Archbishop Miler Magrath.
How Magrath tended his sheep.
Cashel.
Waterford and Lismore.
In the curious epitaph which he wrote for himself, Miler Magrath declares that he served England in the midst of war for fifty years. He was born in Fermanagh, became a conventual Franciscan, and was first provided to the See of Down, of which the O’Neills withheld the temporalities, and from which he was ejected by Gregory XIII. ‘for heresy and many other crimes.’ One of these was probably matrimony; at all events he was twice married, and had a large family of sons and daughters. Whether or not his conversion was sincere—and both opinions have been held—Magrath was no credit either to the Church which he joined or to the Church which he deserted and was accused of secretly favouring. He indulged immoderately in whisky, and he jobbed without the smallest compunction. In 1607, when he had been Archbishop of Cashel and Bishop of Emly for thirty-six years, the united diocese was found to be in a terrible state. Emly Cathedral was in ruins, and things were little better at Cashel. About twenty-six livings were held by his sons or other near relations, often in virtue of simoniacal contracts, and in nearly every case there was no provision for divine service. More than twenty livings and dignities were in the Archbishop’s own possession, who received the profits ‘without order taken for the service of the Church.’ No school whatever was provided. Nineteen livings or dignities were returned as void and destitute of incumbents, and in others,’ says the report, ‘some poor men, priests and others, carry the name, but they have little learning or sufficiency, and indeed are fitter to keep hogs than to serve in the church... in the two dioceses there is not one preacher or good minister to teach the subjects their duties to God and His Majesty.’ Magrath had been Bishop of Waterford and Lismore for twenty years, and ‘it will appear that wheresoever the Archbishop could do hurt to the Church he hath not forborne to do it. Sixteen livings were returned as void and destitute of incumbents.’ Several others were bestowed upon absentees, who provided no curates, and the Archbishop’s daughter or daughter-in-law enjoyed the income of two in which the churches were ruined and the cures not served. Magrath made many leases for his own profit, and, with the connivance of the Dean and Chapter, alienated the manor and see-lands of Lismore, and the castle, which was the episcopal residence, to Sir Walter Raleigh for a rent of 13l. 6s. 8d. in perpetuity. The capitular seal of Cashel he kept in his own hands and used as he pleased.[445]
The country clergy.
‘The country clergy,’ says Davies, ‘were idols and ciphers, and,’ he adds with a fine irony, ‘that they cannot read, if they should stand in need of the benefit of their clergy.’ Serving-men and horseboys held benefices, and the court of faculties dispensed them from all duty. And for all their pluralities they were beggars, since the patron or ordinary took most of the profits by ‘a plain contract before their institution.’
‘The agent or nuncio of the Pope,’ he says, ‘hath 40l. or 50l. a year out of the profits of a parsonage within the Pale.’ The churches were in ruins throughout the kingdom, and there was ‘no divine service, no christening of children, no receiving of the sacrament, no Christian meeting or assembly, no, not once in the year; in a word no more demonstration of religion than amongst Tartars or cannibals.’ The bishops were but too often partakers in the prevalent corruption, and Davies suggested that visitors should be sent from England, ‘such as never heard a cow speak and understand not that language,’ a gift of cattle being the usual means of bribery in Ireland. Neither Loftus nor Jones were disinterested men, but they did take some pains to provide respectable incumbents, Englishmen for the most part, and Davies who did not like either of them, reported that the Pale was ‘not so universally Catholic as Sir Patrick Barnewall and some others would affirm it to be.’ That was all he could say, and it was not much.[446]
Foundation of Trinity College, Dublin.
Archbishop Loftus had prevented Perrott from turning his cathedral of St. Patrick’s into a college, but he helped to provide the means from another source. In 1166 Dermot MacMurrough had founded the priory of All-Hallows for Aroasian canons, just outside Dublin, and by a curious coincidence the man who introduced the English into Ireland thus unwittingly set apart the ground on which the most successful of Anglo-Irish institutions was destined to be built. In 1538 the priory was granted to the city of Dublin; and in 1590 the Corporation were induced to offer the property, which was valued at 20l. a year, as a site for the new college. In 1579 the Queen had entertained the idea of a university at Clonfert, on account of its central position; ‘for that the runagates of that nation, which under pretence of study in the universities beyond the seas, do return freight with superstition and treason, are the very instruments to stir up our subjects to rebellion.’ Nothing came of that plan, perhaps because the bishops were expected to provide the means of realising it, and as there was no education to be had at home, the young gentlemen had continued to resort to universities where the Queen was considered an excommunicated heretic. The offer of the Dublin citizens was now accepted, and the monastic buildings, all but the steeple, were at once pulled down. Henry Ussher, a native of Dublin, but a graduate both of Oxford and Cambridge, who was afterwards Primate, and who was at this time Archdeacon, deserves credit for successfully carrying out the negotiations, and the charter recites that it was he who had petitioned the Queen in the name of the city to found the college. Loftus was the first provost, Ussher himself, with two other fellows and three scholars, being appointed in the same instrument. Burghley was the first chancellor, Essex the second, and Robert Cecil the third. After the siege of Kinsale 1,800l. was subscribed by the army for a library, which thus began at the same time as Bodley’s, and the great collection of Archbishop James Ussher was virtually secured by a subscription of 2,200l. in Cromwell’s army. Trinity College was founded as the mother of a university, but no second house was ever opened, and in common language the college and the university are treated as one and the same.[447]