passion was the study of antiquity, for this purpose he consulted the best manuscripts of both universities, and all libraries public and private: and henceforward he regularly came over once in three years; passing one month of the summer-season at Oxford, another at Cambridge, and the rest in London, chiefly among the treasures of the Cottonian library.

About the beginning of the year 1610, he was unanimously chosen Provost of his College; but this honour, fearing it might prove a hindrance to his studies, he had the forbearance to refuse.

In 1612, he was admitted D. D. by Dr. Hampton, then Archbishop of Armagh, upon which occasion he composed two prælections; one on the Seventy Weeks of Daniel, and the other on the Millennium of the Apocalypse.

The next year, he published in London his Treatise, Gravissima Quæstionis de Christianarum Ecclesiarum, in Occidentis præsertim Partibus, ab Apostolicis temporibus ad nostram usque ætatem continuâ successione et statu, Historica Explicatio; to which his learned friends Isaac Casaubon and Abraham Schultens prefixed encomiastic verses in Greek and Latin.*

Soon after his return to Ireland, he married Phoebe, only daughter of Luke Chaloner, D. D., of the ancient family of the Chaloners in Yorkshire, who as overseer of the building, and treasurer, had been an eminent assistant and benefactor to the new College.

*This work, dedicated to King James, and commencing from the sixth century, where it had been discontinued by Jewel in his Apology for the Church of England,' has been left imperfect. He intended to have completed it, had God afforded him a longer life.

Such was the friendship of Dr. Chaloner for Usher, that he intended, had he lived, to have given him this his only daughter, with a considerable estate : but dying before he could see the nuptials concluded, he charged her upon his death-bed to think of no other person for a husband. The injunction was obeyed soon after her father's decease; and she lived with him in great harmony for forty years.

In 1615, a parliament being held at Dublin, a convocation of the clergy was also assembled, in which the articles of the Church of Ireland, at the request of that body, were drawn up by Usher. The turn of some of these articles, in number 104, having incurred the censure of favouring Puritanism, the learned compiler in his next visit to his English friends carried over recommendatory letters from the Lord Deputy and the Privy Council of Ireland. These readily obtaining for him private audiences of James I., that Monarch was so thoroughly satisfied with the exposition of his religious principles, that in 1620 he promoted him to the see of Meath, saying, "Dr. Usher is a Bishop of my own making." His elevation, however, to the episcopal bench made no alteration in the modesty and simplicity of his character.

In 1622, the new Prelate was requested to address an admonitory oration to certain high-born Catholic officers, who had scrupled to take the oaths of supremacy; and for his speech upon this occasion he received the royal thanks, and the appointment of Privy Councillor.

In the same year, he published his Treatise upon the Religion of the ancient Irish and Britons,' showing the conformity of the rites and doctrines of the primitive ages in these countries with those of

Protestantism, and pointing out the periods in which the Papal innovations were successively introduced.

From the profound knowledge evinced in this disquisition, King James, to facilitate his design of discussing more elaborately the Antiquities of the British churches, transmitted a letter to the Lord Deputy and Council of Ireland, commanding them to grant him a licence for non-residence; upon which, he came over to England, and spent nearly a year in consulting the best manuscripts in both Universities and in private libraries.

Soon after his return to his see in 1624, he was for some time engaged in answering the presumptuous challenge of Malone, an Irish Jesuit of the College of Loraine. He revisited England a little before the death of James, and was by him translated to the archbishopric of Armagh. Upon this promotion he received congratulatory letters from Viscount Falkland, then Lord Deputy, and from all the StateOfficers and Bishops of Ireland; but he did not take actual possession of the primacy till 1626, having been detained in England nine months by a quartan ague. During this interval he gained great credit, and established a valuable friendship for life, by acting as the champion of Lady Mordaunt in a disputation with her Lord's Catholic advocate, which terminated in his Lordship's conversion to Protestantism.

In the administration of the archbishopric, he acted, as he had invariably done in every preceding station, in a most exemplary manner. He exhorted, and reformed, the inferior clergy: but he vigorously opposed the design of granting more toleration to the Irish Catholics; being, unfortunately, in this respect imperfectly enlightened. A general assembly of the whole nation, Catholics and Protestants, had been

called by the Lord Deputy upon this subject. The meeting was held at the Castle. The Bishops, by the Primate's invitation, met first at his house; where they unanimously subscribed a protest against the toleration of Popery. In consequence of this, the proposal of the Catholics, to provide at their own expense a standing army for the defence of the kingdom against it's foreign and domestic enemies upon certain conditions of toleration, was rejected.

The Archbishop was now enabled more amply to gratify his ruling passion, the love of antiquity. He laid aside, every year, a considerable sum for the purchase of valuable books and manuscripts; and, among others, through the medium of Mr. Thomas Davis (then a merchant at Aleppo) he procured, if not the first, one of the first Samaritan Pentateuchs ever brought into the west of Europe,* as also two

* So Selden and Walton admit. The latter borrowed this Pentateuch with his other MSS., and made use of them in his Polyglott Bible; and, being subsequently retrieved out of the hands of his executors, they are now deposited in the Bodleian Library. One of these copies had the Arabic Version coupled with the Samaritan text, and another a portion of the Samaritan Liturgy. From which, and the practice of the modern Jews, traditionally carrying the usage of Set Forms of Prayer as high as the time of Ezra, the learned editor of the Polyglott observes, Sectariorum nostratium pervicacia et impietas meritò redarguitur, qni spretis omnibus publicis orationum et Liturgiarum formis, per omnes Christi Ecclesias ab ipsis Chris tianæ fidei primordiis et Apostolorum temporibus usitatis, omnium per orbem Christianum purissimam et sanctissimam damnârunt, et omnibus liberum permiserunt tonsoribus, bajulis, cauponariis, vilissimisque è face plebis quicquid in buccam venerit publicè in ecclesiis effutire et blaterare, quorum praxis vel ab ipsis Judæis eorumque amulis Samaritanis erroris et novitatis arguitur. All these, says Walton, magno nobis adjumento erant in adornando Pentateucho nostro, eumque à mendis quæ in editionem Pari

manuscript copies of the Old Testament in Syriac, in a much more perfect state than had previously been known.*

In 1631, his Grace published at Dublin his Godeschalci, et Prædestinaria Controversia ab eo mota Historia,' being the first Latin book printed in Ireland. His notions however upon this subject being opposite to those of Laud, a Prelate both more powerful and more inclined to use his power in silencing his adversaries than Usher, he was reluctantly obliged to conform to the directions of a Letter issued by Charles I. for the suppression of the Irish Bishop Downham's work against the Arminians. His zeal against Papists took a better direction, when he employed himself in endeavouring to convert them by argument, inviting them to his house, and holding friendly conversations with them, in which his success is said to have been remarkable.

In the year following he gave to the world a collection of ancient letters, under the title of Veterum Epistolarum Hibernicarum Sylloge, quæ partim ad Hibernos, partim de Hibernis vel rebus Hibernicis sunt conscripta." These documents contain divers curious matters, from 592 to 1180, relative to the ecclesiastical discipline and jurisdiction of the Irish Church and by the learning and judgement, which they displayed, procured for their editor. a considerable addition of credit.

sianam irrepserant repurgando. See Proleg. ad SS. Bibl. Polyglott. XI. 10. 23.

* One of these contained only the Pentateuch; but the other comprised the whole of the Old Testament with the exception of the Psalms, which the Primate had directed to be transcribed from the MS. of the Patriarch of Alexandria at a great expense. Ib. XIII. 10.