authority and in the Pope's name, whose assistance should not be wanting". Garnet subsequently affirmed that he had destroyed the briefs on the peaceable accession of James, but not until he had shown them to Catesby and others who were shortly afterwards engaged in the Gunpowder Plot. The effects of these briefs were immediate. In England, they produced two conspiracies of the Roman Catholics in the first year of James's reign, and the Gunpowder Plot in the third. Catesby, the originator of the plot, when remonstrated with as to his plan, declared that, it being lawful by the force of the briefs of the Pope to have kept King James out, it was lawful now to put him out". In Ireland, where every motion and affection of the Papal Court was immediately known, the opposition of Clement to the accession of James produced a shortlived rebellion in the towns of Cork, Waterford, Limerick, Clonmel and Cashel, which might easily have assumed alarming proportions, and which required the advance of Mountjoy with an army, before those towns would acknowledge the title of James.2

That the Irish Roman Catholic bishops were, during the period under consideration, thoroughly disaffected, admits of no doubt. They all believed the tenet that the Pope possessed the absolute right of deposing princes and of absolving their subjects from their allegiance. Some, if not all, held that, as the English Kings had not observed the conditions prescribed in Adrian's gift to Henry II., they had forfeited their title to Ireland, which had reverted to the successors of the grantor. of Ossory, and Vice-Primate of Ireland, position in his Analecta Sacra. He says:

Routh, Bishop

advanced this "The hereditary

1 Confession of Henry Garnet, Jardine's Gunpowder Plot, appendix. 2 A brief relation of the Rebellion of the City of Cork. Carew Papers 1603-24. p. 7.

right of the English Kings to Ireland was derived from the Roman See, and depends upon the same conditions on which it was originally granted".1 It is difficult to see how the Irish bishops could have dissented from these two tenets and yet have preserved their reverent obedience to the Roman See. The Popes had often put the first in practice, as in the case of Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth, and they always maintained that the conditions of the bull of Adrian IV. had not been kept. Thus Innocent X., in his instructions to his legate, Rinuccini, says that the conditions had been violated. In 1626 Urban VIII. urged the Kings of France and Spain to join with him in an attack on Charles I., "because, in addition to the rights he had against that King as an enemy of the Catholic faith, he was possessed of a just title to Ireland which belonged in direct dominion to the Holy See".3 The Irish bishops, like all other Roman Catholic bishops, were bound to the Pope by "an absolute oath of fealty such as vassals made to their immediate lords ".4 At their consecration they swore "to preserve and defend the royalties of St. Peter against all men; that they would not be concerned in counsel, act or treaty in anything prejudicial to the Pope, or his right, honour, state or power; and that they would obey all Papal mandates." 5 As the Popes claimed Ireland as their peculiar property, its bishops must have furthered that claim by every

1 Page 119; see also page 143.

2 Aiazzi, Nunziatura in Irlanda, translated by Miss Hutton, with the title Embassy of Rinuccini, xxix.

3 Extracts from the Life of Urban VIII., Tierney's Dodd, v., append., p. 358. Tierney also gives Urban's letters to the French and Spanish Kings, urging them to attack England.

Sir John Throckmorton, Letters to the Catholic Clergy, p. 26.

5 The oath is given in Walsh's Hist. of the Irish Remonstrance, p. 19, and in Throckmorton's Letters to the English Catholic Clergy, p. 27.

means in their power. During the reign of Elizabeth they were the principal means of communication between the insurgents and the King of Spain. Many of them were in the interest and some of them in the pay of the Spanish Monarch. Oviedo, Archbishop of Dublin, was the messenger between Desmond and Philip II., and as he says himself, in a letter to Desmond, "prætermitted nothing which might tend to your profit as well as to that of our Catholic master ".1 Cornelius O'Melrian, Bishop of Killaloe, "acted on the Continent as the representative of the Earl of Desmond and the other confederated Irish leaders ".2 James O'Hely, Archbishop of Tuam, was the medium between O'Donnell and Philip II. to demand the succours which that King had promised to the northern rebels. Owen MacEgan, Bishop of Ross and Apostolic Vicar, when the Spaniards invaded Ireland, excommunicated all those who should give quarter to the Queen's soldiers, and as soon as any prisoners of his own religion were brought before him "he caused them first... to be confessed and absolved, and instantly in his own sight would he cause them to be murdered ". We can observe no change in the sentiments of these prelates after the accession of James I. They still bestowed their affections on foreign princes rather than on their own sovereign. In 1617 they presented an address to the Spanish king, and attempted to restore their old connection with that monarchy. "Calling to mind," they wrote, "the hereditary zeal with which your Majesty is accustomed to propagate and promote the Catholic faith, we, though afflicted and distressed, are yet raised to some

