But, notwithstanding his own afflictions, he was ever ready to succor by his slender purse and powerful influence such of his destitute young countrymen who sought an opportunity in Rome to procure an education, of which they were so systematically deprived at home; and it was doubtless from a just perception of his great repute and thorough acquaintance with ecclesiastical affairs in Rome that, in the early part of 1669, he was requested by the Irish bishops to act as their representative at the Papal Court, an office which he cheerfully accepted and filled to the entire satisfaction of his venerable constituency.
But he was not long allowed to occupy this subordinate position in connection with the church in Ireland, nor even to retain his chair in the Propaganda. He had now entered on his fortieth year, his mind fully developed and stored with all the sacred and profane learning befitting one called to a higher destiny, and his soul imbued with a zeal so holy and so far removed from worldly ambition that no temptation was likely to overcome his faith, and no persecution, no matter how severe, to shake his constancy. He was therefore appointed Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland, to succeed Dr. Edmond O'Reilly, recently deceased in Paris. Like the great apostle of his country, of whom he was about to become the spiritual successor, he had spent a long probation in the society of men remarkable for the purity of their lives and the extent of their knowledge, and as St. Patrick longed to revisit the land of his adoption, he also yearned to be once again among the Irish people. Yet his appointment to the primacy of Ireland was neither sought nor anticipated by Dr. Plunket at this time, as we learn from a letter from the Archbishop of Dublin to Monsignor Baldeschi, Secretary of the Propaganda, in which he says:
"Certainly, no one could be appointed better suited than Dr. Oliver Plunket, whom I myself would have proposed in the first place, were it not that he had written to me, stating his desire not to enter for some years in the Irish mission, until he should have completed some works which he was preparing for the press."
The names of many clergymen distinguished for piety, devotion, and learning had been forwarded to Rome, from which to select a fitting successor to Dr. O'Reilly; but, while their various merits were under discussion, the Holy Father, Clement IX., it is said, simplified the matter by suggesting Dr. Plunket as the person best qualified to fill the vacant see, and to govern by his experience and force of character the hierarchy, and, through it, the priesthood of Ireland. The views of the Pope met with unanimous approval, and, the selection being thus made, it was out of the power of Dr. Plunket, no matter how diffident he might have been of his own abilities to fill so elevated a position, to decline. We have seen how this important decision of the Sacred Congregation was viewed by Dr. Talbot, of Dublin, and his opinions seemed to have been shared by all the bishops and priests in Ireland. Dr. O'Molony, of St. Sulpice, Paris, afterwards Bishop of Killaloe, writes:
"You have already laid the foundations of our edifice, erected the pillars, and given shepherds to feed the sheep and the lambs; but, now that the work should not remain imperfect, you have crowned the edifice, and provided a pastor for the pastors themselves, appointing the Archbishop of Armagh, for it is not of the diocese of Armagh alone that he has the administration, to whom the primacy and guardianship of all Ireland is entrusted. One, therefore, in a thousand had to be chosen, suited to bear so great a burden. That one you have found—one than whom none other better or more pleasing could be found; with whom (that your wise solicitude for our distracted and afflicted country should be wanting in nothing) you have been pleased to associate his suffragan of Ardagh, a most worthy and grave man."
The Bishop of Ferns, also, in addressing the Secretary of the Sacred Congregation, says: "Applauding and rejoicing, I have hastened hither from Gand, to the Most Reverend and Illustrious Internunzio of Belgium, to return all possible thanks to our Holy Father, in the name of my countrymen, for having crowned with the mitre of Armagh the noble and distinguished Oliver Plunket, Doctor of Theology;" and Dr. Dowley, of Limerick, adds, "Most pleasing to all was the appointment of Dr. Plunket, and I doubt not it will be agreeable to the government, to the secular clergy, and to the nobility."
