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Of all the causes of unrest by far the most
important was the rise of the movement known as the Reformation,
and the gradual spread of its doctrines through North-western Europe.
Henry VIII himself was no reformer. When Luther hurled defiance
at the authority of the Roman see and disputed the truth of its
doctrines, the young Tudor prince entered the lists against him
with a tract on the Assertion of the Seven Sacraments, for which
the Pope, Leo X, rewarded him with the title of 'Defender of the
Faith.' But with the growth of his ambition came the design of making
himself supreme not only in the State, but in the Church, the chief
check hitherto existing upon the absolutism of the Crown. The gifted
young monarch, who in his early life corresponded with Erasmus and
debated with More, was in his later years to inaugurate the Tudor
despotism which laid its heavy burden upon Church and State alike.
The Act of Supremacy vested all ecclesiastical authority in the
Crown, and the clergy learned, by one injunction after another,
that they were only allowed to retain their offices on condition
of becoming the mouthpieces of the King, who dictated alike the
form of their faith and the manner in which it was to be preached.
Pushed on from one act of absolutism to another by the ruthless
ambition of his minister, Thomas Cromwell, arbitrary acts of taxation,
of legislation, and of imprisonment followed each other with startling
rapidity. "He is a prince," said the dying Wolsey, as
he lay under arrest at the Abbey of Leicester, "of most royal
courage; sooner than miss any part of his will, he will endanger
one half of his kingdom." The passionless and calculating rigour
which startles and appals us in reading the State Papers of the
Tudor period had its effect in England in revolts all over the country,
suppressed with ruthless severity, and in the fall of the noblest
heads in England. Leaders of great houses like the aged Countess
of Salisbury, and men of the highest virtue and learning like More,
fell swiftly one after another upon the block.
It was in such an age and with such a spirit that the question
of religious change was approached in Ireland. That country had
been little touched by the expansion of intellectual enquiry which
was elsewhere stirring in Europe, and which we vaguely designate
as the Renaissance. Both on the intellectual and on the religious
side the Irish people were quite unprepared for any change in their
religious beliefs, with which they were fully satisfied and which
were commended to them by many faithful and devoted lives among
the native priests and more especially among the friars. There was,
in Ireland, little or no complaint of those monastic irregularities
which formed a ready excuse for their despoiling in England when
their accumulated wealth was wanted for State purposes or for the
reward of needy courtiers and impecunious kings. What was best in
the 'New Religion' never had any chance of appeal in Ireland, and
the greedy time-servers on whom alone Henry could rely to carry
out his designs were not the type of men to recommend to a people
any changes in the form or spirit of their religion. The crowd of
priests, rectors, and vicars whom Sir Thomas More saw crowding into
the courtyard at Lambeth, hurrying to take the Oath of Supremacy
for the refusal of which he himself sat awaiting the summons of
death, were not likely to attract to their 'faith' any of the unconvinced.
The men sent over to Ireland to preach the new tenets and enforce
the King's claims were of the type of these subservient clerics.
The chief agent of Henry's will was a man named George Browne, Provincial
of the Augustinian order in England, who had thrown himself zealously
into the plans of the King's minister Cromwell for the "advance
of the King's affairs," and who in March 1535 was consecrated
Archbishop of Dublin to succeed Dr Alen, who had been so brutally
murdered by the followers of Silken Thomas during his rebellion
in the preceding year. Browne was an ignorant and overbearing friar,
whom even the King rebuked for his arrogance and inefficiency, and
whom Lord Deputy Grey called "a polshorn friar." |
Indecent in life and blustering in manner, Browne neither won the adhesion
of the English of the Pale nor that of the clergy and laity in the provinces.
His first duty was to proclaim the Act of Supremacy and force it through
the Irish Parliament. Then followed the removal of all religious images
out of the cathedrals and churches of his diocese. The suppression of
the monasteries came next.[1] From this time the Priory of the Blessed
Trinity was changed into a deanery and chapters, and it henceforth bore
the name of Christ Church Cathedral.
[1] See the protest made by St Leger, May 21, 1539, in S.P., Hen. VIII,
iii, 130-131. This letter and "The Form of the Beads" may be
conveniently read in Miss C. Maxwell's Irish History from Contemporary
Sources, pp. 127, 123.
