suited his taste, he determined to seek another abode, where he might more freely indulge his pious tastes. He therefore hired a little farm, near a dense wood, in the same territory; there he constructed a dwelling of boughs and twigs, with a roof of sods and straw, and the walls plastered with mud, against the cold. The house was the dwelling of a husbandman, and so were the furniture and cooking utensils; no hangings or table napery, no silken coverlets or sumptuous couches; a single sheet on straw, and a thick frieze coverlet, sufficed him; wooden cups, and a plank on wooden props for his table. His drink was water from the spring, or a little weak beer, or whey; hunger was his only sauce, labor the softener of his couch, a contented mind the solace of all his trials.

"In this position of rural poverty he yet found means to relieve the poverty and wants of others. The war in the south was over, and the country was overrun with crowds of famishing wretches; for the violence of war and the passage of plundering bands of soldiers had destroyed all cultivation, and the wretched farmers, not able to bear the incessant plundering, had abandoned their fields and their cottages, and wandered about, seeking a precarious life by begging. Many of these came to the bishop, to whom he gave freely of his little means.

"This his humble dwelling he preferred to more splendid mansions; there did he 'place steps in his heart in the vale of tears, in the place he had chosen.' From thence he proceeded on his annual visitation of his diocese; there he returned when he had completed the circuit of his jurisdiction; there he meditated day and night on the law of the Lord. Thus, while the usurper, who had been placed by the favor of Elizabeth in the see of Ross, occupied his cathedral, the legitimate pastor was not only driven from. his country, but made captive, and fettered and sent out of the kingdom by Perrot, the president, and returned at

length with difficulty to take care of his flock, who were dispersed; for, like Moses, 'he denied himself to be the son of the daughter of Pharaoh, choosing rather to be afflicted with the people of God than to have the pleasure of sin for a time, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasure of the Egyptians.' He crossed the sea and fled into the desert from the Egypt of England, and dwelt in solitude and in desert places; there he held his synods and administered the sacraments, and, far from the noise of the world, gave himself wholly to God. On the more solemn feasts he went to the neighboring church, celebrated there the holy mysteries, and preached to the people. To this his dwelling may be applied what is said in Deuteronomy of the land of promise, 'The land to which you shall come is not as the land of Egypt that you came. out of, where when the seed is sown it is watered as in a garden; but it is a land hilly and wooded, expecting rain from heaven, which the Lord thy God will send, and his eyes are upon it from the beginning of the year to the end.' From this land of the dying he sighed after the land of the living, where the sun burneth not nor the cold freezes. In the midst of his labors and his sufferings from dropsy, his soul panted for the courts of the Lord, and, seated by the waters of Babylon, he was refreshed with the thoughts of Sion, and, though her harps hung silent on the willows because of the violence of the Babylonians, his voice did not cease from her canticles; the beads of the rosary were ever passing through his fingers, or he was repeating the Psalter.

"Such was his conversation, pious and edifying, whether at home or abroad; and, whether at home or abroad, he was ever employed in his Lord's service, for the venerable bishop labored much to bring back many who had wandered from the faith, to confirm those who were wavering, to inflame the tepid and strengthen the weak; and it was

granted to him to drive out Satan, not only from the mind, but also from the body. There was a certain damsel who was possessed by a dumb devil, and she was grievously tormented; her voice trembled, her teeth chattered, her heart palpitated, and the shivering of all her limbs showed the power of the malignant spirit. The holy bishop, being taken to see her, exorcised the evil spirit, made the damsel repeat the Apostles' Creed, (which she did with great difficulty,) and, having heard her confession and prepared her by careful instruction, administered to her the holy communion; and from that time she recovered not only her spiritual health, but gradually also the health of the body.

"The holy Bishop O'Herlaghy continued unwearied in his apostolic labors up to his sixtieth year, and died in the territory of Muskerry, and was buried in the monastery of the Franciscan order, in Kilchree, (de Cellacrea,) in the year 1579."-De Processu Martyriali, etc., T. N. Philadelpho, 1619.

Anno 1580.

THIS year was peculiarly fruitful in martyrs.

