With this evidence before him, the reader may fully appreciate the favourite modern theory of the defenders of the Protestant Establishment, that, forsooth, the Irish bishops during Elizabeth's reign abandoned the faith of their fathers, and became liege servants of the church by law established! Dr. Cotton when speaking of our see makes a somewhat more reserved, but equally erroneous statement: “Redmond O'Gallagher”, he says, “was bishop at this time, but whether recognised as such by Queen Elizabeth and the Protestant Church does not appear”—(Fasti, iii. 315). Why, it does appear as plainly as the noon-day sun that he was the determined enemy of the Protestant queen and her establishment: throughout his whole episcopate he was a devoted pastor of the Catholic Church, and thus his fidelity and devotion to the cause of God merited for him in death the martyr's crown. First on the list of those who suffered for the faith during the reign of Elizabeth is reckoned by Dr. Mathews, Archbishop of Dublin, in 1623, “Redmondus Galluthurius Darensis Episcopus et Martyr”—(Relat. ad. S. C. de Prop. Fid.) Mooney, writing in 1617, also styles him a martyr: “Episcopus Redmondus Gallaher martyr obiit anno 1601”; and O'Sullivan Beare, about the same time, adds some of the circumstances of his death: “Raymundus O'Gallacher”, he writes, “Derii vel Luci Episcopus, ab Anglis bipennibus confessus, et capite truncatus annum circiter octogesimum agens”—(Hist. Cath., pag. 77). The Four Masters (ad an. 1601) also mention his being put to death by the English; and Rothe reckons him amongst those who suffered for the faith. Tradition still points out the spot on which the venerable bishop was slain, almost midway on the high road between O'Kane's Castle and Dungiven. (See Dr. Kelly's Essays, with the additions of Dr. M'Carthy: Dublin, 1864, pag. 425).
It now only remains to notice some few popular errors connected with this see.
1. On account of the old Latin form of the name of this see, i.e. Darensis, it has frequently been confounded with the Diocese of Kildare. Thus, not to mention more recent examples, Ware severely criticises Bale of Ossory for falling into this mistake—(Bishops, pag. 190). The chief criterion for distinguishing between the two sees, is the mention which is generally made of the metropolitan to whom the brief is addressed, or of the ecclesiastical province to which the diocese belongs.
2. Dr. King notices as an improbability that O'Gallagher could have been bishop for fifty-two years, and, nevertheless, be only (as Dr. King imagines) seventy years of age at his death. However, true dates are sure always to mutually correspond. [pg 362] Referring to the Consistorial Acts, cited above, it appears that in 1545 Dr. O'Gallagher was in his twenty-third year, and that a dispensation was then granted to him to be consecrated bishop in his twenty-seventh year: hence, at his death in 1601, Dr. O'Gallagher may very well have attained the fifty-second year of his Episcopate, whilst he will be found, not indeed in his seventieth year, but, as O'Sullivan writes, “circa octogesimum annum agens”.
3. The succession of bishops in the See of Derry affords a practical refutation of the novel theory so fashionable now-a-days amongst the clergy of the Establishment, that forsooth the native clergy without hesitation embraced the tenets of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, and that the Catholic Church was only upheld in our island “by begging friars and foreign priests”. We pray the reader whenever he hears such a statement made, to call to mind the See of Derry. Was Roderick, “the arrant traitor”, in the days of King Henry, a foreign priest and a stranger to our island? Was Raymond O'Gallagher a foreigner during Elizabeth's reign? Oh! ask the faithful of Innishowen, amongst whom he first exercised his sacred ministry—ask the camps of Maguire, O'Donnell, and O'Neill! Ask, too, the very enemies of our holy faith, the first founders of the Protestant Establishment: their deeds will tell you that he was the true pastor of the fold, and hence they set a price upon his head, and at length conferred on him the martyr's crown.
There was, however, one foreign prelate who received an appointment in Derry at this period, and he was precisely the first and only Protestant nominee to this see during Elizabeth's reign. “To the two northern sees of Raphoe and Derry”, writes Dr. Mant, “Elizabeth made no collation, unless in the year 1595, when her reign was drawing towards its close”—(Hist., i. 284). George Montgomery, a Scotchman, was the individual thus chosen to be the first representative of the Establishment in our northern sees. His patent for the sees of Clogher, Derry, and Raphoe, was dated the 13th of June, 1595, where already for many years a canonically appointed bishop ruled the fold of Christ. The good sense, however, of the Knoxian reformer judged it more prudent not to risk himself and family amidst the O'Kanes whilst arms were in the hands of the Irish chieftains: he hence consigned to oblivion his royal patent, and allowed the Irish pastors to feed in peace their spiritual fold. Even when, in 1605, he sought for a new appointment to these sees at the hands of King James, as we learn from Mant, Ware, and other Protestant authorities, he took care to make no allusion to the writ which he had formerly received in the thirty-seventh year of Elizabeth.
Dr. Colenso And The Old Testament. No. II.
The Colenso controversy has entered on a new phase. It appears we must no longer speak of Dr. Colenso as the Protestant Bishop of Natal. He enjoyed this title indeed for a time, in virtue of letters patent issued by the supreme head of the Established Church. But the judicial committee of her Majesty's privy council has sat in judgment on her Majesty's letters patent, and has just pronounced that they are invalid and without effect in law; that her Majesty had assumed a prerogative which did not belong to her, and had been guilty in fact, though inadvertently, of an illegal aggression upon the rights of her colonists.