To Browne's initiative can be traced the first proposals for converting
St Patrick's Cathedral into a university for the education of clergy,
a plan which figures largely in the correspondence of the time. Among
the most revered relics lost in the general destruction was the famous
'Staff of Jesus,' believed by old tradition to have been given to St Patrick
by Jesus Christ. It had been removed from Armagh to Dublin in 1180. The
destruction of the sacred places and images, which was carried out with
a total disregard of the feelings of the populace, awakened an hostility
more vigorous than was the later protest when in 1551 the English liturgy
was ordered to be read in the churches. Browne was strenuously opposed
by Cromer, Archbishop of Armagh, and by his successor Dowdall, although
the latter had been appointed by Henry and might have been expected to
support his policy. A commission from the Pope prohibiting the acknowledgment
of the King's Supremacy arrived in 1538 to support the efforts of the
resisting party. Browne's report to Cromwell, on whose commission he acted,
could hardly have been pleasing to that minister. "The countryfolk
here much hate your lordship," he writes frankly, "and despitefully
call you, in their Irish tongue, the blacksmith's son." His forewarning
that the new measures were beginning to have the effect of making both
the Irish and English races lay aside their old quarrels, "and will,
if anything will, cause a foreigner to invade this nation," was destined
to be speedily fulfilled.
Even at that moment Conn O'Neill, as Browne had the wit to see, was trying
to form with Desmond a Catholic League of the North and South. The violence
and rapacity of the Reforming prelates and clergy did more to weld together
such leagues than any sense of national or internal union could do; the
defence of the old faith provided a link that it was felt drew together
all classes of the people, in every part of the country, English and Irish
alike. It began for the first time what we may recognize as a widespread
movement directed against English policy, which in the later years of
the Tudor tyranny was to become consolidated into a national resistance
to English rule. Up to the time of the Reformation any resistance to the
claims of England over Ireland had been local, the result of temporary
irritation, but no general desire seems to have been felt to rid the country
of a supremacy which was taken, after a term of three and a half centuries,
almost for granted. In the still independent districts only was the English
suzerainty contested or ignored. There was a general submission to the
English Crown, and such outbreaks as there were resulted from special
acts of injustice or cruelty, such as the beheading of Desmond or the
sacrifice of the five uncles of Silken Thomas on the suppression of his
rebellion. But the efforts of Browne and his party did what no political
difficulties had ever done. Such a command as that contained in Browne's
official exhortation, called "The Form of the Beads," bidding
them "obediently to recognize the King's Highness to be supreme head
in earth of the Church of England and Ireland...and to show and teach
how the Bishop of Rome hath heretofore usurped not only upon God, but
also upon our princes," exhorting all to deface him from their primers
and other books,[2] was a trumpet-blast which united the nation against
the King and gave to the hitherto disunited bodies a common ground of
action. Browne reported that neither by gentle exhortation, evangelical
instruction, or sharp correction had he once succeeded, even in the Pale,
in getting any to preach the word of God or the just title of the prince.[3]
Even in St Patrick's the parish priest had hardly begun the Beads when
the choir began to sing and put a stop to them. To St Leger Browne's energies
were hateful. "Go to, go to," he exclaimed, as he saw his work
of appeasement being undone by these zealots, "your matters of religion
will mar all." [4]
[2] S.P., Hen. VIII, ii, 564 seq.
[3] S.P. Hen. VIII, ii, p. 539; Carew, Cal., i, No. 114, p. 135, and No.
120, p. 139.
[4] See also the sharp rebuke addressed to Browne by the King, S.P., Hen.
VIII, ii, 465.
It was during the introduction of the English Book of Common Prayer in
Edward VI's reign, which it was sought to make compulsory in Ireland,
that opposition first became general. St Leger, to whom it fell to call
a convention in 1551 for the purpose of introducing the new Liturgy, was
no persecutor, and his affection for the old religion was made the chief
ground of complaint against him on his downfall.[5] But in virtue of his
office he was obliged to summon an Assembly to enforce the use of the
Liturgy in its revised and English form. A stormy scene ensued. George
Dowdall, Archbishop of Armagh, exclaimed, "Then shall every illiterate
fellow read Mass." [6] "Your Grace is mistaken," replied
Sir Anthony mildly, "for we have too many illiterate priests amongst
us already, who can neither pronounce the Latin, nor know what it means,
no more than the common people that hear them; but when the people hear
the Liturgy in English, they and the priest will understand what they
pray for." It seems clear that the intention was to apply the use
of the Prayer Book only in English-speaking districts, but the crude and
ridiculous attempt was afterward made to force it also on native congregations.
Dowdall was deprived of his position for his resistance, and Browne was
rewarded for his pliancy by being intruded into the Primacy in his place.