RIGHT REV. HUGH LUKE OR LACY, BISHOP OF LIMERICK.

"HUGH DE LACY, of a noble Munster family, was a man well versed in sacred and profane learning, and a priest of most exemplary life, for which reason he was created Bishop of Limerick while Henry VIII. was yet a Catholic. When the king apostatized, he never could induce Hugh to join in his spiritual revolt, or to stain himself by subscribing to the king's supremacy; for which reason he was deprived not only of the king's favor, but of all the revenues and of the possession of his see. As nothing was gained by this, the king had Lacy thrown into prison

in Cork, where he nearly perished from the filth of the dungeon. He was freed by the dexterity of his friends, and returned to Limerick to collect his flock, which he found scattered by the Anglican wolf. But the persecution increased in the latter years of Henry, and still more under the Calvinistic Edward VI., and Hugh was again threatened; wherefore, imitating the example of the apostle, he sought safety in Catholic France. On the accession of Mary he was recalled by Cardinal Pole, and returned to Limerick amid the rejoicings of his flock, and for many years fed his flock in peace, with zeal and vigilance walking in the footsteps of the great Pastor. When he was more than sixty years of age, and Elizabeth was laying waste the Lord's vineyard, the venerable bishop was deprived of his episcopal see, and of all means of living, and thrown into prison for refusing the oath of the queen's supremacy, where, worn out with suffering, the noblehearted bishop died, the 26th March, anno 1571." Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx.

REV. LAURENCE MOORE, PRIEST.

"FATHER MOORE, together with Oliver Plunket, an Irishman of gentle birth, and William Walsh, an English soldier, were seized by a troop of heretical soldiers, tied to stakes, and shot, and thus obtained the palm of martyrdom, on the eleventh of November, the feast of St. Martin, 1580."-Philadelphus.

A letter, written on the 9th January, 1581, in the

• Here, as in many other instances, Bruodin, although right in the substance of his narrative, is wrong in his dates. Dr. Roothe puts his imprisonment and death at 1580, and he is confirmed by the Vatican list given by Dr. Moran, which describes the see of Limerick as vacant in 1580 "per obitum D. Ugonis Lacy, in sua ecclesia defuncti ;" and his successor, Dr. Cornelius Nachten, was appointed in 1581. Dr. Lacy was deprived of the temporalities in 1571, and William Casey intruded by Edward VI. But he remained at liberty at least until 1575.-See Moran, Archbishops of Dublin, vol. i. p. 186, and Ware's Bishops. See also Casey's Recantation, from the State Paper Office, in Brady, Papers concerning the Irish Church, p. 119.

Vatican archives, published by Dr. Moran, gives a fuller account of their death. They were in the Golden Fort, held by a Spanish force under San José. When this traitor surrendered the fort to the English commander, Lord Gray, the letter continues:

"At the request of the viceroy, the priest Laurence, Oliver Plunket, and William Willick, an Englishman, were delivered into his hands. To them the offer was made to be restored to liberty should they consent to take the oath of allegiance to the queen ;* but when they replied, with one accord, that they were Catholics, and that, by the grace of God, they would persevere in the faith, they were led off to a forge of an ironsmith, and then their arms and legs were broken in three different parts. During all that night and the following day they endured that torment with invincible patience. At length they were hanged, and their bodies cut into fragments." Sir R. Bingham (letter to Walsingham) says that an Englishman who had waited on Dr. Sanders, Plunket, who acted as interpreter, and an Irish priest were reserved for special punishment; "their legs and arms were first broken, and they were hanged on a gibbet on the walls of the fort."-See Moran, History of the Archbishops of Dublin, vol. i. p. 202; and Haverty, History of Ireland, p. 243.

REV. GELASIUS O'QUILLENAN, EUGENE CRONE, AND HUGH

O'MELKERAN.

"FATHER GELASIUS O'QUILLENAN, of the Cistercian order, Abbot of the monastery of Boyle, was martyred, together with the priest Eugene Cronius, (probably Cronin,) 1580."-Philadelphus.

The following account of the life of this holy martyr is

In which was embodied the oath of supremacy.