་ 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. Armagh 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. 32, 291. 14 LEWIS's History of the Translations of the Bible, Attempts to cstablish an uni versity 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 publick 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. 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. 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 1." 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. Orders. Some of their Rulers Lords of Parliament. Monks and Friars, how distinguished from each other. False principles in the foundation of these establishments. Practical evil in them predominant over good. SOME substitute for the defect of schools and universities 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. 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 " Monasticon Hibernicum," p. 11: which contains an account of above eleven hundred of these institutions; augmented by his subsequent inquiries, as stated in the introduction to GROSE's Irish Antiquities, 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 or bishop's 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 tion, does not vary materially from Ware's enumeration of three hundred and eighty-two. Possibly this ought to be increased by the addition of some of those contained in ARCHDALL'S Monasticon. Otherwise the sum of the monastick institutions in Ireland, at the period in question, falls short of four hundred. These contained devotees of a variety of orders: Various monasAugustinians, Benedictines, and Cistercians, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Carmelites; in the poet's language: Eremites and friars, White, black, and gray, with all their trumpery'. tick orders. Of all the monastick establishments of Ireland, Augustinians. those of the Augustinian order were the most numerous: the more so in outward appearance, because the several monasteries, which had been founded in that country whilst the Irish Church continued to be independent of the Roman See, were required by Pope Innocent the Second, in the Lateran council of 1139, to submit to the rule of St. Augustine; so that they became afterwards reckoned among the institutions of that order. Inclusive of those, the houses for regular canons were two hundred and twenty, and for nuns sixty-five. However, exclusively of those, the monasteries of the regular canons of St. Augustine exceeded most others in number. And including the Aroasian canons, who Aroasians. were a branch of the Augustines, reformed about 1097, in Aroasia, an abbey in the diocese of Arras, they amounted at the dissolution to about seventy. At the same time, the houses of the nuns, or regular canonesses of the order, were about twenty. Under the same general head of Augustinians, Victorines. came the regular canons of St. Victor, of whom 1 MILTON's Paradise Lost. B. iii. v. 474. |