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Low intellectual state of the clergy.

same may be cited the charge made by the jury of Clonmel to the king's commissioners, in 1537, of several of the regular priests in that part, who kept lemans or harlots, and had wives and children; as well as an Act of Parliament, which was passed not many years after, namely, in the eleventh year of Queen Elizabeth, 1569, in consequence of a discovery made by Sir Henry Sydney, the lord deputy, of the great abuse of the clergy of Munster and Connaught, in admitting unworthy persons to ecclesiastical dignities, which had not lawfulness of birth; but were descended of unchaste and unmarried abbots, priors, deans, chaunters, and such like, getting into the said dignities either with force, simony, friendship, or other corrupt means, to the great overthrow of God's holy Church, and the evil example of all honest congregations"."

The intellectual condition of the clergy seems to have been at this period one of great depression. The character given of them in that respect by Archbishop Browne, in the reign of King Henry the Eighth, 1535, appears just, and applicable to those of the preceding ages. "This island hath been for a long time held in ignorance by the Romish orders; and as for their secular orders, they be in a manner as ignorant as the people, being not able to say mass, or pronounce the words, they not knowing what they themselves say in the Roman tongue".' And when a similar character of ignorance and illiteracy was attributed to the priests shortly after

"Irish stat., 11 Eliz. c. 6.
12 ROBERT WARE's Reformation
of the Church of Ireland, in the

Life and Death of George Browne,
Archbishop of Dublin.

by the Lord Deputy, Sir Anthony St. Leger in the presence of Archbishop Dowdall, the great advocate of the Papacy, it met with no contradiction.

of education.

Some of the higher dignitaries, indeed, are recorded as constant and assiduous in exercising the office of preachers", and as possessed of learning, which they probably acquired by their education at the English or continental universities. But, for want of places the instruction of the great body of the parochial clergy, provision must have been hardly at all attainable. About the middle of the fourteenth century, Richard Fitz-Ralph, archbishop of Armagh, who is commemorated as a learned divine and an able and diligent preacher, and who left behind him testimonies of his literary qualifications in a manuscript book of sermons, which he preached partly in London, Lichfield, and other places in England; partly at Drogheda, Dundalk, Trim, and other churches in his province; and partly at Avignon in France; appears to have been desirous of procuring for others similar advantages of education to those which he had himself enjoyed. He accordingly sent three or four of the secular priests of his diocese into England to study divinity at Oxford; but they were forced soon to return, because they could not find there a Bible to be sold". Facilities of that kind were hardly likely to be more purchasable in Ireland; meanwhile in the latter country places of domestick education were few and ill provided.

Armagli.

From ancient writers of reputation and credit we University of are informed, that there were of old time schools or academies in Ireland, to which not natives only, but

13 WARE'S Bishops, pp. 82, 291.

14 LEWIS'S History of the Translations of the Bible.

Attempts to establish an univer

sity in Dublin;

the British, Saxons, and Scots, resorted for education. But in the comparatively modern times now under review, or the three or four centuries preceding the Reformation, these had for the most part passed away, with the exception of that of Armagh, the high estimation of which was attested by a synod of twenty-six bishops, convened by the primate in 1162, who decreed, that "no person for the time to come should be admitted a public reader in divinity, unless he had been a student, fostered or adopted by Armagh "." But this single institution was insufficient for the necessities of the country; and the places of others, which had fallen into decay, were not effectively supplied by new foundations, notwithstanding the attempts which had been occasionally made for that purpose.

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Thus in 1310, John Lech, archbishop of Dublin, formed a plan for founding an university for scholars, in that city; and procured a bull from Pope Clement the Fifth, dated July 10, 1311. But the archbishop's death in 1313, before the project had been matured, prevented its execution".

In 1320, the scheme was again undertaken by the succeeding archbishop, Alexander Bicknor, who renewed the foundation, and procured a confirmation of it from the Pope, John the Twenty-second. The instrument, which contains the rules for its government, by a chancellor and two proctors, is to be seen in WARE's Antiquities of Ireland, page 37; and a divinity lecture was afterwards instituted by King Edward the Third, and his protection extended to all students resorting to this university, "conscious,"

15 WARE'S Annals, p. 36.
16 WARE'S Bishops, page 60;

STUART'S History of Armagh, pp. 140, 592.

17 WARE'S Bishops, p. 330.

18

as his majesty expresses himself, "of the benefits arising from such studies, and especially as thereby virtue was propagated and peace maintained "." But there appears to have been no provision of a special endowment; and thus, the maintenance of the scholars failing, the university, by degrees, came to nothing, though some traces of it remained in the time of King Henry the Eighth; for in the provincial synod, holden in Christ Church, Dublin, Walter Fitzsimons, then archbishop, the suffragan bishops, and the clergy of the province, granted certain stipends to be paid annually to the lecturers or readers of the university".

heda.

In 1465 also, at a parliament, convened in Drog- And at Drogheda, by Thomas, earl of Desmond, an act was passed for founding an university in that town, and endowing it with privileges similar to those of the university of Oxford". The want, however, of sufficient revenues seems to have been fatal to this as to the former project.

SECTION IV.

Monastick Institutions.

Their number.

Their number. Orders. Some of
Monks and Friars,
False principles in

their Rulers Lords of Parliament.
how distinguished from each other.
the foundation of these establishments. Practical evil in
them predominant over good.

SOME substitute for the defect of schools and univer-
sities was supplied by the monastick institutions,
which were very numerous in Ireland; and had been
at an early period much cherished and frequented, so
that in the seventh century the monks had multi-

18 Rot. Pat. 32 Edw. III., cited in MASON's St. Patrick's Cathedral, P. 101.

19 WARE'S Bishops, p. 344.
20 Stat. Roll, 5 Edw. IV. LoF-
TUS' MS. Marsh's Library.

Great number of

monastick insti

tutions, at an

early period.

Probable amount of them at the dissolution.

plied to such an extent, as to have been supposed
equal to all the other inhabitants of the kingdom.
Such is the computation of Bishop Nicholson, as
quoted by Archdall in the introduction to his "Mo-
nasticon Hibernicum," p. 11: which contains an
account of above eleven hundred of these institu-
tions; augmented by his subsequent inquiries, as
stated in the introduction to GROSE's Irish Antiqui-
ties, p. 16, by about three hundred more.
Of many

of these, however, very little, not even the exact
situation, is known; and many others had lost their
monastick character, or had been incorporated with
others, before the era of the Reformation.

Sir James Ware, in his "Annals," enumerates three hundred and eighty-two, purposely omitting those which had been erected in the first times of the Church of Ireland, and were afterwards converted into parish churches; indeed, by far the greater number of those, which he enumerates, had been founded within three or four centuries of their dissolution, in the reign of King Henry the Eighth. Several abbeys and monasteries, which had been omitted in this enumeration, were added, partly from records, and partly from subsequent writers, by Harris, in his edition of WARE's History and Antiquities; and he also supplied from records, as far as they gave light to the subject, the names of the grantees or assignees of the several monastick lands after the suppression. The catalogue thus supplied amounts to about five hundred and sixty-five, among which several of an early date are specified as having been made parish churches and bishops' sees, and several have no notice of their ultimate assignment. Thus the number of those, which were suppressed by King Henry the Eighth, according to this enumera

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