Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
Chapters towards a History of Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth (Author: Philip O'Sullivan Beare)

Chapter 25


p.43

An account of the fierce persecution started by the English against the Faith.

WHILST Ireland was thus pitifully ruined by the quarrels of the chiefs both between themselves and with the royal crown, and the blood of ecclesiastics was spilled by the English, the chiefs, either worn out by their factions and now exhausted of their resources, or hostages, for many of them being in the hands of the English, seemed little likely to take up arms in defence of the Catholic religion. Hereupon a persecution broke out against the faith of Christ, and the tyrant, Queen Elizabeth, ordered that all should entirely abandon the Catholic faith, forsake the priests, accept the teachings and doctrines of heretical ministers, embrace the Queen's sect, and on holydays attend the services in the churches. And to this were they compelled by fear, terror, punishment and violence. This terrible attack on the Catholic faith was now the more severe and dangerous because just at this time more than ever since the reception of the faith, were Irishmen ignorant of theology, philosophy, and jurisprudence, so that they were unprepared for controversy and for preserving the people in the true religion of Christ Jesus, because through their factions, the confusion of affairs, and the barbarous fury of the heretics, their schools were gone to ruin and scarcely was there anyone able to teach publicly the higher studies. The holy communities of friars were for the most part scattered and banished, and in many places priests could not easily be found to baptise infants; in many places the younger folk knew only so much of the faith as they had learned from their mothers and nurses, and some, indeed, were so ignorant of the evidences of the faith that they knew not how to prove or explain anything beyond that they themselves firmly believed whatever the Roman Catholic Church believed; that with it was the true doctrine of the Catholic faith; and that they had very little trust in the doctrines of the English whom they believed to be ill-disposed to the faith. The royalist towns suffered more through this want of instruction and ignorance


p.44

than the countries of the chiefs, because the English used to congregate in the royalist towns. And this is the reason why the herds and country people, not to mention the ancient and modern Irish chiefs, are more pure and enlightened in devotion to the Catholic faith than the Anglo-Irish who dwell in the royalist towns. In the depth of this darkness and ignorance there is no doubt but that the Irish providentially shunned, ridiculed, and despised the English preachers and were saved from their errors by an unseen and secret light of faith which, alone in a wonderful manner, guided many to follow the true faith of the supreme Pontiff, from which the English had recently fallen away.