To a Lord Deputy so jealous for the dignity of his office nothing could be more distasteful than the power of the House of Ormonde, which was now wielded by the Countess and her husband. The Sheriff of Kildare gave a most galling proof of this power by begging that his communications with Bellingham might be kept secret for fear of Lady Ormonde’s displeasure. She claimed the right to keep gallowglasses in Kilkenny, and the Lord Deputy infinitely disliked this practice, which had prevailed for centuries. He wished to keep the young Earl in England, lest by living at home he should imbibe exaggerated notions of his own importance. ‘His learning and manners,’ he said, ‘would be nothing amended, and the King’s authority thereby be nought the more obeyed.’ By remaining in England till he was of discreet years, he might learn willingly to abandon his ‘usurped insufferable rule, which I trust he will do yet in time to come.’ Any assumption of independence on the part of a subject irritated Bellingham excessively; and when Desmond, whose manners he stigmatised as detestable, neglected his summons, he set out quietly from Leighlin with a small party of horse, rode rapidly into Munster, surprised Desmond sitting by the fire in one of his castles, and carried him off to Dublin. He set himself to instruct the rude noble in civilisation and in the nature of the royal authority, sometimes, if we may believe the chronicler, ‘making him kneel upon his knees an hour together before he knew his duty.’ This discipline, accompanied doubtless with kind treatment in other ways, seems to have answered so well, that, according to the same authority, Desmond ‘thought himself most happy that ever he was acquainted with the said Deputy, and did for ever after so much honour him, as that continually all his life at every dinner and supper he would pray for the good Sir Edward Bellingham; and at all callings he was so obedient and dutiful, as none more in that land.’[341]
Ireland quiet. Garrison at Leighlin Bridge.
At the beginning of the year 1549 the Privy Council thanked Bellingham for having brought Ireland to a good state. They charged him to aid Tyrone against the Scots, and to be on his guard against French enterprises undertaken under colour of trading. The forts erected where Maryborough and Philipstown now are kept Leix and Offaly quiet. Breweries were at work under the shadow of both, and it was proposed to start a tan-yard at Fort Protector, as Maryborough was for the moment called. Bellingham established another post, which became very important, to command the road from Dublin to Kilkenny, and thus make the Government less dependent on the House of Ormonde. The suppressed Carmelite convent at Leighlin Bridge required but little alteration, and the Barrow ceased to be a serious obstacle. The Lord Deputy kept twenty or thirty horses here with the greatest difficulty, the hay having to be brought from Carlow through a disturbed country. Irishmen were willing to settle and to make an example of peaceful cultivation, but they were in great fear of Lady Ormonde. Walter Cowley, formerly Solicitor-General and fomenter of discord between St. Leger and the late Earl, had little good to say of the no longer disconsolate widow, but praised Sir Francis Bryan for saying that he would not ‘borrow of the law as my Lord of Ormonde did.’ The expression was called forth by the action of the Idrone Ryans, who were frightened by the inquiries into tenure, and came to Lady Ormonde offering to convey their lands to her and her heirs; the object being to defeat the Act of Absentees. No doubt the cultivators would have been glad to pay an easy rent to a powerful neighbour, rather than have an active new landlord such as Cosby thrust upon them. Sir Richard Butler, some of whose misdeeds have been already mentioned, built a castle in O’More’s country without any title, and overawed the whole district of Slievemargy.[342]
Progress of the Reformation. Browne and Staples.