A few years later we find him bitterly repenting his choice, and praying
to be sent to a less conspicuous diocese in place of the poor and difficult
post he had been so anxious to obtain in the wild country of Shane O'Neill.
Dowdall was eventually obliged to fly to the Continent, but he was recalled
under Mary, and though he had originally been appointed by the Crown his
recall was approved by the Pope, and he was reinstated in March 1553.
[5] Evelyn P. Shirley, Original Letters and Papers illustrating the History
of the Church of Ireland in the Reign of Edward VI, etc. (1851), No. XXIII.
[6] Harleian Miscellany, v, 601.
It is little wonder that the new doctrine made small progress in Ireland.
It was neither recommended by the preaching nor by the lives of its first
promoters. The monasteries fell into ruins, and the churches languished
for lack of clergy. The clergy who remained, "though," in Browne's
words, "they could and would preach after the old sort and fashion
till right Christians were weary of them, would not once open their lips
to proclaim the King's supremacy" or to use the new service book.
The Observants were "worse than all the others; for I can make them
neither swear nor preach among us." The choirs began to sing their
loudest when the new forms of prayer were read. In 1562, Lord Deputy Sussex
reported that the people were without discipline, utterly void of religion,
and that they came to divine service as to a May game. A futile effort
was made to attract them to church by ordering the new Liturgy to be read
in Latin, but when this was discovered it only led to fresh disorders.
Even Elizabeth was on one occasion heard to say that she feared the same
reproach might fall on her which had been made to Tiberius: "It is
you, you, that are to blame for these evils; you have committed your flocks,
not to shepherds, but to wolves."
All the threats of the Government had little effect outside the English
Pale. A commission held in 1549 asked the question, "How many friar
houses and others remain using the old Papist sort [form of Mass]?"
The answer was: "All Munster in effect, Thomond, Connacht, and Ulster."
And in 1565 Adam Loftus, Archbishop of Armagh, reported that still "the
nobility and chief gentry frequent the Mass." Besides the immediate
result which the forcing of the new doctrines upon the country had in
strengthening and combining the Catholics of the North and South, it had
the further effect of attracting the attention of Catholic powers abroad
and of bringing France and Spain into closer touch with Ireland during
their wars with England, to the great disadvantage and peril of that country.
Ireland, during the next hundred years, was to act as one chief pivot
of the Continental wars, and was to prove a centre of intrigue and a point
of constant danger to England. Moreover, the Papal authority which had,
from the time of Henry II onward, been steadily on the side of the English
Crown now naturally was thrown upon a contrary policy; the Irish Catholics
were called upon to support a league which was outwardly, at least, designed
for the preservation of the Catholic religion. Hitherto the Popes had
always been ready to excommunicate either Scottish or Irish princes and
people who were not "buxom nor obedient to their Lord King of England,"
and it was not till the Catholic League was fully formed in Elizabeth's
reign that the Pope blessed it with his approval, and the Bull of excommunication
against the Queen was promulgated by Pope Pius V, and supported by his
successor, Pope Gregory XIII.
At the accession of Queen Mary the question arose whether she, as a sincere
Catholic, would abjure the title of Head of the Church adopted by her
father and give up the Oath of Supremacy which distressed the minds of
so many of her Catholic subjects; but neither she nor her husband, Philip
of Spain, showed any disposition to limit the prerogatives of the Crown,
though in a general way they "set forth the honour and dignity of
the Pope's Holiness and See Apostolic of Rome," and recommended the
suppression of all heretics and "damnable sects." On Mary's
accession, Pope Paul IV, despairing of recovering a title which had been
now claimed by two kings of England, and which the present occupier of
the throne showed no sign of abandoning, decided to bless a condition
of things he could not alter, by ignoring the action of Henry VIII, and
"erecting the island into a kingdom, so that the world might believe
that the Queen used the title as given by the Pope, not as decreed by
her father." He thus once more re-established his own claim to a
superior authority by giving away, as Adrian had done before him, the
actual power to the kings of England, to be held once more as the gift
of the Holy See.[7]
[7] Carew, Cal., i, No. 205, p. 251.
