The oldest inscription in the church is on a tombstone erected to the memory of Edward, Lord Cromwell and Baron Oakham, no relative of Oliver Cromwell, but a great-grandson of Thomas Cromwell, the famous minister of Henry VIII., who, after the pacification of the country obtained possession of the Downpatrick estates, which continued in his family until 1832, when they were purchased by David Kerr, and in 1874 sold to the late Lord Dunleath, who now owns the largest part of the surrounding country.
At the time of the Reformation, the monks of Downpatrick refused to subscribe to the new ordinances and were driven out of the monastery. The history of Downpatrick is quite vague from that time until affairs quieted down, but from 1662 the records are complete.
Rev. John Wesley visited Downpatrick in 1778, and in his diary he describes the ruins of the Abbey of Saul as “far the largest building I have ever seen in the kingdom. Adjoining it is one of the most beautiful groves which I have ever beheld with my eyes. It covers the sloping side of the hill and has vistas cut through it every way. There is a most lovely plain very near to the venerable ruins of the cathedral.” Wesley visited Downpatrick on four different occasions between 1778 and 1785, and during each visit preached in the grove he describes, using as a pulpit the pedestal upon which a statue of St. Patrick formerly stood.
Perhaps the most celebrated resident of Downpatrick was Rev. Jeremy Taylor, who, while bishop of this diocese, wrote his famous book, “Holy Living and Holy Dying.”
Nothing but the irregular surface of the ground upon a hill about two miles from Downpatrick marks the site of the ancient Monastery of Saul, which from the time it was founded by St. Patrick in 432 was for several centuries one of the most celebrated and influential educational institutions in the world. Like the monastery at Armagh, only twenty miles away, which was also founded by St. Patrick about the same time, it was attended annually by thousands of students from England, Scotland, France, Spain, and other countries of the continent to hear and absorb the learning of the Augustinian and afterward the Benedictine monks. Unfortunately, however, no records remain of the institutions farther than an occasional reference in the “Annals of Ulster.”
The sanctity of the place, however, is recognized by Christians of every race and sect, although the grave of St. Patrick—and of two other saints—which is a hundred feet from the entrance to the old cathedral church, is marked only by an enormous granite bowlder, almost as nature made it, bearing no inscription except the word “Patric” in celtic letters beneath a celtic cross chiseled on the surface of the stone. It is a most appropriate monument in its simple dignity, and one that you might imagine that St. Patrick would have preferred rather than a lofty and ornate tower. It is rather curious, however, that no movement has ever been started to erect an imposing memorial here; there is no evidence that any monument of size ever marked the grave, although the three most venerated saints in the Irish calendar lie here together. A distich, said to have been written by Sir John de Courcy in 1185, says:
“Hi tres Duno tumulo tumulantur in uno;
Brigidam, Patricius atque Colomba Pius”;
which is liberally translated as follows:
“Three Saints in Down, one grave do fill;