preached a sermon before him, which gave great offence:* But at the censuring some officers, on the twenty-second of November, for refusing to take the oath of supremacy, he made a speech in the castle of Dublin in defence of that supremacy, for which he received a letter of thanks from his majesty. In June 1623, he was constituted a privy

*We have an account of this by himself in a letter to Lord Gran dison from Dublin, October 16, 1622, wherein he acquaints that nobleman (late Lord Deputy) that, taking his text in Rom. xiii. He beareth not the sword in vain, he expressed his wishes, that if his majesty were pleased to extend his clemency towards his subjects that were recusants, some order notwithstanding might be taken with them, that they should not give us public affronts, and take possession of our churches before our faces. "I also intreated, continues he, that, whatever connivance were used to others, the laws might be strictly executed against such as had revolted from us.' Upon this a report was raised that he had said, "The sword had rested too long in the sheath." But the reason of this address to Lord Grandison was what some gave out, that he had taxed his Lordship with being too remiss in prosecuting the papists during his government, which he here expressly denies. However that be, it is certain he fell under the displeasure of his metropolitan, Dr. Hampton, Archbishop of Armagh, who wrote him the following letter:

6 My Lord,

IN the exceptions taken by the recusants against your sermon, I cannot be affected, as Gallio was at the beating of Sosthenes, to take nothing for them. I am sensible of that which my brethren suffer: And, if my advice had been required, I should have counselled your Lordship to give lenitives, of your own accord, for all which was conceived over-harsh or sharp. The inquisition, whether an offence were given or taken, may add to the flame already kindled, and provoke further displeasure; it is not like to pacify anger. But let your case be as good as Peter's was, when the brethren charged him injuriously with preaching to the uncircumcised, the great apostle was content to give them a public satisfaction, Acts ii. and it wrought good effects; for the text says, his auditors, quieverunt et glorificaverunt Deum, it brought peace to the congregation, and glory to GoD. My noble Lord Deputy hath propounded a way of pacification, that your Lordship should satisfy such of the Lords as could be present, wherein my poor endeavours shall not be wanting. Howbeit (to say ingenuously as I think) that is not likely to have success; for my Lord of Kilkenny and your other friends, trying their strength in that kind at Trim, prevailed not, but can tell your Lordship what is expeated. And if my wishes can take place, seeing so many men having something against you, tarry not till they complain, but prevent it by a voluntary retraction, and milder interpretation of the points offensive, especially of drawing the sword, of which spirit we are not, nor ought to be; our weapons are not carnal, but spiritual. Withal, it will not be amiss, in mine opinion, for your Lordship to withdraw yourself from these parts, and to spend more time in your own diocese, that such as will not hear your doctrine, may be drawn to love and reverence your Lordship for your hospitality and conversation.'

This speech is too long to be inserted here, and contains nothing more than the common arguments. However, it had so good an effect,

that

privy-counsellor of Ireland, and went not long after to England, by his majesty's special command, in order to carry on a work, which he had begun some time before, concerning the antiquity of the British churches. This business keeping him there till the death of Dr. Cristopher Hampton, Archbishop of Armagh, in January 1624, made way for his advancement to that see, upon which occasion he prepared to return to Ireland; but being seized with a quartan ague, which held him nine months, it was August 1626, when he arrived there. Before he left England, he had a disputation with a popish priest at Drayton in Northamptonshire, the seat of Lord Mordaunt, afterwards Earl of Peterborough, who thereby became a convert to the protestant religion. He was scarce recovered from his ague, when Lord Mordaunt, a zealous Roman catholic, being greatly desirous to bring his lady into the pale of that church, concluded, that there could be no better or more certain way of bringing it about, than to procure a disputation to be held between two learned and principal persons, one of each side, at which his lady should be present. In that resolution he chose, for the champion of his own cause, the jesuit Beaumont, whose true name was Rook wood, being brother to that Rookwood who was executed for the gunpowder treason. Against this antagonist Lady Peterborough chose our Primate, who, notwithstanding his health was not sufficiently confirmed to engage in such a task, yet from the ardent zeal for the reformed doctrine, with which he was constantly animated, and to save a soul from falling into the wiles of an artful jesuit, he did not refuse to comply with her ladyship's request. The place appointed for holding the disputation was my Lord's seat at Drayton in Northamptonshire, a place very proper for the business, as being furnished with a most copious library of the writings of all the ancient fathers of the church, which were ready at hand, if it should happen (which is ordinarily the case) that any of them should be referred to in the engagement. The heads of the dispute were agreed to be upon transubstantiation, the invocation of saints, of images, and the perpetual

