CH. V. They renew their allegiance and are pardoned. 667 to pardon, upon the easy terms of acknowledg- A.D. 1486 ing their fault, and renewing their oaths of allegiance, which terms were accordingly accepted by the said prelates. The papal Bull directed, January 9, 1487, to the Archbishops of Cashel and Tuam and the bishops of Clogher and Ossory, notices the Pope's having heard that not only the Archbishop of Dublin, and the Bishops of Meath and Kildare, but also the Primate, Octavian de Palatio, a Florentine, promoted by the Pope, had supported Simnel. But Ware seems right in judging that this charge against Octavian was unfounded: for he himself, writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1488, declares" that he was the only person who obstructed the coronation of Simnel, and that in doing so he had subjected himself to great perils and sore troubles. And this assertion of his loyalty is confirmed in the "submission" of Jenico Merks, Mayor of Dublin, and the citizens of that place, in 1487, to King Henry VII., where they say, "We were daunted not only to see your chief governour, whom your Highness made Ruler over us, to bend or bow to that Idol, whom they made us to obey; but also our Father of Dublin, and most of the clergy of the nation, excepting the Reverend Father his Grace Octavianus, Archbishop of Armagh." BOOK VI. IRELAND IN THE TROUBLOUS TIMES OF THE BRITISH The doc pal supre venient one siastics. CHAP. I. THE POPE'S SUPREMACY, HOW VIEWED BY DIFFERENT CLASSES IN A.D. 1488. FROM the matter which has been brought before our notice in the preceding pages, we may see that trine of pa- the prelates of the Irish Church in the period macy, a con- last referred to were not always disposed to act for ambi- as the humble and submissive slaves of papal tious eccle- authority; but that they were, on the contrary, ready at times to adopt for themselves courses of their own choosing, independent of the will of the Pope, and even in direct opposition to it, for the purpose of maintaining or advancing their own views and influence. In fact, the doctrine of the Pope's supremacy was found to be a very convenient one for promoting the designs of ambitious and intriguing ecclesiastics; the supremacy of the Pope, in its practical application to Ireland, coming to wean little more or less CH. 1.] Papal Supremacy, how received by the Prelates. 669 than their own supremacy: for whatever power A.D. 1488. or jurisdiction they could assert by means of this doctrine, as belonging to the bishop of Rome, would naturally be exercised in all ordinary cases by themselves. And thus, while their modesty was saved from the invidious appearance of struggling for questionable privileges belonging to their own office, and while they might seem only, as disinterested and faithful men, to be contending for the support of the rightful claims of another, whom the Lord had placed over them as the visible head and chief of His Church on earth, they were enabled all the while to direct their full energies to the great practical object of thus promoting their own power and consequence. We need not wonder therefore to find, that the doctrine of the Pope's Supremacy was one which the prelates of Ireland, in those times which we have been considering, embraced heartily, and generally endeavoured, as far as possible, to maintain and inculcate under all circumstances." *Not however with such universal and unlimited loyalty and ardour, but that they could upon occasion give aid to the civil government in circumscribing the extent of the pernicious influence which they supported in the country. (Vid. Irish Statutes, A.D. 1454 &c., Leland, ii. 39, Ware's Annals, ad an. 1475, and the transactions of the parliament held in Dublin in that year, as there recorded.) Nor did they hesitate, when it promoted their ends, to act in defiance of both pope and civil government. 666, sup. Vid. p. 670 A.D. 1488. people o ward this supremacy, The common people in the mean time were Feelings of filled with awful ideas concerning the nature of the common that mysterious, distant, unseen authority, which they were taught to regard as the centre and source of all spiritual power upon earth; and therefore, so far as they were under the guidance of the prelates, and influenced by any religious impressions received from them, they also were ready to acknowledge and uphold the doctrine of papal supremacy, as well as the other tenets of the religion of Rome. But such of the Irish as were more free from the control of the higher ecclesiastical authorities, and more independent of the English power, cared comparatively little, it would seem, about this doctrine concerning the supremacy. not in all cases those of the most fection. Indeed a love for their own "barbarous simplicity," in matters ecclesiastical, in opposition devoted af- to the Roman mode of proceeding in such affairs, and in opposition, also, to their own prelates who co-operated with England and Rome, seems to have prevailed among the native Irish for ages after the Invasion; and this feeling would naturally lead them to regard with less respect, if not entirely to set at nought, the pretensions of the bishop of Rome to such unbounded authority as he would fain exercise among them. Their forefathers before the twelfth century had never submitted to nor recognised that authority as CH. I.] popular in Ireland. 671 having any right of interference with the Church A.D. 1488. affairs of their island; and that those who came after should in general be very quick in submitting to it, was more than could be expected, promoted and urged upon them as that authority had been by English enemies, or by prelates of their own Church who co-operated in general with those enemies. Accordingly, Dr. Lanigan (as we have already seen) goes so far as to state that, after the invasion, wherever the natives were able to maintain their independence, "clergy and people followed their own ecclesiastical rules, as if the Synod of Cashel had never been held." And although this statement be not exactly correct, it seems probable that it describes, with sufficient propriety, what was the general feeling of the native Irish of those times, towards that foreign ecclesiastical influence which in the Synod of Cashel had been so predominant. Feelings of Irish to Romish illustrated Nor was the lapse of centuries, even down to the native the very eve of the Reformation, sufficient to wards the remove from the minds of the Irish that feeling church of of hostility towards the religious system of Eng- England, land and Rome, which is here noticed. This from the appears distinctly enough from a bull of Pope pope's Bull Innocent VIII. (dated February 8, 1484), for dation of the the erection of a collegiate church at Galway. St. Nicholas, The document, penned more than 300 years Galway. for the foun Church of |