No "reformed" community has ever made such desperate and persistent efforts, with such flimsy or wholly imaginary materials, to bridge over the long space of the middle ages, in order to make some show of historical connection with the first founders of Christianity. But the recent revival of genuine ecclesiastical learning has utterly dissipated the last fond efforts of these spiritual genealogists; and the very first acts of its existence as a separated body, are now as well understood as the 41st of George III., by which it became a copartner in "the United Church of England and Ireland," no longer ago than the first day of the year of our Lord, 1801.
The history of the Irish member of this curious ecclesiastical firm may best be traced through the statutes at large. As its parentage was parliamentary, so its life has been legislative. There is one advantage in having this description of authority to refer to, that it cannot be disputed. The "Journals of Parliament" in England and Ireland, from the reformation to the civil emancipation of the Catholics in 1829, are good Protestant authority. The peers and commoners of the old religion were excluded from the English houses, from the 10th of Elizabeth (1567) to the 9th of George IV., (1829,) a period of 262 years; and in Ireland, the last parliament in which Catholics sat was that of 4th James II., (1689,) followed by a period of exclusion, before the union, of 111 years. It was not found possible, so early as the time of the two first Stuarts and Elizabeth, to wholly exclude Catholics, or, as they were then called, "recusants," from membership in either house in Ireland; and accordingly we find them a formidable minority in those rarely occurring assemblies, such as the Irish parliaments held in the 11th and 25th of Elizabeth, the 11th James I., the 14th Charles I., and the 12th of Charles II, In the second James's short-lived parliament of one session, hastily adjourned to allow his lords and gentlemen to follow their master to the banks of the "ill-fated river," they were a majority; but with that evanescent exception, the statutes of Ireland are quite as exclusively Protestant authority on all church matters as those of England previous to the union of the legislatures and the churches, and subsequently down to 1829.
The history of Protestantism in Ireland, from first to last, is a political history. Its best record is to be found in the parliamentary journals as well in the reign of Henry VIII. as of George III. And though we do not propose to dwell, in the present paper, in anything like detail on the annals of that establishment previous to the present century, we must condense into a short space the main facts of its first appearance on the scene, and its early parliamentary nurture and education, to account for the facility with which it ceased to be, even in pretence, a national church at the time of the legislative union. Political in its origin, its organization, and its government, from the first hour of its existence, it had neither will, nor wish, nor ability, if it had either, to resist the designs of the state, which included its incorporation into the imperial system. As the lay representation of Ireland was recast, as the seal and the standard were changed, so the institution started by statute and royal orders in council in the sixteenth century came naturally to have its individuality extinguished by other statutes and orders in council in the nineteenth. If this so-called "Church of Ireland" had really believed itself to be what its champions had so often asserted, the true and ancient national church of the kingdom, it would at all events have made some show of patriotic resistance before making its surrender.
Not only, however, was it not really national in its origin, but it was then, and always, an eminently anti-popular institution. There was not, as in other countries during the reformation, even the pretext of what is called a popular "movement against Rome." No Luther had arisen among the Celtic or the Anglo-Irish Catholics in that age of perturbation. The ancient faith was received as implicitly by the burgesses of Dublin as by the clansmen of Connaught, and the spiritual supremacy of the pope seemed a doctrine as impossible of contradiction to the descendants of Strongbow as to the children of Milesius. No internal revolt against Roman discipline or Roman doctrine had shown itself within the western island. There was no spiritual insurrection attempted from within to justify the resort to external intervention. The annalists of Donegal, who are commonly called "The Four Masters," and who were old enough to remember the first mention of Protestantism in their own province, thus unconsciously express the amazement of the educated Irish mind of those days at the new doctors and doctrines:
"A.D. 1537. A heresy and a new error broke out in England, the effects of pride, vainglory, avarice, sensual desire, and the prevalence of a variety of scientific and philosophical speculations, so that the people of England went into opposition to the pope and to Rome. At the same time they followed a variety of opinions, and the old law of Moses, after the manner of the Jewish people, and they gave the title of Head of the Church of God to the king. There were enacted by the king and council new laws and statutes after their own will."
