CHAPTER VI.

MELLIFONT IN TROUBLOUS TIMES.

"But I must needs confess That 'tis a thing impossible to frame Conceptions equal to the soul's desires; And the most difficult of tasks to keep Heights which the soul is competent to gain." (_Wordsworth._)

Sixty years of uninterrupted prosperity have passed over Mellifont, during which period it has been honoured by princes and people alike, and even the English Kings have marked their esteem for it by heaping fresh favours on it. It was still flourishing in 1201, when Thomas O'Connor, Archbishop of Armagh, whom the Annals of St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin, style "a noble and worthy man," chose it as his burial-place, and was buried there with great honour. He was brother to Roderick O'Connor, King of Connaught. It was at his instance that Joceline wrote his Life of St. Patrick.

In 1203, King John "of his own fee" granted a new charter confirming that given by his father some years before, and also giving the monks free customs, together with the fishery on both sides of the Boyne.

In 1206, Benedict and Gerald, monks of Mellifont, were deputed by Eugene, Archbishop of Armagh, to wait on the King and to tender him, on the Archbishop's behalf, three hundred marks of silver and three of gold for restitution of the lands and liberties belonging to that See. It was the King's custom to appropriate the revenues of the vacant bishoprics, and on the confirmation by the Pope of the bishop-elect, he issued a writ of restitution of the temporalities, or episcopal possessions and rights. The King, in order to keep the temporalities the longer, often refused his "_congé d'elire_," without which an election was invalid by the civil law. Soon after the Invasion, King Henry II. held in his possession, pending the appointment of new prelates, one archbishopric, five bishoprics, and three abbeys, here in Ireland.

In 1211, Thomas was Abbot, and seven years later, Carus, or Cormac O'Tarpa, Abbot, and presumably immediate successor to Thomas, was made Bishop of Achonry, which See he resigned in 1226, and returned to Mellifont, where he died that same year, and was buried there. Some two-and-one-half miles north of Mellifont, and one-half mile east of Collon, between that village and Tinure, there is a crossing of the roads still popularly known as "Tarpa's Cross." Local tradition has it that this Cormac O'Tarpa, when Abbot, was wont to walk daily from the monastery to this spot.

About that time, or in 1221, Mellifont, from some unrecorded cause, fell from its first fervour, but only for a very brief period; for the remedy applied effected a thorough reform. In the Statutes of the Order for that year, the General Chapter authorised the Abbot of Clairvaux to set things right by bringing in monks from other monasteries, and so, as it were, infuse new and healthier blood into the monastic life there. As no further mention is made of the matter, the trouble, whatever its nature was, must have been permanently removed.

In 1227, Luke Netterville, Archbishop of Armagh, was buried here. It was he who, three years previous, founded the Dominican monastery in Drogheda, of which, now, only the Magdalen Tower remains. And in that year (1227), Gerald, a monk of Mellifont, was elected Bishop of Dromore.

In 1229, the King granted to the Abbot and Community of Mellifont a Tuesday market in their town of Collon.

In 1233, the General Chapter authorised all the Abbots of the Order to have the Word of God preached on Sundays and festivals, to their servants and retainers, in some suitable place. And in 1238, the King gave a new confirmation to the monks of Mellifont.

In 1248, the General Chapter granted permission to the English and Irish Abbots of the Order, to hold deliberations on important local matters in their respective countries. The Abbots of Mellifont, of St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin, and of Duiske, Co. Kilkenny, were empowered to convoke all the other Irish Abbots of the Order for consultation; the assembly thus somewhat partaking of the nature of a Provincial Chapter.

In 1250, no Englishman would be admitted to profession at Mellifont. In 1269, David O'Brogan, who had been a monk of this house, and afterwards Bishop of Clogher, was buried here. In 1272, Hore Abbey, near Cashel, was founded from Mellifont. In 1275, the General Chapter decreed that in the admission of novices into the Order there should be no question of nationality.

