c priests, and actually appear
to have kept private prisons of their own. They exacted tithes from
Roman Catholics of everything titheable. The eels of the rivers and
lakes, the fishes of the sea paid them toll. The dead furnished the
mortuary fees to the 'alien church' in the shape of the best clothes
which the wardrobe of the defunct afforded. The government of
Wentworth, better known as the Earl of Strafford, is highly praised by
high churchmen and admirers of Laud, but was execrated by the Irish,
who failed to appreciate the mercies of his star-chamber court, or to
recognise the justice of his fining juries who returned disagreeable
verdicts. The list of grievances, transmitted by the Irish House
of Peers in 1641 to the English Government, cannot be regarded as
altogether visionary, for it was vouched by the names of lords,
spiritual and temporal, whose attachment to the English interest was
undoubted. The lord chancellor (Loftus), the archbishop of Dublin
(Bulkeley), the bishops of Meath, Clogher, and Killala were no rebels,
and yet they protested against the grievances inflicted on Ireland by
the tyranny of Strafford. According to these contemporary witnesses,
the Irish nobles had been taxed beyond all proportion to the English
nobles; Irish peers had been sent to prison although not impeached
of treason or any capital offence; the deputy had managed to keep all
proxies of peers in the hands of his creatures, and thus to sway the
Upper House to his will; the trade of the kingdom had been destroyed;
and the 'graces' of 1628 had been denied to the nation, or clogged by
provisoes which rendered them a mockery. And yet, in the face of
such evidence of misery and misgovernment, the Archbishop of Dublin
asserted in a charge to his clergy, that 'all contemporary writers
agree in describing the flourishing condition of the island, and its
rapid advance in civilisation and wealth, when all its improvement
was brought to an end by the catastrophe of the Irish rebellion of
1641'--the very year in which the Irish Houses of Lords and Commons
agreed in depicting the condition of Ireland as utterly miserable!

But Archbishop Trench not only contradicts the authentic contemporary
records, in picturing as halcyon days one of the most wretched periods
of Irish history, but also wrongfully represents one of the saddest
episodes of that history. He reminded his clergy 'that the number
of Protestants who were massacred by the Roman Ca