ch was immediately occupied by Dr. Swiney, the popish titular bishop
of Kilmore, who said mass in the church the Sunday following, and then
seized on all the goods and effects belonging to the persecuted bishop.

Soon after this, the papists forced Dr. Bedell, his two sons, and the
rest of his family, with some of the chief of the protestants whom he
had protected, into a ruinous castle, called Lochwater, situated in a
lake near the sea. Here he remained with his companions some weeks, all
of them daily expecting to be put to death. The greatest part of them
were stripped naked, by which means, as the season was cold, (it being
in the month of December) and the building in which they were confined
open at the top, they suffered the most severe hardships. They continued
in this situation till the 7th of January, when they were all released.
The bishop was courteously received into the house of Dennis O'Sheridan,
one of his clergy, whom he had made a convert to the church of England;
but he did not long survive this kindness. During his residence here, he
spent the whole of his time in religious exercises, the better to fit
and prepare himself and his sorrowful companions, for their great change
as not but certain death was perpetually before their eyes. He was at
this time in the 71st year of his age, and being afflicted with a
violent ague caught in his late cold and desolate habitation on the
lake, it soon threw him into a fever of the most dangerous nature.
Finding his dissolution at hand, he received it with joy, like one of
the primitive martyrs just hastening to his crown of glory. After
having addressed his little flock, and exhorted them to patience, in the
most pathetic manner, as they saw their own last day approaching, after
having solemnly blessed his people, his family, and his children, he
finished the course of his ministry and life together, on the 7th day of
February, 1642. His friends and relations applied to the intruding
bishop for leave to bury him, which was with difficulty obtained; he, at
first telling them that the churchyard was holy ground, and should be no
longer defiled with heretics: however, leave was at last granted, and
though the church funeral service was not used at the solemnity, (for
fear of the Irish papists) yet some of the better sort, who had the
highest veneration for him while living, attended his remains to the
grave. At his interment, they discharged a volley of shot, crying ou