council put an end to the ancient Church of Ireland, and submitted it to the yoke of Rome. THAT OMINOUS apostacy has been followed by a series of calamities, hardly to be equalled in the world. From the days of St. Patrick to the Council of Cashel, was a bright and glorious era for Ireland. From the sitting of that council to our times, the lot of Ireland has been unmixed evil, and all her history a tale of woe."

The partial conquest of Ireland was followed by enormous grants of Henry II. and his successors to the Anglo-Norman adventurers. The whole of Ireland, in fact, with the exception of the county Dublin (that city being granted to the Corporation of the city of Bristol) was divided in the beginning of the thirteenth century among ten English families. Earl Strongbow, who had some colour of hereditary title, according to our notion of law, by his marriage with the daughter of Dermot, King of Leinster, obtained the grant of that province. De Lacy acquired Meath, which was not considered a part of Leinster at that period, but a kingdom in itself. In the same way, the whole of Ulster was allotted to De Courcy; Connaught to De Burg; and the rest of the country to six others. These grants they were to hold by a sort of feudal tenure, parcelling them among tenants of the English race, and expelling the natives, or driving them into the worst parts of the country by incessant warfare.

In those parts of Ireland (and they were few) which had been really conquered, Henry's aim was to establish the English laws, and to render it, in its civil Constitution, similar to that of England. The colony from England was already considerable, and was likely to increase. The Ostmen, who inhabited

a few of the maritime towns, came very willingly, as all settlers of Teutonic origin have done, into English customs and language; and upon this basis, leaving the accession of the aboriginal people to future contingencies, he raised the edifice of the Irish Constitution.

The inhabitants of Ireland in those days may be classed under the following denominations:-The first and by far the most numerous were the native population, who never submitted to the English Government, and from their being in a state of constant warfare with it, were called Irish enemies, and from their attachment to the religion of their forefathers were looked upon by the Romish Church, now for the first time forced upon the country, as heretics of the very worst description. Secondly, the Anglo-Norman adventurers, who had obtained a grant of nearly the entire kingdom, but had subjected to their authority only a very small proportion of it, were called liegemen or good subjects. In the course of time, however, many of the leading men among them, adopted the Irish habit and customs, renounced the English laws and institutions, and finally took up arms against the State, and consequently were looked upon as rebels; and finally the Romish hierarchy, who had been raised in consequence of their apostacy from the ancient faith, to a higher rank than the native princes. The two latter, though occasionally quarrelling with each other over the division of the spoil, carried on a most determined and bloody warfare with the native population, and with the Crown of England, whenever its power was exerted either in favour of the persecuted Irish, or to restrain their licentious habits.

In consequence of this pernicious separation of the two races, the Irish priests, who generally followed

their own rules, had little or no intercourse with their bishops, who were nominated by the King, so that their synods are commonly recited to have been holden for safety," inter Anglicos," among the English. The Bishops, themselves, were generally intruded into their sees by violence, and not unfrequently dispossessed of them in the same way; a total ignorance and neglect prevailed in the Church, so much so, that it was often found impossible to recover a succession of names in many of the sees in Ireland; and as a proof to what a wretched state the country was reduced under Popish rule, we give an extract from one of the state papers in Henry the Eighth's time:-"What comyn folke in all this world, is so poor, so feeble, so well besyn in town and fylde, so bestyal, so greatly oppressed and trodden under foot, as the comyn folke of Ireland."

The change that took place regarding Church property in consequence of the Synod of Cashel is very remarkable, and worthy of grave consideration. By one of its seven decrees it was enacted, "That Church lands (the original property of the primitive Irish Church) should be free from the customary exactions of the chieftains, from all demands, whether of money or entertainment; that they should be likewise exempt from certain fines imposed by the Brehon Law, and that all the faithful should pay tythes of their cattle, fruits, and all other increase." And this was explained and enlarged a few years after, by a sweeping commentary of the Dublin Synod, as including the tithes of provisions, hay, flax, wool, the young of animals, and the produce of gardens and orchards. It was also enacted that all the faithful should pay a third of their moveable goods for the repose of their souls; and that if they died unmarried, or without le

gitimate children, the bequest should be increased to one-half."

Such was the splendid bribe conferred on the usurping Church of Ireland. Its extensive lands protected from the lawful claims of the original grantees, and a full tenth of the produce of all other lands, and more than a third of all moveable property. We may remark here also, that a large number of monasteries were erected in Ireland immediately after the English invasion. These monasteries were built and richly endowed by the Anglo-Norman adventurers, who having obtained large grants of land, settled a considerable portion of them, as an atonement for their sins, on these establishments.

Wherever the arms of England prevailed, all these privileges were respected, while in the greater part of Ireland, the petty chiefs followed their old usages, repressing the new tythe system, levying the customary contributions, and overwhelming their clergy with the honour of their unceremonious visits, regardless of King or Pontiff. The design of the Council of Cashel was to assimilate the Irish Church in its doctrines, rites, and discipline, to that of Popish England; but we are assured by the decisive testimony of Dr. Lanigan, a distinguished Roman Catholic historian, that wherever the natives maintained their independence, and that was in the greater part of Ireland, "Clergy and people followed their own ecclesiastical rules, as if the Synod of Cashel had never been held;" and this continued to the very dawn of the Reformation, for we find that after Wolsey had been created a Pope's legate a latere, he manufactured a supply of Bulls and dispensations for the Irish market; but concerning this cargo, Allen wrote to him a complaining account, stating that the commodities went off

slowly. "The Irish," he says, "had so little sense of religion, that they married within the prohibited degrees, without dispensations; they also questioned his grace's authority in Ireland, especially outside the Pale."*

It is not perhaps generally known, that the property bestowed upon the regular clergy of the Romish Church, including a large proportion of the tythes, has been, since the time of Henry VIII., in the possession of the landed proprietors of England and Ireland; in consequence of which, many parishes are left without any adequate provision for the resident clergyman. Thus while the Church was emancipated from Popish errors, it was at the same time deprived of all that property that was brought into it, on the establishment of Romanism in Ireland.

Some may, however, object to this statement, on the ground that tythes were a Romish impost, and introduced into Ireland at the time that the Romish yoke was imposed upon us. We can, however state, on the authority of Lanigan and other Romish writers of credit, that, although an immense increase in the number of tythed articles took place at that period, yet that a modified system of tythes did exist in Ireland previously to the introduction of Romanism; and from the changes that have taken place, especially as it regards the tythe of agistment, and lately by the deprivation of the fourth of the tythe property from the clergy, we do not hesitate to assert that that property now bears a very exact proportion to the tythe system as it existed in the primitive Irish Church.

* The English pale, the extent of the English Government in Ireland, was confined (in the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII.) to parts of the four counties in the neighbourhood of Dublin, Louth, Kildare, Meath, and Dublin.