for their repres priests;" yet did their restless spirit of tumult and outrage rise again at this time to such a height, that a priest, being seized for some unlawful practices in Dublin, was forcibly rescued by the populace. Thus Steps necessary the lords justices were compelled by their insolence sion. to take steps for their repression: and, by direction of the council of England, they seized upon fifteen of the religious houses, lately erected by the Papists in Dublin, for the king's use; and, in 1632, their principal house in Back Lane was disposed of to the University of Dublin, who placed therein a rector and scholars, and maintained there a weekly lecture, which the lords justices often countenanced by their presence. But afterwards, in the time of the next Lord Deputy, the building was allowed to return to its former use, and again became a mass-house. SECTION II. William Bedell, Bishop of Kilmore. State of his Diocese. life. It was about this period that another distinguished Bedell's early ornament was added to the episcopate of the Church of Ireland, in the person of William Bedell, a native of Essex, and in 1593 a fellow of Emanuel College, Cambridge, where he took his degree of B.D. in 1599, with the reputation of singular knowledge in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages; subsequently the chaplain and honoured companion of Sir Henry Wotton, King James's ambassador at Venice; and the bosom friend and most intimate intercom F Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Bishop of Kilmore and Ard agh. 1629. Disadvantages of his bishoprick. municant of learning, of Father Paul Sarpi, the illustrious historian of the Council of Trent. From a retired and obscure benefice in the diocese of Norwich, whither he had withdrawn on his return from Italy, by an unanimous election of the fellows, he was called to the provostship of Trinity College, Dublin, which, after some difficulty, he was persuaded to accept by the king's positive commands: and he applied himself to the government of the college with a vigour of mind peculiar to him; composing differences among the fellows, rectifying disorders, and improving discipline; and training the youth in religious knowledge by weekly lectures on the Church Catechism, with such a mixture of matters speculative and practical, that his discourses were regarded both as learned lectures of divinity, and excellent exhortations to piety and virtue'. He continued in this employment about two years; when, on the recommendation of Laud, at that time Bishop of London, he was, in the fiftyninth year of his age, advanced to the united see of Kilmore and Ardagh: the king, in the letters for his promotion, making honourable mention of the services he had done, and the reformation he had wrought in the university. There has been former occasion for remarking that the bishoprick of Kilmore had, from different causes, been subject to peculiar disadvantages. It had indeed been possessed by two successive bishops of King James's appointment since 1603; and that king, by a commission in the seventeenth year of his reign, had ordered that all lands in the county of Cavan, or within the new plantation of Longford 1 WARE'S Bishops, p. 232. and Leitrim, which should be found by inquisition to have formerly belonged to the sees of Kilmore and Ardagh, should be restored to them. But, notwithstanding these means of improvement, little or no benefit had accrued from them for the publick good, however instrumental they may have been made to the emolument of Bishop Bedell's prede cessors. account of it. "He found his diocese," says Bishop Burnet, in Bishop Burnet's his very copious life of him, "under so many disorders, that there was scarce a sound part remaining. The revenue was wasted by excessive dilapidations, and all sacred things had been exposed to sale in so sordid a manner, that it was grown to a proverb; and there was scarce enough remaining of both these revenues to support a bishop, who was resolved not to supply himself by indirect and base methods." But the general state of his diocese will be best represented by transcribing a letter, which he addressed to Bishop Laud a few months after his promotion. Right reverend Father, my honourable good Lord, Bishop Bedell's letter to Bishop Laud. April 1, 1630. "Since my coming to this place, which was a little before Michaelmas, (till which time the settling of the state of the college, and my Lord Primate's visitation, deferred my consecration,) I have not been unmindful of your lordship's commands, to advertise you, as my experience should inform me, of the state of the Church; which I shall now the better do, because I have been about my dioceses, and can set down, out of my knowledge and view, what I shall relate; and shortly to speak much ill matter in a few Miserable state words, it is very miserable. of the diocese. "The cathedral church of Ardagh, one of the most Dilapidated ancient in Ireland, and said to be built by St. Patrick, 2 BISHOP BURNET's Life of Bishop Bedell, pp. 34-36. churches. Popish recusants. Popish clergy numerous and powerful. Mass-houses. Friars. Poverty of the people. English minis ters. Clerks. together with the bishop's house there, down to the ground. The church here, built, but without bell or steeple, font or chalice. The parish churches all in a manner ruined, and unroofed, and unrepaired. "The people, saving a few British planters here and there, (which are not the tenth part of the remnant,) obstinate recusants. A Popish clergy, more numerous by far than we, and in full exercise of all jurisdiction ecclesiastical by their vicar-general and officials; who are so confident, as they excommunicate those that come to our courts, even in matrimonial causes: which affront hath been offered myself by the Popish primate's vicar-general, for which I have begun a process against him. The primate himself lives in my parish, within two miles of my house the bishop in another part of my diocese, further off. "Every parish hath its priest; and some two or three a-piece, and so their mass-houses also; and in some places mass is said in the churches. "Friars there are in diverse places, who go about, though not in their habits, and by their importunate begging impoverish the people; who indeed are generally very poor, as from that cause, so from their paying double tithes. to their own clergy and ours, from the dearth of corn, and the death of their cattle these last years, with the contributions to their soldiers and their agents: and, which they forget not to reckon among other causes, the oppression of the court ecclesiastical, which in very truth, my lord, I cannot excuse, and do seek to reform. "For our own, there are seven or eight ministers in each diocese of good sufficiency; and, (which is no small cause of the continuance of the people in Popery still,) English; which have not the tongue of the people, nor can perform any divine offices, or converse with them; and which hold, many of them, two, or three, four, or more vicarages a-piece. Even the clerkships themselves are in like manner conferred upon the English; and sometimes two or three, or more, upon one man, and ordinarily bought and sold, or let to farm. His majesty is now, with the greatest part of this country, as to their hearts and consciences, King, but at the Pope's discretion. "WILL. KILMORE AND ARDAGH, "Kilmore, April 1, 1630." The description in the foregoing letter, which concerns the state of the bishopricks of Kilmore and Ardagh at that time, is applied by Cox generally to the Irish sees". But whatever cause may have existed for complaint in other dioceses, and no doubt there was cause enough, the language of Bishop Bedell, true as it certainly was in his use of it, would probably have been an exaggerated representation in a general application. Application of to the other sees. this description siastical pro cesses. diocese of Derry. With respect, however, to his complaint of the Neglect of eccleneglect of ecclesiastical processes in his court, that seems to have been experienced in others likewise: and an example is supplied in the case of Bishop Downham, of Derry, who, during the government of Instanced in the the Lord Chancellor Loftus and the Earl of Cork, obtained a commission, by immediate warrant from himself, to arrest, apprehend, and attach the bodies of all people within his jurisdiction, who should decline the same, or should refuse to appear upon lawful citation, or, appearing, should refuse to obey the sentence given against them; and authority to bind them in recognizances, with sureties or without, to appear at the council table, to answer such contempts. The like commission was renewed to him by the Lord Deputy, Viscount Wentworth, October 23, 1633. Both were obtained on his information, that his diocese abounded with all manner of delinquents, who refused obedience to all spiritual pro cesses*. 3 Cox, ii. 53. WARE'S Bishops, p. 292. |