on the river Quoile, which shows off its imposing cathedral in a most pleasing manner.
The native Kings of Ulster had their residence here before the coming of Christianity. The town was known anciently to Ptolemy, who called it Dunum.
The religious foundation of the place dates from 432 to 440, when St. Patrick established the see and the Abbey of Saul of the Canons Regular, who was superceded in 1183, a few years after the town was taken by John de Courcy, by the Benedictines.
The cathedral of to-day is a rehabilitation of an ancient ecclesiastical building, though to all appearances it is a comparatively modern work and is often credited as such.
Locally, great importance is naturally attached to the supposed fact that Downpatrick is the burial-place of St. Patrick, and a rough, unhewn boulder marks the spot in the churchyard where his bones rest—or do not rest, for there is great and constant doubt as to whether this is really so or not. However, there are, it is to be presumed, many who would like to believe they had visited such a hallowed spot, and perhaps for this reason the want has been supplied.
Moreover, in the old church which stood on the site of the present cathedral, which Harris, the antiquarian, described in 1744, there was an inscription in monkish Latin which, translated, reads: