Ireland

An island comprising the Irish Free State, a self-governing dominion of the British Empire; and Northern Ireland, or the Six Counties (Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry, Tyrone, and the Parliamentary boroughs of Belfast and Londonderry) with a separate Parliament and executive government. Saint Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, was sent there by Pope Celestine in 432 . Arriving in a pagan land he first preached to the leaders, realizing that when they were converted the people would follow. He labored in practically every part of Ireland, built 365 churches, consecrated as many bishops , ordained native priests, founded convents and schools, held councils, and made Christianity the predominant religion. As early as 450 a college had been erected at Armagh, and schools at Kildare, Noendrum, and Louth, where priests were trained. In the 6th century many monastic establishments arose, notably Clonard , founded by Saint Finian, Clonfert by Saint Brendan, Bangor by Saint Comgall, Clonmacnoise by Saint Kiernan, Arran by Saint Enda; and in the 7th century , Lismore by Saint Carthage and Glendalough by Saint Kevin. By the 7th century paganism had for the most part disappeared and the monastic schools flourished. Laboring with Saint Patrick were many holy bishops, monks, anchorites, and nuns. Among the latter, the names of Saint Brigid , Saint Ita, and Saint Fanchea are famous for their lives of sanctity and sacrifice and the number of convents they founded. Saint Columba, who founded the monastery of Iona, Scotland, and numerous other missionaries were natives of Ireland who went to Scotland to spread the true faith. Aidan and his Irish colleagues went into England to surpass the zeal of the Roman missionaries under Saint Augustine and to evangelize Northumbria, Mercia, and Essex. About 590 Saint Columbanus with twelve companions went to France , where they established the monastery of Luxeuil, later labored at Bregenz, Switzerland, and finally built the monastery of Bobbio , long the most prominent in northern Italy . Meanwhile Saint Gall was laboring in Switzerland, Saint Fridolin along the Rhine, Saint Fiacre near Meaux, Saint Killan at Wrzburg, Saint Livinius in Brabant, Saint Fursey on the Marne, and Saint Cataldus in southern Italy .

When the Danes invaded Ireland they sacked and plundered churches and monasteries , desecrated the altars, and killed priests and monks. Under the Anglo-Norman rulers the Irish were oppressed, their churches and schools were neglected, and their culture ignored. With the accession of Henry VIII conditions grew worse; the king proclaimed himself head of the Church, the clergy were deprived of the right of voting, church property and the monasteries were confiscated. The people, however, could not be won from their faith and refused to accept the apostate clerics and the heretical tenets which Henry offered. His successor, Edward VI, endeavored to make Ireland Protestant, but all traces of his efforts were wiped out by the Catholic Queen Mary, so that at Elizabeth’s succession all Ireland was Catholic. Under her, persecution was revived and many holy persons were tortured for their religious beliefs. Intolerance continued under James I; the clergy were banished from the kingdom, Bishop O’Devany of Down and others were put to death, and the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity were rigorously enforced. Charles I followed the policy of his predecessor. In August 1649, Oliver Cromwell came to Ireland with 10,000 men; there was no opposition to his landing and no attempt made to relieve Drogheda. It was soon captured by Cromwell, and its inhabitants and garrison cruelly massacred; a month later the same fate befell Wexford. When Cromwell left Ireland, May, 1650, Munster and Leinster were in his hands, and within two years his successors reduced the remaining provinces. Cromwell’s death in 1658 was welcome news to Ireland, all the more so because Charles II (1660-1685) was restored. The Irish had suffered much for attachment to the cause of Charles, and felt assured that the recovery of their property and homes was at hand. By the Act of Settlement, 600 Catholics were restored to their lands, and more would have been restored if the court of claims had continued its sittings, but through the influence of the Marquis of Ormond, who hated the Catholics , it closed its doors with 3,000 cases untried. One of Charles’s last acts was to dismiss him from office as an enemy to toleration. He was succeeded by James II, a staunch Catholic . When he ascended the throne, he appointed Catholics to high positions, opened the corporations and universities to them, had a papal nuncio at his court, and suspended the penal laws. This good fortune was only temporary, however, for James was forced to flee and leave the throne to William of Orange, under whom Protestant ascendancy was secured. King William’s Parliament formed new and more drastic penal laws, yet the Catholics clung to their faith and Catholicity progressed. About the middle of the 18th century the Catholics showed such loyalty in supporting Grattan in his fight for legislative independence, and subscribing money to equip a volunteer force to protect Ireland against invasion, that religious toleration was favored and penal legislation ceased. In 1771 Catholics were allowed to hold reclaimed bog under lease; the oath of allegiance was substituted for the oath of supremacy in 1774; in 1778 Catholics were permitted to hold all lands under lease; and in 1782 they became free to build Catholic schools and to assist at Mass. Parliamentary and municipal franchise was granted to Catholics by the Act of 1793, admitting them to the universities and civil and military positions and removing all restrictions in regard to the tenure of land. By the Catholic Relief Bill of 1829 legal proscription ceased for the Catholic Church and Catholics were placed on a level with other denominations and admitted within the pale of the constitution.

The operation of the Home Rule Act, agitated for so many years, was delayed by the outbreak of the World War. In 1916 the Easter Rebellion roused the national consciousness and the Sinn Fein movement began to spread rapidly. The Republicans, in 1918 , established a Parliament of their own, the Dail Eireann, electing Eamonn de Valera president of the Irish Republic. After two years of uprisings and widespread guerilla warfare between British and Irish, a truce was finally declared in 1921. On 6 December 1921, an agreement was signed by a few Republicans and Lloyd George by which an Irish Free State was established, with northeast Ulster remaining a separate state. The following year the Free State was formally constituted a dominion and a constitution was formed by which Ireland is ruled by a governor-general appointed by Britain, an executive council, and a legislature of two houses. The Irish government controls the constabulary, army, education, taxes, excise, post-office, telegraph, and telephone; the British government is permitted the use of certain Irish ports for naval purposes and sites for airplane stations. The members of the Irish Parliament swear allegiance to the Irish Free State as by (British) law established and fidelity to the king. The present condition of the Irish Free State is peaceful and prosperous; its government is imbued with the spirit of the best Catholic rulers of the past, and conserves the moral as well as the material welfare of the people.

Archdioceses , past and present, include

Armagh

Cashel

Dublin

Tuam

Dioceses , past and present, include:

Achonry

Ardagh and Conmacnois

Clogher

Clonfert

Cloyne

Cork and Ross

Derry

Down and Connor

Dromore

Elphin

Ferns

Galway and Kilmacduagh

Kerry

Kildare and Leighlin

Killala

Killaloe

Kilmacduagh

Kilmore

Leighlin

Limerick

Lismore

Meath

Ossory

Raphoe

Ross

Waterford and Lismore

Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary

Ireland

GEOGRAPHY

Ireland lies in the Atlantic Ocean, west of Great Britain, from which it is separated in the north-east by the North Channel, in the east by the Irish Sea, and in the south-east by St. George’s Channel. Situated between the fifty-first and fifty-sixth degrees of latitude, and between the fifth and eleventh parallels of longitude (Greenwich), its greatest length is 302 miles, its greatest breadth 174 miles, its area 32,535 square miles. It is divided into four provinces, these being subdivided into thirty-two counties. In the centre the country is a level plain; towards the coast there are several detached mountain chains. Its rivers and bays are numerous, also its bogs; its climate is mild, though unduly moist. In minerals it is not wealthy like Great Britain, but is soil is generally more fertile, and is specially suitable for agriculture and pasturage.

EARLY HISTORY

In ancient times it was known by the various names of Ierna, Juverna, Hibernia, Ogygia, and Inisfail or the Isle of Destiny. It was also called Banba and Erin, and lastly Scotia, or the country of the Scots. From the eleventh century, however, the name Scotia was exclusively applied to Caledonia, the latter country having been peopled in the sixth century by a Scottish colony from Ireland. Henceforth Ireland was often called Scotia Major and sometimes Ireland, until, after the eleventh century, the name Scotia was dropped and Ireland alone remained. Even yet it is sometimes called Erin—chiefly by orators and poets. Situated in the far west, out of the beaten paths of commercial activity, it was little known to the ancients. Festus Avienus wrote that it was two days’ sail from Britain. Pliny thought that it was part of Britain and not an island at all; Strabo that it was near Britain, and that its inhabitants were cannibals; and all that Caesar knew was that it was west of Britain, and about half its size. Agricola beheld its coastline from the opposite shores of Caledonia, and had thought of accepting the invitation of an Irish chief to come and conquer it, believing he could do so with a single legion. But he left Ireland unvisited and unconquered, and Tacitus could only record that in soil and climate it resembled Britain, and that its harbours were then well known to foreign merchants.

But if we have not any detailed description from his lively pen, the native chroniclers have furnished us with abundant materials, and, if all they say be true, we can understand the remark of Camden that Ireland was rightly called Ogygia, or the Ancient Island, because in comparison, the antiquity of all other nations is in its infancy. Passing by the absurd story that it was peopled before the Deluge, we are told that, beginning with the time of Abraham, several successive waves of colonization rolled westward to its shores. First came Parthalon with 1000 followers; after which came the Nemedians, the Firbolgs, and the Tuatha-de-Dananns, and lastly the Milesians or Scots. In addition, there were the Fomorians, a people of uncertain origin, whose chief occupation was piracy and war, and whose attacks on the various settlers were incessant. These and the Milesians excepted, the different colonists came from Greece, and all were of the same race. The Milesians came from Scythia; and from that country to Egypt, from Egypt to Spain, from Spain to Ireland their adventures are recorded in detail. The name Scot which they bore was derived from Scota, daughter of Pharaoh of Egypt, the wife of one of their chiefs; from their chief Miledh they got the name Milesians, and from another chief Goidel they were sometimes called Gadelians, or Gaels. The wars and battles of these colonists are largely fabulous, and the Partholanians, Nemedians, and Fomorians belong rather to mythology than to history. So also do the Dananns, though sometimes they are taken as a real people, of superior knowledge and skill, the builders of those prehistoric sepulchral mounds by the Boyne, at Dowth, Knowth, and Newgrange. The Firbolgs however most probably existed, and were kindred perhaps to those warlike Belgae of Gaul whom Caesar encountered in battle. And the Milesians certainly belong to history, though the date of their arrival in Ireland is unknown. They were Celts, and probably came from Gaul to Britain, and from Britain to Ireland, rather than direct from Spain. Under the leadership of Heremon and Heber they soon became masters of the island. Some of the Firbolgs, it is said, crossed the seas to the Isles of Arran, where they built the fort of Dun Engus, which still stands and which tradition still associates with their name. Heber and Heremon soon quarrelled, and, Heber falling in battle, Heremon became sole ruler, the first in a long line of kings. This list of kings, however, is not reliable, and we are warned by Tighearnach, the most trustworthy of Irish chroniclers, that all events before the reign of Cimbaeth (300 B.C.) are uncertain. Even after the dawn of the Christian Era fact and fiction are interwoven and events are often shrouded in shadows and mists. Such, for instance, are the exploits of Cuchullain and Finn Macumhael. Nor have many of these early kinds been remarkable, if we except Conn of the Hundred Battles, who lived in the first century after Christ; Cormac, who lived a century later; Tuathal, who established the Feis of Tara; Niall, who invaded Britain; and Dathi, who in the fifth century lost his life at the foot of the Alps.

The Irish were then pagans, but not barbarians. Their roads were indeed ill-constructed, their wooden dwellings rude, the dress of their lower orders scanty, their implements of agriculture and war primitive, and so were their land vehicles, and the boats in which they traversed the sea. On the other hand, some of their swords and shields showed some skill in metal-working, and their war-like and commercial voyages to Britain and Gaul argue some proficiency in shipbuilding and navigation. They certainly loved music; and, besides their inscribed Ogham writing, they had a knowledge of letters. There was a high-king of Ireland (ardri), and subject to him were the provincial kings and chiefs of tribes. Each of these received tribute from his immediate inferior, and even in a sept the political and legal administration was complete. There was the druid who explained religion, the brehon who dispensed justice, the brughaid or public hospitaller, the bard who sang the praises of his chief or urged his kinsman to battle; and each was an official and had his appointed allotment of land. Kings, though taken from one family, were elective, the tanist or heir-apparent being frequently not the nearest relation of him who reigned. This peculiarity, together with gavelkind by which the lands were periodically redistributed, impeded industry and settled government. Nor was there any legislative assembly, and the Brehon law under which Ireland lived was judge-made law. Sometimes the ardri’s tribute remained unpaid and his authority nominal; but if he was a strong man he exacted obedience and tribute. The Boru tribute levied on the King of Leinster was excessive and unjust, and led to many evils. The pagan Irish believed in Druidism, resembling somewhat the Druidism Caesar saw in Gaul; but the pagan creed of the Irish was indefinite and their gods do not stand out clear. They held the immortality and the transmigration of souls, worshipped the sun and moon, and, with an inferior worship, mountains, rivers, and wells. And they sacrificed to idols, one of which, Crom Cruach, they are said to have propitiated with human sacrifices. They also believed in fairies, holding that the Tuatha-de-Dananns, when defeated by the Milesians, retired into the bosom of the mountains, where they held their fairy revels. One of the women fairies (the banshee) watched the fortunes of great families, and when some great misfortune was impending, the doomed family was warned at night by her mournful wail.

EARLY CHRISTIAN PERIOD

Intercourse with Britain and the Continent through commerce and war sufficiently accounts for the introduction of Christianity before the fifth century. There must have been then a considerable number of Christians in Ireland; for in 430 Palladius, a bishop and native of Britain, was sent by Pope Celestine “to the Scots believing in Christ”. Palladius, however, did little, and almost immediately returned to Britain, and in 432 the same pope sent St. Patrick. He is the Apostle of Ireland, but this does not imply that he found Ireland altogether pagan and left it altogether Christian. It is however quite true that when St. Patrick did come paganism was the predominant belief, and that at his death it had been supplanted as such by Christianity. The extraordinary work which St. Patrick did, as well as his own attractive personal character, has furnished him with many biographers; and even in recent years his life and works have engaged erudite and able pens. But in spite of all that has been written many things in his life are still doubtful and obscure. It is doubtful when and where he was born, how he spent his life between his first leaving Ireland and his return, and in what year he died. It has been maintained that he never existed; that he and Palladius were the same man; that there were two St. Patricks; again, some, like Jocelin, have multiplied his miracles beyond belief. These contradictions and exaggerations have encouraged the scoffer to sneer; and Gibbon was sure that in the sixty-six lives of St. Patrick there must have been sixty-six thousand lies. In reality there seems no solid reason for rejecting the traditional account, viz., that St. Patrick was born at Dumbarton in Scotland about 372; that he was captured and brought to Ireland by the Irish king, Nial; that he was sold as a slave to an Ulster chief Milcho, whom he served for six years; that he then escaped and went back to his own people; that in repeated visions he, a pious Christian, heard the plaintive cry of the pagan Irish inviting him to come amongst them; that, believing he was called by God to do so, he went first to the monastery of St. Martin of Tours, then to that of St. Germanus of Auxerre, after which he went to Lerins and to Rome; and then, being consecrated bishop, he was sent by Pope Celestine to Ireland, where he arrived in 432.

From Wicklow, where he landed, his course is traced to Antrim; back by Downpatrick, near which he converted Dichu and got from him a grant of land for his first church at Saul; then by Dundalk, where Benignus was converted; and to Slane, where in sight of Tara itself he lighted the paschal fire. The enraged druids pointed out to the ardri the heinousness of the offence, for during the great pagan festival then being celebrated it was death to light any fire except at Tara. But St. Patrick came to Tara itself, baptized the chief poet, and even the ardri; then marched north and destroyed at Leitrim the idol, Crom Cruach, after which he entered Connaught, and remained there for seven years. Passing through Connaught to Ulster, he went through Donegal, Tyrone, and Antrim, consecrated Macarten Bishop of Monaghan, and Fiace Bishop of Sletty; after which he entered Munster. Finally he returned to Ulster, and died at Saul in 493. His early captivity in Ireland interfered seriously with his education, and in his Confession and in his Epistle to Caroticus, both of which have survived the wreck of ages, we can discover no graces of style. But we see his great familiarity with the Scripture. And the man himself stands revealed; his piety, his spirit of prayer, his confidence in God, his zeal, his invincible courage. But while putting his entire trust in God, and giving Him all the glory, he rejected no human aid. Entering into a pagan territory he first preached to the chief men, knowing that when they were converted the people would follow. Wonderful indeed was his labour, and wonderful its results. He preached in almost every district in Ireland, confounded in argument the druids and won the people from their side; he built, it is said, 365 churches and consecrated an equal number of bishops, established schools and convents, and held synods; and when he died the whole machinery of a powerful Church was in operation, fully equal to the task of confirming in the faith those already converted and of bringing those yet in darkness into the Christian fold.

One of the apostle’s first anxieties was to provide a native ministry. For this purpose he selected the leading men—chiefs, brehons, bards—men likely to attract the respect of the people, and these, after little training, and often with little education, he had ordained. Thus equipped the priest went among the people, with his catechism, missal, and ritual, the bishop in addition his crosier and bell. In a short time, however, these primitive conditions ceased. Abut 450 a college was established at Armagh under Benignus; other schools arose at Kildare, Noendrum, and Louth; and by the end of the fifth century these colleges sent forth a sufficient supply of trained priests. Supported by a grant of land from the chief of the clan or sept and by voluntary offerings, bishop and priests lived together, preached to the people, administered the sacraments, settled their disputes, sat in their banquet halls. To many ardent natures this state of things was abhorrent. Fleeing from men, they sought for solitude and silence, by the banks of a river, in the recesses of a wood, and, with the scantiest allowance of food, the water for their drink, a few wattles covered with sods for their houses, they spent their time in mortification and prayer. Literally they were monks, for they were alone with God. But their retreats were soon invaded by others anxious to share their penances and their vigils, and to learn wisdom at their feet. Each newcomer built his little hut, a church was erected, a grant of land obtained, their master became abbot, and perhaps bishop; and thus arose monastic establishments the fame of which soon spread throughout Europe. Noted examples in the sixth century were Clonard, founded by St. Finian, Clonfert by St. Brendan, Bangor by St. Comgall, Clonmacnoise by St. Kieran, Arran by St. Enda; and, in the seventh century, Lismore by St. Carthage and Glendalough by St. Kevin.

There were still bardic schools, as there was still paganism, but in the seventh century paganism had all but disappeared, and the bardic were overshadowed by the monastic schools. Frequented by the best of the Irish, and by students from abroad, these latter diffused knowledge over western Europe, and Ireland received and merited the title of Island of Saints and Scholars. The holy men who laboured with St. Patrick and immediately succeeded him were mostly bishops and founders of churches; those of the sixth century were of the monastic order; those of the seventh century were mostly anchorites who loved solitude, silence, continued prayer, and the most rigid austerities. Nor were the women behindhand in this contest for holiness. St. Brigid is a name still dear to Ireland, and she, as well as St. Ita, St. Fanchea and others, founded many convents tenanted by pious women, whose sanctity and sacrifices it would be indeed difficult to surpass. Nor was the Irish Church, as has been sometimes asserted, out of communion with the See of Rome. The Roman and Irish tonsures differed, it is true, and the methods of computing Easter, and it may be that Pelagianism found some few adherents, though Arianism did not, nor the errors as to the natures and wills of Christ. In the number of its sacraments, in its veneration for the Blessed Virgin, in its belief in the Mass and in Purgatory, in its obedience to the See of Rome, the creed of the early Irish Church was the Catholic creed of to-day (see CELTIC RITE). Abroad as well as at home Irish Christian zeal was displayed. In 563 St. Columba, a native of Donegal, accompanied by a few companions, crossed the sea to Caledonia and founded a monastery on the desolate island of Iona.

