Titular abbots still appointed. Cistercians.
In the case of the Cistercians at least titular abbots were sometimes appointed for many generations. Alemand, the French historian of Irish monasteries, says that the learned Nicholas Fagan, Bishop of Waterford, was Abbot of Innislonagh, and was buried in the abbey in 1617. According to the same author, who wrote towards the end of the seventeenth century, there were in his time Abbots of Mellifont, Tintern, and Boyle, living in the neighbourhood of their abbeys, but dressing like laymen. They were probably chiefly occupied in receiving novices for education in foreign convents. An important paper drawn up at Waterford in 1646 bears the signature of one prior of Augustinian canons, and of four Cistercian abbots, to say nothing of Jesuits and mendicants, but some of these may have been appointed after the breaking out of the rebellion. In the reign of James I. some Cistercians certainly lurked in Ireland. The nuncio Rinuccini, who had the charge of Irish patronage from 1645, apologised for preferring so many regulars on the ground that men of family seldom became secular priests.[315]
The dissolution not carried out in remote districts.
In 1541 a commission was issued to the Earl of Desmond and others to survey and dissolve all religious houses in Cork, Limerick, Kerry, and Desmond. In these districts and in the purely Irish regions of Connaught and Ulster, the process of dissolution was slow and uncertain. The title of the Crown was theoretically acknowledged, but in some cases nothing was done for many years. As the native nobility were subdued or reconciled, Henry VIII.’s policy was gradually carried out. In the wildest parts of Ulster the consummation was delayed until after the flight of the Earls in the reign of James I.[316]
Number and wealth of religious foundations.
Many are losers by the dissolution.
Without counting the mendicant orders, about 350 religious houses can be traced in Ireland. Many of these had disappeared before the reign of Henry VIII., having become parish churches, or been absorbed in episcopal establishments. Others were dependent on English foundations, and were destroyed by the Act of Absentees; others, again, were cells to more important houses, and followed their fortunes. A yearly income of 32,000l., with personalty to the amount of 100,000l., has been attributed to the Irish monasteries, and their possessions must certainly have been considerable. The monks, and especially the Cistercians, generally chose fertile situations near a river or on the coast, for the sake of fish and water carriage. The most beautiful and convenient sites were in their hands, and their system of cultivation was much superior to that of lay proprietors. The ceaseless wars of Ireland did not entirely spare the religious houses, but they escaped better than other kinds of property. The spoiling of the Church could never have been considered a great or glorious work. The wealth of the monks is not to be measured by the extent of their lands. It is in the vast number of their houses, orchards, gardens, fishing-weirs, and mills, that we must seek the evidence of accumulated capital. The immense circuit of the walls at Kells or Athassel seems to show that great numbers of artificers and labourers were sheltered within the enclosures, and that the monks knew how to defend their own. The system of corrodies or resident pensions probably reconciled the great nobles, and opposition to the dissolution came partly from those who were impoverished by their abolition. It is to these pensions, which were perhaps often abused, that Cowley probably alludes when he accuses the monks generally of immorality and of showing no hospitality save to themselves and ‘certain bell-wedders, which ringleaders have good fees, fat, profitable farms, the finding of their children, with other daily pleasures of the abbeys, and fearing to lose the profit thereof, repugn and resist the suppressing of abbeys, surmising it should be prejudicial to the common weal, which is otherwise.’[317]
The Friaries suppressed. Not before 1541.
In 1541 a commission was issued to Sir Anthony St. Leger and others to survey and suppress all the friaries in Ireland. The total number was rather under two hundred, of which the Franciscans had more than half, the Dominicans forty-three, the Augustinian hermits twenty-four, and the Carmelites twenty-one. As in the case of the older monasteries, the houses within reach were at once dissolved, and the rest were perforce respited. Their possessions were not large, and the friars managed to exist without them. The Dominican historian says there were about six hundred members of his order in Ireland just before Cromwell’s conquest, and the Franciscans were probably much more numerous. The houses of Grey Friars had been very generally reformed by the Observants, and it is with these stricter votaries that we generally meet. They swarmed everywhere, and to them is due the preservation of the Roman tradition until the Jesuits made head in Ireland. Archbishop Browne is never tired of testifying against them, and Thomas Agard, his enthusiastic supporter, calls them crafty bloodsuckers. Almost the only open opposition to the dissolution came from a Franciscan, Dr. Sall, who boldly preached against it at Waterford. During the Cromwellian war and subsequent persecution the Franciscans claim thirty-one martyrs, which shows that they must have been very numerous. In 1645 the Carmelites reckoned twenty-seven houses in Ireland, but most of these were doubtless desecrated and deserted. No candid Protestant can altogether sympathise with Browne and Agard, for we have the most overwhelming proof that but for the friars a large part of the population would have been altogether debarred from the exercise of religion.[318]
All kinds of men share the plunder.