Loftus and Jones are too fond of money.
Adam Loftus was fond of money. He begged so unblushingly for himself and his relations, that the chapter of Christ Church, on granting one of his requests, made him promise, before them all, not to ask for anything more. Even this promise he afterwards tried to evade. He was accused of jobbing away the revenues of St. Patrick’s, and the late dean, who was married to his sister-in-law, earned a very bad name for wasting the substance of his deanery first, and afterwards of his bishopric. One extant deed in particular bears Swift’s indignant endorsement, made in 1714, as ‘a lease of Coolmine, made by that rascal Dean Jones, and the knaves, or fools, his chapter, to one John Allen for eighty-one years, to commence from the expiration of a lease of eighty years made in 1583; so that there was a lease of 161 years of 253 acres in Tassagard parish, within three miles of Dublin, for 2l. per annum... now worth 150l., and, so near Dublin, could not then be worth less than 50l. How the lease was surrendered, I cannot yet tell.’
St. Patrick’s rescued;
though Loftus liked a university in the abstract.
Archbishop Bancroft.
Loftus was accused of being interested in many such leases, and it was said that in defending St. Patrick’s he was really defending his own pocket. He had been dean himself, too, and very possibly he was not anxious for the inquisition which must have taken place had the cathedral been dissolved. On the other hand, the Archbishop could give good reason why Perrott’s plan should not take effect. St. Patrick’s, he said, was the only place in Ireland where a learned man, and especially a learned Englishman, ‘could, without imminent danger, thrust his head.’ There were twenty-six dignitaries, some of them very slightly endowed, and of these fifteen were university graduates. With the exception of one bishop, there were no good preachers in Ireland but those furnished by St. Patrick’s, and amongst them were Dean Jones, Thompson, the treasurer, Conway, the chancellor, and Henry Ussher, the archdeacon, who lived to be Archbishop of Armagh. Of three bishops who could preach, two had been promoted out of St. Patrick’s, and Christ Church neither had done nor could do anything in that way. He was ready to give what help he could towards the establishment of a university, but a university could not be maintained long if there were no benefices to bestow upon fellows. The prebends did not depend upon temporalities, but were all attached to parishes. Kildare was patron of two, but the others were in the Archbishop’s gift, and they were all opposed to Perrott’s scheme. Loftus himself was ready to resign rather than leave himself ‘a perpetual blot and infamy’ to his successor, for having consented to the destruction of his cathedral. Archdeacon Ussher was sent to England, and Loftus also employed Richard Bancroft, one of the prebendaries, to plead the cause of St. Patrick’s at Court. Bancroft became Archbishop of Canterbury, and gained lasting fame for his services in connection with the authorised version of the Bible, but appears to have resided very little in Dublin, though he held his preferment there for at least thirty years.[127]
The scheme makes Perrott and Loftus enemies.
Whatever may be thought of Loftus’s character, his arguments on this occasion were good, and Burghley felt them to be unanswerable. The thing could not be done, he said, without the consent of the prebendaries, and he asked Perrott how he would like to have his own salary diverted to some other use. Preaching was necessary as well as teaching, and there was no greater abuse in the Church of England than the transfer of livings to abbeys and colleges. Tithes had been instituted for the service of parishes, and he would never do evil that good might come. Perrott answered that the idea had not been originated by him, and that his instructions from the Privy Council, signed by Burghley himself with many others, would have warranted him in proceeding far more roughly than he had done. Where he seems really to have done wrong was in not showing this order of the Privy Council to Loftus, and in letting him suppose that he was acting of his own motion. Even after Burghley had given his opinion, he was unwilling to give up the scheme, and the Archbishop begged for a letter signed by the Queen herself. This was granted, and the royal missive was read to Perrott in the presence of Waterhouse and Sir Lucas Dillon. Even then the Lord Deputy was not silenced, and the result was bitter hostility between the Queen’s representative and the Chancellor Archbishop, who should have been his chief adviser.[128]
Three hundred executions in Munster.
While Norris was absent in the North, Sir William Stanley governed Munster, and improved the occasion by 300 executions. ‘This,’ he said, ‘doth terrify them so that a man now may travel the whole country, and none to molest him.’ The Lord President on his return declared the country was waste and depopulate. Even malefactors were scarce, and there was no chance of resettling the province but by importing people.