Fresh arrivals came from Ireland; the monastery with Columba as its abbot was soon a flourishing institution, from which the Dalriadian Scots in the south and the Piets beyond the Grampians were evangelized; and when Columba died in 597, Christianity had been preached and received in every district in Caledonia, and in every island along its west coast. In the next century Iona had so prospered that its abbot, St. Adamnan, wrote in excellent Latin the “Life of St. Columba”, the best biography of which the Middle Ages can boast. From Iona had gone south the Irish Aidan and his Irish companions to compete with and even exceed in zeal the Roman missionaries under St. Augustine, and to evangelize Northumbria, Mercia, and Essex; and if Irish zeal had already been displayed in Iona, equal zeal was now displayed on the desolate isle of Lindisfarne. Nor was this all. In 590 St. Columbanus, a student of Bangor, accompanied by twelve companions, arrived in France and established the monastery of Luxeuil, the parent of many monasteries, then laboured at Bregenz, and finally founded the monastery of Bobbio, which as a centre of knowledge and piety was long the light of northern Italy. And meantime his friend and fellow-student St. Gall laboured with conspicuous success in Switzerland, St. Fridolin along the Rhine, St. Fiacre near Meaux, St. Kilian at Wurzburg, St. Livinus in Brabant, St. Fursey on the Marne, St. Cataldus in southern Italy. And when Charlemagne reigned (771-814), Irishmen were at his court, “men incomparably skilled in human learning”.

In the civil history of the period only a few facts stand out prominently. About 560, in consequence of a quarrel with the ardri Diarmuid about the right of sanctuary, St. Columba and Rhodanus (Reudan) of Lorrha publicly cursed Tara, an unpatriotic act which dealt a fatal blow at the prospect of a strong central government by blighting with maledictions its acknowledged seat. Nearly thirty years later the National Convention of Drumceat restrained the insolence and curtailed the privileges of the bards. In 684 Ireland was invaded by the King of Northumbria, though no permanent conquest followed. And in 697 the last Feis of Tara was held, at which, through the influence of Adamnan, women were interdicted from taking part in actual battle. At the same time the ardri Finactha, at the instance of St. Moling, renounced for himself and his successors the Boru tribute. As the eighth century neared its close, religion and learning still flourished; but unexpected dangers approached and a new enemy came, before whose assaults monk and monastery and saint and scholar disappeared.

These invaders were the Danes from the coasts of Scandinavia. Pagans and pirates, they loved plunder and war, and both on land and sea were formidable foes. Like the fabled Fomorians of earlier times they had a genius for devastation. Descending from their ships along the coast of western Europe, they murdered the inhabitants or made them captives and slaves.

In Ireland as elsewhere they attacked the monasteries and churches, desecrated the altars, carried away the gold and silver vessels, and smoking ruins and murdered monks attested the fury of their assaults. Armagh and Bangor, Kildare and Clonmacnoise, Iona and Lindisfarne thus fell before their fury. Favoured by disunion among the Irish chiefs, they crept inland, effected permanent settlements at Waterford and Limerick and established a powerful kingdom at Dublin; and, had their able chief Turgesius lived much longer, they might perhaps have subdued the whole island. For a century after his death in 845 victory and defeat alternated in their wars; but they clung tenaciously to their seaport possessions, and kept the neighbouring Irish in cruel bondage. They were, however, signally defeated by the Ardri Malachy in 980, and Dublin was compelled to pay him tribute. But, able as Malachy was, an abler man soon supplanted him in the supreme position. Step by step Brian Boru had risen from being chief of Thomond to be undisputed ruler of Munster. Its chiefs were his tributaries and his allies; the Danes he had repeatedly chastised, and in 1002 he compelled Malachy to abdicate in his favour.

It was a bitter humiliation for Malachy thus to lay down the sceptre which for 600 years had been in the hands of his family. It gave Ireland, however, the greatest of her high-kings and unbroken peace for some years. War came when the elements of discontent coalesced. Brian had irritated Leinster by reviving the Boru tribute; he had crushed the Danes; and these, with the Danes of the Isle of Man and those of Sweden and the Scottish Isles, joined together, and on Good Friday, 1014, the united strength of Danes and Leinstermen faced Brian’s army at Clontarf. The victory gained by the latter was great; but it was dearly bought by the loss of Brian as well as his son and grandson. The century and a half which followed was a weary waste of turbulence and war. Brian’s usurpation encouraged others to ignore the claims of descent. O’Loughlin and O’Neill in the North, O’Brien in the South, and O’Connor beyond the Shannon fought for the national throne with equal energy and persistence; and as one set of disputants disappeared, others replaced them, equally determined to prevail. The lesser chiefs were similarly engaged. This ceaseless strife completed the work begun by the Danes. Under native and Christian chiefs churches were destroyed, church lands appropriated by laymen, monastic schools deserted, lay abbots ruled at Armagh and elsewhere. Bishops were consecrated without sees and conferred orders for money, there was chaos in church government and corruption everywhere. In a series of synods beginning with Rathbreasail (1118) and including Kells, at which the pope’s legate presided, many salutary enactments were passed, and for the first time diocesan episcopacy was established. Meanwhile, St. Malachy, Archbishop of Armagh, had done very remarkable work in his own diocese and elsewhere. His early death in 1148 was a heavy blow to the cause of church reform. Nor could so many evils be cured in a single life, or by the labours of a single man; and in spite of his efforts and the efforts of others the decrees of synods were often flouted, and the new diocesan boundaries ignored.

THE ANGLO-NORMANS

In Henry II of England an unexpected reformer appeared. The murderer of Thomas a’ Becket seemed ill-fitted for the role, but he undertook it, and in the first year of his reign (1154) he procured a Bull from the English-born Pope Adrian IV authorizing him to proceed to Ireland “to check the torrent of wickedness to reform evil manners, to sow the seeds of virtue.” The many troubles of his extensive kingdom thwarted his plans for years. But in 1168 Macmurrogh, King of Leinster, driven from his kingdom sought Henry’s aid, and then Adrian’s Bull was remembered. a first contingent of Anglo-Normans came to Ireland in 1169 under Fitzgerald, a stronger force under Strongbow (de Clare, Earl of Pembroke) in 1170, and in 1171 Henry himself landed at Waterford and proceeded to Dublin, where he spent the winter, and received the submission of all the Irish chiefs, except those of Tyrconnell and Tyrowen. These submissions, however, aggravated rather than lessened existing ills. The Irish chiefs submitted to Henry as to a powerful ardri, still preserving their privileges and rights under Brehon law. Henry, on his side, regarded them as vassals holding the lands of their tribes by military service and in accordance with feudal law. Thus a conflict between the clan system and feudalism arose. Exercising his supposed rights, Henry divided the country into so many great fiefs, giving Meath to be Lacy, Leinster to Strongbow, while de Courcy was encouraged to conquer Ulster, and deCogan Connaught. At a later date the deBurgos settled in Galway, the Fitzgeralds in Kildare and Desmond, the Butlers in Ossory. Discord enfeebled the capacity of the Irish chiefs for resistance; nor were kernes and gallowglasses equal to mail-clad knights, nor the battle-axe to the Norman lance, and in a short time large tracts had passed from native to foreign hands.

The new Anglo-Irish lords soon outgrew the position of English subjects, and to the natives became tyrannical and overbearing. Ignoring the many evidences of culture in Ireland, her Romanesque architecture, her high crosses, her illuminated manuscripts, her shrines and crosiers, the scholars that had shed lustre on her schools, the saints that had hallowed her fame throughout Europe—ignoring all these, they despised the Irish as rude and barbarous, despised their language, their laws, their dress, their arms; and, while not recognizing the Brehon law, they refused Irishmen the status of English subjects or the protection of English law. At last, despairing of union among their own chiefs, or of justice from Irish viceroy or English king, the oppressed Irish invited Edward Bruce from Scotland. In 1315 he landed in Ireland and was crowned king. Successful at first, his allies beyond the Shannon were almost annihilated in the battle of Athenry (1316); and two years later he was himself defeated and slain at Faughart. His ruin had been effected by a combination of the Anglo-Irish lords, and this still further inflated their pride. Titles rewarded them. Birmingham became Lord of Athenry and Earl of Louth, Fitzgerald Earl of Kildare, his kinsman Earl of Desmond, de Burgo Earl of Ulster, Butler Earl of Ormond. But these titles only increased their insolence and disloyalty. Favoured by the weakness of the viceroy’s government the native chiefs recovered most of the ground they had lost.

Meanwhile the De Burgos in Connaught changed their name to Burke, and became Irish chiefs; many others followed their example; even the ennobled Butlers and Fitzgeralds used the Irish language, dress, and customs, and were as turbulent as the worst of the native chiefs. To recall these colonists to their allegiance the Statute of Kilkenny made it penal to use Irish customs, language, or law, forbade intermarriage with the mere Irish, or the conferring of benefices on the native-born. But the barriers of race could not be maintained, and the intermarrying of Irish with Anglo-Irish went on. The long war with France, followed by the Wars of the Roses, diverted the attention of England from Irish affairs; and the viceroy, feebly supported from England, was too weak to chastise these powerful lords or put penal laws in force. The hostility of native chiefs was bought off by the payment of “black rents”. The loyal colonists confined to a small district near Dublin, called “the Pale”, shivered behind its encircling rampart; and when the sixteenth century dawned, English power in Ireland had almost disappeared. Those within the Pale were impoverished by grasping officials and by the payment of “black rents”. Outside the Pale the country was held by sixty chiefs of Irish descent and thirty of English descent, each making peace or war as he pleased. Lawlessness and irreligion were everywhere. The clergy of Irish quarrelled with those of English descent; the religious houses were corrupt, their priors and abbots great landholders with seats in Parliament, and more attached to secular than to religious concerns; the great monastic schools had disappeared, the greatest of them all, Clonmacnoise, being in ruins; preaching was neglected except by the mendicant orders, and these were utterly unable to cope with the disorders which prevailed.

THE TUDOR PERIOD

Occupied with English and Continental affairs, Henry VIII, in the beginning of his reign, bestowed but little attention on Ireland, and not until he was a quarter of a century on the throne were Irish affairs taken seriously in hand. The king was then in middle age, no longer the defender of the Faith against Luther, but, like Luther, a rebel against Rome; no longer generous or attractive in character, but rather a cruel capricious tyrant whom it was dangerous to provoke and fatal to disobey. In England his hands were reddened with the best blood of the land; and in Ireland the fate of the Fitzgeralds, following the rebellion of Silken Thomas, struck Irish and Anglo-Irish alike with such terror that all hastened to make peace. O’Neill, renouncing the inheritance of his ancestors, became Earl of Tyrone; Burke became Earl of Clanrickard, O’Brien Earl of Thomond, Fitzpatrick Lord of Ossory; the Earl of Desmond and the other Anglo-Irish nobles were pardoned all their offences, and at a Parliament in Dublin (1541) Anglo-Irish and Irish attended. And Henry, who like his predecessors had been hitherto but Lord of Ireland (Dominus Hiberniae), was now unanimously given the higher title of king. This Parliament also passed the Act of Supremacy by which Henry was invested with spiritual jurisdiction, and, in substitution for the pope, proclaimed head of the Church. As the proctors of the clergy refused to agree to this measure, the irate monarch deprived them of the right of voting, and in revenge confiscated church lands and suppressed monasteries, in some cases shed the blood of their inmates, in the remaining cases sent them forth homeless and poor. These severities, however, did not win the people from their faith. The apostate friar Browne, whom Henry made Archbishop of Dublin, the apostate Staples, Bishop of Meath, and Henry himself, stained with so many adulteries and murders, had but poor credentials as preachers of reform; whatever time-serving chiefs might do, the clergy and people were unwilling to make Henry pope, or to subscribe to the varying tenets of his creed. His successor, an ardent Protestant, tried hard to make Ireland Protestant, but the sickly plant which he sowed was uprooted by the Catholic Mary, and at Elizabeth’s accession all Ireland was Catholic.

Like her father Henry, the young queen was a cruel and capricious tyrant, and in her war with Shane O’Neill, the ablest of the Irish chiefs, she did not scruple to employ assassins. She was neither a sincere Protestant nor a willing persecutor of the Catholics; and though she re-enacted the Act of Supremacy and passed the Act of Uniformity, making Protestantism the state creed, she refused to have these acts rigorously enforced. But when the pope and the Spanish king declared against her, and the Irish Catholics were found in alliance with both, she yielded to her ministers and concluded, with them, that a Catholic was necessarily a disloyal subject. Henceforth toleration gave way to persecution. The tortures inflicted on O’Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel, and O’Hely, Bishop of Mayo, the Spaniards murdered in cold blood at Smerwick, the desolation of Munster during Desmond’s rebellion, showed how cruel her rule could be. Far more formidable than the rebellion of Desmond, or even than that of Shane O’Neill, was the rebellion of Hugh O’Neill, Early of Tyrone. No such able Irish chief had appeared since Brian Boru. Cool, cautious, vigilant, he laid his plans with care and knew how to wait patiently for results. Never impulsive, never boastful, wise in council and wary in speech, from his long residence in London in his youth he learned dissimulation, and was as crafty as the craftiest English minister. Repeatedly he foiled the queen’s diplomatists in council as he did her generals in the field, and at the Yellow Ford (1598) gained the greatest victory ever won in Ireland over English arms. What he might have done had he been loyally supported it is hard to say. For nearly ten years he continued the war; he continued it after his Spanish allies had brought upon him the disaster of Kinsale; after his chief assistant, O’Donnell, had been struck down by an assassin’s hand; after Carew had subdued Munster, and Mountjoy had turned Ulster into a desert; after the Irish chiefs had gone over to the enemy. And when he submitted it was only on condition of being guaranteed his titles and lands; and by that time Elizabeth, who hated him so much and so longed for his destruction, had breathed her last.

UNDER THE STUARTS

James I (1603-25) was the first of the Stuart line, and from the son of Mary Stuart the Irish Catholics expected much. They were doomed, however, to an early disappointment. The cities which rejoiced that “Jezabel was dead”, and that now they could practise their religion openly, were warned by Mountjoy that James was a good Protestant and as such would have no toleration of popery. Salisbury, who had poisoned the mind of the queen against the Catholics, was equally successful with her successor, with the result that persecution continued. Proclamations were issued ordering the clergy to quit the kingdom; those who remained were hunted down; O’Devany, Bishop of Down, and others were done to death. The Acts of Supremacy and uniformity were rigorously enforced. The Act of Oblivion, under which participants in the late rebellion were pardoned, was often forgotten or ignored. English law, which for the first time was extended to all Ireland, was used by corrupt officials to oppress rather than to protect the people. The Earl of Tyrone and the Early of Tyroconnell (Rory O’Donnell) was so spied upon and worried by false charges of disloyalty that they fled the country, believing that their lives were in danger; and to all their pleas for justice the king’s response was to slander their characters and confiscate their lands. It is indeed true that Irish juries found the earls guilty of high treason, and an Irish Parliament, representing all Ireland, attained them. But these results were obtained by carefully packing the juries, and by the creation of small boroughs which sent creatures of the king to represent them in Parliament. And the Catholic members acquiesced under threat of having enacted a fresh batch of penal laws. Thus, aided by corrupt juries and a complaisant Parliament, James I was enabled to plant the confiscated lands of Ulster with English Protestants and Scotch Presbyterians. Other plantations had fared badly. That of King’s and Queen’s County in Mary’s reign had decayed; and the plantation of Munster after the Desmond war had been swept away in the tide of O’Neill’s victories. The plantation of Ulster was more thorough and effective than either of these. Whole districts were given to the settlers, and these, supported by a Protestant Government, soon grew into a powerful and prosperous colony, while the despoiled Catholics, driven from the richer to the poorer lands, looked helplessly on, hating those colonists for whose sake they had been despoiled.

Under the new king, Charles I (1625-49), the policy of persecution and plantation was continued. Under pretence of advancing the public interest and increasing the king’s revenue, a crowd of hungry adventurers spread themselves over the land, inquiring into the title by which lands were held. With venal judges, venal juries, and sympathetic officials to aid them, good titles were declared bad, and lands seized, and the adventurers were made sharers in the spoil. The O’Byrnes were thus deprived of their lands in Wicklow, and similar confiscations and plantations took place in Wexford, King’s County, Leitrim, Westmeath, and Longford. Hoping to protect themselves against such robbery, the Catholics offered the king a subsidy of £120,000 in exchange for certain privileges called “graces”, which among other things would give them indefeasible titles to their estates. These “graces” granted by the king, were to have the sanction of Parliament to make them good. The money was paid, but the “graces” were withheld, and the viceroy, Strafford, proceeded to Connaught to confiscate and plant the whole province. The projected plantation was ultimately abandoned; but the sense of injustice remained. All over the country were insecurity, anxiety, unrest, and disaffection; Irish and Anglo-Irish were equally menaced. Seeing the futility of appealing to a helpless Parliament, a despotic viceroy, or a perfidious king, the nation took up arms.

To describe the rebellion as the “massacre of 1641” is unjust. The details of cruel murders committed and horrible tortures inflicted by the rebels are mischievously untrue. On the other hand, it is true that the Protestants suffered grievous wrong, and that many of them lost their lives, exclusive of those who fell in war. The Catholics wanted the planters’ lands; when driven away in wintry weather, without money, or food, or sufficient clothes, many planters perished of hunger and cold. Others fell by the avenging hand of some infuriated Catholic whom they might have wronged in the days of their power. Many fell defending their property or the property and lives of their friends. The plan of the rebel leaders, of whom Roger Moore was chief, was to capture the garrison towns by a simultaneous attack. But they failed to capture Dublin Castle, containing large stores of arms, owing to the imprudence of Colonel MacMahon. He imparted the secret to a disreputable Irishman named O’Connolly, who at once informed the Castle authorities, with the result that the Castle defences were strengthened, and MacMahon and others arrested and subsequently executed. In Ulster, however, the whole open country and many towns fell into the rebels’ hands, and Munster and Connaught soon joined the rebellion, as did the Catholics of the Pale, unable to obtain any toleration of their religion, or security of their property, or even of their lives. Before the new year was far advanced the Catholic Bishops declared the rebellion just, and the Catholics formed a confederation which, from its meeting place, was called the “Confederation of Kilkenny”. Composed of clergy and laity its members swore to be loyal to the king, to strive for the free exercise of their religion, and to defend the lives, liberties, and possessions of all who took the Confederate oath. Supreme executive authority was vested in a supreme council; there were provincial councils also, all these bodies deriving their powers from an elective body called the “General Assembly”.