That the condition of the Church in Ireland had been in a satisfactory
state before the Reformation is much to be doubted. A State Paper of May
31, 1534, gives a lamentable account of the ruin which had fallen upon
the monasteries and churches and the secular purposes to which they were
put. We know from other sources that some of the cathedrals in the Irish
districts were used entirely for such purposes as fortresses, storehouses,
and barracks. Tuam was for three hundred years used as a fortress by the
neighbouring gentry, "without the holy sacrifice or divine office,"
according to the report of the Papal emissary, Father David Wolf, until
the appointment of Christopher Bodkin, the Government Archbishop, who
had "with a great risk of his own life" cleared out the horses
and beasts that inhabited the cathedral and had restored the divine worship
in decency and quiet. Wolf says of Bodkin that "his morality is unimpeached,
and he is well liked by everyone," and he strongly recommends that
his appointment should be accepted and confirmed by the Pope, as he was
better fitted for the post than the "true and legitimate archbishop,"
Art O'Fredir. Achonry Cathedral had been used as a fortress up to 1561,
according to the interesting letter of the same apostolic delegate, written
in that year to the Cardinal to whom he is reporting.[8] "It does
not retain one vestige of the semblance of religion."
[8] The letter is quoted in full in Cardinal P. F. Moran's History of
the Catholic Archbishops of Dublin, pp. 85-87.
Armagh Cathedral had long been used as a military centre both by Shane's
party and by the English, who made it into a barracks and used it for
their military headquarters during their wars in Tyrone. The complaints
as to the sort of men who occupied posts in the native churches before
the changes can also not be without some ground of truth. The State Paper
to which we have already referred complains of "the unlearned persons,
murderers, thieves, and [persons] of other detestable dispositions (such
as light men of war)" who had been intruded into the churches, having
expelled the rightful incumbents, and who spent and wasted the lands given
for the service of God.[9] Creagh's account of the State of the Church
in Ulster confirms this. Sidney declares that the Church is "foul,
deformed, and cruelly crushed;" out of two hundred and twenty-four
churches in the diocese of Meath, a hundred and five were leased out to
farmers, and no parson or vicar was resident on any of them; very simple
or sorry curates, mostly Irish-speakers and quite unlearned, were appointed
to serve them, without houses to dwell in and living on the gain of Masses
and other "bare altarages." This was in the best-peopled diocese
in the country.[10] The obligation to take the Oath of Supremacy, and
the new doctrines, began to empty the churches in the towns also. Even
Justices of the Peace and bailiffs refused the Oath of Supremacy in Cork,
and where the bishop of that diocese had been accustomed to preach to
a thousand or more he had now not five. The correspondents of the time
impute this increasing stubbornness to the activities of foreign agents,
whom the English classed under the comprehensive name of Jesuits. There
is no doubt that large numbers of priests, schoolmasters, and friars were
coming into the country purposely to support the Catholic League as well
as to carry on their ordinary functions. Some were Italians and Spaniards;
others were Irishmen who had been educated abroad and had imbibed the
views of the countries in which they had spent their youth. This continued
throughout Elizabeth's reign. "They land here secretly in every port
and creek of the realm (a dozen of them together sometimes, as we are
credibly informed) and afterwards disperse themselves into several quarters,
in such sort that every town and country is full of them...The people
in many places resort to Mass now in greater multitudes, both in town
and country, than for many years past."[11] Though the ports were
watched and the houses searched, these teachers, half missioners and half
political agents, continued to arrive; and their teaching was followed
by a revival of Church life, "solid and brilliant," as the letters
of Father Fitzsimon declare, as well as by the awakening of a violently
anti-English spirit among the people.
[9] Carew, Cal., i, No. 42, p. 55.
[10] Sidney, Letters, ed. Collins, i, 112-113 (April 28, 1576).
[11] Cal, S.P.I., Eliz., cxci, pp. 14-16 (July 6, 1596); Cal. S.P.I.,
James I, No. 419, pp. 309-310 (October 27, 1607).
Of actual bodily suffering on account of religion there was at this time
considerably less in Ireland than in England and abroad. There were no
burnings at the stake, and none of those holocausts such as were being
suffered for the sake of religion in France, Spain and the Low Countries.
