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Evils not grappled with by government.

at instructing the people.

have been ever fairly grappled with by the governing powers, or to have called forth a great and simultaneous effort for their remedy: so that the members of the Church were left in a condition of lamentable destitution, as to the means of assembling for publick worship and instruction, or of receiving the aid of pastoral guidance for themselves or their children; and the rural districts in particular are described as presenting a spectacle of almost total abandonment and desolation.

The same observation, as to the absence of co-operating and combined exertions, under the auspices of the authorities of the kingdom, applies Partial attempts to the attempts made for the instruction of the people at large, by the instrumentality of the Irish language. Many instances have fallen under our notice of the existence of Irish incumbents or curates, of Irish readers, and Irish clerks; but these provisions seem to have been the result of individual projects of improvement, rather than of a general and united effort of authority. At the same time, they were met by united and vigorous exertions on the part of the Popish emissaries. Thus little progress appears to have been made in bringing the people in general within the fold of the Reformed Church of Ireland: whilst on the other hand, by the encouragement afforded by the Irish government to Protestant dissenters and separatists, the foundation was laid for an accumulation, in time to come, of additional impediments and perils to the well-being of the Church: the soundness of whose religious profession was also in some degree committed by incorporating with it the modern inventions of the Genevan reformer through the medium of the Lambeth Articles. But by the blessing of

Protestant dissenters.

Providence this evil was not permitted to be of long continuance: being obliterated in the succeeding reign by a recurrence to "the Apostles' doctrine," concerning God's will in man's salvation, as avowed in the professions of the early Christians, and perpetuated in the Articles of the Church of England.

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New Bull of the
Pope.

Its effect on the
Irish.

SECTION I.

Accession of the King followed by a Bull of the Pope. Condition of the Church in general; particularly of the Diocese of Armagh. Project of allowing Privileges to the Papists. Judgment of the Primate and other Bishops thereupon. Published by the Bishop of Derry. Its consequences. Measures of the Government. Proclamation irreverently received. Danger of the Archbishop of Dublin from an Insurrection. Proceedings concerning the Papists.

THE accession of King Charles the First to the throne was soon followed by a bull of Pope Urban the Eighth, wherein he exhorted the Catholick, or speaking more properly, the Popish subjects of the king, rather to lose their lives than to take that pernicious and unlawful oath of allegiance, whereby not only provision was made for maintaining fidelity to the King of England, but for wresting the sacred sceptre of the Universal Church from the Vicars of Almighty God; and which Paul the Fifth, his predecessor, of happy memory, had condemned as such: an exhortation which did not fail to operate on the Irish subjects of the papacy, and to encourage their naturally unquiet spirits to fresh agitation'.

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Primate Ussher

The new primate had been detained for some Return of months in England by a quartan ague, the conse- to Ireland. quence of extraordinary professional exertions in the pulpit; and, on his return to Ireland, in 1626, he found that, whatever was his accession of dignity from his late promotion, it brought no diminution of labour or difficulty; and that the state of the Church was such as to require all the exertions of her faithful sons under the new reign.

A letter of congratulation, addressed to him, soon after his promotion, by Thomas Moygne, bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh, may be here transcribed from Dr. PARR'S Collection, as opening a general prospect of the actual condition of the Irish Church.

"Most reverend, and my honourable good Lord,

Letter to him

from the Bishop

of

Kilmore,

March 26, 1625.

the growth of

the Church.

"I do congratulate, with unspeakable joy and comfort, your preferment, and that both out of the true and unfeigned love I have ever borne you, for many years continued, as also out of an assured and most firm persuasion that God hath ordained you a special instrument for the good of the Irish Church, the growth whereof, notwithstanding all his majesty's endowments and directions, receives every day more impediments than ever. And that Impediments to not only in Ulster, but begins to spread itself into other places; so that the inheritance of the Church is made arbitrary at the council table; impropriators in all places may hold all ancient customs, only they, upon whom the cure of souls is laid, are debarred; St. Patrick's Ridges, which you know belonged to the fabrick of that church, are taken away within the diocese of Armagh, the whole Revenues of the clergy, being all poor vicars and curates, by a declaration clergy taken of one of the judges this last circuit, (by what direction I know not,) without speedy remedy will be brought to much decay the which I rather mention because it is within

away.

your province. The more is taken away from the king's Augmentation to clergy, the more accrues to the Pope's: and the servitors the Popish and undertakers, who should be instruments for settling

clergy.

Importance of the Primate's station.

St. Patrick's
Ridges,

Church, do hereby advance their rents, and make the
Church poor.

"In a word, in all consultations which concern the Church, not the advice of sages, but of young counsellors, is followed. With all particulars the agents, whom we have sent over, will fully acquaint you, to whom I rest assured your lordship will afford your countenance and best assistance. And, my good lord, now remember that you sit at the stern, not only to guide us in a right course, but to be continually in action, and standing in the watch-tower to see that the Church receive no hurt. I know my Lord's Grace of Canterbury will give his best furtherance to the cause, to whom I do not doubt, but after you have fully possessed yourself thereof, you will address yourself. And so, with the remembrance of my love and duty unto you, praying for the perfect recovery of your health,

"I rest, your lordship's most true and
"Faithful servant to command,
"THO. KILMORE, &c."

"March 26, 1625*."

A particular phrase in the foregoing letter, that of "St. Patrick's Ridges," appears to require some explanation. Among the duties reserved in ancient leases, that which is denominated "ridges" occurs frequently. It appears probable that the service of a certain number of days in harvest, to which the lord was entitled, was commuted, and the duty ascertained by the measure of the space, in preference to that of time; hence a "ridge" of work, in sowing or reaping, became, by mutual consent, a substitute for the service of one or more days. The economy fund of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, that is, the fund for sustaining the fabrick and other expenses of the cathedral, received from the dioceses of the suffragan bishops a revenue, not unfrequently mentioned under the name of "St. Patrick's Ridges."

2 PARR'S Life of Ussher, p. 322.

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