The Supreme Council exercised all the powers of government, administered justice, raised taxes, formed armies, appointed generals. One of the best-known of these officers was General Preston, who commanded in Leinster, having come from abroad with a good supply of arms and ammunition, and with 500 trained officers. A more remarkable man still was General Owen Roe O’Neill, nephew of the great Earl of Tyrone, who took command in Ulster, and whose defence of Arras against the French caused him to be recognized as one of the first soldiers in Europe. He also, like Preston, brought officers, arms, and ammunition to Ireland. At a later state came Rinuccini, the pope’s nuncio, bringing with him a supply of money. Meanwhile, civil war raged in England between king and Parliament; the Government at Dublin, ill supplied from across the Channel, was ill fitted to crush a powerful rebellion, and, in 1646, O’Neill won the great victory of Benburb. But the strength of which this victory was the outcome was counterbalanced by elements of weakness. The Catholics of Ulster and those of the Pale did not agree; neither did Generals O’Neill and Preston. The Supreme Council, with a feeble old man, Lord Mountgarret, at its head, and four provincial generals instead of a commander-in-chief, was ill-suited for the vigorous prosecution of a war. Moreover, the influence of the Marquis of Ormond was a fatal cause of discord. A personal friend of the king, and charged by him with the command of his army and with the conduct of negotiations, a Protestant with Catholic friends on the Supreme Council, his desire ought to have been to bring Catholic and Royalist together. But his hatred of the Catholics was such that he would grant them no terms, even when ordered to do so by His Majesty. The Catholics’ professions of loyalty he despised, and his great diplomatic abilities were used to sow dissensions in their councils and to thwart their plans. Yet the Supreme Council, dominated by an Ormondist faction, continued fruitless negotiations with him, agreed to a cessation when they themselves were strong and their opponents weak, and agreed to a peace with him in spite of the victory of Benburb, and in spite of the remonstrances of the nuncio and of General O’Neill. Nor did they cease these relations with him even after he had treacherously surrendered Dublin to the Parliament (1647), and left the country. On the contrary, they still put faith in him, entered into a fresh peace with him in 1648, and when he returned to Ireland as the Royalist viceroy they received him in state at Kilkenny. In disgust, General O’Neill came to a temporary agreement with the Parliamentary general, and Rinuccini, despairing of Ireland, returned to Rome.

The Civil War in England was then over. The Royalists had been vanquished, the king executed, the monarchy replaced by a commonwealth; and in August, 1649, Oliver Cromwell came to Ireland with 10,000 men. Ormond meanwhile had rallied his supporters, and, with the greater part of the Catholics of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, the Protestants of the Pale and of Munster, and great part of the Ulster Presbyterians, his strength was considerable. His obstinate bigotry would not allow him to make terms with the Ulster army, and he thus lost the support of General O’Neill at a critical time. Early in August he had been disastrously beaten by the Puritan general Jones, at Rathmines; in consequence he offered no opposition to Cromwell’s landing and made no attempt to relieve Drogheda. It was soon captured by Cromwell and its garrison put to the sword. A month later the same fate befell Wexford. Waterford repelled Cromwell’s attack, and Clonmel and Kilkenny offered him a stout resistance; but other towns were easily captured, or voluntarily surrendered; and when he left Ireland, in May, 1650, Munster and Leinster were in his hands. His successors, Ireton and Ludlow, within two years reduced the remaining provinces. Meanwhile Owen Roe O’Neill had died after making terms with Ormond, but before meeting with Cromwell. The Catholic Bishops, however, repudiated Ormond, who then left Ireland. Some negotiations subsequently between Lord Clanricarde and the Duke of Lorraine came to nothing, and the long war was ended in which more than half the inhabitants of the country had lost their lives.

In the beginning of the rebellion many Englishmen subscribed money to put it down, stipulating in return for a share of the lands to be forfeited, and thus hatred of the Catholics was mingled with hope of gain. The English Parliament accepted the money on the terms proposed, and the subscribers became known as “adventurers”, because they adventured their money on Irish land. When the rebellion was over, the problem was to provide the lands promised, and also to provide lands for the soldiers who were in arrears of pay. It was a difficult problem. There was an Act for Settling Ireland, and and Act for the Satisfaction of Adventurers in Lands and Arrears due to the soldiers and other public Debts; there was a High Court of Justice to determine who were guilty of rebellion; there were soldiers who had got special terms when laying down their arms; and there were those who had never had a share in the rebellion, but had merely lived in the rebel quarters during the war. The best of the lands east of the Shannon were for the adventurers and soldiers, the dispossessed being driven to Connaught. To determine where the planters were to be settled and where the transplanted, and what amount they were to get, there were commissions, and committees, and surveys, and court of claims. Nor was it till 1658 that the Cromwellian Settlement was complete, and even then many of the transplanted protested their innocence of any share in the rebellion, and many of the adventurers and soldiers complained that they had been defrauded of their due. In the amount of suffering it entailed and wrong inflicted the whole scheme far exceeded the plantation of Ulster. But it failed to make Ireland either English or Protestant, and in setting up a system of alien landlords and native tenants it proved the curse of Ireland and the fruitful parent of many ills.

To the Irish Cromwell’s death in 1658 was welcome news, all the more so because Charles II (1660-85) was restored. For their attachment to the cause of the latter they had suffered much; and now the Catholic landlord in his Connaught cabin and the Irish soldier abroad felt equally assured that the recovery of their lands and homes was at hand. They soon learned that Stuart gratitude meant little and that Stuart promises were written on sand. Had Charles been free to act, the Cromwellian Settlement would not have endured; for he loved the Catholics much more than he loved the Puritans. But the planters were a dangerous body to provoke, sustained as they were by the English Parliament and by the king’s chief adviser, Ormond, who indeed hated the Cromwellians, but hated the Catholics much more. Some attempt, however, was made to right the wrong that had been done, and by the Act of Settlement, six hundred innocent Catholics were restored to their lands. Many more would have been restored had the court of claims been allowed to continue its sittings. The irate planters wanted to know what was to become of them if the despoiled papist thus back their lands; utterings threats and even breaking out into rebellion they alarmed the king. Under Ormond’s advice the Act of Explanation was then passed (1665) and the court of claims set up by the Act of Settlement closed its doors, though three thousand cases remained untried. Thus the Cromwellians who had murdered the king’s father were, with few exceptions, left unmolested while the Catholics were abandoned to their fate. Before the rebellion two-thirds of the lands of the country were in the hands of the latter; after the Act of Explanation scarcely one-third was left them, a sweeping confiscation especially in the case of men who were denied even the justice of a trial. After this the toleration of the Catholics was but a small concession. Not, however, during the whole of Charles’s reign; for Ormond, now a duke, filled the office of viceroy for many years; he at least would maintain Protestant ascendancy, and exclude the Catholics from the bench and the corporations. In the English Council and in Parliament he bitterly attacked and defeated the proposed revision of the Act of Settlement. He does not appear to have had any sympathy with the lying tales of Oates and Bedloe, or with the storm of persecution which followed, and he disapproved of the judicial murder of Oliver Plunket. But his aversion from the Catholics continued, and was in no way chilled by advancing age. One of the last acts of Charles was to dismiss him from office as an enemy to toleration. The king himself soon after died in the Catholic Faith, and James II, an avowed Catholic, succeeded, the first Catholic sovereign since the death of Mary Tudor.

Religious toleration had then made little progress throughout Europe, and England, aggressively Protestant, looked with special disfavour on Catholicism. In these circumstances James II should have moved with caution. He should have taken account of national prejudices and the temper of the times, and respected established institutions; while conscientiously practising his own religion, he should have sought for no favour for it, at least until the nation was in a more tolerant and yielding mood. Instead of this, and in defiance of English bigotry and English law, he appointed Catholics to high civil and military offices, opened the corporations and the universities to them, had a papal nuncio at his court, and issued a declaration of Indulgence suspending the penal laws. When the Protestant bishops refused to have this declaration read from their pulpits he prosecuted them. Their acquittal was the signal for revolt, and James, deserted by all classes, fled to France leaving the English throne to William of Orange, whom the Protestants invited from Holland. Meanwhile sweeping changes had been effected in Ireland by the viceroy, the Duke of Tyreconnell, a militant Catholic and a special favourite of King James. Protestant magistrates, sheriffs, and judges had been displaced to make room for Catholics; the army and corporations underwent similar changes; and the Act of Settlement was to be repealed. Timid Protestants trembling for their lives fled to England; others formed centres of resistance to the viceroy in Munster and Connaught, and, in Ulster, Derry and Enniskillen expelled the Catholics and closed their gates against the viceroy’s troops. This was rebellion, for James, though repudiated in England, was still King of Ireland. In March, 1689, he arrived at Kinsale from France to subdue these rebels. But the task was beyond his strength. Derry and Enniskillen defied all his attacks, and a Wiliamite force, issuing from the latter town, almost annihilated a Jacobite army at Newton-Butler.

Disaffection became general among the Protestants when the Irish Parliament repealed the Act of Settlement and attained eighteen hundred persons who had fled to England through fear; and when, in August, a Williamite force of twenty thousand landed at Carrickfergus, the Protestants everywhere welcomed it. This great force, however, effected nothing, and in June, 1690, William himself came and encountered James on the banks of the Boyne. The battle was fought on 1 July, and resulted in the defeat of James. Hastening to Dublin he told the Duchess of Tyrconnell that the Irish soldiers had shamefully run away, to which the lady is said to have replied; “But your Majesty won the race.” The retort was just. The Irish cavalry behaved with conspicuous gallantry, as did the greater part of the infantry. Some of the latter did run away, but not so fast as James himself, who fled taking the ablest of the Irish generals, Sarsfield, with him. That the Irish were no cowards was soon shown by their defence of Athlone and the still more glorious defence of Limerick. After being compelled to raise the siege of the latter city, King Williams left for England, committing the civil authority to lords justices and the military command to General Ginkel. In the following year Ginkel captured Athlone, owing to the carelessness of the Jacobite general, St-Ruth; and on 12 July, 1691, the last great battle of the war was fought at Aughrim. The Irish were not inferior to their opponents in numbers, discipline, or valour, and though overmatched in heavy guns they had the advantage of position. Nor was St-Ruth inferior to Ginkel in military capacity. His dispositions were excellent, and after several hours’ desperate fighting Ginkel was driven back at every point. Just then St-Ruth was struck down by a cannon ball. Panic-stricken, the Irish fell back, allowing their opponents to advance and inflict on them a crushing defeat. The surrender of Galway and Sligo followed, and in a short time Ginkel and his whole army were before the walls of Limerick. When he had effectually surrounded it and made a breach in the walls, further resistance was seen to be hopeless, and Sarsfield and his friends made terms. By the end of the year the war was over, King William had triumphed, and Protestant ascendancy was secure.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

By the Treaty of Limerick the Catholic soldiers of King James were pardoned, protected against forfeiture of their estates, and were free to go abroad if they chose. All Catholics might substitute an oath of allegiance for the oath of supremacy, and were to have such privileges “as were consistent with the laws of Ireland, or as they did enjoy in the reign of Charles II”. King William also promised to have the Irish Parliament grant a further relaxation of the penal laws in force. This treaty, however, was soon torn to shreds, and in spite of William’s appeals the Irish Parliament refused to ratify it, and embarked on fresh penal legislation. Under these new laws Catholics were excluded from Parliament, from the bench and bar, from the army and navy, from all civil offices, from the corporations, and even from the corporate towns. They could not have Catholic schools at home or attend foreign schools, or inherit landed property, or hold land under lease, or act as executors or administrators, or have arms or ammunition, or a horse worth £5. Neither could they bury their dead in Catholic ruins, or make pilgrimages to holy wells, or observe Catholic holidays. They could not intermarry with the Protestants, the clergyman assisting at such marriages being liable to death. The wife of a Catholic landlord turning Protestant got separate maintenance; the son turning Protestant got the whole estate; and the Catholic landlord having only Catholic children was obliged at death to divide his estate among his children in equal shares. All the regular clergy, as well as bishops and vicars-general should quit the kingdom. The secular clergy might remain, but must be registered, nor could they have on their churches either steeple or bell. This was the Penal Code, elaborated through nearly half a century with patience, and care, and ingenuity, perhaps the most infamous code ever elaborated by civilized man.

Such legislation does not generate conviction, and, in spite of all, the Catholics clung to their Faith. Deprived of schools at home, the young clerical student sought the halls of Continental colleges, and being ordained returned to Ireland, disguised perhaps as a sailor and carried in a smuggler’s craft. And in secrecy and obscurity he preached, taught, lived, and died, leaving another generation equally persecuted to carry on the good fight. Poverty was his portion, and frequently the prison and the scaffold; and yet, while Protestantism made no progress, Catholicism more than held its own. In 1728 the Catholics were to the Protestants as five to one, and half a century later Young calculated that to make Ireland Protestant would take 4000 years. Indeed the Protestant clergy made no serious effort to convert the Catholics; nor was this the object of the Penal Code. Passed by Protestants possessing confiscated Catholic lands, it object was to impoverish, to debase, to degrade, to leave the despoiled Catholics incapable of rebellion and ignorant of their wrongs. In this respect it succeeded. A few Catholics, with the connivance of some friendly Protestants, managed to hold their estates; the remainder gradually sank to the level of cottiers and day-labourers, living in cabins, clothed in rags, always on the verge of famine. Shut out from every position of influence, rackrented by absentee landlords, insulted by grasping agents and drunken squireens, paying tithes to a Church they abhorred, hating the Government which oppressed them and the law which made them slaves, their condition was the worst of any peasantry in Europe. From a land blighted by such laws the enterprising and ambitious fled, seeking an outlet for their enterprise and ambition in happier lands. In the time of Elizabeth and James, and still more in Cromwell’s time, thousands joined the army of Spain. But in the latter half of the seventeenth century the stream was diverted to France, then the greatest military power in Europe. Thither Sarsfield and his men went after the fall of Limerick, and in the fifty years which followed 450,000 Irish died in the service of France. They fought and fell in Spain and Italy, in the passes of the Alps, in the streets of Cremona, at Ramillies and Malplaquet, at Blenheim and Fontenoy. Irishmen were marshals of France; an Irishman commanded the armies of Maria Theresa; another the army of Russia; and there were Irish statesmen, generals, and ambassadors all over Europe. Beyond the Atlantic, Irish had settled in Pennsylvania and Maryland, in Kentucky and Carolina and the New England states; Irish names were appended to the Declaration of Independence; and Irish soldiers fought throughout the War of Independence.

Now were soldiers and statesmen the only Irish exiles whom penal laws had sent abroad. The decay of schools and colleges continued from the eleventh to the sixteenth century; nor did Ireland in that period produce a single great scholar, except Duns Scotus, who was partly educated broad. Any hope of a revival of learning in the sixteenth century was blasted by the suppression of monasteries and the penal laws; early in the seventeenth century, however, Irish colleges were already established at Louvain, Salamanca, and Seville, at Lisbon, Paris, and Rome. In these colleges the brightest Irish intellects learned and taught, and Colgan and O’Clery, Lynch and Rothe, Wadding and Keating recalled the greatest glories of their country’s past. At home Trinity College had been established (1593) to wean the Irish from “Popery and other ill qualities”‘ but the Catholics held aloof, and either went abroad or frequented the few Catholic schools left. The children of the poor, avoiding the Protestant schools, met in the open air, with only some friendly hedge to protect them from the blast; but they met in fear and trembling, for the hedge-school and its master were proscribed. Thus was the lamp of learning kept burning during the long night of the penal times.

In the Irish Parliament meanwhile a spirit of independence appeared. As the Parliament of the Pale it had been so often used for factious purposes that in 1496 Poyning’s Law was passed, providing that henceforth no Irish Parliament could meet, and no law could be proposed, without the previous consent of both the Irish and English Privy Councils. Further, the English Parliament claimed the right to legislate for Ireland; and in the laws prohibiting the importation of Irish cattle (1665), and Irish woollen manufactures (1698), and that dealing with the Irish forfeited estates (1700), it asserted its supposed right. The Irish Parliament, dominated by bigotry and self-interest, had not the courage to protest, and when one member, Molyneux, did, the English Parliament condemned him, and ordered his book to be burned by the common hangman. Moreover, it passed an Act in 1719 expressly declaring that it had power to legislate for Ireland, taking away also the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish House of Lords. The fight made by Swift against Wood’s halfpence showed that, though Molyneux was dead, his spirit lived; Lucas continued the fight, and Grattan in 1782 obtained legislative independence. England was then beaten by the American colonies; an Irish volunteer force had been raised to defend Ireland against a possible invasion, and it seems certain that legislative independence was won less by Grattan’s eloquence than by the swords of the Volunteers. These events favoured the growth of toleration. The Catholics, in sympathizing with Grattan and in subscribing money to equip the Protestant Volunteers, earned the goodwill of the Protestant Nationalists; in consequence the penal laws were less rigorously enforced, and from the middle of the century penal legislation ceased. In 1771 came the turn of the tide, when Catholics were allowed to hold reclaimed bog under lease. The grudging concession was followed in 1774 by an Act substituting an oath of allegiance for the oath of supremacy; in 1778 by an Act enabling Catholics to hold all lands under lease; and in 1782 by a further Act allowing them to erect Catholic schools, with the permission of the Protestant bishop of the diocese, to own a horse worth more than £5, and to assist at Mass without being compelled to accuse the officiating priest. Nor were Catholic bishops any longer compelled to quit the kingdom, nor Catholic children specially rewarded if they turned Protestant. Not for ten years was there any further concession, and then an Act was passed allowing Catholics to erect schools without seeking Protestant permission, admitting Catholics to the Bar, and legalizing marriages between Protestants and Catholics. Much more important was the Act of 1793 giving the Catholics the Parliamentary and municipal franchise, admitting them to the universities and to military and civil offices, and removing all restrictions in regard to the tenure of land. They were still excluded from Parliament, from the inner Bar, and from a few of the higher civil and military offices.

