I WILL relate here some events of this persecution in which will be shown both the constancy of the Irish and how empty and unstable their own sects appeared to the heretics themselves. To begin with: the noble Irish youths who were held by the English as hostages in Dublin being brought to church on a day which was observed by the heretics as a festival and holyday, set up a great shouting and bawling when the ministers commenced their hymns and music, preventing them from being heard, and obstructing the heretical ceremonies, nor did they desist until they were carried out of the church and sent back to their former prison, whence they were never again summoned to wicked rites.
On the day on which the Feast of the Lord's Supper is commemorated, the heretical ministers arranged in a ring or circle, and on bended knees, a large crowd of Irish farmers and rustics whom they forced into church, and one minister bearing a large mass of wheaten bread vainly offered a piece to each! Another tendered drink out of a large bowl of wine. The first of the rustics who accepted the bread helped himself with the left hand, and immediately taking the cup of wine poured the whole liquor over his long and unkempt beard, pretending that he had drunk it all. But when the second boor found the glass empty, ‘Why, comrade,’ said he, addressing the first, ‘have you not left me any wine?’ whereupon the former, striking the latter in the face with his piece of bread, cried out ‘If I have drunk all the wine do you eat all the bread.’ Hereupon mocking laughter, shouting and uproar, broke out and put an end to the whole plan of heretical Communion despite all the ministers could do.
In a certain village near the town of Drogheda, dwelt an English minister, who greatly annoyed the Catholic priest of the village, and other Catholics: now endeavouring to seize the priest, anon complaining of his neighbours, and wanting to be present at marriages, baptisms, funerals, and other sacred rites. Once it happened that a certain neighbour died whose body the rest wished to bury, with
The same minister consoled his wife, whom the children of the district used to hoot as she walked along the streets and sometimes cover with spits and slavers, calling her the priest's wife, with this observation: ‘That she was not a clergyman's wife, nor himself a clergyman, although enjoying the benefice of a Protestant minister, which he held to support himself, and that Catholics might live more freely and Catholically under him than under others.’
There was a certain pretended English Bishop (Lyons) who being informed by spies where there was a Catholic priest, secretly sent a messenger to warn the priest to quit that place lest he be arrested by the soldiers, and when he was not found there, the Bishop had the infamous spies severely reprimanded, and warned not to bring him any more falsehoods.
A certain priest, being enamoured of a woman, committed himself more than once, and being cautioned by the clergy and rebuked for his crime, he would not do penance, but finally, when the priests endeavoured to inflict a salutary remedy for his public wickedness, went to the heretic Bishop and promised that he would follow the Queen's sect, and give the Bishop satisfaction if he were enrolled in the ranks of the ministers and got an ecclesiastical benefice. The heretic Bishop, however, asked him, ‘What objects induce you, what persecution compels you, to forsake your old religion? Is it not cherished by others more pious and more holy, and every way more eminent than yourself? It is great folly to desert a religion without reason. Do you think that we will place confidence in you who so easily change your early and up to now settled convictions? With the same inconstancy would you abandon us also. I am, indeed not ignorant that it is not for love of the Queen nor zeal of her religion. nor any other reason than the lust for a woman whom you do not wish to give up that you come to us. But we think less of you than if you remained true and steadfast amongst your own.’