In the list of the Irish clergy above referred to, under the heading "qui sunt extra Hiberniam", is mentioned Darmisius Craticus, who is described as studying in Rome, and in his thirtieth year. He is subsequently again mentioned among those who might be destined for the Irish mission, and it is there added that he was a native of Munster, and though he was skilled in both the English and Irish languages, he was more conversant with the Irish: "melius loquitur Hibernice". From the consistorial acts we further learn that he applied himself to sacred studies in the illustrious college which had been founded a few years before for the purpose of supplying missioners to Germany and other countries suffering from the oppression of heresy, and among his companions in its hallowed halls was Nicholas Skerrett, who was destined to be sharer of his missionary toils and perils as Archbishop of Tuam.
Dr. Graith was one of the most illustrious missioners who laboured in our Irish Church during the sixteenth century; and, as Peter Lombard informs us, was at one time the only bishop in the province of Munster. Soon after his arrival in our island, the agents of heresy mainly directed their efforts towards his apprehension, and so chagrined were they at his escape that they even accused Sir John Perrot of having secretly favoured him and thus baffled their designs. In a memorial presented to government in 1592, "Doctor Creagh, Bishop of Cloyne and Cork", appears first on the list of those who in Munster were enemies of the Elizabethan rule, having lived "in the country these eleven or twelve years past, without pardon or protection, consecrating churches, making priests", etc.; and it is further added that "he did more evil", that is, he was more zealous in propagating our holy faith, even "than Dr. Sanders in his time" (see Essays, etc., by Rev. Dr. M'Carthy, pag. 424). Another State Paper, being a letter from the Lord Deputy to Lord Burghley, in England, dated 17th May, 1593, gives us the following particulars:—
"We have laboured with all possible endeavours with the Earl of Tirone, as well by private conference as by our sending letters, for the apprehension of the titular bishops remaining in these parts; yet can we by no means prevail, though it is very well known to us that the earl might have done great and acceptable service therein, on account of the friendship between him, O'Donell, and Maguire—Maguire being cousin-germain, and altogether at his service, and, as report goeth, either hath or is to marry the earl's daughter. And as in this I made bold, I humbly pray your lordship's pardon, to state what little success hath followed of the great shams of service made by the Archbishop of Cashel and Richard Power, rather in regard for their own benefit and to serve their own turns, than for any performance of actions at all. Upon the Archbishop's coming over they pretended a plot, both for the getting of great sums of money for her Majesty and for the apprehension of Dr. Creaghe, to the second of which we rather first hearkened, but in the end nothing was done more than to spend so much time, and an open show, as it were, made to the world how that traitor was sought and laid for, whereby the other traitorous titular bishops might take warning to be the more wary upon their keeping" (S. P. O.).
The accusation which is here made against the unfortunate Miler MacGrath, Protestant Archbishop of Cashel, had probably more foundation than the Lord Deputy imagined; and whilst much noise was made for the arrest of our Bishop Dermitius, intelligence of all such schemes was communicated to him by Miler himself. One letter of MacGrath to his "loving wife Any" is preserved in the S. P. O., dated from Greenwich, the 26th of June, 1592, in which he writes: "I have already resolved you in my mind touching my cousin Darby Creagh, and I desire you now to cause his friends to send him out of the whole country if they can, or if not to send (to him) my orders, for that there is such search to be made for him that unless he be wise he shall be taken".
On the 31st of October, 1595, a brief was addressed to "Dermitio Episcopo Corcagiensi", commissioning him to grant some ecclesiastical livings to Owen MacEgan, who a few years later became illustrious in the annals of our church as Vicar Apostolic of Ross.—(See Irish Ecclesiastical Record, vol. i., p. 110). In 1599 Dr. Graith was visited by the Franciscan Father Mooney, who in his History of the Order, commemorating this visit, describes the bishop as "vir valde prudens et in rebus agendis versatus". This must have been a period of harrowing anxiety for the worthy bishop. His diocese was laid waste by fire and sword, the Irish chieftains driven to arms by the iniquitous policy of the agents of Elizabeth, having made the southern districts of Ireland the theatre of their struggle. Dr. Graith shared the perils of their camp, ministering to them the comforts of religion. One of his hair-breadth escapes is thus described in the Hibernia Pacata, pag. 190:
"The Earl of Thomond, Sir George Thornton, and Captain Roger Harvey, with their companies, following the direction of their guide, were conducted to Lisbarry, a parcel of Drumfinnin woods. No sooner were they entered into the fastness, than presently the sentinels who were placed in the outskirts of the wood, raised the cry which it would seem roused the Earl of Desmond and Dermod MacCraghe, the Pope's Bishop of Cork, who were lodged there in a poor ragged cabin. Desmond fled away barefoot, having no leisure to pull on his shoes, and was not discovered; but MacCraghe was met by some of the soldiers clothed in a simple mantle, and with torn trousers like an aged churl, and they neglecting so poor a creature, not able to carry a weapon, suffered him to pass unregarded".
This happened in the month of November, 1600.
It was on the 30th March that year, that O'Neill and the other Irish princes addressed a letter in common to the Sovereign Pontiff, unfolding to him the miseries which laid desolate our island, attesting too their resolute desire to combat for the Catholic faith, and to promote the interests of Holy Church, and petitioning in fine, that the vacant sees of the province of Munster might be filled by those who were recommended by the Bishop of Cork and Cloyne: they add that the only bishop then in the southern province was "Reverendissimus Corcagiensis et Cloanensis qui senio et labore jam paene est confectus"; and as a special motive why the Holy See should not delay to make these appointments to the vacant dioceses, they write: "Hoc eo confidentius petimus quia qui electi conservati et ad nos dimissi fuerunt a vestra sacrosancta Sede, ad vacuas his in partibus sedes occupandas, a nobis pro viribus, in iisdem Dei gratiâ defenduntur, ut gregibus sibi commissis tuto invigilare queant".—Original Letter in Hib. Pacat., page 311.
The next notice that we find of our aged Bishop is in the appointment of Luke Archer to administer the see of Leighlin during the absence of its Bishop Ribera, on whose death, in 1604, the same Luke Archer was constituted Vicar-Apostolic of that see. From the words used by Harty when registering this appointment made by our Bishop, we may conclude that Dr. Graith, as his predecessor, had received special faculties from Rome not only for his own diocese, but also for the province of Leinster. "Dermitius Chrah (he writes), Corcagiensis et Clonensis tunc Episcopus apostolica auctoritate qui fulserat".
As regards the precise period of Dr. Graith's death, no record has come down to us. Mooney, the Franciscan annalist, merely attests that "he lived for some time subsequent to 1599". Dr. Matthews, who was consecrated bishop of Clogher in 1609, reckons him amongst the bishops who survived Elizabeth, and lived for some years "aliquibus annis" under James I. This would lead us to conclude that his life was prolonged till the year 1605. O'Sullivan Beare, writing in 1618, leaves us in a like uncertainty, as he refers his death in general terms to the first year of the seventeenth century, after an episcopate of more than twenty years. The eulogy, however, passed upon this bishop by O'Sullivan Beare deserves to be cited in full:—