that several of the offenders being satisfied they might lawfully take the oath of supremacy, did thereby avoid the sentence of Præmunire, then ready to be pronounced against them. It must be observed, that there had been a synodical meeting (as it is called) of the popish clergy, together with some common lawyers, and monks of the Cistertian, Franciscan, and Jesuit orders, wherein a decree was made, declaring the absolute unlawfulness of taking this oath of supremacy.

perpetual visibility of the church. After it had been held for three days, five hours each day, in which our Primate sustained the part of respondent, that office for the fourth day lay upon Beaumont, according to the regulation settled by himself. But no jesuit then appeared. On the contrary, he sent a letter to the baron, with an excuse for the default, alleging, That all the arguments which he had formed had slipt out of his memory, nor was he able by any effort to recollect them, imputing the cause of the misfortune to a just judgment of Gop upon him, for undertaking of his own accord, without the licence of his superiors, to engage in a dispute with a person of so great eminence and learning as the Primate.' Such a shameful tergiversation sunk deeply into the mind of Lord Mordaunt, so that, after some conferences with the Primate, he renounced popery, and continued in the profession of the protestant faith to the end of his life.

This account is given in the life of our Archbishop by Dr. Nicholas Bernard, who says he had it from an eye and ear-witness. And it is in a great measure confirmed by the reproach thrown upon Beaumont by Chaloner, a secular priest, who in a piece wrote against the jesuit, admonishes him to beware of Drayton House, lest he should there chance to light upon another Usher, and be again put to flight, to the great disgrace both of himself and his profession. As to the Primate, the eminent service done by this disputation to Lady Peterborough could not but be very sensibly felt by her; and that it was so, she gave his Grace sufficient proofs in that extraordinary kindness and respect which she shewed to him all his life after. King James granted him the temporalities of the archbishopric, notwithstanding his absence, and he was ordered four hundred pounds sterling out of the revenues of Ireland, by King Charles I. not long after his accession to the throne. Being now at the head of the Irish church, he omitted nothing which might either reform the abuses, or relieve the wants of it, both in regard to doctrine and discipline. For that purpose he made frequent personal visitations, admonishing those of the clergy whom he found faulty, and giving excellent advice and directions to the rest, charging them to use the liturgy of the church in all public administrations, and to preach and catechize diligently in their respective cures, and to make the holy Scriptures the rule as well as the subject of their doctrine and sermons. He also endea

voured to reform the proctors, apparitors, and other officers of the ecclesiastical courts, where there were many great complaints of abuses and exactions in his predecessor's time, keeping a watchful eye to defeat the restless endeavours of its nearest and most dangerous enemies, the papists. In this spirit, he opposed vigorously a design which was set on foot by them in the winter after his arrival, for granting a more full toleration to them.*

