told by him who saw it." Under the year 1540, we shall meet with a particular instance, recorded by the same annalist, of the martyrdom of some of their own order.

Anno 1539.

THE Spanish writer Lopez gives, under this year and 1545, the martyrdom of a large number of Trinitarian fathers, but, as there is great doubt as to the accuracy of those accounts in Lopez, I shall not here insert them.

Anno 1540.

FRANCISCAN FATHERS OF THE MONASTERY OF MONAGHAN.

"THE English, in every place throughout Ireland where they established their power, persecuted and banished the nine religious orders, and particularly they destroyed the monastery of Monaghan, and beheaded the guardian and a number of the friars."-Annals of Four Masters, at this year.

Anno 1560.

WILLIAM WALSH, BISHOP OF MEATH, CONFESSOR.

DURING the reign of Henry VIII., Meath had been disgraced by an apostate bishop. Dr. Edward Staples, an Englishman, had been appointed, in 1530, at the request of Henry VIII., Bishop of Meath. As to the early years of his episcopate little is known. In 1534, he fled to England, in order to escape the anger of Silken Thomas, then in rebellion, to whom he had made himself obnoxious. In 1535, he returned to the diocese of Meath, deeply infected with the principles of the Reformation; and from that time

he was a willing assistant of Dr. Browne, the intruder into the see of Dublin, in the work of despoiling the monasteries and endeavoring to force the new heresy on the Irish people.

Mary ascended the throne in 1553, and in April, 1554, Dr. Dowdall, Archbishop of Armagh, lately returned from banishment, and Dr. William Walsh, received a commission to proceed against immoral ecclesiastics, and to depose such as were married and impenitent. By their authority, Edward Staples was, in June of the same year, removed from the diocese of Meath, deprived of his benefice, and suspended from all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and this Dr. William Walsh was afterward duly appointed Bishop of Meath.

Sir James Ware says that he was a native of Waterford; but another authority, who certainly had better opportunities of information, namely, John alias Malachy Hortrey, a Cistercian monk of the Abbey of Holy Cross, in a manuscript treatise entitled De Cistertiensium Hibernorum Viris Illustribus, states that William Walsh was born at Dunboyne, county Meath, joined the Cistercian order, and lived in the Abbey of Bective, previous to its suppression. Whatever doubt there may be about the place of his birth and his early history, there is none whatever as to his eminent virtues, distinguished abilities, and the heroic fortitude with which he bore numerous and prolonged sufferings for the faith. His unbending orthodoxy and. opposition to the innovations of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. marked him out for promotion after the accession of Mary, and accordingly we find him associated with the zealous primate, Dr. Dowdall, in the commission to drive from the sanctuary all such as were faithless to their trust. A congé d'élire was issued to the Archdeacon and clergy of Meath for the election of Dr. Walsh, and, after having received the royal assent and the confirmation of the Holy

See, he addressed the following petition to Mary and Philip:

"Petition of William Walsh, stating that he was elected bishop by the chapter and clergy of the bishopric of Meath, and had for his consecration their graces' letters-patent; but, not having his lawful consecration from the Universal Catholic Church, like other bishops, he could not, with good conscience, be consecrated; and stating that he was sent into Ireland at his own cost, by commission, to deprive certain married bishops and priests, and was so occupied in execution of this office that he could not attend to his consecration. He therefore prays a grant of the temporalities of the see from the date of the deprivation of the late incumbent, which was the feast of Saints Peter and Paul last past."

On the receipt of this petition the king and queen wrote to the Lord Deputy, the Chancellor, and the Council of Ireland, thus:

"We send you herein enclosed a supplication exhibited to us by our loving subject, Dr. Walsh, Bishop of Meath elect. He desires the temporalities of the bishopric from the time of the deprivation of the late incumbent. Our pleasure is that you shall give order to make forth an utterlemagne, under our Great Seal, whereby he may enjoy the whole temporalities of the bishopric from the time. of the amotion or deprivation of the late incumbent."— Oct. 18th, 1st and 28 Mary and Philip.