Compared with these the sufferings of the Irish were light. Yet there
were a considerable number of severe punishments inflicted, and fines
and often long imprisonments were the reward of those who refused to take
the Oath of Supremacy—a refusal which could easily be construed
as an act of disloyalty and was punishable as treason. Nor could the order
for the suppression of the monasteries be carried through without great
hardships, though in Henry's reign pensions were promised to the ejected
abbots and priors. The order made in 1538 could not be carried into immediate
execution; and in the remote parts of the country the monasteries continued
to carry on their work practically untouched. Sir John Davies, in the
reign of James I, remarks that the abbeys and convents in Tyrone, Tyrconnel,
and Fermanagh had never been reduced. But before the close of 1539 twenty-four
of the chief monasteries had been effectually suppressed in the districts
over which the English held sway. A number of priors and abbots and many
monks were imprisoned or put to death for resisting the dismantling of
their monasteries, or for refusing to accept the King's supremacy. The
main period of persecution began after the restoration of the Act of Uniformity
in 1560, when a number of bishops, priests, and friars suffered long periods
of imprisonment, and in some cases torture or death. One of the most pathetic
cases was that of Dr. Dermod O'Hurley, Professor of Philosophy at Louvain
and of Canon Law at Rheims, who left his congenial and learned posts to
become Archbishop of Cashel at a time when "the Irish mission"
was one of almost certain imprisonment or death. For a time he carried
on his work in the face of constant danger, but, being tracked down at
last, he suffered in prison extreme torture, which he bore with admirable
patience and serenity, till in 1584 he was put to death by being strangled
with a withe.[12] Fourteen bishops and a number of other clergy are remembered
by name as having suffered imprisonment, death, or exile between the years
1577 and 1597, during which period the persecution was at its height.
To hunt priests was a meritorious act, and was rewarded by the Government,
often on the testimony of such infamous informers as Miler Magrath, one
of the few Irish ecclesiastics who acknowledged the supremacy of Elizabeth
and whose grasping disposition was rewarded with many honours. He employed
himself in hunting down men more honest than himself, and shamelessly
invented accusations against them. "Very few of them," he writes
to Cecil in 1593, "escape the whip of my censuring discoveries."
His career runs through the State Papers of his day like the track of
some vile reptile, and it is only a slight satisfaction to know that the
same violent death that he had been instrumental in inflicting on others
eventually overtook himself.
[12] David Rothe, Analecta, ed. P. T. Moran, Introd., pp. xiii-xlvi.
Cornelius O'Devany, Bishop of Down and Connor, was executed in February
1612, in the reign of James I, Ibid., pp. xciii seq.
The laws were spasmodically enforced, but in the larger number of cases,
though a Catholic priest might be forced to quit the country if found
celebrating Mass or teaching Catholic children, and though the fines for
non-attendance at the Protestant churches were frequently levied, severe
corporal punishments were rare. Such documents as the Italian Report of
1613,[13] the declarations of O'Sullevan Beare regarding Elizabeth's reign,[14]
and the similar statements of Pope Innocent X in 1645 [15] are sufficient
evidence of this. In 1613 there were still 800 seculars, 130 Franciscans,
20 Jesuits, and some members of the other orders at work in Ireland; and
though the terror of imprisonment hung over them if they were found taking
part in political affairs, they seem generally to have been left in peace.
But the disabilities that beset a Catholic in every walk in life were
as degrading and harassing as the later penal enactments. A Catholic might
not study under one of his religion at home, and if he were caught going
overseas for his education he was liable to imprisonment and heavy fines.
No Irish Catholic could plead in court, nor was he eligible for any civil
employment, nor might a merchant share in the privileges of his town without
taking the Oath of Supremacy, going to church, and promising to bring
up his children as Protestants; hence all official employments passed
into the hands of English Protestants.[16]
[13] Archivium Hibernicum (1914), iii, 300.
[14] P. O'Sullevan Beare, Historia Catholicae Iberniae Compendium, vol.
iii, Bk. I, ch. i, iii.
[15] Instructions of Innocent X to Rinuccini, Embassy in Ireland, xxix-xxx.
[16] Memorial presented to the King of Spain on behalf of the Irish Catholics,
1619. See Archivium Hibernicum
In 1556 the long Deputyship of St Leger, broken into four parts by three
short recalls, came to an end. He had been in power, with intervals, since
1540. He was succeeded by Sussex, Lord FitzWalter, under whom, from 1556
onward, Sir Henry Sidney acted as Lord Justice and Vice-Treasurer, acquiring
an intimate knowledge of the country's conditions and needs during his
seven years of active association with him before he was appointed to
follow him as Lord Deputy in 1565. In 1558 Mary died, and with the accession
of Elizabeth to the throne the most stirring period of Irish history begins.
At the date of the new Queen's accession there were signs of difficulties
ahead in the North. Shane O'Neill was smarting under a sense of injury
in having been set aside by his father in favour of an older man whom
he persistently declared to be only "the son of a blacksmith,"
and who was supported in his position, at Conn's request, by the English
Government.[17] Conn, his reputed father, died in 1559, and Shane, who
was now coming to manhood, determined to assert his claims.
[17] Carew, Cal., i, No. 228, pp. 305-307.
END OF CHAPTER XI
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