But the laws and statutes enacted by the king and council in England, for changing the national religion, were not immediately either extended to, or proposed for imitation in, Ireland. The zeal of the crowned apostle was tempered by the exigencies of the politician. Before this king's time, the English power in Ireland had been essentially a colonial power; "a pale" or enclosure, or garrison. Whoever will not mark the point, will miss the very pivot of all the operations of the new religion in Ireland. Henry VIII. had inherited from his father, the first king of united England for a century, the ambition of making himself equally master of the neighboring nation. During the twenty years of the sway of his great cardinal-chancellor, this object never was for a moment lost sight of. When Wolsey went down to the grave in disgrace without seeing it fulfilled, his royal pupil continued to prosecute the plan to its entire accomplishment. This result, however, he only reached in the thirty-second year of his reign, (1541,) some six years before his miserable end. Ten years previously, (1531,) he may be said to have established the new religion in England by compelling the majority of the clergy to subscribe to his supremacy in spirituals; within two years followed his marriage with Anne Boleyn; and in 1535, his order appeared commanding the omission "of the name of the Bishop of Rome from every liturgical book," which may be said to have completed the severance of England from Rome.
Not only did not Henry, in obedience to his political design of adding another crown to his dominions, not press his reformed doctrines immediately upon the Irish of either race, but he expressly reprehended his deputies at Dublin for having prematurely attempted the national conversion. In the same year in which he struck the pope's name from every liturgical book, he sharply rebuked George Browne, an English ex-Augustinian whom he had appointed Archbishop of Dublin, for destroying certain relics of saints in the churches of that city. Again in the same year. Secretary Cromwell writes officially to contradict "a common rumor," that he intended to pluck down the statue of "our Lady of Trim," which was as famous on the west, as our "Lady of Walsingham" on the east of the channel. Four years later, we find the Lord Deputy Grey, after a victory over O'Neill at Bellahoe, halting with the whole court and army at this celebrated place of pilgrimage, and visiting this same shrine of our Lady—"very devoutly kneeling before her, he heard three or four masses." At that moment, in the thirtieth year of Henry VIII., and the sixth of his open rupture with Rome, any Celtic-Irish or Anglo-Irish Catholic, in the ranks of Lord Grey, not particularly well informed as to the affairs of the neighboring kingdom, might have rested honestly in the belief that he was serving a Catholic prince in full communion with the rest of Christendom.
But as soon as the election to the kingship, which it is not in our way here to dwell upon, was successfully over, and the new royal title proclaimed, confirmed, and acknowledged abroad, especially in Scotland and France, and by the emperor, then there came a change. The politician being satisfied, the apostle awoke. A commission of reformation, at the head of which sat Archbishop Browne, undertook the purgation of the Dublin and neighboring churches, producing as their warrant the royal authority, "dated years before." A sufficient guard of horse and foot accompanied these commissioners, and were much needed to protect them from the populace. The statues and relics in the cathedrals of Leighlin, Ferns, and Kildare; the Lady statue at Trim, and a famous crucifixion in Ballyhogan Abbey, were forthwith destroyed. So far and so soon as they could venture into the interior, this "work, of reformation," under the royal warrant, was pushed on vigorously, in order, as Henry's commission expressed it, "that no fooleries of this kind might henceforth for ever be in use in said land." This royal order (1539) sounded the key-note of spoliation, and little more than this was attempted during the remainder of this reign. The first serious effort at national conversion was made under the orders in council of the 4th of Edward VI., (1551,) when on Easter day the English liturgy was for the first time publicly recited in Christ Church Cathedral, the ex-Augustinian archbishop preaching from the text, "Open mine eyes, that I may see the wonders of the laws," (Ps. 119.) The liturgy was printed the same year at Dublin, in English, and the lord deputy was instructed to take measures to have it "translated into Irish in those places that need it." The following year the work of spoliation was resumed with new vigor at the famous seven churches of Clonmacnoise, and other points upon the Shannon. Within twelve months thereafter, young Edward died, and the five years' reign of Queen Mary gave a respite to the Irish church. It was a period too short for restoration, but long remembered with regretful affection for the temporary exemption from persecution it had afforded.