These warm expressions of esteem and regard, if known to the new primate, must have inspired him with renewed courage to accept the grave responsibilities imposed upon him, and truly, if ever man required the support of friends to nerve him to encounter dangers and unheard-of opposition, he did. But he seems to have had within himself a courage not of this world, but superior to all earthly considerations. It is recorded on the very best authority that, when about to leave Rome, he was thus accosted by an aged priest, "My lord, you are now going to shed your blood for the Catholic faith." To which he replied, "I am unworthy of such a favor; nevertheless, aid me with your prayers, that this my desire may be fulfilled."[108] The condition of the country to which the primate was hastening fully justified this prophecy. It was to the last degree forlorn and full of discouragement. The sufferings of the Irish people at this period defy description; and were it not that we have before us the penal acts of parliament, numerous authenticated state papers, and the published statements of some of the highest officials of the crown and the agents of the Commonwealth, we would be inclined to believe, if only for the credit of human nature, that the relation of the atrocities at this time perpetrated by English authority on the Catholics of Ireland was the work of some diseased mind that delighted in horrors and revelled in the contemplation of an imaginary pandemonium. The Tudors and the Stuarts as persecutors of Catholics were bad enough, but their ineffectual fires paled before the cool atrocity and sanctimonious villany of the followers of Cromwell; men, if we must call them such, who, arrogating to themselves not only the honorable title of champions of human liberty, but claiming to be the exemplars of all that was left of what was pure and holy in this wicked world, perpetrated in the name of freedom and religion a series of such deeds of darkness that not even a parallel can be found for them in the annals of the worst days of the Roman emperors. So deep indeed has the detestation of the barbarities of Cromwell taken root in the popular mind of Ireland, that, though more than two centuries have elapsed since his death, his name is as thoroughly and as heartily detested there to-day as if his crimes had been committed in our own generation. Previous to the Reformation, though wars were frequent and oftentimes bloody between the English invaders and the natives, they were generally conducted in a certain spirit of chivalry and with some degree of moderation, which usually characterize hostile Catholic nations even in times of the greatest excitement. Churches and the nurseries of learning and charity were respected, or, if destroyed through the stern necessities of warfare, were apt to be replaced by others. But the followers of the new religion knew no such charitable weakness, for from the first they seemed actuated, probably as a punishment for their sin of wilful rebellion against the authority of God's law, with an unquenchable hatred of everything holy, and a craftiness in devising measures to destroy the faith and pervert the minds of the Catholics so preternatural in its ingenuity that we can only account for it by supposing it the emanation of the enemy of mankind. That any people stripped of all worldly possessions, debarred so long from religious worship and the means of enlightenment, outlawed by the so-called government, ensnared by the spy and the magistrate, and ground to dust beneath the hoofs of the trooper's horse, should not only have preserved their existence and the faith, but have multiplied amazingly, both at home and abroad, is one of the most remarkable incidents in all history, as well as one of the strongest proofs of the enduring and unconquerable spirit of Catholicity.
There were probably at this time in Ireland nearly a million and a half of Catholics, though Sir William Petty estimates their number at about 1,200,000; the native population having been fearfully reduced by the late war and the pestilence and famine which succeeded it, by the emigration of forty or fifty thousand able-bodied men to Spain and other countries, and by the deportation of an equal number of women and children, as slaves, to the West Indies and the British settlements on our Atlantic coast. Yet, notwithstanding the immense loss of life occasioned soon after by the Williamite war, the constant drain on the adult male population in the latter part of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries, to fill up the decimated ranks of the Catholic armies of Europe, amounting, it is said, to three-quarters of a million, the periodical famines to which the peasantry were constantly exposed, and the great famine of 1846-7 and 1848, which swept away at least two millions, the Irish Catholics of to-day and their descendants in all quarters of the globe number at least fifteen million souls. It is a singular and interesting fact that the Irish Catholics resident in London out-number the entire population of the city of Dublin; that in the cities and towns of England and Scotland there are more Catholics of Irish birth than existed in every part of the world two hundred years ago; and that, while the children of St. Patrick count nearly five millions on the soil which he redeemed from paganism, many more millions of them and their descendants born within the present century are planting the cross of Christ everywhere in America and Australasia. This indestructibility of the Irish race seems to have raised an insurmountable barrier against the designs of the reformers. James I. having planted part of Ulster with some success, the Long Parliament determined to follow his example on a more comprehensive scale, and to utterly exterminate the people who persisted in adhering to their ancient faith. Accordingly, in 1654, all Catholics were ordered under the severest penalties to remove before a certain day from the provinces of Ulster, Leinster, and Munster, and take up their abodes in Connaught, the least fertile and most inaccessible division of the island. In their front a strip of land some miles in width, following the sinuosity of the sea-coast, and another in their rear along the line of the Shannon, were reserved for the victors and protected by a cordon of military posts, the penalty of passing which, without special license, was death. Thus encompassed by the stormy Atlantic and the broad river, with an inner belt of hostile settlements, it was fondly hoped that the remnant of the gallant Irish nation, completely segregated from the world, would speedily perish, unnoticed and unknown, among the sterile mountains of the west. A more diabolical attempt on the lives of a whole people is not to be found recorded in either ancient or modern history, and, to do but justice to the canting fanatics who conceived the plan, no means were left untried to carry it out to a successful issue. But Providence, with whose designs the Cromwellians assumed to be well acquainted, decreed otherwise, and no sooner had their leader sunk into a dishonored grave, and the legitimate sovereign been restored to the throne, than every part of the country swarmed again with Catholics, who seemed to spring, as if by magic, from the very soil. The people, it was found, had actually increased in numbers, and the clergy, who it was supposed had been effectually destroyed by expatriation, famine, or the sword, still amounted to over sixteen hundred seculars and regulars, as devoted as ever to the spiritual interests of their flocks.