Always in favour of religious liberty, Grattan would have swept away every vestige of the Penal code. But, in 1782, he mistakenly thought that his work was done when legislative independence was conceded. He forgot that the executive was still left independent of Parliament, answerable only to the English ministry; and that, with rotten boroughs controlled by a few great families, with an extremely limited franchise in the counties, and with pensioners and placement filling so many seats, the Irish Parliament was but a mockery of representation. Like Grattan, Flood and Charlemont favoured Parliamentary reform, but, unlike him, they were opposed to Catholic concessions. As for Foster and Fitzgibbon, who led the forces of corruption and bigotry, they opposed every attempt at reform, and consented to the Act of 1793 only under strong pressure from Pitt and Dundas. These English ministers, alarmed at the progress of French revolutionary principles in Ireland, fearing a foreign invasion, wished to have the Catholics contented. In 1795 further concessions seemed imminent. In that year an illiberal viceroy, Lord Westmoreland, was replaced by the liberal-minded Lord Fitzwilliam, who came understanding it to be the wish of Pitt that the Catholic claims were to be conceded. He at once dismissed from office a rapacious office-holder named Beresford, so powerful that he was called the “King of Ireland”; he refused to consult Lord Chancellor Fitzgibbon or Foster, the Speaker; he took Grattan and Ponsonby into his confidence, and declared his intention to support Grattan’s bill admitting Catholics to Parliament. The high hopes raised by these events were dashed to the earth when Fitzwilliam was suddenly recalled, after having been allowed to go so far without any protest from Portland, the home secretary, or from the premier, Pitt. The latter, disliking the Irish Parliament because it had rejected his commercial propositions in 1785, and disagreed with him on the regency in 1789, already mediated a legislative union, and felt that the admission of Catholics to Parliament would thwart his plans. He was probably also influenced by Beresford, who had powerful friends in England, and by the king, whom Fitzgibbon had mischievously convinced that to admit Catholics to Parliament would be to violate his coronation oath. Possibly, other causes concurred with these to bring about the sudden and disastrous change which filled Catholic Ireland with grief, and the whole nation with dismay.

The new viceroy, Lord Camden, was instructed to conciliate the Catholic bishops by setting up a Catholic college for the training of Irish priests; this was done by the establishment of Maynooth College. But he was to set his face against all Parliamentary reform and all Catholic concessions. These things he did with a will. He at once restored Beresford to office and Foster and Fitzgibbon to favour, the latter being made Earl of Clare. And he stirred up but too successfully the dying embers of sectarian hate, with the result that the Ulster factions, the Protestant “Peep-of-Day Boys” and the Catholic “Defenders”, became embittered with a change of names. The latter, turning to republican and revolutionary ways, joined the United Irish Society; the former became merged in the recently formed Orange Society, taking its name from William of Orange and having Protestant ascendancy and hatred of Catholicism as its battle cries. Extending from Ulster, these rival societies brought into the other provinces the curse of sectarian strife. Instead of putting down both, the Government took sides with the Orangemen; and, while their lawless acts were condoned, the Catholics were hunted down. An Arms’ Act, an Insurrection Act, an Indemnity Act, a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act placed them outside the pale of law. An undisciplined soldiery, recruited from the Orange lodges, were than let loose among them. Martial law, free quarters, flogging, picketing, half-hanging, destruction of Catholic property and life, outrages on women followed, until at last Catholic blood was turned into flame. Then Wexford rose. Looking back, it now seems certain that, had Hoche landed at Bantry in 1796, had even a small force landed at Wexford in 1798, or a few other counties displayed the heroism of Wexford, English power in Ireland would, temporarily at least, have been destroyed. But one county could not fight the British Empire, and the rebellion was soon quenched in blood.

Camden’s place was then given to Lord Cornwallis, who came to Ireland for the express purpose of carrying a Legislative Union. Foster refused to support him and joined the opposition. Fitzgibbon, however, aided Cornwallis, and so did Castlereagh, who for some time had discharged the duties of chief secretary in the absence of Mr. Pelham, and who was now formally appointed to the office. And then began one of the most shameful chapters in Irish history. Even the corrupt Irish Parliament was reluctant to vote away its existence, and in 1799 the opposition was too strong for Castlereagh. But Pitt directed him to persevere, and the great struggle went on. On one side were eloquence and debating power, patriotism, and public virtue, Grattan, Plunket, and Bushe, Foster, Fitzgerald, Ponsonby, and Moore, a truly formidable combination. On the other side were the baser elements of in Parliament, the needy, the spendthrift, the meanly ambitious, operated upon by Castlereagh, with the whole resources of the British Empire at his command. The pensioners and placemen who voted against him at once lost their places and pensions, the military officer was refused promotion, the magistrate was turned off the bench. And while anti-Unionists were unsparingly punished, the Unionists got lavish rewards. The impecunious got well-paid sinecures; the briefless barrister was made a judge or a commissioner; the rich man, ambitious of social distinction, got a peerage, and places and pensions for his friends; and the owners of rotten boroughs to large sums for their interests. The Catholics were promised emancipation in a united Parliament, and in consequence many bishops, some clergy, and a few of the laity supported the Union, not grudging to end an assembly so bigoted and corrupt as the Irish Parliament. By these means Castlereagh triumphed, and in 1801 the United Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland opened its doors.

SINCE THE UNION

The next quarter of a century was a period of baffled hopes. Anxious to stand well with the Government, Dr. Troy, the Archbishop of Dublin, had been a strong advocate of the Union, and had induced nine of his brother bishops to concede to the king a veto on episcopal appointments. In return, he wanted emancipation linked with the Union, and Castlereagh was not averse; but Pitt was non-committal and vague, though the Catholic Unionists had no doubt that he favoured immediate concession. Disappointment came when nothing was done in the first session of the United Parliament, and it was increased when Pitt resigned office and was succeeded by Addington, a narrow-minded bigot. Cornwallis, however, assured Dr. Troy that Pitt had resigned, unable to overcome the prejudices of the king, and that he would never again take office if emancipation were not conceded. Yet, in spite of this, he became premier in 1804, no longer an advocate of emancipation but an opponent, pledged never again to raise the question in Parliament, during the lifetime of the king. To this pledge he was as faithful as he had been false to his former assurances; and when Fox presented the Catholic petition in 1805, Pitt opposed it. After 1806, when both Pitt and Fox died, the Catholic champion was Grattan, who had entered the British Parliament in 1805. In the vain hope of conciliating opponents he was willing, in 1808, to concede the veto. Dr. Troy and the higher Catholics acquiesced; but the other bishops were unwilling, and neither they nor the clergy, still less the people, wanted a state-paid clergy or state-appointed bishops. The agitation of the question, however, did not cease, and for many years it distracted Catholic plans and weakened Catholic effort. Further complications arose when, in 1814, the prefect of the Propaganda, Quarantotti, issued a rescript favouring the veto. He acted, however, beyond his powers in the absence of Pius VII, who was in France, and when the pope returned to Rome, after the fall of Napoleon, the rescript was disavowed.

In these years the Catholics badly needed a leader. John Keogh, the able leader of 1793, was then old, and Lords Fingall and Gormanstone, Mr. Scully and Dr. Dromgoole, were not the men to grapple with great difficulties and powerful opponents. An abler and more vigorous leader was required, one with less faith in petitions and protestations of loyalty. Such a leader was found in Daniel O’Connell, a Catholic barrister whose first public appearance in 1800 was on an anti-Unionist platform. A great lawyer and orator, a great debater, of boundless courage and resources, he took a prominent part on Catholic committees, and from 1810 he held the first place in Catholic esteem. Yet the Catholic cause advanced slowly, and, when Grattan died in 1820, emancipation had not come. Nor would the House of Lords accept Plunket’s Bill of 1821, even though it passed the House of Commons and conceded the veto. At last O’Connell determined to rouse the masses, and in 1823, with the help of Richard Lalor Sheil, he founded the Catholic Association. Its progress at first was slow, but gradually it gathered strength. Dr. Murray, the new Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, joined it, and Dr. Doyle, the great Bishop of Kildare; other bishops followed; the clergy and people also came in; and thus rose a great national organization, supervising from its central office in Dublin subsidiary associations in every parish; maintained by a Catholic rent; watching over local and national affairs, discharging, as Mr. Canning described it, “all the functions of a regular government, and having obtained a complete mastery and control over the masses of the Irish people”. The Association was suppressed in 1825 by Act of Parliament; but O’Connell merely changed the name; and the New Catholic Association with its New Catholic rent continued the work of agitation as of old. Nor was this all. By the Catholic Relief Act of 1793 the forty-shilling freeholders obtained the franchise. These freeholders, being so poor, were necessarily in the power of the landlords and were wont to be driven to the pools like so many sheep. But now, protected by a powerful association, and encouraged by the priests and by O’Connell, the freeholders broke their chains, and in Waterford, Louth, Meath, and elsewhere they voted for the nominees of the Catholic Association at elections, and in placing them at the head of the pool humbled the landlords. When they returned O’Connell himself for Clare in 1828, the crisis had come. The Tory ministers, Welllington and Peel, would have still resisted; but the people were not to be restrained: it must be concession or civil war, and rather than have the latter the ministers hauled down the flag of no surrender, and passed the Catholic Relief Bill of 1829. The forty-shilling freeholders were disfranchised, and there were some vexations provisions excluding Catholics from a few of the higher civil and military offices, prohibiting priests from wearing vestments outside their churches, bishops from assuming the titles of their sees, regulars form obtaining charitable bequests. In other respects Catholics were placed on a level with other denominations, and at last were admitted within the pale of the constitution.

From that hour O’Connell was the uncrowned king of Ireland. Where he led the people followed. They cheered him when he praised Lord Anglesey and when he attacked him; when he supported the Whigs and when he described them as “base, brutal and bloody”; when he advocated the Repeal of the Union and when he abandoned the Repeal agitation; and when, after long years of waiting for concessions that never came, he again unfurled the flag of Repeal, they flocked to hear him, and laughed or wept with him, responsive to his every mood. Finally, to leave him free to devote his whole time to public affairs they subscribed yearly to the O’Connell tribute, given him thus an income which never fell below £16,000 and often went far beyond that figure. And yet the legislative results of nearly twenty years of such devotion and sacrifice were poor. The National Education system, established in 1831, required much amendment before it worked smoothly, and even now is far from being an ideal system. The Commutation of Tithes Act only transferred the odium of collection from the parson to the landlord, but gave little relief to the people. The Poor Law system, though it often relieved destitution, too often encouraged idleness and immorality. And the Corporation Act, while reforming a few of the corporations, abolished many. Nor could anything be more complete than the failure of the Repeal agitation. The explanation is not far to seek. O’Connell had a wretched party, men without capacity or patriotism. His acceptance of offices for his friends and his alliances with the Whigs was surely not a sound policy. And when he took up Repeal in earnest he was already old, with the shadow of death upon him. Lastly, as he neared the end, he lost the support of the Young Irelanders, the most vigorous and capable section of his followers. These things embittered his last days and hastened his death in 1847.

Meantime the shadow of famine had fallen upon the land. The potato blight first appeared in Wexford, in 1845, whence it marched with stealthy tread all over the country, poisoning the potato fields as it passed. The stalks withered and died, the potatoes beneath the soil became putrid, and when they were dug and the sound ones separated from the unsound ones and put into pits, it was soon discovered that disease had entered the pits. The reckless creation of forty-shilling freeholders by the landlords for political purposes, the reckless subdivision of holdings by the tenants, had so augmented the population that in 1845 the inhabitants of Ireland were well beyond 8,000,000, most of them living in abject poverty with the potato as their only food. And now, with half the crop of 1845 gone and with the loss of the whole crop in the two succeeding years, millions were face to face with hunger. To cope with such a calamity required heroic measures, and O’Connell urged that distilleries should be closed, the export of provisions prohibited, public granaries set up, and reproductive works set on foot. But the premier, Peer, minimized the extent of the famine, and Lord John Russell, who succeeded him in 1846 was equally sceptical. He would neither stop distilling nor the export of provisions, nor build railways; and when he set up public works they were not reproductive, and the money expended on them, largely levied on the rates, was squandered by corrupt officials. Ultimately indeed he set up government stores, and in many cases food was distributed free. Charity supplemented the efforts of Government, and with no niggard hand. There were Quaker, Evangelical, and Baptist relief committees, and subscriptions from Great Britain and from Continental Europe, from Australia and from the West Indies. But America was generous most of all. In every city from Boston to New Orleans meetings were held and subscriptions given. Philadelphia sent eight vessels loaded with provisions; Mississippi and Alabama large consignments of Indian corn; railroads and shipping companies carried relief parcels free; and the Government turned some of the war vessels into transports to carry food to the starving millions beyond the Atlantic. Yet were the sufferings of the people great, and the number of deaths from famine and famine-fever appalling. Thousands lived for weeks on cabbage and a little meal, on cabbage and seaweed, on turnips, on diseased horse and ass flesh; and one case is recorded where a woman ate her dead child. Men died from cold as well as from hunger. They died on the roads and in the fields, at the relief works and on their way to them, at the workhouses and at the workhouse doors. They died in their cabins unattended, often surrounded by the dying and frequently by the dead. Flying from the country they died in the hospitals of Liverpool or Glasgow, or on board the sailing vessels to America. And thousands who crossed the ocean reached America only to die. In 1848 and in 1849 the famine was only partial, but in the latter year cholera appeared. In 1851 the famine was over, and such was the havoc wrought that a population, which at the previous rate of increase should have been 9,000,000, was reduced to 6,500,000.

The conduct of the landlords during this terrible time was selfish and cruel. With few exceptions they gave no employment and no subscriptions to the relief funds. Unable to get rents from tenants unable to pay, they used their right to evict, and in thousands of cases the horrors of eviction were added to the horrors of famine. Retribution soon followed. The evictors, without rents and crushed by poor-rates, became hopelessly insolvent. The British Parliament considered them a nuisance and a curse, and in 1849 passed the Encumbered Estates Act, under which a creditor might petition to have the estate sold and his debt paid. Insolvent landlords were thus sent adrift, and solvent men took their places, and to such an extent that in a few years land to the value of £20,000,000 changed hands. But the new landlords were no better than the old. They raised rents, confiscated the tenant’s improvements, worried him with vexatious estate rules, evicted him cruelly; and from 1850 to 1870 was the period of the great clearances. The necessary result was a constant and ever-increasing stream of emigration from Ireland, chiefly to America. Nor would British statesmen do anything to stem the tide, Lord John Russell would not interfere with the rights of property by passing a Land Act. Lord Derby was a landlord with a landlord’s strong prejudices. Lord Palmerston declared that tenant right was landlord wrong. Nothing could be expected from the Irish members. Sadleir and Keogh broke up the Tenant Right party; Lucas was dead; Duffy in despair went to Australia; Moore was out of Parliament; and from 1855 to 1870 the Irish members were but placehunters and traitors. In these circumstances the Irish peasant joined the Ribbon Society, which was secret and oath-bound, and specially charged to defend the tenants’ interests. Agrarian outrages naturally followed. The landlord evicted, the Ribbonman shot him down, and the evictor fell unpitied by the people, who refused to condemn the assassin. After 1860 the Robbonmen were gradually merged in the Fenian Society, which extended to America and England, and had national rather than agrarian objects in view. The Irish are not good conspirators, and the attempted Fenian insurrection in 1867 came to nothing. But the mediated assault on Chester Castle, the Clerkenwell explosion, and the Fenian raids into Canada showed the extent and intrepidity of Irish disaffection. An increasing number of Englishmen began to think that the non possumus attitude of Lord Palmerston was no longer wise; and with the advent to power of Mr. Gladstone in 1868, at the head of a large Liberal majority, the case of Ireland was taken up.

The Catholic masses had a threefold grievance calling urgently for redress: the state Church, landlordism, and educational inequality. Mr. Gladstone called them the three branches of the Irish ascendancy upas tree. Commencing with the Church, he introduced a Bill disendowing and disestablishing it. Commissioners were appointed to wind it up, taking charge of its enormous property, computed at more than £15,000,000 ($75,000,000). Of this sum, £10,000,000, ultimately raised to £11,000,000, was given to the disestablished Church, part to the holders of existing offices, part to enable the Church to continue its work. A further sum of nearly £1,000,000 was distributed between Maynooth College, deprived of its annual grant, and the Presbyterian Church deprived of the Regium Donum, the latter getting twice as much as the former. The surplus was to be disposed of by Parliament for such public objects as it might determine. This was generous treatment for the state Church which had been so conspicuous a failure. Supported with an ample revenue, and by the whole power of the State, its business was to make Ireland Protestant and English. It succeeded only in intensifying their attachment to Catholicity and their hatred of Protestantism and England. In 1861, after the havoc wrought by the famine, the Catholics were seven times as numerous as the members of the state Church. There were many parishes without a single Protestant; and in a poor country a Church numbering but 600,000 persons had an income of nearly £700,000, mostly drawn from people of a different creed, who at the same time had their own Church to support. Yet there were members of Parliament who described Mr. Gladstone’s Bill as robbery and sacrilege. The House of Lords, afraid to reject it altogether, emasculated it in committee. And Ulster Protestants declared that if it became law they would kick the Queen’s crown into the Boyne. Ignoring these threats, Mr. Gladstone rejected the Lords’ amendments, though on some minor points he gave way, and in spite of all opposition the Bill became law. And thus one branch of the upas tree came crashing to the earth. The Land Act of 1870 was well-meant, but in reality gave the tenants no protection against rackrenting or eviction. Two years later the Ballot Act freed the Irish tenant from the terrors of open voting.

In 1873 the education question was reached. And first as to the primary schools. What the Catholic primary schools were in the early years of the nineteenth century we learn from Carleton. The teacher, the product of a local hedge-school and of a Munster classical school, or perhaps an ex-student of Maynooth, had first been employed as a tutor in some farmer’s family. Then he became a hedge-schoolmaster, and the manner in which he attained to this position was peculiar. Challenging the schoolmaster already in possession to a public disputation, they met at the church gates on Sunday in presence of the congregation. The intellectual swordplay between the combatants was keenly relished, and, if the younger man won the applause of the audience by his depth of learning and readiness of reply, his opponent left the district and the victor was installed in his place. His school, built by the roadside by the people’s voluntary efforts, was of earthen sods, with an earthen floor, a hole in the roof for a chimney, and stones for the pupils’ seats. In many districts the teacher received little fees, but the people supplied him liberally with potatoes, meal, bacon, and turf, and entertained him at their houses. A century before Carleton’s time the Charter schools were established, and endowed to educate the children of the destitute poor. They were to give industrial as well as literary training, and took religion and learning as their motto. But they became dens of infamy, with incompetent and immoral teachers, who taught the pupils nothing except to hate Catholicism. As such the schools were shunned by the Catholics, and were manifest failures, and yet till 1832 they received government grants. Such societies as the Society for Discountenancing Vice, the London Hibernian Association, and the Baptist Society were proselytizing institutions. The Kildare Street Society founded in 1811, though Protestant in its origin, was on different lines. The design was to have Catholics and Protestants educated together in secular subjects, leaving their religious training to the ministers of their religion outside of school hours. O’Connell favoured the scheme and joined the governing board, grants were obtained from Parliament, and for some years all went well. But again the bread of knowledge given to Catholics was steeped in the poison of proselytism. The bigots insisted on having the Bible read in the schools “without note or comment”; the Society was then vigorously assailed by John MacHale, at the time a young professor at Maynooth, and O’Connell retired from the board.

Recognizing the failure of such a system, Lord Stanley; the Irish chief secretary, passed through Parliament in 1831 a bill empowering the lord lieutenant to constitute a National Board of Education with an annual grant for building schools, and for payment of teachers and inspectors. Religious instruction was to be given on one day of the week by ministers of the different religions to children of their own Faith. The schools were open to all denominations, and even “the suspicion of proselytism” was to be excluded. But the Catholics were treated unfairly. In spite of their numbers they were given but two of the seven members of the Board. Mr. Carlisle, a Presbyterian, was made resident commissioner, and as chief executive officer appointed non-Catholics to the principal offices; and he and his fellow-commissioner, Dr. Whately, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, compiled lesson-books, in which the history of Ireland and the Catholic religion were treated with injustice. In a few years the original rules of the Board were so changed that Catholic priests were entirely excluded from all Ulster schools under Presbyterian management. Outside of Ulster, a bigoted Protestant clergyman, named Stopford, was able in 1847 to abrogate the rule compelling Catholic child in Protestant schools to leave when the hour for religious instruction arrived. This left it optional with the children to remain, and brought much suffering on poor Catholics at the hands of tyrannical and bigoted landlords.

Among the Catholic bishops there was toleration rather than approval of the National system. But Dr. MacHale, who had become Archbishop of Tuam in 1834, opposed the system from the first, believing that education not founded on religion was a curse. He preferred to have in his diocese the Christian Brothers’ schools in which religious instruction was given the premier place. Dr. Murray of Dublin and Dr. Crolly of Armagh were not so hostile, and, when the matter was referred to Rome in 1841, the reply was that the National system might be given a further trial. The “Stopford Rule” strengthened MacHale’s hands, as did a board rule in 1845 providing that all schools even partially erected by a board grant should be vested in the Board itself, and not as hitherto in the local manager, who in Catholic schools was usually the priest. MacHale also objected to the disproportionately small representation of Catholics on the Board, to the character of the lesson-books, to the large number of non-Catholics in the higher positions. These attacks told. In 1850 the Synod of Thurles condemned the National schools as then conducted. In 1852 Dr. Murray of Dublin died, and was succeeded by Dr. Cullen, who shared MacHale’s views. The following year Whately’s lesson-books were withdrawn from the Board’s lists, and Whately in consequence resigned his seat. In 1860 the board was enlarged from seven to twenty, and thenceforth half of these were to be Catholics. The “Stopford Rule” and the rule regarding the vesting of schools were abrogated, and, with the resident commissioner a Catholic, the system became more acceptable to Catholics. For the training of teachers however there was only one Training College under non-Catholic control, but the Catholics established the Training College at Drumcondra, and in 1883 that at Baggot Street, Dublin, and since then they have established others at Belfast, Limerick, and Waterford. But even as the National system stood in 1873, Mr. Gladstone thought that the Catholics had no substantial grievance, and did nothing.

Nor did he interfere with the state of things in intermediate education, though the inequality which existed was glaring. The diocesan free schools of Elizabeth, maintained by county contributions, and the free schools of James I and those of Erasmus Smith, maintained by confiscated Catholic lands, were under Protestant management and as such generally shunned by Catholics. Further, the Protestants were the richer classes, and, though their Church had been disestablished, it had been but partially disendowed. The Dissenters also had wealth and had well-equipped schools. But the Catholics, long prohibited from having any schools, got no help from the state even when the pressure of penal legislation had been removed. They had, however, set manfully to work, and, partly by private donations, principally by collections, had established colleges all over the land. Carlow College was founded in 1793, Navan College in 1802, St. Jarlath’s College, Tuam, in 1817, Clongowes by the Jesuits in 1814, and others in the years that followed. but they could get no state assistance till 1879, when the Intermediate Education Act was passed. The yearly interest on £1,000,000 was then appropriated for prizes and exhibitions to pupils, and for result fees to colleges, and without distinction of creed, following competitive examinations to be annually held. The system, depending so much on examination and encouraging cramming, is certainly not ideal, but is has been of enormous assistance to struggling Catholic schools.

It was in the field of higher education that Catholics suffered most. In 1795 Maynooth College had been founded for the education of the clergy. Its annual Parliamentary grant had been lost in 1869, but it nevertheless continued to flourish, and flourishes still as one of the first ecclesiastical colleges in the world. There were other ecclesiastical colleges at Carlow, Thurles, Waterford, and Drumcondra. But the laity had only Trinity College or the Queen’s Colleges. The former had first opened its doors to Catholics in 1793, but would give them no share in its emoluments, nor did it abolish religious tests till 1873. The Queen’s Colleges, three in number, one at Galway, one at Cork, and one at Belfast, were constituent colleges of the Queen’s University, and were meant by Peel to do for higher education what Stanley had done for the primary schools. But the Catholic bishops’ demand to have some adequate provision made for religious teaching, some voice in the appointment and dismissal of professors, and separate chairs in history and philosophy, not been acceded to, the Queen’s Colleges were denounced by Dr. MacHale as godless colleges, and condemned by Rome as intrinsically dangerous to faith and morals; and at the Synod of Thurles, in 1850, it was resolved on the advice of Rome to set up a Catholic University. The model given was the University of Louvain. A committee was then appointed, subscriptions received both from Ireland and from abroad, a site was purchased in Stephen’s Green, Dublin, Dr. Newman was made first rector, professors and lecturers were appointed, and in 1854 work was begun.

But there were difficulties from the first. The nation still felt the effects of the famine, the secondary schools were but imperfectly organized and unable to furnish sufficient students, and Dr. MacHale and Dr. Cullen did not agree. Dr. MacHale complained that the administration was too centralized, that he could get no details of the expenditure, that there were too many Englishmen among the professors. He objected also to Dr. Newman. Though the great Oratorian loved Ireland, he was an Englishman with English ideas, and wanted Oxford and Cambridge men as his colleagues. MacHale, on the contrary, would have the whole atmosphere of the University Irish, and thus, trained by Irish teachers, Irish students would go forth to exhibit the highest capabilities of the Irish character. Dr. Cullen did not fully share these views, and generally agreed with Newman. Not always, however, for he objected to have Newman appointed an Irish bishop, and he disliked Newman’s excessive partiality for professors trained in the English universities. This want of harmony was not conducive to enthusiasm or efficiency, and the pecuniary contributions obtained left the various faculties woefully undermanned. Nor could nay provision be made for students’ residence or for tutorial superintendence. Most fatal of all, the Government refused to give a charter, and students could not be expected to frequent a university where they could get no degree. Unable to succeed where the elements of failure were so many, Newman resigned in 1857. In 1866 the Government of Earl Russell granted a supplemental charter making the Catholic University a constituent college of the queen’s University, a sort of fourth Queen’s College, but the charter was found to be illegal. Nor did Lord Mayo’s attempt to settle the university question in 1868 succeed, and thus the Catholic University struggled painfully on.

Nor was Mr. Gladstone’s Bill of 1873 satisfying. He proposed to abolish the Queen’s University and the Queen’s College, Galway, and to have Dublin University separated from Trinity College, but with Trinity College, the Queen’s Colleges at Belfast and Cork, Magee College and the Catholic University as constituent colleges. From Trinity College £12,000 a year would be taken and given to the Dublin University, which would have in all an income of £50,000, for the payment of examiners and professors and the founding of fellowships, scholarships, and prizes to be competed for by students of all the constituent colleges. There was to be a senate, at first wholly nominated by the Crown and subsequently half and half by the Crown and Senate. The endowment of the Queen’s Colleges would remain, though the Catholic University would get nothing; nor would there be in any of the colleges any endowment for chairs of history, theology, or philosophy. This was perpetuating the inferior position of the Catholic University, as it was perpetuating the endowment of the godless colleges, and it would be almost impossible for the Catholics ever to have their proper share of representation in the Senate. Finally, men asked what sort of university that was which had no chairs of history or philosophy. The Bill in fact satisfied nobody, and Mr. Gladstone being defeated resigned office.

It will be convenient here to anticipate. In 1879 the Queen’s University was abolished and the Royal University took its place, empowered to give degrees to all comers who passed its examinations. The Queen’s Colleges were left. In 1882 the Catholic University passed under Jesuit control, and of the twenty-eight fellowships of £400 a year founded by the Royal University fourteen were given to the Catholic University staff. With this slender indirect endowment it entered the lists with the Queen’s Colleges and beat them all. Subsequently there were two University commissions, one dealing with the Royal University, the other with Trinity College, but nothing was done. Finally, in 1908, Mr. Birrell passed his Irish Universities Act leaving Trinity College untouched. Abolishing the Royal University, the Act sets up two new universities, the Queen’s University with the Queen’s College at Belfast, and the National University at Dublin, with the Queen’s Colleges at Cork and Galway and a new college at Dublin as constituent colleges. In these colleges there are new governing bodies, largely Catholic and National, but religious services of any kind are prohibited within the precincts, and there are no religious tests. This change has resulted in the Jesuits severing their connection with the Catholic University, the buildings of which have been taken over by the new Dublin college.

To go back, when Mr. Gladstone was replaced by the Tories, in 1874, a new Irish party had been already formed demanding an Irish Parliament, with full power to deal with purely domestic matters. It was called the Home Rule party, Mr. Butt, a Protestant lawyer of great ability, being its chief. At the general election in 1874, sixty Home Rulers were returned. But Mr. Butt accomplished nothing. His own methods of conciliation and argument were not the most effective. His party, nominal Home Rulers, were mostly place-hunters, and except the Intermediate Education Act of 1878 there were no legislative results. Mr. Butts died in 1879, and for a brief period the Home Rule leader was Mr. Shaw; but after the general election of 1880 Mr. Shaw was deposed, and a younger and more vigorous leader was appointed in the person of Charles Stewart Parnell. There had been a serious failure of the potato crop in 1877 and 1878, but in 1879 there was only half the average yield. The landlords unable to get their rents began to evict, and it seemed as if the horrors of 1847 were to be renewed. Large relief funds were collected and disbursed by the Duchess of Marlborough, the viceroy’s wife, and by the Lord Mayor of Dublin; and Mr. Parnell went to America in the last days of 1879 and appealed in person to the friends of Ireland. He was accompanied by Mr. John Dillon, son of Mr. Dillon, the rebel of 1848. Within two months they addressed meetings in sixty-two cities, bringing back with them to Ireland £40,000 ($200,000). Nor would Mr. Parnell have come back in March but that the Tory premier, Lord Beaconsfield, had dissolved Parliament. Appealing to the county on an anti-Irish cry, his answer came in a crushing defeat, and in the return of Mr. Gladstone to power with a strong Liberal majority. Of the Home Rulers returned many were mere Whigs, but a sufficient number favoured an active policy to depose Mr. Shaw and put Mr. Parnell in his place.

In 1879 the Torries had followed up the Intermediate Act by the Royal University Act, which left the Queen’s Colleges and Trinity College untouched, but set up the Royal University, a mere examining board. But they would do nothing to restrain the landlords and nothing effective to relieve Irish distress. Better was expected from the new Liberal Government which included, besides Mr. Gladstone, such men as Bright, Chamberlain, and Forster, the latter appointed chief secretary for Ireland. Yet the Liberals were slow to move, and not until evictions had swelled to thousands did they introduce the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. It was thrown out in the Lords and not reintroduced. But the Irish peasants were in no humour to acquiesce in their own destruction and already a great land agitation was shaking Ireland from sea to sea. Begun in Mayor by Mr. Michael Davitt, the son of a Mayo peasant, and favoured by the prevailing distress and by the heartlessness of the landlords, it rapidly spread. Mr. Parnell soon joined it, and in October, 1979, the Land League was formed, its declared object being to protect tenants from eviction and to substitute peasant proprietary for the existing system of landlorism. Extending to America, many branches were formed there and large subscriptions sent home. In November, 1879, an abortive prosecution of Mr. Davitt and others only strengthened the League. In the new year a Mayo land agent, Captain Boycott, roused the ire of his tenants by issuing processes and threatening evictions; in consequence no servant would remain with him, no labourer would work for him, no shopkeeper would deal with him, no neighbour would speak to him. This system of ostracism became known as boycotting, and was freely used by the League against landlords, agents, and grabbers, with the result that they were compelled to make terms with the people. Government was unable to aid the boycotted, and before the end of 1880 the law of the League had supplanted the law of the land.

These events changed Mr. Forster in a coercionist. He prosecuted Mr. Parnell and thirteen others in November, 1880, but failed to convict them. Then he asked for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. Mr. Gladstone reluctantly acquiesced, and early in 1881, after a fierce struggle with the Irish members, the measure passed. In a short time nearly two hundred persons were in jail without trial. Mr. Gladstone next passed a comprehensive Land Act, setting up courts to fix rents, and giving increased facilities to tenants to purchase their holdings. But the Irish members, angered because of the Coercion Act, received the Land Act without gratitude; and Mr. Parnell advised the tenants not to rush to the land courts, but rather go there with a limited number of test cases. Mr. Gladstone retorted by imprisoning Mr. Parnell and his principal lieutenants. For the next few months terror reigned supreme. Mr. Forster filled the jails, broke up meetings, suppressed newspapers, and yet succeeded so ill in pacifying the country that he felt compelled to ask for more drastic coercion. Mr. Gladstone, however, had had enough of coercion, and in May, 1882, Lord Cowper, the viceroy, and Mr. Forster were relieved of office, and Mr. Parnell and his colleagues were set free; and by an arrangement often called the Kilmainham Treaty an Arrears’ Bill was to be introduced, while Parnell on his side, was to curb the agitation and gradually re-establish the reign of law.

On the evening of 6 May these happy changes were fatally marred by the murder in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, of the under-secretary, Mr. Burke, and of the new chief secretary, Lord Frederick Cavendish. The assassins, entirely unconnected with the Land League, belonged to a secret society called the Invincibles. Mr. Parnell was stunned, the Irish cause grievously injured, and in England there was a cry of rage. A new Coercion Act was passed and vigorously enforced, and during the remainder of Gladstone’s parliament between the Irish and the Liberals there was bitter enmity. But meanwhile Parnell’s power increased. In place of the suppressed land League the National League was established, and spread over the United Kingdom and America. Mr. Parnell, while opposing Mr. Dillon’s project of a renewed land agitation and Mr. Davitt’s scheme of land nationalization, was aided by the Fenians; and though English intrigue succeeded in obtaining a papal rescript condemning a testimonial that was being raised for him, its only effect was to increase the subscriptions. Being friendly with the Tories, he joined with them to defeat Mr. Gladstone in 1885, and for a brief period Lord Salisbury was premier. He governed without coercion, and passed the Ashbourne Act, which advanced £5,000,000 to Irish tenants for the purchase of their holdings. In return, Mr. Parnell advised the Irish electors in Great Britain to vote for the Tories at the general election in October, 1885. But the Liberals were given a majority over the Tories, though not sufficient to form a government without the Irish. On the understanding that Home Rule was to be conceded, Liberals and Irish coalesced, the Tories were turned out, and Gladstone because premier and brought in his Home Rule Bill of 1886, setting up an Irish Parliament with an executive dependent on it. Deserted by a large section of his followers under Bright, Chamberlain, and Hartington, he was defeated, and going to the country was seriously defeated at the polls. In August Lord Salisbury was again in office at the head of the Tories and Liberal Unionists, and in overwhelming strength.

The rejection of Mr. Parnell’s Bill of 1886 providing for the admission of leasholders to the benefits of the Land Act of 1881, and for a revision of judicial rents to meet the recent heavy fall in prices, led to the starting of the Plan of Campaign by Messers. Dillon and O’Brien. The tenant was to offer his landlord a fair rent; and if it was refused he banked the money and fought the landlord, and was assisted by his fellow tenants throughout the land. The Plan was not approved or by Mr. Parnell, and it had the unfortunate effect of placing the perpetual Coercion Act of 1887 on the Statute Book. But it caused the Government to pass the very measure they had so lately rejected, and it compelled many of the poorer landlords to make terms with the tenants. While on the one hand the Plan was thus put in operation in Ireland, and on the other hand the Coercion Act, the Liberals and Irish worked well together in Parliament and on British platforms, the London “Times”, always the bitter enemy of Ireland, became enraged, and in its anxiety to do harm published a series of articles on Parnellism and Crime. It relied, as it pretended, on authentic documents which connected Parnell and his colleagues with crime, and showed that Parnell himself condoned the Phoenix Park murders. A Special Commission appointed by Parliament discovered that the chief letters were forgeries and that the “Times” had been fooled by a disreputable Irishman named Richard Pigott. The forger confessed his crime and then committed suicide, and Parnell became the hero of the hour. When the Special Commission issued its report, early in 1890, the tide had turned with a vengeance against the Tories. Their majority was then seriously diminished, and when the general election came it was certain that nothing could prevent the triumph of Home Rule. In the midst of these bright hopes for Ireland there came the mournful wail of the banshee, and, even before the Special Commission report was issued, Captain O’Shea had filed a petition for divorce on the ground of his wife’s adultery with Mr. Parnell. There was no defence, and could be none, and the decree was issued, Mr. Gladstone evidently expected that Mr. Parnell would have retired from the leadership, and, finding that he did not, intimated that his continuance in that position would wreck Home Rule. The Irish party which had re-elected Mr. Parnell were not prepared to go so far, and, as he would not retire even for a day, they deposed him. A minority still supported him, and at the head of these he appealed to the Irish people. Week after week he attended meetings and made speeches. But his health, already bad, could not stand the strain; the stubborn and reckless fight ended in his collapse, and at Brighton, on the 6th of October, 1891, the greatest Irish leader since O’Connell breathed his last.

In the years that followed faction was lord of all. At the general election in 1892 the Parnellite members were reduced to nine, while the anti-Parnellites were seventy-two, and at the election in 1895 there was no material change. To argument and entreaty the minority refused to listen, and though the anti-Parnellite leaders, Mr. MacCarthy and Mr. Dillon, were ready to make any sacrifice for unity and peace, their opponents rejected all overtures; and under the shelter of Parnell’s name they continued to shout Parnell’s battle-cries. At last patriotism triumphed over faction, and in 1900 Mr. John Redmond, the Parnellite leader, was elected chairman of the reunited Irish party. Much had been lost during these years of discord in unity and strength, in national dignity and self-reliance. To faction it was due that the Liberal victory of 1892 was not more sweeping; that, in consequence, the Home Rule Bill of 1893 was rejected by the Lords; and that, in 1894, Mr. Gladstone retired, baffled and beaten, from the struggle. At the elections of 1895 and 1900 the Tories were victorious, and during their long term of power the Coercion Act was frequently enforced. But there were concessions also. In 1890, Mr. Balfour’s Land Act provided £33,000,000 for Irish land purchase, and in 1891 the Congested Districts Board was established. In 1896, there was an amending Land Act; and in 1898, the Local Government Act transferred the government of counties and rural districts from the non-representative Grand Juries to popularly elected bodies. A further important Act was that of Mr. Wyndham, in 1903, providing more than £100,000,000 for the buying out of the whole landlord class. Mr. Wyndham also favoured a policy of devolution, that is a delegation to local bodies of larger powers. But nothing was done till the Liberals came into office in 1906, and they had nothing more generous to offer than Mr. Birrell’s National Councils Bill, a measure so halting and meagre, that an Irish National Convention rejected it with scorn. Mr. Birrell has been more fortunate in his University Bill, which, though not establishing a purely Catholic University, provides one in which Catholic influences will predominate. In recent years also the programmes both in the national and secondary schools have been made more practical, facilities have been given for agricultural and technical education, and the great ecclesiastical college of Maynooth continues to maintain its reputation as the first ecclesiastical college in the world.