1 Pacata Hibernia, i., p. 200.

2 Bishop, now Cardinal, Moran. p. 21. Carte, Introduction, p. 57.

Introduction to the Analecta Sacra,

3 O'Sullivan, Hist. Cathol. Compendium, p. 161.

+ Pacata Hibernia. ii., p. 663.

hope of comfort when we turn our eyes to that sceptre and diadem, from which both we and our fathers have received solace in tribulation and shelter in the storm." 1 About the same time Routh published abroad and anonymously his Analecta Sacra. There probably never was a more seditious book issued under the name of religion, or one containing more malicious accusations against a Government. Two dedications were prefixed to this work, one to the Emperor and the orthodox kings and princes, the second to the Prince of Wales. In 1626, Peter Lombard, Archbishop of Armagh, presented to Pope Urban VIII. his History of Ireland, in which the author maintained that "Ireland was the ancient property of the Holy See, and that its inhabitants rejected any temporal sovereignty but that of the Roman Pontiff." 2 Two years later Heber Mac Mahon, successively Bishop of Clogher and Down, was privy to an intended general rebellion, which was to be supported by French forces. The year 1628 was fixed on for the attempt, but the unexpected protraction of the war in Italy engrossed the attention of Richelieu, and the enterprise was abandoned.3 In 1634, the same prelate requested Sir George Radcliffe to grant him a private interview. On obtaining it, he fell upon his knees and confessed "that there was a general rising designed in Ireland to be seconded and assisted from abroad, and that he himself had been employed several years on that account in foreign Courts, soliciting supplies to carry on that work for the good of religion". But what concludes the question is the conduct of the

1 Analecta Sacra, p. 270; Hibernia Dominicana, p. 636.

2 Dr. O'Conor, Hist. Address, i., p. 91.

3 Confession of Lord Maguire.

4 Carte, i., p. 155. Clarendon, Irish Rebellion, 187. Dr. O'Conor, Hist. Address, ii., p. 208.

Irish bishops on the breaking out of the rebellion in 1641. Five months after that event, the Synod of the Province of Armagh declared the rebellion to be a lawful and holy war, and two months later, a General Synod of the bishops and clergy pronounced it to be just and lawful, and excommunicated all who should "forsake the Catholic union and cause," or assist in anyway their enemies.1

The bishops received a vigorous and submissive support from another order of men, to whom the late changes had also given political importance, namely, the Roman Catholic lawyers of the Pale. The introduction of the English law of descent, the abolition of Tanistry and Gavelkind, and of the Brehon law, made the advice of this class a matter of necessity to the natives who were unacquainted with the new rules. These gentlemen were the sons or relations of the lords and gentry of the Pale, and were educated at the same seminaries to which their clergy resorted. We find it stated in a letter addressed to the Spanish regents of the Netherlands in 1613, that upwards of eighty sons of the Irish nobility and gentry had been educated at the college of Douay alone up to that date.2 In these seminaries they met the Irish youths, many of them their own relations, who were destined for the priesthood, and shared with them the common instruction. The lawyers were also imbued with the doctrine that the Pope was the supreme legislator, and that he was possessed of the power of deposing kings. In 1613, a deputation from the Roman Catholic lords and gentlemen repaired to London and waited on the King. At an audience where all were present, James proceeded to question them on different subjects; at last

1 Carte, i., 316. The Acts of these Synods are given in the History of the Irish Confederation, i., p. 290, ii., p. 34.

2 Calendar, Carew Papers, 1603-14, p. 285.