A Chronological Table of the Catholic Primates of Ireland

With the Years in Which They Succeeded to the Metropolitan Sees of Armagh, Dublin, Cashell and Tuam

ARCHBISHOPS OF ARMAGH.

BISHOPS OF DUBLIN.

ARCHBISHOPS OF DUBLIN.

(1 A.) Saint Patrick, ten years after building the Metropolitan church of Armagh, committed it to the care of Bineen, or Benignus, his scholar, who resigned it soon after to Iarlath. He, dying in 482, was succeeded by Cormack, so that St. Patrick saw three of his successors in his see of Armagh, before his death, on the 17th of March, 493.

(14 A.) To Thomian, or Tomian, and the other clergy of Ireland, was written that epistle from the Roman clergy during the vacancy of the Roman see, in 639, concerning the time of observing Easier, of which a part is extant in Bede's Ecclesiastical History.

(20 A.) In Artruge, or Artry's primacy, the Ultonian territories were much disturbed by the invasions of the Danes. Armagh was for a month in their possession, in 830.

(36 A.) Maolbridy, the son of Tornan, or Dornan Comorban to St. Patrick and Columbkille, was of the blood royal of Ireland. His learning and virtues were so eminent as to obtain for him the appellation of the ornament of Europe. In his time, Armagh was thrice plundered by the Danes.

(52 A.) St. Malachy, called in Irish Maolmedoc ua Morgair, resigned his see to Giolla-Iosa, or servant of Jesus, strangely metamorphosed by Latin writers into the seemingly Greek name Gelasius, whereby the Irish etymology is almost lost, as is the case with many other names too. St. Malachy, after establishing a monastery of regular canons in Down, undertook a journey to Rome, but died in the arms of St. Bernard, his biographer, in the Abbey of Clairvaux, in France.

(1 D.) Of the bishops of Dublin, no regular succession can be at present made out before the time of Donat, the Dane, in 1074. Hestaunus, indeed, mentions the few that are above recorded, before that time. Notwithstanding the silence of our records, it is very probable that St. Patrick, after founding a church there, in 448, established a form of ecclesiastical government for it, similar to that which he instituted in other parts of the island.

(2 D.) The illustrious and patriotic St. Laurence O'Toole, was the son of Martough O'Toole, prince of Imaly, by Inghean ee Bhrian, or daughter of the royal house of O'Brien. In 1167, he assisted at a convention of the clergy and princes of Leah-Cuin, or north of Ireland, at Athboy, wherein many laws for the government of church and state were made. St. Laurence animated the inhabitants of Dublin to a vigorous defence against the Anglo-Norman invaders, under Strongbow, until the city was forced to surrender. He next prevailed on Roderic, and the princes of Ireland, to join in a conspiracy against the invaders; but after investing Dublin by land and water with 30,000 men, and 30 ships, the Irish princes were compelled to raise the siege. He, with the rest of the clergy, assisted at a national council, held in Cashel, by order of Henry II. "Having, out of zeal," says Cambrensis, "for his country's service, fallen under Henry the Second's displeasure, Laurence was a long time detained in France and England, by that politic prince." In this latter place, at Becket's shrine in Canterbury, our patriot was attacked by a villain, who, perhaps, wishing, like the murderers of Thomas a Becket, to ingratiate himself with Henry, by a similar act of assassination, rushed on the archbishop as he was saying mass there, and knocked him down with a blow which fractured his skull. He died at Auge, in Normandy, in 1180, and was canonized by pope Honorius the III. in 1225.

(80 A.) Archbishop Dowdall strenuously opposed the innovations of Henry VIII. and of his complaisant servant, then the archbishop of Dublin, the well known apostate George Brown. Brown was originally an Augustinian friar, of London, and provincial of that order in England. He was advanced to the see of Dublin, by Henry VIII. in 1535. He was the first Roman Catholic prelate who embraced the reformation in Ireland. Miles M'Grath, archbishop of Cashell, Staples, bishop of Meath, Lancaster, bishop of Kildare, Travers, bishop of Laughlin, and Coyne, bishop of Limerick, afterwards apostatized, and abjured the Catholic religion; Lancaster and Travers were, in turn, ejected from their sees, in Queen Mary's reign; as they, like the other apostles of the Reformation, took wives to themselves. Coyne, or Quin, was originally a Dominican friar; M'Grath was a Franciscan before his perversion.

(87 A.) Richard Creagh was poisoned in the tower of London in 1585, and his successor, Edward M'Gauron, was murdered in his confessional, by a soldier, in 1598, as is asserted by David Roth, the learned bishop of Ossory, in his "Processus Martyrialis." To these illustrious martyrs, we may add the (92. A.) fourth in succession after M'Gauran; viz. the learned and holy martyr, Oliver Plunket, who, in 1679, was taken to Dublin, detained as a close prisoner there, and after being transmitted from thence to Newgate in London, was ultimately drawn on a sledge to Tyburn, that theatre of Catholic martyrdom since the holy Reformation, and hanged, beheaded, and quartered, on the 1st of July, 1681, as may be seen more at large, in the Tripartite Theology of Richard Archdeakin, an erudite Jesuit of Kilkenny, printed at Antwerp, in 1682.

(101 A.) Doctor R. O'Reilly, having completed his studies at Rome, returned to his native country, and, in 1780, was consecrated coadjutor bishop to Doctor O'Keefe, the predecessor of the present learned and pious Doctor Delany, in the diocess of Kildare and Leighlin. In 1782, Doctor O'Reilly was made administrator of the arch-diocess of Armagh; and on the death of the late Doctor Blake, in 1787, was promoted to the metropolitan chair of that primatial see.

(40 D.) Doctor J. T. Troy was born in the city of Dublin, and was, at an early age, affiliated into the order of St. Dominic, an order which has rendered itself eminently illustrious for adorning the Christian Church with a brilliant galaxy of popes, prelates, and preachers, equally distinguished for their pious zeal in cultivating the Lord's vinevards, as for the purity of their principles and edifying sanctity of their lives. In order to qualify himself for the mission, he went to Rome. There, in the college of SS. PP. Sixtus and Clement de Urbe, he spent twenty-one years. That he attained to literary pre-eminence in the various departments of his under graduate course, is fully evinced by his being twice dignified with the honour of filling the rectorial chair of that celebrated seminary. From this academic retreat he was at last called forth to the active labours of the Irish mission. In 1776, Doctor Troy was promoted to the see of Ossory, then vacant by the death of Doctor Thomas Burke, also a native of Dublin, a member of the Dominican order, and author of the celebrated work called "Hibernia Dominicana." Doctor Troy, in 1786, was translated to the archdiocess of Leinster, and took possession of the metropolitan and primatial chair, in his native city of Dublin, on the 15th February, 1787, leaving the vacated see of Ossory to Doctor John Dunne, who, dying in 1789, was succeeded by Doctor James Lanigan, the present truly religious, learned, and laborious bishop of that diocess.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CASHELL.

ARCHBISHOPS OF TUAM.