Oliver Plunket, whose judicial murder has been dealt with above, was appointed Primate by Clement IX. in 1669. On his way he made some stay in London, where he was well received by Queen Catherine, and reached Dublin in March 1670. Robartes was Lord Lieutenant and, search having been made for the new Archbishop before he came, he thought it prudent to move at night only. When Berkeley arrived, all was changed. Plunket was received at Dublin Castle, though not quite openly, and he explained that he could not help going there often, since Lady Berkeley, the chief secretary, and others were of his own faith. He was on good terms with his rival Margetson. There were at that time 1000 secular priests in Ireland and from 600 to 800 regulars who came and went. When Essex became Lord Lieutenant he was inclined to tolerate the Roman Catholic clergy if they kept quiet, but the pressure of the English Parliament in 1673 obliged him to take steps which drove most of the Roman Catholic bishops from Ireland and many of the regulars. He tried to protect the remnant of the Remonstrants which Berkeley had been ordered to do, but did not. Plunket, not otherwise given to harsh judgments, was very bitter against Peter Walsh, and against anything that looked like Jansenism. He himself remained in Ireland under the name of Thomas Cox, and he was not seriously molested until the days of Oates’s plot. He held provincial assemblies, established schools, and in four years confirmed 48,655 persons, some of whom were sixty years old, and repressed vice to the utmost. Drunkenness he especially abhorred, and forbade the clergy to indulge in whisky; to give an example, he himself did not drink at meals. ‘Give me,’ he says, ‘an Irish priest without this vice, and he is assuredly a saint.’ It must be remembered that the clergy were extremely poor and that this devoted Primate had not more than 20l. in the world.[291]
Peter Talbot.
O’Molony.
Peter Talbot became Archbishop of Dublin nearly at the same time as Plunket was appointed to Armagh, and the two were soon in controversy about precedence. Talbot was a political priest much practised in intrigues and altogether different from the Primate. He was supported by the Duke of York, but not much liked by any party. Both Archbishops were imprisoned for supposed complicity in the ‘Popish plot,’ but no real evidence appeared against either. Talbot died in the Castle of stone, from which he had long suffered, and Plunket forced his way to him and administered the last rites. Probably the warders were not very unwilling. More important than Talbot was John O’Molony, ‘the most dangerous because the wisest man of their clergy,’ in Essex’ opinion. He was appointed to Killaloe in 1671, and showed his ability by bringing about a good understanding between Plunket and Talbot and between Talbot’s brother, the future Tyrconnel, and Ormonde’s brother-in-law, Colonel Fitzpatrick. He had good preferment in France, so that he could spend some money if required. Essex feared that if the divisions were healed he would be unable to get any information. O’Molony had influence at the French Court even before he became a bishop, and he conferred with Plunket when at Paris on his way to Ireland.[292]
Some other bishops.
O’Molony, though he evidently liked being in France, did not neglect his duties in Ireland. After three years’ uninterrupted residence, he escaped in 1681 just before the execution of Plunket, and gave a short account of the ecclesiastical state of Ireland. In Ulster the only bishop remaining at the moment was Patrick Tyrrell of Clogher, who wandered about as secretly as possible. In Leinster there were James O’Phelan, who managed to live among friends in his diocese of Ossory, and Mark Forstall of Kildare, who was a prisoner in Dublin Castle. In Munster, Brenan, Archbishop of Cashel, lived quietly with his relations, while Peter Creagh of Cork lurked in hiding near Killaloe; he was betrayed by a servant who mistook him for O’Molony. Wetenhall, the Protestant Bishop of Killaloe, had Creagh arrested and imprisoned at Limerick, but he was afterwards sent to Dublin and left at large under surveillance. James Duley, Bishop of Limerick, was taken before a magistrate, but allowed to go free on account of his age and infirmity. In Connaught, where the Protestant minority was small, De Burgo of Elphin and Keogh of Clonfert were able to live quietly, though not quite safely. The inferior clergy throughout Ireland were practically tolerated, not being considered as directly under foreign jurisdiction like the bishops. O’Molony was specially suspected on account of his known dealings with the French Government, and was supposed to be the contriver of the imaginary invasion which brought Oliver Plunket to the scaffold. He came to believe that ‘there is no Englishman, Catholic or other, of what quality or degree soever alive that will stick to sacrifice all Ireland for to save the least interest of his own in England.’[293]
Recusants after James II.
James II. naturally wished to provide for the endowment of his own Church, and he proposed to create a fund by keeping vacant the archbishopric of Cashel and three other sees. Bishop O’Molony’s advice was to take all benefices, giving a pension to the Protestant incumbents who could ‘pretend’ to nothing more than a lease for life. The Acts of Attainder and of Absentees would have gone a long way towards carrying this out without troubling about life interests. When the Jacobite cause was finally lost, the Irish penal code came into being. Being in a minority, the victors never felt quite safe, and having suffered much were not in a forgiving mood. As to the results of this oppression Berkeley asked, ‘Whether it be not a vain attempt to project the flourishing of our Protestant gentry exclusive of the bulk of the natives?’ In another place he says, ‘The house of an Irish peasant is the cave of poverty; within you see a pot and a little straw; without, a heap of children tumbling on the dunghill.’ Swift at various periods asserted that the Roman Catholics of Ireland were in point of power no more considerable than women and children; and in 1731, when the persecution had done its work, he added that the estates of Papists were very few, ‘crumbling into small parcels, and daily diminishing.’ In 1745, the year of Swift’s death, Berkeley besought the Roman Catholics of his diocese of Cloyne not to rise in favour of the Pretender, lest they should lose the little that was left to them. Four years later he addressed the priests, dwelling upon their common Christianity and urging them, as the only people who had the necessary influence, to use it for the advancement of industry among their people. Respecting his character more than his office, the priests, or at least many of them, took his advice in good part, but Petty had long before pointed out that the idleness of the Irish was less due to original sin than to the absence of inducement to work.[294]