RELATIONS BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE

By the Catholic Relief Act of 1829 legal proscription ceased for the Catholic Church, as did legal ascendancy for the Protestant Church by Mr. Gladstone’s Act of 1869. In practice, however, Protestant ascendancy largely remains still. Only within living memory was the first Catholic lord chancellor appointed in the person of Lord O’Hagan; Catholics are still excluded, except in rare instances, from the higher civil and military offices; and from the lord-lieutenancy they continue to be excluded by law.

ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANIZATION

The Catholic Church, divided into four provinces, not, however, corresponding with the civil divisions, is ruled by four archbishops and twenty-three bishops. But the number of dioceses is more than twenty-seven, for there have been amalgamations and absorptions. Cashel, for instance, has been joined with Emly, Waterford with Lismore, Kildare with Leighlin, Down with Connor, Ardagh with Clonmacnoise, Kilmacduagh with Galway, the bishop of Galway being also Apostolic Administrator of Kilfenora. In many dioceses there are chapters, in others none. The number of parishes is 1087. A few are governed by administrators, the remainder by parish priests, while the total number of the secular clergy—parish priests, administrators, curates, chaplains, and professors in colleges—amounts to 2967. There are also many houses of the regular clergy: Augustinians, Capuchins, Carmelites, Fathers of the Holy Ghost, Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, Marists, Order of Charity, Oblates, Passionists, Redemptorists, and Vincentians. The total number of the regular clergy is 666. They are engaged either in teaching or in giving missions, but not charged with the government of parishes. There is, however, one exception—that of the Passionists of Belfast, who have charge of the parish of Holy Cross in the city. There are the two Cistercian abbeys of Mount Melleray and Roscrea, each ruled by a mitred abbot, and having forty-three professed priests.

STATISTIC

The population of Ireland has been steadily diminishing. In 1861, it was 5,798,564; in 1871, 5,412,377; in 1881, 5,174,836; in 1891, 4,704,751; in 1901, 4,458,775. The decrease is due to emigration, and as the great majority of the emigrants are Catholics, the Catholic population has suffered most. In 1861, it numbered 4,505,265; in 1871, 4,150,867; in 1881, 3,960,891; in 1891, 3,547,307; in 1901, 3,310,028. In the period from 1851 to 1901 the total number of emigrants, being natives of Ireland, who left Irish ports was 3,846,393. No less than 89 per cent went to the United States, the remainder going to Great Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. The saddest feature of this exodus is that 82 per cent of the emigrants were between 15 and 35 years of age. The healthy and enterprising have gone, leaving the weaker in mind and body at home, one result being that the number of lunatics increased from 16,505 in 1871 to 21,188 in 1891. In the latter year the total number of primary schools was 9157, of which 8569 were under the National Board, 97 under the Christian Brothers and other communities, and 471 other primary schools. In 1908 the total number of National Board schools was 8538 under 3057 managers, of whom 2455 were clerical and 602 laymen. Of the clerical managers 1307 were Catholics, 713 were Protestant Episcopalians, 379 Presbyterians, 52 Methodists, and 4 unclassed. In 1901 the number of pupils in all the primary schools was 636,777, of whom 471,910 were Catholics. There has been a steady improvement in the matter of illiteracy. In 1841 the percentage of those above five years who could neither read not write was 53; in 1901 it had fallen to 14. Of the whole population 14 per cent could speak Irish. In 1901 there were 35,373 pupils in the Intermediate schools, the number of Catholics being 78 per cent of the total Catholic population. The Catholic girls in these schools were for the most part educated in the various convents. The boys were educated in the diocesan colleges, or in the colleges of the religious orders, and a proportion also in the Christian Brothers’ schools. “In Colleges of Universities and other Colleges”, in 1901, there were 3192 students, of whom 91 were females. The highest form of ecclesiastical education is obtained at Maynooth, other such colleges being All Hallows and Clonliffe in Dublin, Thurles, Waterford, and Carlow colleges.

CHURCH PROPERTY, CHURCHES, SCHOOLS, CEMETERIES

Church property is usually held in trust by the parish priest for the parish, the bishop for the diocese, the religious superior for his order, and often associated with other trustees. In many cases the title-deeds have been lost, but undisputed possession is considered sufficient, and the parish-priest or other superior for the time being is recognized as the legal owner of the church, church grounds, and cemetery, if there be such. New churches are built on land purchase out, or acquired free of rent or under very long lease, and church and ground are exempt from taxation. New cemeteries belong to the District Council, and many of the older cemeteries have been taken over by the same authority. Schools under the National Board are either vested or non-vested. If vested, they are held by trustees—usually the priest, who is manager, and two others—and in this case only two-thirds of the cost of building is granted by Government. In the case of non-vested schools, which are the property of the National Board itself, the full amount for building is granted by Government, and the school is also kept in repair, while in vested schools repairs have to be made by the manager. Both in vested and non-vested schools the National Board regulates the programme, selects the school books, and provides for the cost of examination and inspection. The appointment and dismissal of teachers rests with the manager, from whom in the Catholic schools there is an appeal to the bishop. All these are exempted from taxation. Clergymen of all denominations get loans from Government on easy terms to build residences. These houses, however, are not exempt from taxation, and belong to the clergyman and his successors, not to himself personally.

PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS

Prisons are under government management, and always have a Catholic chaplain, when there are Catholic inmates. So also have workhouses, asylums, and county hospital, which are under the local authority. Reformatories and industrial schools in the great majority of cases are under Catholic management, but they must be certified as suitable by a government official and are subject to government inspection from time to time. In 1900 there were in Ireland six reformatories and seventy industrial schools; the number of both sexes in the former being 624 and in the latter 8221. Both reformatories and industrial schools are maintained partly by a government grant and partly by the local rates.

LEGAL STATUS OF THE CLERGY

The clergy have, with some few exceptions, the usual rights of citizens. They can receive and dispose of property by will as all others, and they can vote at elections. But they are excluded by law from the House of Commons, though not from the House of Lords; and they are excluded from the County and District Councils, though not from the various committees appointed by these bodies. They are exempt from military service and from serving on juries. Public worship is free; but priests may not celebrate the Mass outside the churches or private houses, nor appear publicly in their vestments, nor have religious processions through the streets; nor many the regular clergy go abroad in the distinctive dress of their order. These laws, however, are not enforced and not infrequently processions do take place through the streets, and the regular clergy do go abroad in their distinctive dress. Similarly, it is illegal for religious orders of men to admit new members; but this provision of the Catholic Relief Act of 1829 has never been enforced.

LAWS RELATING TO CHARITABLE BEQUESTS, MARRIAGE, DIVORCE

Generally speaking, all bequests for the advancement of public worship are valid; but bequests for superstitious uses are void. A bequest, for instance, to maintain a light before an image for the good of one’s soul is void; but the bequests for Masses are good, unless left to a member of a religious order as such, the reason being that religious orders are still technically illegal. For the validity of a will nothing is required but that the testor be of sound mind at the time, and free from undue influence, and that the document be signed by two witnesses. As to marriage, it is necessary that the contracting parties should be free, and that the mutual consent be given in the presence of two witnesses and a clergyman, or registrar duly appointed for the purpose. In the Irish courts no marriage can be dissolved; only a judicial separation can be obtained. When such a separation is obtained there is no difficulty in having a Bill passed through Parliament dissolving the marriage.

THE PRESS

There is no purely Catholic newspaper acting as the mouthpiece either of an individual diocese or of the Irish Church. There are, however, in most of the provincial towns weekly newspapers, often owned by Catholics, and always ready to voice Catholic opinion. In Cork and Belfast there are daily papers animated with the same spirit, and in Dublin the “Freeman’s Journal” and the “Daily Independent”. In Dublin also is the “Irish Catholic”, which is a powerful champion of Catholicity; and there is the “Leader”, not professedly Catholic, but with a vigorous and manly Catholic tone. These two are weeklies. Published monthly are the “Irish Monthly” under the Jesuits, the “Irish Rosary” under the Dominicans, the “Irish Educational Review”, dealing with Catholic educational matters, and the “Irish Ecclesiastical Record”, edited by Dr. Hogan of Maynooth, under episcopal supervision. There is also the “Irish Theological Quarterly”, which, as its name implies, is published quarterly, and conducted by the professors of Maynooth College with an ability, an extent of knowledge, a grasp of the subjects treated, and a vigour and freshness of style worthy of Maynooth College in its palmiest days.

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Annals of the Four Masters (Dublin, 1856); Annals of Ulster (Dublin, 1887); Annals of Loch Ce (London, 1871); Annals of Clonmacnoise (Dublin, 1896); LELAND, History of Ireland (London, 1773); JOYCE, Short History of Ireland (London, 1893); KEATING, History of Ireland (Dublin, 1859); HAVERTY, History of Ireland (Dublin, 1860); FERGUSON, The Irish before the Conquest (London, 1868); RICHEY, Lectures on Irish History (London, 1860); HYDE, Literary History of Ireland (London, 1899); D’ALTON, History of Ireland (London, 1906).

FOR THE PAGAN AND EARLY CHRISTIAN PERIODS:—Senchus Mor (Dublin, 1865-1901); O’CURRY, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish (Dublin, 1873); IDEM, MSS. Materials of Ancient Irish History (Dublin, 1861); JOYCE, Social History of Ancient Ireland (London, 1903); JUBAINVILLE, The Irish Mythological Cycle (Dublin, 1903); WARE, Works, ed. HARRIS (Dublin, 1739-64); O’DONOVAN, Book of Rights (Dublin, 1847); WALKER, History of the Irish Bards (Dublin, 1786); STOKES, Tripartite Life of St. Patrick (London, 1887); LANIGAN, Ecclesiastical Hist. of Ireland (Dublin, 1822); HEALY, Ancient Schools and Scholars (Dublin, 1896); IDEM, Life and Writings of St. Patrick (Dublin, 1905); BURY, St. Patrick and his Place in History (London, 1905); MORRIS, St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland (London, 1890); ZIMMER, Celtic Church (London, 1902); MORAN, Essays on the Early Irish Church (Dublin, 1864); W. STOKES, Ireland and the Celtic Church (London, 1892); IDEM, Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore (London, 1890); IDEM, The Felire of Aengus (Dublin, 1880); USHER, Works (Dublin, 1847); OLDEN, Church of Ireland (London, 1892); ADAMNAN, Life of St. Columba (Dublin, 1857); ARCHDALL, Monasticon Hibernicum (Dublin, 1873); REEVES, The Culdees (Dublin, 1864); PETRIE, Round Towers (Dublin, 1845); O’FLAHERTY, Ogygia (Dublin, 1793); HALLIDAY, Scandinavian Kingdom of Dublin (Dublin, 1882); WORSAE, The Danes in England, Scotland and Ireland (London, 1852); TODD, Wars of the Gael and Gall (London, 1867); DASENT, Burnt Njal (Edinburgh, 1861); O’HANLON, Life of St. Malachy (Dublin, 1859); see also (in Migne’s Patrologia) the works of ALCUIN, BEDE, ST. BERNARD, COGITOSUS, ST. COLUMBANUS, DONATUS, DUNGAL, ST. GALL, MARIANUS, SCOTUS, SCOTUS ERIUGENA; and for incidental references in the earlier part, the works of HERODOTUS, PLINY, STRABO, CAESAR, TACITUS, CLAUDIAN, and GIBBON.

FOR THE PLANTAGENET AND TUDOR PERIODS:—SWEETMAN, Calendars of State Papers; GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS, Work (London, 1861-91); LYNCH, Cambrensis Eversus (Dublin, 1855); MISS STOKES, Early Christian Art in Ireland (London, 1887); ORPEN, The Lay of Dermot and the Earl (London, 1892); THIERRY, Norman Conquest (Bohn Series); MALONE, Adian IV and Ireland (Dublin, 1899); GINNELL, The Doubtful Grant of Ireland (Dublin, 1899); GOSSELIN, Power of the Popes in the Middle Ages (London, 1853); KING, Church History of Ireland (Dublin, 1898); GILBERT, Viceroys of Ireland (Dublin, 1865); O’CONNOR DON, The O’Connors of Connaught (Dublin, 1891); WARE, Annals (Dublin, 1704); GILBERT, Historic and Municipal Documents (Dublin, 1870); COX, Hibernia Anglicana (London, 1689); Ancient Irish Histories (Dublin, 1809); LINGARD, History of England; O’FLAHERTY, Iar Connaught (Dublin, 1846); ORDERICUS VITALIS, History of England and Normandy (Bohn); STOKES, Ireland and the Anglo-Norman Church (London, 1897); MANT, History of the Church of Ireland (London, 1841); CLYNN AND DOWLING, Annals (Dublin, 1849); COLTON, Visitation Statute of Kilkenny (Dublin, 1843); DAVIES, Historical Tracts (London, 1786); MEEHAN, History of the Geraldines (Dublin, 1878); HARRIS, Hibernica (Dublin, 1770); FROISSART, Chronicle (London, 1895); Correspondence relating to Ireland (reign of Henry VIII), Hamilton’s Calendars of State Papers (1509-1600); Carew Papers (1509-1624); BAGWELL, Ireland under the Tudors (London, 1885-90); GREEN, Short History of the English People (London, 1878); GASQUET, Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer (London, 1891); IDEM, Henry VIII and the English Monasteries (London, 1899); Harleian Miscellany (London, 1808-13); D’ALTON, Archbishops of Dublin (Dublin, 1838); MORAN, Archbishops of Dublin (Dublin, 1864); MORRIN, Calendar of the Patent Rolls (Dublin, 1861); CAMDEN, Annals (London, 1635); FROUDE, History of England (London, 1898); O’SULLIVAN, Catholic History of Ireland (Eng. tr. Dublin, 1903); CARTE, Life of Ormond (London, 1736); HOLINSHED, Chronicle (London, 1574); O’CLERY, Life of Red Hugh O’Donnell (Dublin, 1893); FYNES MORYSON, Irish Wars (London, 1617); CUELLAR, Narrative (London, 1897); MACGEOGHEGAN, History of Ireland (Dublin, 1844); HOGAN, Ireland in 1598 (Dublin, 1878); Pacata Hibernia (London, 1896).

FOR THE STUART PERIOD:—RUSSELL AND PRENDERGAST, Calendars (1603-25); GARDINER, History of England (1844); Stuart Tracts (London, 1903); MEEHAN, Earls of Tyrone and Tyroconnell (Dublin, date uncertain); HILL, Plantation of Ulster (Belfast, 1877); STRAFFORD, Letters (London, 1739); BELLING, History of the Irish Confederation (Dublin, 1882); HICKSON, Ireland in the 17th Century (London, 1884); CLANRICARDE, Memoirs (Dublin, 1744); MAHAFFY, Calendars of State Papers (625-60); PRENDERGAST, Cromwellian Settlement (London, 1870); TEMPLE, History of the Irish Rebellion (Dublin, 1724); WARNER, History of the Rebellion (London, 1767); CLARENDON, History of the Rebellion (London, 1720); PETTY, Tracts (Dublin, 1769); CASTLEHAVEN, Memoirs (Dublin, 1815); GILBERT, Contemporary History (1641-52), (Dublin, 1879); RINUCCINI, Letters (Dublin, 1873); MURPHY, Cromwell in Ireland (Dublin, 1897); MORLEY, Cromwell (London, 1900); GARDINER, Cromwell (London, 1897); IDEM, History of the Commonwealth (London, 1894-1901); Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches (London, 1846); D’ALTON, History of Drogheda (Dublin, 1844); LENIHAN, History of Limerick (Dublin, 1866); RANKE, History of England in the 17th Century (Clarendon Press); The Down Survey (Dublin, 1851); MORAN, Persecutions under the Puritans (Callan, 1903); IDEM, Life of Oliver Plunkett (Dublin, 1870); MOUNTMORRES, Irish Parliament 1634-66 (London, 1792); Diaries of PEPYS and EVELYN; WALSH, Irish Remonstrance; CLARKE, James II (London, 1816); MACAULAY, History of England; SOMERS, Tracts; Jacobite Narrative of the War in Ireland (Dublin, 1892); Macariae Excidium (Dublin, 1851); STORY, Impartial History (London, 1691); STORY, Continuation of the War (London, 1693); Diary of Dean Davies (Camden Society); BELLINGHAM, Diary; The Rawdon Papers (London, 1819); MURPHY, Our Martyrs (Dublin, 1896); MEEHAN, Franciscan Monasteries of the 17th Century (Dublin, —); HOGAN, Hibernia Ignatiana (Dublin, 1880); MASON, Parliaments in Ireland (Dublin, 1891); PRENDERGAST, Ireland from 1660 to 1685 (London, 1887); KING, State of the Irish Protestants (Cork, 1768); COLGAN, Trias Thaumaturga (Louvain, 1647); Calendars of the Stuart Papers at Windsor; SCULLY, Penal Laws (Dublin, 1812).

FOR THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY:—FROUDE, English in Ireland (London, 1895); LECKY, History of Ireland in the 18th Century (London, 1902); YOUNG, Tour in Ireland (London, 1892); SWIFT, Prose Works (London, 1905); BERKELEY, Works (Clarendon Press, 1871); O’CALLAGHAN, Irish Brigade in the Service of France; D’ALTON, King James’s Army List (Dublin, 1855); SWIFT MACNEILL, The Irish Parliament (London, 1888); MOLYNEUX, Ireland’s Case Stated (Dublin, 1698); LECKY, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland; DELANEY, Autobiography (London, 1861); Charlemont Papers and HARDY, Lord Charlemont (London, 1810); BARRINGTON, Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation (Dublin, 1853); IDEM, Personal Sketches (London, 1827); GRATTAN, Speeches (London, 1822); Journals of the Irish House of Commons; Irish Parliamentary Debates (1781-97); BALL, Irish Legislative Systems (London, 1888); PLOWDEN, Historical Review (London, 1803); MOORE, Lord Edward Fitzgerald (London, 1897); WOLFE TONE, Autobiography (London, 1893); MADDEN, United Irishmen (Dublin, 1857); Secret Service under Pitt (London, 1892); HAY, History of the Rebellion, also the Histories of TELLING, CLONEY, GORDON, KAVANAGH, and MAXWELL; FITZPATRICK, Sham Squire (Dublin, 1895); IDEM, Ireland before the Union (Dublin, 1880); SEWARD, Collectanea Hibernica (Dublin, 1812); GRATTAN, Life and Times of Henry Grattan (London, 1839); MACNEVIN, Pieces of Irish History (New York, 1807); HOUT, Memoirs (London, 1838); Cornwallis Correspondence (London, 1859); GUILLON, La France et l’Irlande (Paris, 1888); STANHOPE, Pitt (London, 1861); ASHBOURNE, Pitt (London, 1898); COOTE, History of the Union (London, 1802); Castlereagh Correspondence (London, 1848).

PERIOD SINCE THE UNION:—MITCHELL, History of Ireland (Glasgow, 1869); MACDONAGH, The Viceroy’s Postbag (London, 1904); Lord Sidmouth’s Life (London, 1847); COLCHESTER, Diary (London, 1861); CANNING, Correspondence (London, 1887); PLOWDEN, History, 1800-10 (Dublin, 1811); DUNLOP, Daniel O’Connell (London, 1900); MACDONAGH, Daniel O’Connell London, 1903); O’Connell’s Correspondence (London, 1888); FITZPARTICK, Dr. Doyle (Dublin, 1880); DOYLE, Letters on the State of Ireland (Dublin, 1826); PEEL, Memoirs (London, 1856); CLONCURRY, Recollections (London, 1849); WYSE, History of the Catholic Association (London, 1829); SHEIL, Speeches (London, 1845); IDEM, Sketches (London, 1855); The Annual Register; O’BRIEN, Life of Drummond (London, 1889); JOHN O’CONNELL, Recollections (London, 1849); Halliday Pamphlets; O’RORKE, Irish Famine (Dublin, 1902); O’BRIEN, Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland (London, 1885); O’CONNOR, The Parnell Movement (London, 1887); A. M. SULLIVAN, New Ireland; GREVILLE, Memoirs (London, 1888); Hansard’s Parliamentary Reports; LUCAS, Life of F. Lucas (London, 1886); DUFFY, The League of North and South (London, 1886); IDEM, Four Years of Irish History (London, 1883); IDEM, Young Ireland (London, 1880); Devon Commission Report (Dublin, 1847); CARLISLE, Speeches (Dublin, 1865); O’LEARY, Fenians and Fenianism (London, 1896); BUTT, Land Tenure in Ireland (Dublin, 1866); MORLEY, Life of Gladstone (London, 1905); BARRY O’BRIEN, Life of Parnell (London, 1899); REID, Life of Foster (London, 1888); DAVITT, Fall of Feudalism in Ireland (London, 1904); PLUNKETT, Ireland in the New Century (London, 1904); O’RIORDAN, Catholicity and Progress in Ireland (London, 1905); MACCAFFREY, History of the Church in the Nineteenth Century (2 vols., Dublin, 1909); O’DEA, Maynooth and the University Question (Dublin, 1903). For Statistics see Thom’s Directories and The Irish Catholic Directory.

E.A. D’ALTON Transcribed by Thomas M. Barrett Dedicated to all people of Irish ancestry

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VIIICopyright © 1910 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, October 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia

Ireland

the more western of the two principal islands of which the kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is composed, between lat. 510 25′ and 550 23′ N., and long. 6 20′ and 100 20′ W. Area, 32,513 sq. miles.

At the time when the island became known to the Greeks and the Romans its inhabitants were Celts. Of Celtic origin is the original name of Erin, which means West Side, and was changed by the Greeks into Ierne, and by the Romans, who made no endeavors to subjugate the island, into Hibernia. During the whole period of the rule of the Romans over Brittany the history of Ireland is enveloped in profound obscurity. According to later chronicles, Ireland is said to have had in the 3rd century five states, Momonia, Connacia, Lagenia, Ultonia, and Modia (Meath). As the people were akin to the Celts of Scotland, Ireland was, until the 4th century, often called Great Scotland (Scotia major). Christianity appears to have been brought to Ireland at al early time, perhaps as early as the 2nd century. A reference to Ireland is, in particular, found in the words of Tertullian, who says that parts of the British Islands which had never been visited by the Romans were subject to Christ. In the 4th century a number of churches and schools are mentioned, and even before the 4th century missionaries went out from Ireland. Celestius; the friend and colaborer of Pelagius, was, according to Jerome, an Irishman, and the son of Christian parents. That the Irish had received their Christianity not from Rome, but from the East, is shown by their aversion against the institutions of the Church of Rome.

The first Roman missionary, who about 430 was sent to Ireland by pope Coelestius, was not well received, and had soon to return to Scotland. Two years later (432), the Scotch monk St. Patrick (q.v.) arrived in Ireland. He had spent his youth in Ireland as a slave, and had subsequently lived for some time in Gaul. With great zeal he preached Christianity throughout Ireland, converted several, and was, in particular, active for the establishment of convents, so that Ireland was called the island of the Saints. He settled finally as bishop of Armagh, which see thus received metropolitan power over all Ireland. According to some writers (Wiltsch, Kirchl. Statistik, 2, 48), Ireland was, however, without its own archbishop, being, until the 12th century, subject to the archbishop of Canterbury; according to others, pope Eugene, as early as 625, appointed four metropolitan sees at Armagh, Dublin, Cashel, and Tuam. Certain it is that the permanent division of Ireland into the four ecclesiastical provinces of Armagh, Dublin, Cashel, and Tuam took place about 1150 (according to Moroni in 1152, at the Council of Mellefont; according to Wiltsch in 1155). From this time the primacy of Armagh over all the sees of Ireland was generally recognized. The first bishops for a long time maintained their independence with regard to Rome. In the 7th century Rome endeavored to induce the Irish churches to conform themselves with regard to the celebration of Easter to the practice of the Roman Church instead of following, as heretofore, the rite of the Eastern churches.

The Irish made a long resistance, until, in 717, the monks in Iona (q.v.) were on this account either expelled or coerced into submission. Most of the Irish churches then submitted; yet, as late as the 12th century, some monks were found who adhered to the Eastern practice of celebrating Easter. In the 9th century the Irish Church was considerably disturbed by the invasions of the Northmen, who destroyed many churches, and burned manuscripts and convents. These invasions were followed by a period of anarchy, during which the moral condition of the Irish clergy greatly degenerated. The complaints of Rome at this time referred chiefly to the peculiar ecclesiastical practices of the Irish the marriage of the clergy, the administration of baptism without chrisma, and the use of their own liturgy. The legates of the popes finally succeeded in obtaining the entire submission of the Irish Church to the Church of Rome about the middle of the 12th century, which until then is believed to have been without auricular confession, sacrifice of the mass, and indulgences, and to have celebrated the Lord’s Supper in both kinds. In 1155 a bull of pope Hadrian IV allowed king Henry II of England to subject Ireland, the king, in his turn, promising the pope to protect the papal privileges. In 1172, a synod at Cashel regulated the ecclesiastical affairs in accordance with the wishes of Rome. During the time of the following kings of the house of Plantagenet the clergy were in a deplorable condition: the bishops carried the sword, and lived with their clergy in open and secret sins. The monks, who were very different from what they had been in former times, traversed the country as troublesome beggars, molesting the priests as well as the laity.

When Henry VIII undertook to make himself the head of the Church in his dominions he met in Ireland with a violent opposition. The opposition was the more popular as it was intimated that henceforth only such priests as understood the English language would be appointed. The Englishman, George Brown, who was appointed bishop of Dublin, met, therefore, in spite of his earnest and incessant labors in behalf of the Reformation, with but little success. The English liturgy was introduced in 1551, under Edward VI, but the order to hold divine service in the English language seems not to have been executed. The germs of Protestantism were wholly destroyed under’ the government of Mary. The people were not prepared for the Reformation, and the clergy were not as corrupt as in many other countries. Moreover, there were among the ministers who had been sent to Ireland as Protestant missionaries many adventurers, who, by disreputable conduct, strengthened the aversion of the people to Protestantism.

Under the government of Elizabeth, an order was issued in 1560 to introduce the general use of the English liturgy and of the English language at divine service. Some years later, however, concessions appear to have been made in favor of the old Irish language. In 1602 the first translation of the New Testament into the Irish language by William Daniel appeared, but the translation of the whole Bible was not finished until 1665. The persistent endeavors of the English government to extirpate the native language established a close union between the Irish nationality and the Church of Rome. The excitement against England greatly increased when Elizabeth showed a design to confiscate the whole property of the Roman Catholic Church in behalf of the Protestant clergy. A number of revolts consequently occurred, which found a vigorous support on the part of the pope and the Spanish court.

A plan submitted by the English lord lieutenant, Sir John Perrot, for thoroughly Anglicizing Ireland, was rejected as being too expensive, and thus England was compelled to maintain at a heavy expense a large military force in Ireland. In 1595 the chieftain Hugh O’Niele, whom Elizabeth had made earl of Tyrone, placed himself at the head of a powerful insurrection, which was mainly supported by Irish soldiers who had returned from military service in foreign countries. The earl of Essex, with an army of 22,000 men, was unable to quell the insurrection; but his successor, lord Mountjoy, was more successful, and pacified the whole island. In 1601 the Irish again rose, aided by Spanish troops under Aquila and Ocampo; but the combined forces of Ocampo and O’Niele were, on Dec. 24,1601, totally defeated by Mountjoy near Kinsale. The Spaniards left Ireland in January, 1602, and O’Niele made peace with the English. At the death of Elizabeth the whole of Ireland was under English rule. As a large number of Irish had perished in this conflict, 600,000 acres of land were confiscated in favor of English colonists. In view of the close alliance between the Church of Rome and the native Irish, the government of Elizabeth proceeded with equal severity against both: the public exercise of the Catholic religion was totally forbidden, and every inhabitant, under penalty of twelve pence, was commanded to be present at divine service celebrated in the Anglican churches. Decrees like this provoked a general dissatisfaction, which was carefully fomented by the Jesuits of the University of Douay, in the Netherlands (now belonging to France).

On the accession of James I to the English throne the papal party was very powerful: it expelled the Protestant ministers from many’ places, and re-established the service of the Catholic Church. These attempts were forcibly suppressed, and new insurrections consequently were caused, all of which proved of short duration. In order to break the power of the Catholic chieftains, the government of James, following the example of queen Elizabeth, was especially intent upon wresting from them their landed property. Whoever was unable to prove, by means of a bill of feoffment, his title to his property, lost it. Thus, in the northern part of Ireland alone, about 800,000 acres were confiscated by the crown, which sold them to English speculators and to Scottish colonists, who founded the town of Londonderry. From this time dates the predominance of Protestantism in Ulster the northern province of Ireland. At the same time, however, many most beneficent measures were taken for improving the social condition of the people. The English law supplanted the previous lawlessness; all inhabitants were declared to be free citizens, and the country was divided into parishes. In 1615 an Irish National Parliament was called to sanction these measures. In consequence of the interference of the government, there were among the 226 members of the lower house only 101 Catholics, while the upper house, consisting of 50 members, consisted almost entirely of Protestants. The Catholics were, moreover, excluded from the public offices, because most of them refused (hence their name Recusants) to take the oath of supremacy, which designated the king of England as head of the Church: At the beginning of the reign of Charles I the Anglican Church was nevertheless in a deplorable condition.

Many churches were destroyed, the bishoprics impoverished, the clergy ignorant, indolent, and impoverished. A convocation called in 1634 adopted the 39 articles of the Church of England, and retained the 104 articles of the Irish Church which had been adopted by the Parliament of 1615. The constitution of the Church of Ireland was defined in 100 canons, which were of a somewhat more liberal character than the 141 canons of the Church of England. The Roman Catholics were generally allowed to celebrate divine service in private houses, and many priests who had fled returned. At the same time the Irish nationality continued to be persecuted, and a number of new confiscations were added to the old ones. On Oct. 23,1644, a bloody insurrection broke out under the leadership of Roger More, O’Neale, and lord Maguire, the descendants of former chieftains. Within a few days from 40,000 to 50,000 Protestant Englishmen were murdered (according to other accounts the number of killed amounted to only 6000), and an equally large number is said to have perished while trying to flee. The enraged Parliament ordered the confiscation of two and a half million acres of land, but, in consequence of its conflict with the king, was unable to achieve anything.

The king’s lieutenant, the marquis of Ormond, concluded peace with the Catholic Irish, who received the promise of religious toleration, and, in return, furnished to the king an army against the Parliament. When after the execution of the king, Ormond tried to gain the support of the Catholic Irish for the prince of Wales as king Charles II, the English Parliament sent an army of 10,000 men under Cromwell to Ireland, which conquered the whole island. The Catholics were punished with the utmost severity; all their landed property, about 5,000,000 acres, confiscated; about 20,000 Irish sold as slaves to the West Indies, and 40,000 others compelled to flee to Spain and France. The celebration of Catholic service was forbidden, and all Catholic priests ordered to quit Ireland within twenty days. The restoration of royalty caused no important changes in the condition of the people. Religious persecution ceased by order of Charles II, but the Protestants remained in possession of the confiscated property. The accession of the Catholic James II filled the Irish Catholics with the greatest hopes, and when, after his expulsion, he landed, at the beginning of 1689, with a French army of 5000 men, he was received by the Catholics with enthusiasm. His army in a short time numbered more than 38,000 men, and he succeeded in capturing all the fortified places except Enniskillen and Londonderry. Large numbers of Protestants had to leave the country because their lives and property were no longer secure. Soon, however, the victories of William III over the Catholic party on the Boyne River, near Drogheda (July 1, 1690), and near Aughrim (July 13, 1691), completed the subjugation of Ireland. The peace concluded with the British general Ginkel at the surrender of Limerick promised to the Irish the free exercise of their religion as they had possessed it under Charles II. While James II had deprived 2400 Protestant landowners of their estates, now more than 12,000 Irishmen who had fought for James voluntarily went into exile. A resolution of the English Parliament ordered a new confiscation of 1,060,000 acres, which were distributed among the Protestants, who began to organize themselves into Orange societies. A number of rigorous and cruel penal laws were passed in order to extirpate the national spirit and the Roman Catholic Church.

Bishops and other high dignitaries were exiled; the priests were confined to their own counties; all instruction in the Catholic religion and its public exercise were forbidden; the Catholic Irishmen were not allowed to own horses of higher value than 5, or to marry Protestants, and were excluded from all public offices. The irritation produced by these laws was still’ increased when the English Parliament, by imposing high duties on the exports from Ireland, dealt a heavy blow to the commerce and prosperity of the island, and when, in 1727, it deprived the Catholic Irish of the franchise. These harsh measures soon led to the establishment of several secret societies, as the Defenders, the Whiteboys (about 1760), so called from the white shirts which they threw over their other clothes when at night they attacked unpopular landlords and their officers; and the Hearts of Oak (about 1763). During the American War of Independence, the Irish, under the pretext that the French might avail themselves of the withdrawal of most of the British troops to invade their island, formed a volunteer army, which, in the course of two years, increased to 50,000 men. Monster petitions numerously signed by Irish Protestants also, demanded the abolition of the penal laws, the restoration of the Irish Parliament, reform of the rotten electoral law, and relief of Irish commerce. Fear of a general insurrection induced the Parliament to mitigate the penal laws, and to allow the Catholics to establish schools, to own landed property, and to exercise their religious worship. The onerous tithes which the Catholics had to pay to the Protestant clergy soon led to the establishment of another secret society, the Right Boys, who, by means of oaths and threatened vengeance, endeavored to intimidate the Catholics from paying tithes.

A still more dangerous movement was called forth by the outbreak of the French Revolution. The league of United Irishmen, which, in November 1791, was formed at Dublin by former members of the volunteer army, endeavored, in union with the French convent, to make Ireland an independent republic. When the Catholics, at a meeting in Dublin in 1792, demanded equal rights with Protestants, the British Parliament abolished several penal laws, and gave to the Catholics the right of becoming attorneys-at-law and of marrying Protestants. In 1793 the law was abolished which fined the Catholics for, neglecting to attend the Protestant Church on Sunday; at the same time they were admitted to several lower public offices, and received the right to vote. The United Irishmen, nevertheless, assumed a threatening attitude, and a French corps of 25,000 men, under general Hoche, landed in Ireland. The latter had, however, to leave again in December 1796, and a new insurrection, which broke out in May 1798, was unsuccessful. In 1800 the Irish Parliament, bribed by the English Parliament, consented to the legislative union of Ireland with Great Britain, and in the next year the first united Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland assembled. The union of the two parliaments involved the union of the Anglican churches in the two countries, which now received the name of the United Church of England and Ireland. Several further concessions were, however, about this time made to the Catholics. In 1795 a Catholic theological seminary had been established at Maynooth, as the British government hoped that if the Catholic priests were educated upon British territory they would be less hostile to British rule. The rules against convents were also moderated, and at the close of the 18th century the Dominican order alone had in Ireland about forty- three convents. In 1805 the Catholic Association was formed to secure the complete political emancipation of the Catholics. It soon became the center of all political movements in Ireland, and, as the Orange lodges began likewise to be revived, frequent disturbances between Catholics and Protestants took place.

In 1825 both associations were dissolved by the British government; but the Catholic association was at once reorganized by O’Connell, and gained considerable influence upon the elections. The unceasing agitation of O’Connell, aided by the-moral support of the Liberal party in England, finally succeeded in inducing the British ministry to lay before Parliament a bill of emancipation, which passed after violent debates, and was signed by George IV on April 13, 1829. The oath which the members of Parliament had to take was so changed that Catholics also could take it. At the same time they obtained access to all public offices, with the only exception of that of lord chancellor. This victory encouraged the Catholics to demand further concessions; in particular, the abolition of the tithes paid to the Protestant clergy, and the repeal of the legislative’ union between Great Britain and Ireland. To that end O’Connell organized the Repeal Association, to which the ministry of earl Grey opposed in 1833 the Irish Coercion Bill, which authorized the lord lieutenant of Ireland to forbid mass meetings and to proclaim martial law. When the liberal ministry of Melbourne rescinded the Coercion Bill and began to pursue a conciliatory policy towards Ireland, O’Connell dissolved the Repeal Association. Earl Mulgrave, since 1835 lord lieutenant of Ireland, filled the most important offices with Catholics, and in 1836 suppressed all the Orange lodges. In 1838 the British Parliament adopted the Tithe Bill. When, in August, 1841, the government fell again into the hands of the Tories, O’Connell renewed the repeal agitation so violently that in 1843 he was arrested and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment, a sentence which was, however, annulled by the Court of Peers. The repeal agitation ended suddenly by the death of O’Connell in 1847, because no competent successor in the leadership of the party could be found. It was followed by the ascendency of the more radical Young Ireland party, which did not, like O’Connell, court an alliance with the Catholic Church, but preferred to it an outspoken sympathy with the radical Republicans of France, and is on that account not so much interwoven with the ecclesiastical history of Ireland as the movements of O’Connell.

The ultramontane doctrines taught in the seminary of Maynooth called forth an agitation in Protestant England for a repeal of the annual subsidy which that seminary received from the British government. New offence was given to the bishops and the ultramontane party by the establishment of three undenominational Queen’s Colleges. The bishops’ unanimously denounced the colleges as godless, and warned all Catholic parents against them; they could, however, not prevent that ever from the beginning the majority of the students in these colleges were children of Catholic parents. The disregard of the episcopal orders showed a decline of priestly influence upon a considerable portion of the Catholic Irishmen. This decline of priestly influence became still more apparent when, during the civil war in the United States, the Fenian organization was formed for the express purpose of making Ireland an independent republic. As it was chiefly directed against English rule in Ireland, the new organization, like all its predecessors, had to direct its attacks prominently against the Established Church of Ireland, and thus appeared to have to some extent an anti-Protestant character; but, being a secret society, it was excommunicated by the pope, and denounced by all the Irish bishops. The general sympathy with which it nevertheless met among the Catholic Irishmen. both of Ireland and the United States is therefore a clear proof that the Catholics of Ireland no longer obey the orders of their bishops as blindly as formerly.

The Established Church of Ireland, regarding itself as the legitimate successor of the medieval Catholic Church, and taking possession of all her dioceses, parishes, and Church property, retained for a long time the same diocesan and parochial divisions as the Roman Catholic Church. As late as 1833 the Church, notwithstanding its small membership, had 4 archbishoprics and 18 bishoprics: namely, Armagh, with 5 bishoprics; Dublin, with 4 bishoprics; Tuam, with 4 bishoprics; and Cashel, with 5 bishoprics. The income of these 22 archbishops and bishops was estimated at from 130,000 to 185,000. In 1833 the first decisive step was taken towards reducing the odious prerogatives of the Established Church.

The number of archbishoprics was reduced to two, Armagh and Dublin, and the number of bishoprics to ten, five for each archbishopric. As the income was very unequally distributed, all the benefices yielding more than 200 had a tax of from ten to fifteen per cent imposed upon them, the proceeds of which were employed for church building, raising the income of poor clergymen, and other ecclesiastical purposes. In 1868, the English House of Commons, on motion of Mr. Gladstone, resolved to disestablish the Church of Ireland. The proposition was rejected by the House of Lords. Public opinion expressed itself, however, so strongly against the continuance of the privileges of the Irish Church, that the report of the royal commissioners on the revenues and condition of the Church of Ireland (dated July 27, 1868) recommended important reductions as to the benefices of the Irish Church. This report, a volume of more than 600 pages, is replete with interesting information, and is one of the best sources of information concerning the condition of the Church at this time. It states that the total revenue of the Church from all sources was at this time 613,984; 1319 benefices half a Church population of over forty persons, and extending to 5000 and upwards.

Four bishoprics were suggested for abolition, namely, Meath, Killaloe, Cashel, and Kilmore. The commissioners were in favor of leaving one archbishopric only, that of Armagh. All bishops were to receive 3000 a year income, and an additional 500 when attending Parliament. The primate was to get 6000, and the archbishop of Dublin, if continued, 5000. The abolition of all cathedrals and deaneries except eight was recommended. With a view to rearrangement of benefices, it was proposed that ecclesiastical commissioners should have extended powers to suppress or unite benefices. All benefices not having a Protestant population of forty were to be suppressed. The estates of all capitular bodies and of the bishoprics abolished were to be vested in ecclesiastical commissioners, and the surplus of all property vested in them to be applicable at their discretion to augmentation of benefices. The ecclesiastical commission was to be modified by the introduction of three unpaid laymen and two paid commissioners, one appointed by tile crown, the other by the primate. The management of all lands was to be taken out of the hands of ecclesiastical persons and placed in those of the ecclesiastical commissioners. Mr. Gladstone having become, towards the close of the year i868, prime minister, introduced in March 1869, a new bill for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Irish Church. It passed a second reading in the House of Commons, after a long and excited debate, by a vote of 368 to 250, showing a majority in favor of the passage of 118; and in the House of Lords by a majority of 33 in a house of 300 members.

The amendments adopted by the House of Lords were nearly all rejected by the Commons, and on July 26 it received the royal assent. The bill, which contains sixty clauses, is entitled A bill to put an end to the establishment of the Church of Ireland, and to make provision in respect to the temporalities thereof, and in respect to the royal College of Maynooth. The disestablishment was to be total, but was not to take place until Jan. 1, 1870, when the ecclesiastical courts were to be abolished, the ecclesiastical laws to cease to have any authority, the bishops to be no longer peers of Parliament, and all ecclesiastical corporations in the country to be dissolved. The disendowment was technically and legally to be total and immediate.

Provision was made for winding up the ecclesiastical commission. and the constitution of a new commission, composed of ten members, in which the whole property of the Irish Church was to be vested from the day the measure received the royal assent. A distinction was made between public endowments (valued at 15,500,000), including everything in the nature of a state grant or revenue, which were to be resumed by the state, and private endowments (valued at 500,000), which were defined as money contributed from private sources since 1660, which were to be restored to the disestablished Church. Provision was made for compensation to vested interests, including those connected with Maynooth College and the Presbyterians who were in receipt of the regium donum. Among these interests, the largest in the aggregate were those of incumbents, to each of whom was secured during his life, provided he continued to discharge the duties of his benefice, the amount to which he was entitled, deducting the amount he might have paid for curates, or the interest might, under certain circumstances, be commuted, upon his application for a life annuity.

Other personal interests provided for were those of curates, permanent and temporary, and lay compensations, including claims of parish clerks and sextons. The amount of the Maynooth grant and the reg ium donum was to be valued at fourteen years’ purchase, and a capital sum equal to it handed over to the respective representatives of the Presbyterians and of the Roman Catholics. The aggregate of the payments would amount to about 8,000,000, leaving about 7,500,000, placing an annual income of about 30,000,000 at the disposal of Parliament. This was to be appropriated mainly to the relief of unavoidable calamity and suffering, but in such a way as not to interfere with the obligation imposed upon property by the poor laws, A constitution for the disestablished Church was adopted by a General Convention, held in Dublin in 1870.

The Church will be governed by a General Synod, consisting of a House of Bishops and a House of Clerical and Lay Delegates. The House of Bishops has the right of veto, and their veto prevails also at the next synod; but seven bishops must agree upon a veto to make it valid. The bishops will be elected by the Diocesan Convention, but the House of Bishops will in all cases be the court of selection when the Diocesan Synod does not elect by a majority of two thirds of each order a clergyman to fill the vacant see, The primate (archbishop of Armagh) shall be elected by the Bench of Bishops out of their own number. The property of the Church is to be vested in a Representative Church Body, which is to be permanent. It is to be composed of three classes: the exoficio, or archbishops and bishops; the elected members, who are to consist of one clerical and two lay representatives for each diocese; and the co-opted members, who are to consist of persons equal in number to such dioceses, and to be elected by the ex-offcio and representative members. The elected members are to retire in the proportion of one third by rotation. The Convention also adopted a resolution against the introduction of the ritualistic practices which have crept into the Established Church of England.

The following table shows the population connected with the Anglican Church, according to the official census of 1881, in each of the counties, together with the number of Roman Catholics, and the population of other religious denominations in each:

CountiesTotalRoman CatholicsProtestant Episcopal -iansPresbyteri- ansMetho- distsAll Other Deno mina- tions

Leinster1,279,1901,095,459157,62212,6336,7126,764

Munster1,513,5581,244,87668,3523,7944,4212,467

Ulster1,739,542831,784377,936466,10734,49429,221

Connaught817,197779,76931,7602,9692,042657

Total5,159,8393,951,888635,670485,50347,66939,109

The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland is governed by four archbishops, whose sees are in Armagh, Dublin, Cashel, and Tuam, and twenty-four bishops; they are all nominated by the pope, generally out of a list of three names submitted to him by the parish priests and chapter of the vacant diocese, and reported on by the archbishops and bishops of the province. In case of expected incapacity from age or infirmity, the bishop names a coadjutor, who is usually confirmed by the pope, with the right of succession. In many of the dioceses a: chapter and cathedral corps have been revived, the dean being appointed by the cardinal protector at Rome. The diocesan dignitaries are the vicars-general, of whom there are one, two, or three, according to the extent of the diocese, who have special disciplinary and other powers; vicars-forane, whose functions are more restricted; the archdeacon, and the parish priests or incumbents. All of these, as well as the curates, are appointed by the bishop. The whole of the clergy are supported solely by the voluntary contributions of their flocks.

The episcopal emoluments arise from the mensal parish or two, the incumbency of which is retained by the bishop, from marriage licenses, and from the cathedraticum, an annual sum, varying from 2 to 10, paid by each incumbent in the diocese. The 2425 civil parishes in Ireland are amalgamated into 1073 ecclesiastical parishes or unions, being 445 livings less than in the Anglican Church. The incomes of the parish priests arise from fees on marriages, baptisms, and deaths, on Easter and Christmas dues, and from incidental voluntary contributions either in money or labor. The number of priests in Ireland in 1853 was 2291 (of whom 1222 were educated at Maynooth College); in 1889 it was 3353. The curates of the- parish priests form more than a half of the whole clerical strength; and scattered through the cities and towns are 70 or 80 communities of priests of various religious orders or rules, hence called Regulars, who minister in their own churches, and, though without parochial jurisdiction, greatly aid the secular clergy. All the places of public worship are built by subscriptions, legacies, and collections. There are numerous monasteries and convents; the latter are supported partly by sums, usually from 300 to 500, paid by those who take the vows in them, and partly by the fees for the education of the daughters of respectable Roman Catholics. Various communities of monks and nuns also devote themselves to the gratuitous education of the children of the poor.

Candidates for the priesthood, formerly under the necessity of obtaining their education in continental colleges, are now educated at home. The principal clerical college is that of Maynooth, which was founded in 1795 as Royal College of St. Patrick at Maynooth. The Irish Parliament made to it an annual grant of 14,000; the English Parliament sanctioned the grant, but reduced it to ,8927, out of which the professors and 480 students were supported. The Irish lord Dunboyne founded 20 more scholarships. In 1845, the government, under the administration of Sir Robert Peel. raised the annual grant to 26,000; more recently this sum was again raised to 38,000. In 1869, when the Anglican Church was disestablished, a capital sum equal to the amount of the Maynooth grant, valued at fourteen years’ purchase, was handed over to the representatives of the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic University at Dublin was established at a synodal meeting of the Catholic bishops held on May 18, 1854.

At a conference held in 1863 the bishops resolved to enlarge the university, and to erect a new building at the cost of 100,000. There are, besides, the Catholic colleges of St. Patrick, Carlow; St. Jarlath, Tuam; St. John’s, Waterford; St. Peter’s, Wexford; St. Colman’s, Fermoy; St. Patrick’s, Armagh; St. Patrick’s, Thurles; St. Kvran’s, Kilkenny; St. Mel, Longford; All Hallows (devoted exclusively to prepare priests for foreign missions), and Clonliffe, Dublin, all supported by voluntary contributions.

There are also for the education of Irish priests two colleges in Rome, the Irish College and the College of St. Isidor, and one in Paris. The number of religious communities of men has decreased during the last hundred years. The Dominicans, at the time of Benedict XIV, had 29 houses, in 1890 only 13 houses, with about 50 monks’; the Augustinies had formerly 28, now 11 convents; the Carmelites have 19 houses, formerly 167; the Jesuits 5 colleges, 1 home and 70 members; the Lazarists, Passionists, and Redemptorists 2 houses each; the brothers of the Christian Schools have a large number of institutions.

The following is a statistical summary of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland in 1889:

The first Presbytery in Ireland was formed at Carrickfergus in 1642, and gave rise to the Synod of Ulster. The Presbyterian Synod of Munster was formed about 1660. The Presbytery of Antrim separated from the Synod of Ulster in 1727, and the Remonstrant Synod in 1829. A number of seceders formed themselves into the Secession Synod of Ireland about 1780. In 1840, the General and Secession Synoods, having united, assumed the name of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, comprising, in 1888, 600 congregations, arranged under 37 presbyteries. The ministers were supported by voluntary contributions, the rents of seats and pews, and the interest of the regium dosnum, or royal gift. This was first granted in 1672 by Charles II, and in 1869 26 (first class) ministers received from the state 92 6s. 2nd. each, and 551 (second class) 69 4s. 8d. each per annum. As the ministers in the first class died, their successors only received the latter amount. The regiums donum. as annual grant, was abolished by the Irish Church Bill, but a capital sum equal to the amount of the donum, valued at fourteen years’ purchase, was handed over to the representatives of the Presbyterian body. The total sum for regium donum voted by Parliament for the year ending March 31,1869, was 40,547. The minutes of the General Assembly for 1869 state that in the year ending March 31 there were 628 ministers (besides 51 licentiates and ordained ministers without charge), 560 congregations, and 262 manses. The seat rents produced 38,011; the stipends paid to ministers, 37,853; raised for building or repairing churches, manses, and schools, 17,830; Sabbath collections, 13,575; mission collections, 12,124; other charitable collections, 6,835. The Congregational Debt was 37,167.

The Presbyterians lave the General Assembly’s College at Belfast, and Magee College at Londonderry. The latter was opened Oct. 10,1865. In the year 1846, Mrs. Magee, widow of the late Rev. William Magee, Presbyterian minister of Lurgan, left 20,000 in trust for the erection and endowment of a Presbyterian college. This sum was allowed to accumulate for some years, until eventually the trustees were authorized, by a decree of the lord chancellor, to select a convenient site at or near the city of Londonderry. The citizens of Derry subscribed upwards of 5000 towards the erection of the building, which cost about 10,000. The Irish Society have granted an annual endowment of 250 to the chair of natural philosophy and mathematics, and 250 for five years towards the general expenses of the college.

Remonstrant Synod of Ulster. This synod was formed in May, 1830, in consequence of the separation of seventeen ministers, with their congregations, from the General Synod of Ulster, on the ground that, contrary to its usages and code of discipline, it required from. its members in 1827 and 1828 submission to certain doctrinal tests and overtures of human invention. There are 4 presbyteries and 27 congregations in this synod.

The Reformed Presbyterian Synod of Ireland, consisting of 4 presbyteries and 25 congregations, is unconnected with the General Assembly. It did not participate in the regium donum.

United Presbytery or Synod of Munster. This body was formed in 1809 by the junction of the Southern Presbytery of Dublin with the Presbytery of Munster, and is one of the three non-subscribing Presbyterian bodies of Ireland, the other two being the Presbytery of Antrim (now consisting of 11 congregations) and the Remonstrant Synod of Ulster. A few years ago these three bodies united to form the General Non-subscribing Presbyterian Association of Ireland, for the promotion of their common principles, the right of private judgment, and non-subscription to creeds and confessions of faith. The General Association meets triennially for these objects, while the three bodies of which it is composed retain their respective names and independent existence, being governed by their own rules and regulations.

The Irish Conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection of Great Britain numbered in 1869 19,659 members, 627 members on trial, and 174 ministers. The president of the British Conference is also president of the Irish Conference. The Primitive Methodist Society (also called Church Methodists) numbered in 1869 8763 members in Ireland. They regard themselves as belonging to the Anglican Church. According to the census of 1881, the total Methodist population of Ireland amounted to 47,669. There were also, according to the same census, 4532 Independents, 4327 Baptists, 3695 Friends, 18,798 belonging to other sects, and 453 Jews.

The commissioners of public instruction and the census commissioners return the numbers in the principal religious denominations, and their percentage of the general population have been as follows:

Profession18611881Decrease between 1861 and 1881Increase between 1861 and 1881

NumberPercentNumber%NumberNumber

Irish Church693,35711.9635,67012.357,687

Roman Catholics4,505,26577.73,951,88876.6553,379

Presbyterians523,2919.0485,5039.437,788

Methodists45,3990.847,6690.92270

Other Denomina-tions31,6550.638,6560.87001

Jews39345360

Total5,798,967100.05,159,839100.648,8529331

The census commissioners of 1861, in their report on religion and education (p. 5). remark that the Wesleyan Methodists, by a peculiarity of their constitution, although frequenting places of worship distinct from those of the Established Church, very generally declined to be reckoned as dissenters, and were therefore included (by the commissioners of public instruction of 1834) among the members of the Established Church.

Between the years 1834 and 1861 the Roman Catholic population showed a decline of 1,930,975 persons-the difference between 6,436,060 in 1834 and 4,505,265 in 1861-or nearly a third of what was their entire number in 1834; and, distributing this loss over the original dioceses (as given in the list of Anglican dioceses), as in the case of the Established Church, we find that it has to be divided among thirty out of the thirty-two, the only exceptions being the dioceses of Dublin and Connor, in both of which the number of Roman Catholics is something in excess of what it was in 1834. The total Roman Catholic population of the thirty dioceses in which it is found to have declined was 5,949,509 in 1834, and 4,005,104 in 1861, showing a loss of 1,944,405, or nearly a third of the former population. In 1834 the number of Presbyterians in Ireland was returned as 643,058, and in 1861 it had fallen to 523,291, exhibiting a reduction of 119,767, or rather less than a fifth of their number in 1834. This reduction distributes itself over ten of the thirty-two (original Anglican) dioceses those, namely, of Achonry, Armagh, Clogher, Connor, Derry, Down, Dromore, Kilfenora, Kilmore, and Raphoe, the total Presbyterian population of which amounted in 1834 to 637.784, and in 1861 to 505,196, showing a reduction of 132,588, or 20.8 per cent of the original numbers. In twenty-two dioceses the Presbyterians have very considerably increased, their gross population having been only 5274 in 1834, and 18,095 in 1861, showing an increase of 243.1 per cent. The proportion per cent of the members of the Established Church to the general population had risen since 1834 in twenty-one out of the thirty-two dioceses, had remained stationary in two, and fallen in nine.

In 1831 the grants of public money for the education of the poor were entrusted to the charge of the lord lieutenant, to be expended on the instruction of the children of every religious denomination, under the superintendence of commissioners appointed by the crown, and named The Commissioners of National Education. The principles on which the commissioners act are, that the schools shall be open alike to Christians of every denomination; that no pupil shall be required to attend at any religious exercise, or to receive any religious instruction which his parents or guardians do not approve, and that sufficient opportunity shall be afforded to the pupils of each religious persuasion to receive separately, at appointed times, such religious instruction as their parents or guardians think proper. In 1845 the commissioners were incorporated under the name of The Commissioners of National Education in Ireland, with power to hold lands to the yearly value of 40,000, to purchase goods and chattels, to receive gifts and bequests to that amount, to erect and maintain schools where and as many as they shall think proper, to grant leases for three lives or thirty-one years, to sue and to be sued by their corporate name in all courts, and to have a common seal, a power being vested in the lord lieutenant to fill up vacancies, to appoint additional members, provided the total number does not exceed twenty, and to remove members at his pleasure.

The following return gives the number of schools and pupils at different periods, and the amount of parliamentary grants annually voted for their maintenance:

YearSchoolPupilsParliam. GrantsYearSchoolsPupilsParliam. Grants

1840197823,560L50,00018605632804,000L270,722

1845342643284475,00018656372922,084325,583

18504321480623120,00018686586967,563360,195

18555124535905215,200188075901,083,020727,366

The religious denomination of the children who, on Dec. 31, 1888, were on the rolls of the national schools, was as follows:

Irish ChurchRoman CatholicPresbyteri ansOther Denom.Total

Ulster76,684185,462113,0288,647383,821

Munster7,481279,774595583288,433

Leinster12,576204,7861,397553219,312

Connaught5,477185,035609333191,454

Ireland102,218855,057115,62910,1161,083,02 0

Percent9.479.010.70.9

See Herzog, Allgen. Real-Encyklop. 7, 63; Wiggers, Kirchliche Geogr. u. Statistik; Neher, Kirchl. Geogr. 2u. Statistik, 2, 1 sq.; Thom, Irish Almanac; Porter, Comp. Annal. eccl. Hib. (Rom. 1690); Warseus, Hibernial Sacra. (Duibl. 117); Lanigan, Eccl. Hist. of Ireland (Dubl.1829).

Ireland

Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary

Ireland

Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia

Ireland

Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature