Church of the condition of Ireland at this time in his Spenser, ch. iii., "Spenser in Ireland." It was not always easy, however, to get English statesmen to undertake the troublesome and oftentimes dangerous task of governing Ireland. In 1579 Mendoza, writing to the King of Spain, mentions that Elizabeth had offered the viceroyalty to several nobles who had refused it. - Spanish State Papers. There has been the same difficulty in our own day.

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It is curious how rarely we find Ussher, in voluminous correspondence, referring to the general condition of Ireland. He seldom alludes to politics at all, except when his official position required it. He leaves that to his correspondents. The fact is that throughout his life Ussher was, above everything else, a student. He made little pretensions to that statecraft for which some of his contemporaries were distinguished. He loved his books; he lived, in a large measure, the life of a recluse; his vision was bounded by the walls of his splendid library; here he wrought, and the fruit of his toil may still be found in tomes from which successive generations of students have gathered fresh spoils.