Hitherto, the Cistercians confined themselves, in discharging the offices of their sacred ministry, to their guests, servants, and the sick poor in the hospitals at their gates; but now, the altered circumstances of the times demand a change in their usages and impose fresh burdens on them, for which they get no credit. The new Orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic had settled down in this country, and were attracting a large percentage of the young men, who, till then, entered the ranks of the Lay Brethren, and managed the granges, or outlying farms, under the Cellarer. In consequence, therefore, of the insufficiency of their numbers to work the farms profitably, it was found necessary to lease these granges to tenants, and hence the origin of many villages and towns that, in several instances, arose on the site of the granges. The chapel attached to the grange (for every grange had its chapel for the use of the Brothers in charge) was converted into a parish church for the new population that clustered around it. Of this church the monks became the pastors, except when it lay at too great distance to be served from the monastery; in which case, the monks employed secular priests. They built schools also, where the children of the tenants and dependants received _gratuitously_ from the monks themselves, an education similar to that at present imparted in our primary schools.

Though the study of Sacred Scripture, Theology, and Canon Law was encouraged in the Order from its foundation; yet it was not until 1245 that studies were fully organised by drawing up a curriculum that should be obligatory. In that year it was ordained by the General Chapter that in every Province there should be a central monastery to which the monks should repair to read the prescribed course of studies under members of the Order, who had graduated at some university. We are not told which of the Irish monasteries was selected as the House of Studies; but, in 1281, the General Chapter decided and decreed that in all the larger abbeys such Houses of Studies should be established.

There is an entry in the Annals of St. Mary's Abbey, at the year 1281, giving the price of cattle at that time. As it is interesting it is given here: viz., twenty shillings each for a horse, a cow, or a bullock.

In 1306, Mellifont first experienced the baleful effects of racial jealousies and bickerings; for the monks could not, or would not, agree to elect an Abbot; and during their dissensions, the King seized the possessions of the monastery. We are not informed how matters terminated on that occasion.

In 1316, the General Chapter ordered that the English, Welsh, and Irish Abbots should send some of their monks, in proportion to the number in their respective monasteries, to the University of Oxford, to be educated there. A few years previous, the Earl of Cornwall endowed at Oxford the College of St. Bernard (now St. John's), for the Cistercians. How far the Irish monks availed of this college cannot be known; probably those within the Pale did largely benefit by it. One who obtained an unenviable notoriety by his intemperate invectives against the Mendicant Orders, was educated there--Henry Crump, an Englishman, and monk of the Abbey of Baltinglas. But it is very dubious that the "_mere_ Irish" ventured to cross its threshold. They would abstain from doing so from prudential motives.

The fourteenth century was ushered in by the repetition of feuds between the Anglo-Irish and the Irish; and, as it grew older, the former fought amongst themselves, with Irish auxiliaries on both sides. It may be here remarked, as a curious historical fact, that it was the Irish who fought the battles for the English Crown in Ireland; it was they, too, who retained their country subject to that dominion, according to Sir John Davis (_Discoverie_, p. 639); for no army ever came out of England from the time of King John, except the expeditionary army of Richard II. The few forces subsequently sent over, until the twenty-ninth year of Queen Elizabeth, were to quell the rebellions of the English settlers.

The most disastrous calamity in Ireland in this century, next to the great plague of 1348, or the "Black Death," as it was called, was Bruce's invasion in 1315. Friar Clyn tells us in his Annals, that Bruce and his followers "went through all the country, burning, slaying, depredating, spoiling towns and castles, and even churches, as they went and as they returned." As a result the country was visited by a dreadful famine, and, moreover, the Pope, writing to the Archbishops of Dublin and Cashel in 1317, alludes to scandals, murders, conflagrations, sacrileges, and rapine, as following from that invasion. Though Bruce failed in his object to overthrow the English power in Ireland, yet he so far succeeded, that he weakened it considerably.