Doctrinal Protestantism was not formally promulgated in Bellingham’s time; but the recognition of the royal supremacy was pretty general, for he would allow no disobedience. The Treasurer of St. Patrick’s, who was refractory, was severely reprimanded, and threatened with condign punishment. A Scot who preached at Kilmainham condemned the Mass, and Archbishop Browne, whose opinions were not perhaps quite fixed, was accused of inveighing against the stranger, and of maintaining that those who sided with him were ‘not the King’s true subjects.’ Means were, however, taken to spread the order of service which Browne had set on foot. The Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ave Maria were read and circulated in English, but the Mass was retained; a confused arrangement which could not last. Still, the men who controlled the Government and the young King were known to be favourable to the new doctrines, and the Scots emissary soon found a distinguished follower in the Bishop of Meath. Staples had at one time certainly held opinions less advanced than those of Browne, but he now went to Dublin and preached a strong Protestant sermon against the Mass. On returning to his own diocese he found that he had incurred universal hatred. An Irishman, whose infant he had christened and named after himself, desired to have the child re-baptized, ‘for he would not have him bear the name of a heretic.’ A gentleman refused to have his child confirmed ‘by him that denied the sacrament of the altar.’ The gossips in the market-place at Navan declared that if the Bishop came to preach there they would stay away, lest they should learn to be heretics. A lawyer in the neighbourhood told a crowd of people that Staples deserved to be burned, ‘for if I preached heresy so was I worthy to be burned, and if I preached right yet was I worthy that kept the truth from knowledge.’ ‘This gentleman,’ Staples quaintly adds, ‘loveth no sodden meat, but can skill only of roasting.’ Another lawyer, a judge, said it should be proved before the Bishop’s face that he preached against learning. The following is too interesting to omit:—‘A beneficed man of mine own promotion came unto me weeping and desired me that he might declare his mind unto me without my displeasure. I said I was well content. My Lord, said he, before ye went last to Dublin ye were the best beloved man in your diocese that ever came in, and now ye are the worst beloved that ever came here. I asked why? “Why,” saith he, “ye have taken open part with the State that false heretic, and preached against the sacrament of the altar, and deny saints, and will make us worse than Jews: if the country wist how they would eat you;” and he besought me to take heed of myself, for he feared more than he durst tell me. “Ye have,” he said, “more curses than ye have hairs of your head, and I advise you for Christ sake not to preach at the Navan as I hear ye will do.” I said it was my charge to preach, and because there was most resort (God willing) I would not fail but preach there. Hereby ye may perceive what case I am in, but I put all to God.’ The Bishop spoke as became his office, but he was ‘afraid of his life divers ways.’[343]
Bellingham and Dowdall.
Bellingham had information of what was going on in England by private as well as official correspondence. John Issam, a strong Protestant, who was afterwards made seneschal of Wexford, wrote from London an account of the variations of opinion upon the all-important question of the sacrament. ‘There is great sticking,’ he said, ‘about the blessed body and bloode of Jesus Christ, howbeit, I trust that they will conclude well in it, by the help of the Holy Spirit, without which such matters cannot well be tried; but part of our bishops that have been most stiff in opinions of the reality of His body there, as He was here in earth, should be in the bread, they now confess and say that they were never of that opinion, but by His mighty power in spirit, and leaveth His body sitting on the right hand of His Father, as our common creed testifieth; but yet there is hard hold with some to the contrary, who shall relent when it pleaseth God.’ Bellingham certainly did what he could to spread the reformed doctrines, but this was, perhaps, not much. His letter to Primate Dowdall, who had acknowledged the royal supremacy, but was inflexible on the question of the sacrament, is instinct with the spirit of Christian sincerity.
‘My Lord Primate,’ he says, ‘I pray you lovingly and charitably to be circumspect in your doings, and consider how God hath liberally given you divers gifts, and namely, of reputation among the people ... Let all these in part be with the gratuity of setting forth the plain, simple, and naked truth recompensed, and the way to do the same is to know that which, with a mild and humble spirit wished, sought, and prayed for, will most certainly be given, which I pray God grant us both.’[344]
Bellingham advances the royal supremacy.
Bellingham could do nothing with Dowdall; but in the spring of 1549 all the priests in the Kilkenny district not physically incapable of travelling were summoned to meet the Lord Deputy and Council. It was ordered that the Attorney-General should exercise jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters, and ‘abolish idolatry, papistry, the Mass sacrament, and the like.’ The Archbishop of Cashel seems to have had no great zeal for the work. Nicholas Fitzwilliam, Treasurer of St. Patrick’s, received a stinging rebuke for his hesitation to carry out the royal commands. The innovations were distasteful to most men in Ireland, but Bellingham was recognised as one who would use his patronage conscientiously, and not job in the usual style. John Brereton, a decided Protestant, recommended to him ‘for the love of God and the zeal that you have for the education of Christ’s flock,’ a poor priest who was willing to go into a certain district where he had friends, and where there was no one to declare the true worship. The suppliant, who was both learned and earnest, could expect favour from no nother’s (sic) hand, because he ‘is but poor and has no money to give as his adversaries do.’ Auditor Brasier told Somerset that ‘there was never Deputy in the realm that went the right way, as he doth, both for the setting forth of God’s Word to His honour, and to the wealth of the King’s Highness’ subjects.’ But these praises did not serve to prolong his term of office, and he left Ireland without effecting the reforms which he had at heart.[345]