The United Churches of England and Ireland, in Ireland [pp. 200-212]

The Unzited Churches in Ireland.
what he wanted, and resolved to bring them
to their senses. In a letter to Laud he
chuckled over his victory, apparently quite
unconscious that he had been playing the
tyrant, circa sacra, in a style worthy of Henry
VIII. Having learned what the committee
of convocation had done, he instantly sent
for Dean Andrews, its chairman, requiring
him to bring the Book of Canons noted in
the margin, together with the draught he
was to present that afternoon to the house.
This order he obeyed;'but,' says the
lord deputy,'when I came to open the
book, and run over the deliberandums in the
margin, I confess I was not so much moved
since I came into Ireland. I told him, certainly not a Dean of Limerick, but an Ananias, had sat in the chair of that committee;
howe-er, sure I was an Ananias had been
there in spirit, if not in body, with all the
frater nities and conventicles of Amsterdam,
that I was ashamed and scandalized with it
above measure.' He gave the dean imperative orders not to report anything until
he heard from him again. He also issued
orders to the primate, the Bishops of Meath,
Kilmore, Raphoe, and Derry, together with
Dean Leslie, the prolucutor, and the whole
commnittee, to wait upon him next morning.
lie then publicly rebuked them for acting
so unlike churchmen; told them that a few
petty clerks had presumed to make articles
of taith, without the privity or consent of
state or bishop, as if they purposed at once
'to take away all government and order
forth of the church. But those heady and
arrogant courses he would not endure, nor
would he suffer them either to be mad in
the convocation nor in their pulpits.' He
next gave them strict injunctions as to what
the convocation should do. They were to
say content, or not content, to the Articles
of England, for he would not endure that
they should be disputed. He ordered the
primate to frame a canon on the subject;
but it did not meet his approval, and so the
lord deputy framed one himself, whereupon his grace came to him instantly and
said he feared the canon would never pass
in such a form as his lordship had made,
but he was hopeful it might pass as he had
drawn it himself. He therefore besought
the lord deputy to think a little better of
it. The sequel is best told in Strafford's
own vigorous language-'But I confess,
having taken a little jealousy that his proceedings were not open and free to those
ends I had my eye upon, it was too late now
either to persuade or to affright me. I told
lhis lordship I was resolved to put it to them
in those very words, and was most confident
there were not six in the house that would
refuse them, telling him, by the sequel, we
should see whether his lordship or myself
better understood their minds in that point,
and by that I would be content to be judged,
only for order's sake I desired his lordship
would vote this canon first in the upper
house of convocation, and so voted, then
to pass the question beneath also.' He
adds that he enclosed the canon* to Dean
Leslie,'which, accordingly, that afternoon
was unanimously voted, first with the bishops, and then by the rest of the clergy, excepting one man, who simply did deliberate
upon the receiving of the Articles of England.'
We pause and draw a hard breath,
after this dictatorialdescription of how
to rule a church and have a church,
to observe that the Irish Protestant
prelates of those days were no mean
men; Bramhall was Bishop of Derry,
and Bedell of Kilmore, and the primate so hectored and overawed by
this Cavalier-Cromwell was no less
a personage than James Usher. But
being as they were, as they well knew
they were, the creatures of the state,
what could they do when brought
into conflict with the author and finisher of their law?
Omitting the period of the civil
wars and the Cromwellian Protectorate as a period phenomenal and exceptional, deserving study apart, we
pass to the firstparliament of Charles
II., (I662,) in which one of the first
contributions to the statutes which
we find, is the renewal of the Elizabethan act of uniformity. In the same
session was passed the acts of settlement and explanation, which have
been called "the Magna Charta of
Irish Protestantism." These acts
confirmed to their Puritan possessors the properties of the Catholic
gentry confiscated by Cromwell for
their attachment to both Charleses,
and extending into almost every
county. Of 6ooo proprietors, so
confiscated, but 6oaone per centwere restored, in part or whole, to
their hereditary estates. Thirty years
~The first Irish canon.
207