In the year 1316 (according to Ussher), O'Neill addressed his famous Remonstrance to Pope John XXII., in which, amongst other complaints, he remarked, that the religious communities were prohibited by the law from admitting anyone not an Englishman into monasteries within the Pale. In response to this, the Pope sent two Cardinals to investigate the matter, and also wrote a letter to King Edward II., exhorting him to adopt merciful measures towards the Irish. The letter had not much effect, and the cruelties and injustice continued; but, about twenty years later, there was exhibited an unprecedented tendency on the part of the Anglo-Irish and the Irish towards incorporation. The Irish people clung to the great Geraldine family with a romantic affection which that chivalrous race fully reciprocated. So, too, did they lean towards the rivals of the Geraldines, the Ormondes, and to other Anglo-Irish barons, who, likewise, had adopted Irish customs and sirnames. English power in this country had grown to be regarded as merely nominal, and the administration of the law and the office of Lord Deputy could no longer be committed to one or other of the two principal families (the Geraldine or Ormonde), to whom the Deputyship had been usually entrusted. To preclude the danger of these haughty noblemen attempting to arrogate the state of the independent native chieftains, and to firmly establish the English power, a Parliament, which assembled at Nottingham, in the seventeenth of Edward III. (1343), enacted laws for the reformation of the Irish Government. A few months previous to the sitting of this Parliament, Sir Ralph Ufford had been sent over as Lord Deputy, to stamp out this incipient spirit of independence, and to impede the fusion of the two races. This nobleman, by rigid and cruel measures, executed the nefarious intentions of the English Parliament. He appropriated the goods of others, plundered, without discrimination, the clergy, the laity, the rich and the poor; assigning the public welfare as a pretext. He broke down the pride of the Earl of Desmond, and for a while seized his estates; but, on Ufford's recall to England and the appointment of Sir Walter Bermingham as his successor, Desmond was restored to royal favour. Gradually the old animus was revived, and old dormant jealousies between the two races were awakened, until, in the year 1376, the "Statute of Kilkenny" threw the whole nation into a state of commotion and chaos, and aroused a fierce hatred between the Anglo-Irish and the later arrivals from England, who were styled by that Act, "the English born in England." The latter despised the former and called them "Irish Dogg;" the Anglo-Irish retorted, giving them the name of "English Hobbe," or churl. These bickerings were reprobated by the said Statute, which, at the same time, banned the whole race of the native Irish. Sir John Davis writes of it: "It was manifest from these laws that those who had the government of Ireland under the Crown of England intended to make a perpetual separation between the English settled in Ireland and the native Irish, in the expectation that the English should in the end root out the Irish." And another Englishman writes of this Statute: "Imagination can scarcely devise an extremity of antipathy, hatred, and revenge, to which this code of aggravation was not calculated to provoke both nations" (Plowden, _Historical Review of the State of Ireland_.) The foregoing summary of the condition of affairs in Ireland in the fourteenth century has been given, in order to illustrate and explain the bald historical facts handed down to us having reference to Mellifont during the same period.

It will be remembered that in the year 1316, O'Neil complained to the Pope that Irishmen were by law excluded from entering monasteries within the Pale; accordingly, we read that in 1322, the monks of Mellifont, amongst whom the English element then prevailed, would admit no man to profession there who had not previously sworn that he was not an Irishman. Cox, who derives his information from some old document in the Tower of London, tells us that in 1323, the General Chapter of the Order strongly denounced this pernicious practice, but there is no such decree, nor is there any allusion to it in Martène at that date. That spirit seems to have been gratifying to King Edward II.; for, in 1324, he complained to the Pope of the violation of the law of exclusion, and Nicholas of Lusk, who was then Abbot, was superseded; very likely, was summarily deposed, for the infraction of it.

At that very time, some of the other Cistercian monasteries under the protection of the native chieftains, and totally composed of Irishmen, were in a most prosperous condition, and merited the genuine esteem of princes and people. Thus, the Abbey of Assaroe, or Ballyshannon, under the fostering care of the Princes of Tyrconel, attained celebrity by the regularity of its monks and the learning and sanctity of its Abbots, three of whom were made Bishops at no distant intervals. Of Boyle Abbey, Co. Roscommon, the same can also be said; for it throve and flourished without royal favour or charter. On the other hand, Mellifont had a plethora of charters, for which the monks there must have paid dearly. But, surrounded as it was by covetous and not over-scrupulous neighbours in lawless times, such safeguards were decidedly necessary. So, in 1329, Edward III. granted them a confirmation of all former privileges, together with the right of free warren in all their manors; and again in 1348, he gave them a fresh confirmation, with the right to erect a prison in any of their lands in the Co. Meath, and also the power to erect a pillory and gallows in their town of Collon. The Abbot then, as a temporal lord over his own manors, had power of life and death over his vassals therein; but he never exercised the authority so vested in him by condemning anyone to death, nay, even, he refrained from adjudicating on civil matters, as is seen by dispensations granted by Popes to Irish Cistercian Abbots freeing them from the obligation of acting as Justices.

It is recorded that in 1329, in the battle in which the Louth men killed their new Earl, John Birmingham, "there fell Caech O'Carroll, that famous tympanist and harper, so pre-eminent that he was a phoenix in his art, and with him fell about twenty tympanists who were his scholars. He was called Caech O'Carroll because his eyes were not straight, but squinted; and if he was not the first inventor of chord music, yet of all his predecessors and contemporaries, he was the corrector, the teacher, and director."

