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 phœnix 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, Cœur 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.