As an off-set to this confession, drawn from him unwillingly, he accuses the Irish clergy of drinking at night more than is becoming (plusquam deceret), but does not go the length of saying that they drank to inebriation, which, indeed, would be altogether incompatible with the virtues which he is forced to admit they possessed. Felix, Bishop of Ossory, who was present when Giraldus made this statement, resented as false his allusion to the indulgence of the Irish clergy in wine. But, even taking the account of Giraldus in its full extent, we must admit that the Irish priests, at the time of the Norman invasion, had nothing to learn from the example of the ecclesiastics who had followed the conquerors from England; and we are inclined to hold with Lanigan that there was in that day no church in Christendom in which there were fewer abuses.
It was to Maurice, Archbishop of Cashel, who died in 1191, that Giraldus made the objection that Ireland had never had any martyrs. “It is true,” replied the archbishop; “for, though the Irish are looked upon as barbarous and uncultivated, yet have they always paid reverence and honor to priests; nor have they ever raised their hands against the saints of God. But now there is come amongst us a people who know how and are accustomed to make martyrs. Henceforth Ireland, like other nations, shall have her martyrs.”
Giraldus has himself recorded this retort as a sharp saying. His heart would have failed him could he have looked into the future and beheld the whole people weltering in their martyr-blood; the sword always uplifted ready to strike, the
land made desolate, the populous cities empty, the solemn cathedrals in ruins, the monasteries sacked and burned, until Ireland, that made no martyrs for Christ, became, for him, the great martyr-nation of all time. Cashel itself was to have its martyrs, chosen some of them from among its archbishops. Maurice Fitzgibbon, of the noble family of the earls of Desmond, filled this see when Elizabeth ascended the throne. His birth was not more eminent than his virtue. Every effort was made by the queen to induce him to prefer honors to conscience. But in vain. He spurned the royal favor which could be obtained only by the sacrifice of his faith, was arrested for refusing to take the oath of supremacy, and thrown into prison in Cork, where, after years of suffering and cruel treatment, he died on the 6th of May, 1578. His successor was Archbishop O’Hurley, who, through his mother, Honora O’Brien, was descended of the house of Thomond. A wretched informer was set to watch him, but, through the timely warning of a friend, he escaped just as he was on the point of being delivered into the hands of the officers of the government, and found an asylum in the castle of Slane. His place of refuge was soon discovered, and Lord Slane was ordered under the heaviest penalties to bring the archbishop with the least possible delay to the Castle of Dublin. On his trial he was put to torture, in the vain hope that his excruciating sufferings might bring him to renounce his faith. In the midst of his torments his only sister was sent into his prison to add her prayers to the cruelties of his tortures. He implored her to fall upon her knees and ask pardon for so great a crime. As a last resort he was offered pardon
with the promise of high honors if he would yield. The heroic martyr replied that when he had health to enjoy the world, such things had not power to move him; and now that he was weak and broken, it would be folly to deny his God for pleasures which he could not enjoy. Sentence was then passed upon him, and on the 6th of May, 1583, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, he was dragged to the place of public execution in Stephen’s Green, and there hanged. His head was then cut off, and his body quartered and placed upon the four gates of the city.
The first Protestant Archbishop of Cashel was the notorious Miler Magragh, who apostatized during the reign of Elizabeth, and whom Camden calls “a man of uncertain faith and credit, and a depraved life.” During the fifty-two years of his occupancy of this see he squandered its revenues, alienated its lands, and, lest the memory of his misdeeds should perish, took care to erect in the cathedral a monument to himself to recall to succeeding generations the lavish manner in which he spent the ill-gotten goods of apostasy and servility. The epitaph, which he wrote himself, records among other things that for fifty years he worshipped England’s sceptre and pleased her princes. When Donald O’Brien’s grand cathedral passed into the hands of Protestant bishops, it began to be neglected. In 1647 Lord Inchiquin, one of Cromwell’s generals, laid siege to it, and, after a severe bombardment, took it by storm. Twenty priests who had taken refuge in the castle retired into the vault, and the soldiers, not being able to break in the door, brought turf and made a fire, by which they were either
roasted or suffocated. The western tower, which was directly exposed to the battery of Inchiquin, was greatly damaged, and after the capture the roof of the cathedral was blown off with cannon. When the troubled times of the Commonwealth had passed away, the choir was again fitted up and used for religious worship, until in 1749 the Protestant Archbishop Price abandoned this hallowed sanctuary altogether, leaving it to the mercy of time and the elements. The groined arch underneath the belfry was broken down, and the bells were carried off to Fethard and Clonmel. The interior of the church was filled with the fragments of the fallen roof, beneath which were buried tombstones, capitals, corbels, and pillars; and the noble Rock where for ages the heroes and saints of Ireland had dwelled and prayed, abandoned of men, was given up to the owl and the bat. In 1848, while the people were dying from hunger, the great tower, that had been battered by Cromwell’s cannon, opened, and the southern half fell to the ground with a terrific crash; but so excellent was the mortar which had been used in the building that it remained firm while the stones were shattered. The walls of the cathedral still stand firm and unshaken as the Rock on which they are built. There is no nobler ruin in Great Britain. The abbeys of Melrose, Dryburgh, and Holyrood are contemptible when compared with the Rock of Cashel. Even in its fallen state it has the lofty bearing of a king.
“They dreamed not of a perishable life
Who thus could build.”
When Cromwell beheld it he exclaimed: “Ireland is a country worth fighting for.”