How it fared with Mellifont during the fearful pestilence that ravaged all Europe in 1348, is not related. Friar Clyn, the Franciscan Annalist, wrote of it:--"That pestilence deprived of human inhabitants, villages and cities, and castles and towns, so that there was scarcely found a man to dwell therein." The mortality in the religious houses was very great, and in some instances, only a few monks were left out of large and numerous communities. It is said that in these countries the religious Orders never recovered from the loss of the best and most learned of their members who were then swept away.

In 1351, Abbot Reginald was charged, as if it were a crime, and found guilty, of having within two years collected of his own money, and from the Abbots of Boyle, Knockmoy, Bective, and Cashel, and of having remitted the sum of 664 florins to the Abbot of Clairvaux, while war was being waged between England and France. But there was no treason or treasonable intent in that; for the money was to defray the current expenses of the Order, and was levied off every monastery in proportion to the resources of each. Richard, Coeur de Lion, Alexander II. of Scotland, and Bela IV. of Hungary had, in their day, contributed largely to this fund.

In 1358, the Abbot of Mellifont made good his claim to three weirs upon the Boyne, at Rosnaree, Knowth, and Staleen; but, in 1366, he was indicted at Trim, for erecting an unlawful weir at Oldbridge, when the Jury found against him, and he was ordered to reduce the weir to a certain breadth and space, and he, himself, was sentenced to a term of imprisonment; but, on his paying a fine of £10 to Roland de Shalesford, the sheriff of the Co. Meath, this sentence was commuted. Ten years later, John Terrour, successor to this Abbot, was sued for obstructing the King's passage of the Boyne.

In the years 1373 and 1377, the Abbot was summoned to attend Parliaments held at Dublin and Castledermot respectively. In the former Parliament, one hundred shillings were ordered to be levied from him, as his portion of the subsidy granted to the Lord Justice, William de Windesore, by the same Parliament. In 1380, the King gave a special mandate that no _mere_ Irishman should be admitted to profession in this abbey. In 1381 and 1382, the Abbot attended Parliaments held in Dublin, and in 1400, the King granted a royal confirmation of all the land, manors, and liberties, bestowed on the abbey by former charters; and in 1402, he pardoned the Abbot and monks for their having admitted Irishmen to profession. However, they were mulcted in the sum of £50. In 1415, Leynagh Bermingham, William Davison, and John D'Alton were committed to the custody of the Abbot to be kept by him as hostages for the allegiance of their respective fathers. In 1424, the Abbot, with the Archbishop of Armagh and Nicholas Taaffe, was appointed Justice and Conservator of the Peace for the Co. Louth.

The allusions to Mellifont during the remainder of this century are very few and uninteresting. Whether, or not, it shared the fate of many other Irish monasteries at that time and had no regular Abbot, but one who was called Abbot _in commendam_, is not known; but the presumption is that it had not a regular Abbot. These Abbots _in commendam_ were not monks, or members of any Religious Order; but secular clerics, not necessarily in Holy Orders. Sometimes, especially when the abuse had reached its greatest height in the fifteenth century, they were even laymen; nevertheless, they enjoyed the revenues of the abbeys committed to them, with the style and title of Abbots, but exercised no spiritual jurisdiction in their abbeys. This latter was confided to regular Priors who were selected by their own Religious superiors. When laymen held the abbeys _in commendam_ they commonly resided in them with their wives, families, retinues, servants, etc., to the distraction and interference with the monks in their regular observances, and finally, to the complete subversion of discipline. At that very time this pernicious practice had brought the whole Order to the brink of ruin; for we find the General Chapter on several occasions deploring the injuries inflicted on religion, and lamenting the havoc wrought by it, and they decided to send three of their number to Rome to implore the Pope's protection against the growing evil. Still, it survived, more or less, in these countries till the Reformation. Scotland suffered more from it, apparently, than Ireland did, as can be seen from the lists furnished by Brady in his _Episcopal Succession_.

