Jeremy Taylor.
Bramhall, whom Cromwell called the Irish Canterbury, naturally became Primate at the Restoration, and the Laudian system was fully established. The difficulties surrounding the Church may be understood from the experiences of Jeremy Taylor. Poor and unbeneficed, in 1647 he had published the ‘Liberty of Prophesying,’ and had endeavoured to determine the true relation between Church and State. ‘The temporal power,’ he said, ‘ought not to restrain prophesyings, where the public peace and interest are not certainly concerned.’ He knew that ‘a union of persuasion is impossible to be attained.’ Taylor came to Ireland in 1658 with the Protector’s licence and protection, and worked quietly as a clergyman under Lord Conway’s patronage. At the Restoration he became Bishop of Down and Connor and administrator of Dromore, and little more than two years later he preached Bramhall’s funeral sermon. The Primate had been softened by age, perhaps his mind had been enlarged by foreign travel and by controversy with Hobbes, and it was against the Bishop of Down that the Presbyterians exerted their full force. The gentle Margetson, who succeeded to Armagh, was not one to make the rent worse. Taylor found a great difference between philosophising as a scholar and governing as a bishop. The ministers told him that they would not acknowledge his office, and that they believed the Presbyterian polity to be of divine right. After several attempts at conciliation he treated thirty-six parishes as vacant and filled them with incumbents from England. The Presbyterians turned their faces to Scotland, and their organisation grew without any reference to the Established Church of Ireland. Bishop Taylor died in 1667, much of his later time being occupied in the hopeless task of trying to convert the Roman Catholics by argument, and in answering the critics of his ‘Dissuasive from Popery.’ The diocese was not fortunate in the shepherds who succeeded him.[285]
A bad bishop.
Roger Boyle was Bishop of Down for only five years, and made no particular mark. Margetson checked his efforts to repress the Presbyterians. His translation to Clogher was promotion in point of money, and was also desirable because Lord Ranelagh would get something out of the first-fruits. He was followed by Thomas Hacket, whom Essex recommended as a fit person long known to him and to whom he had given a living in Hertfordshire. Hacket was English by birth, but educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and he had been Dean of Cork. According to his own account, he found both Papists and Presbyterians impossible to deal with, and he soon ceased to try; keeping out of his diocese as much as possible. The King ordered strict residence, but Clarendon found that Hacket had been six years absent. He had some good men under his nominal charge who gave a lamentable account, ‘many of the clergy being absent from their cures and leaving them to mean and ignorant curates, such as will serve cheapest, which gives a grievous advantage to the adversaries of our religion.’ One of these incumbents was Robert Maxwell, who drew 900l. a year from several benefices ‘but never resided upon any.’ The lame foot of justice halted until 1694, when a royal commission suspended Hacket for non-residence, and then deprived him for simony. He was one of the worst enemies that the Church of Ireland ever had.[286]
Bishops ignorant of Irish.
The twelve bishops consecrated together at the Restoration were all of British birth or parentage. Three had been educated at Oxford, three at Cambridge, the rest at Trinity College, Dublin, but some of the latter were Oxford doctors also. Robert Leslie, who was particularly obnoxious to the Presbyterians, had been at Aberdeen as well as Oxford and Dublin. Most of them were worthy men, many of them great benefactors to the Church in which they filled high places, but it does not appear that any spoke Irish. They could, therefore, have no missionary influence in the wilder districts. This was all in pursuance of the Laudian policy. Strafford trusted no Irishman nor anyone born in Ireland, and he thwarted the efforts of Bedell to reach the native Irish through their own language, leaving that work to the friars. Jeremy Taylor’s idea of civilising the Celts was to make them learn English. The Scotch in Ulster, whom Strafford tried to destroy and who instead destroyed him, were also estranged by the determination of the Irish Government and most of the bishops to acknowledge none but what the sceptic Petty called ‘legal protestants,’ and to treat Presbyterians and Anabaptists as ‘fanatics.’[287]
Condition of the clergy.
The dignitaries were much too numerous for the requirements of the Church, and they were pretty well paid. From a report made for Ormonde’s information in 1668 by Dean Lingard of Lismore, we know that Primate Margetson had over 3500l. a year, including his fees as Prerogative Judge and King’s Almoner. Archbishop Boyle of Dublin had 1200l. a year and the expectation of more: he was also Lord Chancellor. Dr. Mossom of Derry received 1800l. Of the others, twelve had incomes from 1600l. to 1000l., five between that and 600l. The poorest bishoprics were Clonfert and Kildare, being worth respectively 400l. and 200l. Christ Church, Dublin, worth 600l., was the best deanery. ‘The inferior clergy of Connaught,’ adds Lingard, ‘are very poor, the whole country being swallowed up by impropriations.’ Bedell, and later Robartes, fought against pluralities, and no doubt there were some scandalous cases, but there were a great many parishes in which no clergyman, and especially no married clergyman, could live decently on glebe and tithe. At the beginning of the seventeenth century this had gone very far. The abbeys had got hold of the tithes generally, and after the dissolution the Crown granted them to laymen. The greatest deficiency was in Connaught, where the vicar who did the work got commonly but 40s. a year and sometimes only 16s. At the beginning of the eighteenth century things were not much better. When engaged in obtaining the remission of first-fruits and tenths, Swift reported that hardly one parish in ten had a glebe and still fewer a house. The livings were so small that five or six had to be joined to make up 50l. a year. The clergy ‘for want of glebes were forced in their own or neighbouring parish to take farms to live on at rack-rent.’ So much went to collectors that the first-fruits and tenths were worth only 500l. a year net to the Crown, and Swift succeeded in getting them remitted. He was less successful with impropriations still in the Queen’s hands worth about 2000l. annually to her and a great impoverishment to the Irish Church, amounting to one-third or one-half of the real value of each benefice affected. Goldsmith’s good parson