"In the name of Donald O'Neill, King of Ulster, and rightful hereditary successor to the throne of all Ireland, as well as Princes and Nobles of the same realm with the Irish people in general present their humble salutations approaching with kisses of devout homage to his sacred feet."
They lay before him, "with loud and imploring cry," the treatment they have received, and also an account of their descent from Milesius, the Spaniard, through a line of one hundred and thirty-six kings unto the time of St. Patrick, A.D. 435. From that saint's day until 1170 sixty-one kings had ruled who acknowledged no superior, in things temporal, and by whom the Irish Church was endowed.
Photo by W. Leonard
Kilruddery House
Earl of Meath
"'At length,' say the Princes, 'your predecessor, Pope Adrian, an Englishman—although not so completely in his origin as in his feelings and connections,—in the year of our Lord 1155, upon the representation, false and full of iniquity, which was made to him by Henry, King of England—the monarch under whom, and perhaps at whose instigation, St. Thomas, of Canterbury, in the same year, suffered death, as you are aware, in defence of Justice and of the Church,—made over the dominion of this realm of ours in a certain set form of words to that Prince, whom, for the crime here mentioned, he ought rather to have been deprived of his own kingdom; presenting him de facto with what he had no right to bestow, while the question touching the justice of the proceeding was utterly disregarded, Anglican prejudices, lamentable to say, blinding the vision of that eminent Pontiff. And thus despoiling us of our royal honour, without any offence of ours, he handed us over to be lacerated by teeth more cruel than those of any wild beasts. For, ever since the time when the English, upon occasion of the grant aforesaid, and under the mask of a sort of outward sanctity and religion, made their unprincipled aggression upon the territories of our realm, they have been endeavouring, with all their might, and with every art which perfidy could employ, completely to exterminate, and utterly to eradicate our people from the country ... and have compelled us to repair, in the hope of saving our lives, to mountainous, woody and swampy and barren spots, and to the caves of the rocks also, and in these, like beasts, to take up our dwelling for a length of time.'
"The Princes enclosed a copy of Pope Adrian's Bull, along with their Complaint, to Pope John, which Bull the latter Pope forwarded to King Edward....
"The part which the Church of Rome has taken, not only in the bringing of Ireland under English rule in the first instance, but in the maintenance of that rule, has never been understood by the Irish people in general.
"Dr. Lanigan, whose history of Ireland is expensive and scarce, says of Pope Adrian that 'love of his country, his wish to gratify Henry, and some other not very becoming reasons, prevailed over every other consideration, and the condescending Pope, with great cheerfulness and alacrity, took upon himself to make over to Henry all Ireland, and got a letter, or Bull, drawn up to that effect and directed to him, in which, among other queer things, he wishes him success in his undertaking, and expresses the hope that it will conduce, not only to his glory in this world, but likewise to his eternal happiness in the next.'[8]
"Adrian's old master was one Marianus, an Irishman, for whom he had great regard, yet, says Dr. Lanigan, 'he was concerned in hatching a plot against that good man's country, and in laying the foundation of the destruction of the independence of Ireland.'[9]
"This is strong language from an Irish Roman Catholic clergyman, who enjoys the fullest confidence of his country, with regard to a former Pope, and it must be remembered that the statement was not made in a platform speech, when momentary excitement might impel a speaker into the use of words which he would afterwards regret, but that it was calmly and deliberately penned in the quietness of the study, and, probably, read and re-read, and finally corrected, before it was committed to print.
"The Rev. M.J. Brennan, O. S. F., who is not at all so unprejudiced as Dr. Lanigan, states that 'Adrian, anxious for the aggrandisement of his country,' or, as Cardinal Pole expresses it, 'induced by the love of his country, lost no time in complying with the agent's request.'[10] The agent referred to was John of Salisbury, who had been sent by King Henry in 1155 to ask for the Pope's sanction for the invasion of Ireland, and who states that the invasion was delayed until 1171 by the restraining influence of the King's mother, the Empress Matilda. With this statement Dr. Lanigan agrees.[11]
"It is a mistake to suppose that the Conquest of Ireland is due to the appeal made in 1168 by Dermot MacMurrogh for King Henry's aid. That event merely afforded to the King and the Pope a convenient excuse for carrying out a long-determined plan.
"Attempts have been made on various grounds to justify Pope Adrian's action. Edmund Campion, the famous English Jesuit, alleges that the Spanish ancestors of the Irish were subject '376 years ere Christ was born' to one Gurguntius, from whom King Henry was descended, and that, consequently, the Pope only helped to restore to Henry his rightful authority.[12] But this notion is too far-fetched to deserve consideration.
"A more plausible excuse is that about a century previous to the Conquest the Irish handed over to the Pope of that time—Urban II.—the sovereignty of this country. This theory was advocated by the Rev. Geoffrey Keatinge, D.D.
"But a still more popular excuse is, that all the Christian Islands of the Ocean were conferred on the Popes by the first Christian Emperor, Constantine. "Dr. Lanigan brushes aside all these fanciful ideas with one sweep. 'This nonsense' he says, 'of the Pope's being the head owner of all Christian Islands had been partially announced to the world in a Bull of Urban II., dated 1091, in which, on disposing of the Island of Corsica, he said that the Emperor Constantine had given the Islands to St. Peter and his vicars. But Constantine could not give what did not belong to him, and accordingly, as Keatinge argues, could not have transferred the sovereignty of Ireland to any Pope.'[13]
"As to Keatinge's own idea, namely, that the Irish had transferred their crown to the Pope, Dr. Lanigan writes: 'Neither in any of the Irish annals, nor in the ecclesiastical documents of those times, whether Roman or Irish, is there a trace to be found of a transfer of Ireland to Urban II., or to any Pope, by either the Irish Kings or Irish nobility, although the sly Italian, Polydore Virgil, who has been followed by two Englishmen, Campion and Sanders (both Jesuits), and also by some Irish writers, has told some big lies on this subject. These stories were patched up in spite of Chronology, or of any authority whatsoever, and Keatinge swallowed them as he did many others.'"[14]