In 1476, the Abbot of Mellifont complained, that "owing to oppressions and extortions within the County of Louth and Uriell, his monastery was greatly indebted and impoverished." Certain it is, that for some time previous, it had fallen from its former regularity and fervour; but, through the zeal and tact of Abbot Roger who then governed it, it regained its wonted prominence amongst the most observant monasteries. In 1479, this same Roger having set forth to the King that he had "Jurisdiction Ecclesiastical of all persons within his lands, as well secular as ecclesiastical, the King, out of his love to the Cistercian Order, granted to the Abbot and his successors, the _Jus de excommunicatis capiendis_, and episcopal jurisdiction," (Stat. Roll. 19 Ed. IV., c. 5.) The former privilege refers to the concession made to the Church by the first clause of the Statute of Kilkenny, and which had been confirmed by subsequent Parliaments for centuries after its first enactment. Under the heading--"The Church to be free--Writ _De Excommunicato capiendo_," the clause proceeds to ordain, "that Holy Church shall have all her franchises without injury, ... and if any (which God forbid) do to the contrary, and be excommunicated by the Ordinary of the place for that cause, so that satisfaction be not made to God and Holy Church by the party so excommunicated within a month after such excommunication, that then, after certificate thereupon being made by the said Ordinary into the Chancery, a writ shall be directed to the Sheriff, Mayor, Seneschal of the franchise, or other officers of the King, to take his body, and to keep him in prison without bail, until due satisfaction be made to God and Holy Church, etc." By episcopal jurisdiction is here meant the civil rights and privileges appertaining to the episcopal office, and enjoyed at that time by bishops over their subjects, lay and clerical. And as to the spiritual, quasi-episcopal jurisdiction--the Abbots of the Order had that as well as exemption in relation to their own monks from the very foundation of the Order; but by a Decree dated 28th September 1487, Pope Innocent VIII. granted to all Cistercian Abbots quasi-episcopal jurisdiction over their tenants, vassals, subjects, and servants. By this Decree, the Pope "took all the Abbots, Abbesses, Monks and Nuns of the Order under his special protection, together with all their goods, vassals, subjects, and servants, and exempted and freed the same from _all jurisdiction, superiority, correction, visitation_, subjection and power of Archbishops, Bishops and their Vicars, etc., ... and subjected them immediately to himself and the Holy See." This Decree is given in full in the _Privilegia Ordinis Cisterciensis_, p. 179.

That the Abbots of the Order exercised that privilege in this country cannot be doubted. We read an instance of it in the _Triumphalia_, so ably edited by the late Father Denis Murphy, S.J., where, even after the Council of Trent and so recently as 1621, a certain secular priest, who had been appointed by the Abbot of Holy Cross to the pastoral charge of the parish attached to that abbey and of one or more outlying parishes subject to the same Abbot, denied after some time, that he had his faculties from the said Abbot, but rather from the Archbishop, or his Vicar. The controversy lasted long, but finally, it was decided in the Abbot's favour, and Dr. Kearney, then Archbishop of Cashel, acknowledged the Abbot's title. And again, in the _Spicelegium Ossoriense_ there is a letter from Dr. O'Reilly, Archbishop of Armagh, written to the Propaganda in 1633, in which he complained that the Cistercians claimed the privilege of "_Visitation, Correction, Summoning to Synods, Approbation to hear confessions, together with entire and absolute episcopal jurisdiction_." And a further proof in favour of the practice is found in the fact that laymen who acquired the suppressed monasteries of the Order claimed and exercised that same privilege. Thus, in 1622, Archbishop Ussher in a Report of Bective parish said it belonged to Bartholomew Dillon, Esq. of Riverstown, his Majesty's farmer of the impropriate property. "This church belongeth to the Abbey of Bectiffe, in the possession of the said Mr. Dillon, who pretendeth to have an exemption from the Lord Bishop's jurisdiction, and doth prove wills and grant administrations." And in 1744, Harris writes of Newry, where once was a Cistercian Abbey also: "A mitred Abbot formerly possessed the lordships of Newry and Mourne, and exercised therein Episcopal Jurisdiction, which after the dissolution of the Abbey was done by the temporal proprietor, and at the present Robert Needham, Esq., to whom the town and manor belong, enjoys an exempt Jurisdiction within the said manors, and the seal of his court is a Mitred Abbot in his Albe sitting in a chair, and supported by two yew trees with this inscription: '_Sigillum exemptæ Jurisdictionis de Viride Ligno alias Newry et Mourne_.'" Which in English means, the seal of the Exempt Jurisdiction of Newry and Mourne. Verily! this savours of Popery; for, it was from the Pope the monks received their exemption. A modern example of this Papal concession, exercised in the Anglican Church, is to be found in the case of the Dean of Westminster who is immediately under the jurisdiction of her Gracious Majesty the Queen, and consequently exempt from that of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is as successor to the Abbot of Westminster that he claims and is allowed that privilege of exemption; for the Abbot was immediately subject to the Pope in pre-Reformation times.