Dr. Walsh was consecrated about the close of 1554, and immediately applied himself with zeal and energy to reform abuses, and to heal the wounds which during the last two reigns had been inflicted on faith, morals, and discipline. The period of his usefulness was, however, destined to be brief, and he had time merely to stimulate his priests and to fortify his diocese when the gathering storm burst over the Irish Church, and sacrificed the Bishop of Meath

among its first and noblest victims. Queen Mary died in 1558, and was succeeded by Elizabeth, who at once publicly embraced the reformed tenets, and proceeded to have them enforced on all. In 1560, an act was passed, under the deputyship of the Earl of Suffolk, which ordered all ecclesiastical persons, judges, officers, justices, mayors, and all the other queen's officers, to take the oath of supremacy under penalty of forfeiture, and also enacted that if any person should, by writing, printing, teaching, preaching, by express words, deed, or act, maintain any foreign spiritual jurisdiction, he should for the first offence forfeit all his goods and suffer one year's imprisonment, for the second offence should incur the penalty of præmunire, and for the third be deemed guilty of high treason. (2d Eliz. cap. i.)

It was now the fidelity of Dr. Walsh was tested to the utmost. Had he, like a few of his contemporaries, sacrificed conscience to expediency, worldly comfort and ephemeral honor were soon to have been his portion. But he felt he had a higher authority to obey than Queen Elizabeth, and hence he repudiated her pretensions to rule the church, and guarded his flock, even at the peril of his life, against her parliamentary creed. Ware thus narrates the

event:

"After the return of the Earl of Sussex to Ireland, letters came from her majesty signifying her pleasure for a general meeting of the clergy of Ireland, and the establishment of the Protestant religion through the several dioceses of this kingdom. Among the bishops, the Bishop of Meath was very zealous for the Romish Church; not content with what offers her majesty had proposed, but very much enraged, (after the assembly had dispersed themselves,) he fell to preach against the Common Prayer in his diocese at Trim, which was newly come over and ordered to be observed, for which the lord lieutenant

confined him till he acquainted her majesty with it, who sent over her orders to clap him up in prison. Within a few months after, persisting in the same mind, he was deposed, and the bishopric of Meath was about two years vacant, till, by her majesty's provision, Hugh Brady became Walsh's successor."*

On the 16th of July, 1565, Adam Loftus, Protestant Archbishop of Armagh, writes to Sir William Cecil :

"The XIIIth of this monthe by vertu of our commission for cawsis ecclesiastycall, we committed to the castell of Dublyn, doctor Welcke, late byssippe of Methe, there to remayne until the queenes majesties pleasure were knowne. He refused the othe and to answer such articles as we required of him; and besides that, ever sithens the last parliament, he hath manifestly contemned and openly showed himself to be a mislyker of all the queenes majesties proceedings; he openly protested before all the people the same day he was before us, that he would never communicate or be present (by his will) where the service should be ministrid, for it was against his conscience and (as he thought) against God's woord. If it shall seeme good to your honour and the rest of her majesties most honourable counseyle, in myne opinion, it wer fit he showld be sent to England, and peradventure by conferringe with the lerned bishoppes there, he might be brought to sum conformitie; he is one of great creadit amongst his countrimen, and uppon whome (as tutchinge cawsis of religion) thay wholy depend."†

As no pretext could be devised for leading him to the scaffold, he once more received the culprit's chains, (he bore

*Ware's Annals, 1560. I need hardly say it was only the temporalities of the see of Meath which were given to Brady. William Walsh continued lawful Bishop of Meath till his death. All his biographers agree that Dr. Walsh passed between twelve and thirteen years in prison; and he escaped about Christmas, 1572. He would therefore appear to have been imprisoned a first time in 1560, and more definitely consigned to prison in 1565. See Henri quez and his Epitaph ap. Moran and Cogan.