1258. Submission of King Henry the Further encroachments of the Papacy on royal preroga tive. ments on the crown, when it was worn by a prince naturally feeble, or involved in political difficulties. Thus, in 1258, when King Henry the Third was at war with his barons, Pope Alexander the Fourth sent him an insolent command to restore Abraham O'Conellan to the temporalties of the archbishoprick of Armagh, which had been granted to him by his Holiness through the plenitude of his power; and to that command the necessitous king tamely submitted". Other encroachments were attempted to be made on the royal prerogative by the Papal provisions, in which were inserted clauses prejudicial to the king and the kingdom. As a counteraction of such encroachments, it was customary for the Irish bishops to receive consecration in England, that so, before the completion of their titles by the king, they might be obliged to renounce in person any claims prejudicial to the crown, contained in the Pope's bulls. Sometimes this renunciation was allowed to be made by proxy; and then the bishop-elect was spared the trouble and expense of a journey into England, by virtue of a royal mandate for his consecration by the Irish Metropolitan, as in the instance of Richard de Northampton, consecrated by the Archbishop of Dublin to the bishoprick of Ferns in 1282". In pursuance of the same principle of counteraction, in the time of King Edward the Second, in 1306, the king refused to restore the temporalties to Walter, who had been advanced to the archbishoprick of Armagh by the Pope's provision, until he had renounced all the offensive clauses, and engaged to pay a fine of a thousand crowns for that misde10 Ib., p. 441. • WARL'S Bishops, p. 67. meanour". It was another device of the Papal see, to protract the time by long and useless delays in examining a bishop's election; and so to constrain him, though lawfully elected, to resign his right into the Pope's hands, and to receive his bishoprick again by the Pope's provision dearly purchased, as in the case of William de Bermingham, elected to the archbishoprick of Tuam in 1289; and, on his resignation of his lawful claim, reappointed to that see by the Pope". But the influence of the Papal See in Ireland was made instrumental to the furtherance of its ambitious projects, in other ways prejudicial to the rights both of the sovereign and the subject. In 1229, a chaplain of the Pope was sent over with a demand of the tenths of all the moveables, to support him against the Emperor Frederick: a tax so hard to be discharged, that it was necessary to part from, not only the cadows and aqua vitæ, but even the chalices and altar-cloths". In 1240, another missionary arrived from Pope Gregory, with a demand, under pain of excommunication and other censures ecclesiastical, of the twentieth part of the whole land, besides donations and private gratuities for the maintenance of the war against the emperor: whereby he extorted a thousand and five hundred marks or more". In 1270, another messenger was sent, requiring the tithes of all spiritual promotions for three years to come, to carry on the wars of the Pope with the King of Arragon; a demand which was greatly murmured at and gainsaid, yet the nuncio went not empty away. In 1329, a remarkable reservation in 11 WARE'S Bishops, p. 71. 12 Ib., p. 608. 13 Hibernia Anglicana, or History of Ireland. By RICHARD Cox, Esq.; 1689. vol. i. p. 61. 14 15 Annals of Ireland. By Sir JAMES WARE. Hen. III. p. 57. Prejudicial in fluence of the Papal See. Example of the Papal See follow ed by the Irish hierarchy. favour of the Papacy was made in a commission, sent by the Pope's Penitentiary General to the Dean of St. Patrick's, empowering him to hear the Archbishop of Dublin's confession of certain crimes, in pursuance of the request of the archbishop himself; the commission, in the thirteenth year of the pontificate of Pope John the Twenty-second, empowered the dean to remit all the sins which might be confessed by the archbishop, except contempt of Papal authority". And in 1394, Pope Boniface the Ninth, for the promotion of a favourite of his own, took the extraordinary step of translating William O'Cormacain, against his will, from the archbishoprick of Tuam to the bishoprick of Clonfert: a translation which the archbishop took so much to heart, that he neglected to expedite his Bull in due time, and was thereupon deprived, and fell into a fit of sickness, which at last terminated in his death: "a new strain," as Harris hath well remarked, " of the Pope's usurped power; who presumed to do what the king could not do, namely, to deprive a man of his freehold without the judgment of his peers"." SECTION II. Encroachments by the Irish Hierarchy on the King's Prerogative. Arrogance and violence of the Prelates towards each other. Other enormities in the Hierarchy. Abuses of Excommunication. Treatment of Hereticks, MEANWHILE the same spirit of encroachment, which actuated the occupiers of the Roman See in opposition to the royal prerogative, was imparted to the 16 History and Antiquities of St. Patrick's Cathedral. By W. MONCK MASON, Esq. Dublin, 1820. p. 122. 17 WARE'S Bishops, p. 640. highest order of ecclesiasticks; and manifested itself, as occasions were offered, in the members of the Irish hierarchy. croachments by the royal prero gative, in an Archbishop of Dublin; In the early part of the thirteenth century, Instances of enHenry de Loundres, archbishop of Dublin, filled the the prelates on honourable and confidential office of Lord Justice of Ireland under King John. Yet so regardless was he of the trust reposed in him, and of the consequent duty, and so glaring were his infringements of the rights of the crown by drawing temporal causes into ecclesiastical courts, that the clamours of the subjects were no less excited against him than the resentment of the king; and in the year 1223, on the complaints of the citizens of Dublin, a writ was issued to prohibit him from such practices in future, not without threats of severe penalties if he proceeded'. Similar writs of prohibition, under pain of losing In an archbishop his temporalties, were issued against Albert of Cologne, archbishop of Armagh; who, during his occupancy of the metropolitical see from 1240 to 1247, roused the displeasure of King Henry the Third, by labouring to advance the usurped authority of the Pope; and especially by prosecuting a long suit with the prior of Lanthony in the spiritual court concerning pleas of advowson and patronage which belonged only to the temporal courts of the king. of Armagh; collectively; About 1250, the bishops in general formed a pro- In the bishops ject to deprive the king of the custody of the temporalties during the vacancy of a see; and also to prevent their tenants from sueing in the king's courts without the Pope's assent". Down; About 1277, Nicholas, bishop of Down, asserted In a Bishop of his privilege to hold almost all pleas of the crown in his manors; and claimed cognisance of felonies, and 1 WARE'S Bishops, p. 319. 2 Ib., p. 66. a Ib., p. 506. In an Archbishop of Armagh; the right of ransoming felons; for which he was 66 discovery of the by the aspiring And in the year 1297, the same bishop was indicted for another offence of a similar complexion. For the abbey of the convent of St. John at Down being void, the prior and convent sought and obtained the king's licence for electing another abbot. But the bishop broke into the Abbey, and stole the letters of licence, and created an abbot of his own choice, and restored to him the temporalties; whereupon both he and the newlycreated abbot were prosecuted for the usurpation. In the interval between these two occurrences, namely, in 1285, the Archbishop of Armagh, Nicholas Mac Molissa, made an attack on the king's prerogative, by seizing the temporalties of the See of Dromore during a vacancy; for which he was prosecuted in the King's Bench in Ireland, and amerced twenty marks, half of the penalty being afterwards remitted by the king on his paying the remainder. The same primate, in 1291, promoted and headed a very extraordinary association, whereby In an association the three other archbishops, all the suffragan bishops, of the arch bishops and bishops; all the deans and chapters, and the other orders and degrees of the clergy, unanimously engaged in a confederacy, not only under their hands and seals, but confirmed, moreover, by the sanction of an oath. They swore, first, that if they, or any of them, their churches, rights, jurisdictions, liberties, or customs, should, by any lay power or jurisdiction whatever, be impeded, resisted, or grieved, they would at their WARE, p. 199. |