The restoration of Charles II. in 1660 was hailed by the Catholics as a favorable omen. They had faithfully supported his father, and had lost all in defending his own cause, and hence they naturally expected, if not gratitude, at least simple justice. But Charles was a true Stuart. Opposed to persecution from a constitutional love of ease and pleasure, as much as from any innate sense of right, he had neither the capacity to plan a reform nor the manhood to carry out the tolerant designs of others. He was, moreover, weak-minded, vacillating, and insincere, more disposed to conciliate his enemies by gifts and honors than to reward his well-tried friends by the commonest acts of justice. The greatest favor that the Catholics could obtain was a toleration of their worship in remote and secret places, and even this qualified boon was dependent on the whim of the viceroy, and was soon withdrawn at the command of parliament.
But the evils of the English Protestant system did not stop here. The death or involuntary exile of most of the Irish bishops and the dispersion of the clergy created a relaxation of ecclesiastical discipline, particularly among the regulars, and the impossibility of obtaining proper religious instruction at home, and the difficulty of procuring it elsewhere, necessarily lowered the standard of education among the priests of all ranks. Left for the most part to their own guidance, and only imperfectly trained for the ministry, many friars, particularly of the Order of St. Francis, so illustrious for its many distinguished scholars and eloquent preachers, were disposed to rebel against their superiors when the least restraint was placed upon their irregular modes of living, and some were found base enough to lend the weight attached to their sacred calling to further the designs of the worst enemies of their creed and country. Ormond and other so-called statesmen, while avowing unqualified loyalty to their sovereign and a secret attachment to the church, were insidiously betraying the one by placing him in a false position before Catholics and Protestants, while vainly endeavoring to strike a blow at the other by using these apostates to create a schism in her ranks. In the latter scheme they signally failed, and their defeat was mainly due to the untiring energy and profound foresight of the Archbishop of Armagh during the ten years of his administration. The very announcement of Dr. Plunket's appointment seems to have struck terror into the secret enemies of the church in Ireland, and to have given new hope to the friends of religion. This event occurred on the 9th of July, 1669, when the bulls for his consecration were immediately forwarded to the Internunzio at Brussels. Dr. Plunket was desirous of receiving the mitre in Rome, and even made a strong request to be granted that privilege, but the prudential motives which induced the Sacred Congregation to select Belgium in the first instance still remained, and the favor was reluctantly refused. As his first act of obedience, the archbishop bowed cheerfully to this decision, and after presenting his little vineyard, his only real property, and a few books to the Irish College, he bade a final adieu to his Roman friends in the following month, and commenced his homeward journey—his first step to a glorious immortality. He arrived during November in the capital of Belgium, and was cordially welcomed by the Internunzio, who was not unacquainted with his extensive learning and unaffected piety. At the request of that prelate, the Bishop of Ghent consented to administer consecration to Dr. Plunket, and the solemn ceremony was duly performed on the 30th of November, in the private chapel of the episcopal palace in that ancient city. Dr. Nicholas French, Bishop of Ferns, one of the few persons present on the occasion, thus describes it: