On hearing of what had occurred, he hastened back, attempted to take the city, but was repulsed and obliged to retire. The fidelity of the citizens was not unrewarded. The king, Henry VIII.,

by letters patent, dated February 4, 1538, after reciting the "siege, famine, miseries, wounds, and loss of blood," they had suffered, granted them "all the building and estates belonging to the dissolved monastery of All-hallows, near Dublin, lying in the counties of Dublin, Meath, Louth, Kildare, Tipperary, Kilkenny, and elsewhere in Ireland, at the rent of four pounds, four shillings, and three farthings." And, further, to repair the weakened and ruined great forts and towers of the city and its walls, he confirmed to them, for ever, a formal grant of nearly forty pounds a year, with an annual gift of twenty pounds from himself.

The hill on which Dublin stood was not yet entirely cleared of the "hazel-wood" which at first gave it the name of "Ath-Cliath," for the annals record that during the quarrels between the two factions of Ormond and Kildare, the former "came down with a great host of Irishmen, and encamped in Thomas Court Wood." What is now Dame street was then an "avenue" leading from the city gate to Hogges, or Hoggin's, Green.

THE city had been for five hundred years under the spiritual yoke of Romanism, and, during nearly four centuries out of the five, the secular power of England had, for upholding its own interests, been joined with that spiritual dominion in both countries. In profound yet contented servitude to the pope, Ireland remained till Henry VIII. had numbered more than thirty years on the English throne. Continental Europe had been convulsed throughout: the monk of Wittemberg had made the Vatican quake to its foundations Great Britain was in the midst of the tumult attending a revolution in her faith; but Ireland slumbered on, as if drugged to stolidity or death under the pontiff's sway. Having little intercourse with other nations, she was so engrossed with the local interests and strifes of her people, that she neither cared for nor knew much of what was passing elsewhere. Many of the Irish clergy, some even of prelatic rank, were ignorant, indolent, and immoral; and occasionally their exactions were painfully oppressive. But the clergy were considered the almoners of grace, and the lords of conscience, and it was believed that in

proportion to the amount of "carnal things" demanded by the Church, and to the cheerfulness with which those demands were acquiesced in, would be the degree of heavenly benediction - vouchsafed from the "holy mother" to her muchloved and much-loving children. Priest-ridden as the latter were, the want of self-respect and self-reliance, the want of manly independent thought and action, the habit of hanging upon others and succumbing to them, which Popery generates, tended to keep the population at ease and even satisfied beneath the sacerdotal yoke. Clerical influence then, as now, beguiled Irish patriotism to believe that English rule was the incubus to be got rid of in order to uplift the people, and that the papal supremacy must be clung to as the only protecting and sustaining agency that could deliver from what was denounced as a usurped and crushing tyranny. Little did its victims think that the papal supremacy was itself the chief tyranny.

When, therefore, Ireland first heard of the "Reformation," the intelligence stirred no kindling sympathy in her heart. Previous movements had more or less prepared other countries to welcome it. England had had its Wycliffe: Bohemia, its Huss and Jerome: Switzerland had its Zuingle: Germany, its Luther: France, its Calvin: Scotland, its Knox. But in Ireland no herald had come to prepare the way of the Lord: no native champion had arisen there to assert His claims upon her homage: no Irishman ventured to raise a banner for his brethren to rally round and escape from

their Babylonian thrall: no Irishman lifted his voice to warn his brethren of the "mystery of iniquity" that bewitched them, and to proclaim to them the "mystery of godliness" which brings freedom and health, and life for evermore. What was at first, and for not a short time afterwards, done to make Ireland Protestant, was for the most part effected by the English government obliging the clergy and laity to adopt the English ritual, as an obedience due to the king's will, and to be enforced by the king's authority. The project was dealt with as a matter of state-regimen more than of conscience towards God. The aim was rather to secure conformity of "bodily exercise" with outward regulations, than to renew the spirit to the faith of Christ; and this conformity was sought by the application of pains and penalties, more than by the intelligent and kind persuasions of Christianity. Happily, there has been since learned "a more excellent way."

When Henry received the crown, he was a zealous Romanist. Some dozen years afterwards came forth his book on the Seven Sacraments, written against Luther, and which obtained for him and his successors, from the pope, the title of "Defender of the Faith." In course of time, he found it convenient to repudiate the papacy of Rome, and appropriate its prerogatives to himself over his own realm. But Romanism was still to be the religion of his country; the principal change being that he who was its sovereign was to be its pope also. Cardinal Wolsey, when legate, had seized forty monasteries, and applied

their properties to found a new college at Oxford. Henry judged that he could now do at his pleasure what Wolsey had done; and he disposed of the religious houses and estates in his kingdom according to his royal will and pleasure. That he still designed no change of creed, except in the matter of supremacy, is evident from the act passed by his parliament, and called the "Bloody Bill," which, by its first provision, consigned any party who denied the "real presence" to death by burning, and allowed no mitigation of the sentence even if the heresy were solemnly abjured. After Henry's marriage with Catherine Parr, in 1543, he became less hostile to the reformers. But it was not till the accession of his son, Edward VI., that the royalty of England became truly engaged for Protestantism. Next arose

Mary, and, with her, Romanism returned to the high place from which it had been expelled. She was followed by Elizabeth, when a "uniformity" which excluded Romanism and often tried to annihilate English Puritanism, was affirmed, and was continued under her successor, James I.

It may be thought that the contents of the foregoing paragraphs are foreign to our subjectthat they concern England, Ireland, and the Reformation, rather than Dublin. But the wellinformed reader is aware how much proceedings about religion bore on the affairs of the city, and how closely the history of Ireland's metropolis is interwoven with that of Ireland itself, and of England also.

George Brown, provincial of the Augustinians