At

the

The propositions to which the papists offered to consent, in case of a more full toleration, were, to pay their quota towards maintaining five hundred horse and five thousand foot soldiers: Upon which occasion a general assembly of the nation, both protestants and papists, was called, by the then Lord Deputy Falkland, in the hall of the Castle of Dublin. The bishops, by the Lord Primate's invitation, met first at his house, where a protestation was drawn up in form, importing, that the popish religion being superstitious and idolatrous, a full toleration of it would be sinful, and moreover a matter of most dangerous consequence. This paper was signed by our Archbishop at the head of eleven prelates, one of whom (the Bishop of Derry) at the next meeting of the assembly, April 23, 1627, published it at Christ Church before the Lord Deputy and Council in the middle of his sermon, wherein he declared warmly against the toleration; in which he was seconded by the Primate, in a sermon preached the Sunday following, before the same auditory. Hereupon other resolutions were taken. Mr. Bayle having transcribed Bates's account of this proceeding of the bishops, makes the following remark: I am to observe, that our Archbishop and his suffragans acted according to the principles of those who are the most rigid enemies to toleration, they not grounding their declaration upon political reasons, like moderate men of that party, but only on the nature of the worship in the popish communion, without once mentioning its persecuting spirit, which is the only reason why even such as favour toleration suppose that it ought not to be tolerated.' To pass by this critic's rash assertion, that the favourers of toleration ground their opinion of exempting popery only upon account of its persecnting spirit, the contrary of which is notoriously evident in our famous poet, Milton, who gives the very same reason for denying a toleration to popery with our Archbishop, viz. its idolatry. It will be sufficient to represent the true state of the case with respect to the Primate's conduct, which probably was unknown to Bayle. The papists, here understood by the Irish bishops' protestation, were such as either descended of the race of the ancient English, or such as held their estates from the crown, who being generally loyal subjects to his majesty, thereupon took this occasion to propose the suspension of the laws against recusants. This raised a murmur among several of the protestants, for whose satisfaction it might be very necessary for the bishops to make the afore-mentioned declaration. But that the Primate had no such spirit of intolerancy as is here intimated by his accuser, is evident from what followed, which was, That the protestants, refusing to contribute their quota to the support of a standing army, were assured that the laws against recusants should remain in full force; and that if the papists, on the other hand, would give nothing without such a suspension, they might perhaps agree that the condition of the kingdom required some standing forces. It was resolved therefore, by the Lord Deputy and Council, that the Pri mate should, in regard of his great esteem with all parties, declare, in a

speech

the same time observing the daily growth and increase of Arminianism, which was looked on by him as a very dangerous doctrine, he employed some time in searching into the original of the predestinarian controversy, and meeting with a curiosity upon that subject, he published it in 1631, at Dublin, in 4to. it is entitled, Goteschalci et predestinariana Controversia ab Eo mote historia. Our Author had begun twelve years before to make collections for a history of predestinarianism; but, upon the coming out of that history by Vossius, he dropped his design of publishing any thing of it except these written by Goteschalc himself, which were not mentioned by Vossius, and had never been printed. He had procured them out of Corbey Abbey in France. Thus he writes to Dr. Ward, who had assisted him about the same time with some observations touching the nickname of the predes

speech to the whole assembly, the true state of the kingdom, and the necessity of a standing army for the defence thereof against any foreign invasions or intestine commotions; and consequently, that a competent supply was needful for that purpose, and to be raised, without any condition whatsoever, as well by the Roman catholic as protestant subjects. The speech is too long to be inserted here, though it is an exquisite proof of his Lordship's abilities in matters of state; and being transmitted by the desire of the Lord Deputy to the King, was well approved by him. The following passage in it is apparently a full vindication of the Archbishop against Bayle's accusation of a persecuting spirit. Where the burden is borne, says he, in common, and the aid required to be given to the prince by his subjects of difierent judgments in religion, it stands not with the ground of common reason, that such a condition should be annexed unto the gift, as must of necessity deter the one party from giving at all upon such terms as are repugnant to their consciences: As therefore, on the one hand, if we desire that the recusants should join with us in granting a common aid, we should not put in the condition of executing the statute, which we are sure they would not yield unto: so, on the other hand, if they would have us to join with them in the same contribution, they should not require the condition of suspending the statute to be added, which we in conscience cannot yield unto. The way will be then freely to grant unto his majesty, without all manner of conditions that may seem unequal unto any side, and to refer unto his own sacred breast how far he will be pleased to extend or abridge his favour; of whose lenity, in forbearing to execute the statute, our recusants have found such experience, that they cannot expect a greater liberty, by giving any thing that is demanded, than now already they do freely enjoy.' The inference from this argument is obvious: That though it could not consist with a conscientious regard for the safety of the true religion, to consent that popery, as being idolatrous, should have the sanction of a law to warrant the exercise of it, yet he expressly approves his majesty's lenity in forbearing to restrain that exercise, except where the safety of the public, and thence of the established religion therewith, makes it necessary. In short, he is for keeping the rod in his hands, but to use it sparingly against them. Is not this the principle which is universally maintained at this day by the discreetest favourers of toleration?