The Abbot of Mellifont was implicated in the rebellion of Lambert Simnel; for in 1488, he received pardon from the King for his offences in that connection. The close of the fifteenth century found Mellifont recovering and maintaining its old prestige amongst the Religious Orders of this country, and with the dawning of a new century, it had regained its former level, from which a host of circumstances had conspired to drag it down and to degrade it. These circumstances have been already detailed and need not be here repeated.

In civil matters, Ireland in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, presented the same, or nearly the same, condition as she did more than three centuries before, when the English first landed on her shores. The Pale was literally bounded by the Liffey and the Boyne, and the old feuds, the long-protracted wars between the Anglo-Irish and the natives still subsisted. The regular administration of the law was limited to the four counties adjoining the capital, called the "Four Obedient Counties." It seems incontestable that religion was in a flourishing condition in this country during the period; for an unwonted activity and fervour animated both clergy and people, as can be inferred from the number of religious houses established; the frequency of Synods held denoting zeal and regularity on the part of the prelates convening them; and the common practice, so much then in vogue, of visiting, through a spirit of penance and devotion, the Holy Places at home and in far-off countries. Our Annals prove this to demonstration. But, it must be borne in mind that the spirit of exclusion was still in full force amongst the Anglo-Irish clergy, and no Irishman was eligible for benefices within the Pale. Learning, which is ever the handmaid of true piety, found its home as in ancient times amongst the two classes of the clergy, the secular and regular. The number of learned works published at that time clearly proves it. Amongst the many eminent men who then adorned the Church in Ireland, Maurice O'Fihely, Archbishop of Tuam, ranks foremost. His biographers, for he had many, inform us, that he "was eminent for his extraordinary knowledge in Divinity, Logic, Philosophy, and Metaphysics," that he published a Dictionary of the Holy Scriptures, and was styled by his contemporaries at home and abroad, "The Flower of the World." He had been a Franciscan Friar before his promotion to the See of Tuam, but did not long survive his appointment.

Now, capital has been made by some writers out of a description of the Church in Ireland taken from the State Papers, Part III., Vol. II., pp. 15, 16. If it reflected a true picture, a Reformation would indeed have been needed, but not the kind introduced by Henry VIII., nurtured by Edward VI., and propagated with fire and sword by Elizabeth. The Report states: "Some sayeth, that the prelates of the Church and the clergy is much the cause of all the mysse order of the land, for there is no archbyshop, ne bysshop, abbot, ne prior, parson ne vicar, ne any other person of the church, high or lowe, greate or smalle, Englysh or Irishe, that usythe to preach the worde of Godde, saveing the poor fryers beggars."... "Some sayeth"--Who were these "Some," or what was their assertion worth? Were they parties who benefited by the disturbance of the old order of things at the Suppression, and so suspected of having been partial, and eager to seek any and every palliation for the State Church as by law established. Now every student of Irish history, as contained in our Annals, knows that that anonymous statement is unwarranted by fact. It will suffice to take two instances, as we find them recorded in Dowling's _Annals_ about this time, to show the fallacy of the accusation of wholesale neglect of preaching the Word of God. Of Nicholas Maguire, Bishop of Leighlin, 1490-1512, Dowling (Protestant Chancellor of Leighlin) writes: "When he was Prebendary of Ullard, he preached and delivered great learning with no less reverence, being in favour with the King and nobility of Leinster, who, together with the Dean and Chapter, elected him Bishop of Leighlin." And of Maurice Deoran, or Doran, who a few years later succeeded him in Leighlin, Dowling again writes: "He was a most eloquent preacher." It cannot be denied that at that time some Church dignitaries affected the airs and magnificence of worldly magnates, nor that they gave scandal to their flocks by their absenteeism. Other abuses, no doubt, existed, but the watchful providence of God had made provision for their removal through His authorised ministers. But, alas! a new condition of affairs shall soon arise. The most powerful political engine ever fabricated for the extension of the English power in Ireland shall be introduced, one which shall eventually break up the tribe lands, annihilate the sway of the ancient chieftains, and reduce their impoverished descendants to the condition of serfs and menials. And this shall be called reforming the Church! Even in this revolution, Mellifont shall play her part, and become revolutionized and misappropriated.