source of their invention. The greater number are those of well-known English towns or bishoprics, such as Bath, Lincoln, Peterborough; some are names of places celebrated in early English ecclesiastical history, but improbable sites for convents in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such as Bangor and St. Asaph's; some, as "Conventus Dulemensis," the foundation of which is placed at 1257, are evident mistakes; Dulemensis being evidently intended for Dunelmensis, Durham, where however there was no Trinitarian convent. "Darensis," given as the name of an English convent, is a still wilder adaptation, Darensis being the Latin name of the bishopric of Kildare, and sometimes used by mistake for Deriensis, the bishopric of Derry, both in Ireland. The natural conclusion is that the writer picked out any well-known names that he found, and gave them as the names of convents; and also used any portions of the history of his own or other religious orders that he met with. A detailed examination of some of Lopez's accounts of supposed English convents will illustrate this. Lopez states that there was a convent of Trinitarians in London; that it was situated in Hac Street, in the parish of Leadenhall (there was no such parish, but the name was well known), was founded in 1298, by Ralph Hozier and William Severn, who became Trinitarians. For these statements he refers to his usual string of authorities; he adds, the Trinitarians were called "Crutched" or "Crouched Friars." The truth is there never was a convent of Trinitarians in London, but there was one of "Crutched Friars," a totally different order, as our readers have already seen. was in Hart Street, near Tower Hill, in the parish of S. Olave, and was founded in 1298, by Ralph Hozier and William Severn, who became friars of S. Cross. The only connection of this house with the Trinitarian Order was, that it was built upon the site of certain tenements purchased from a priory of the Holy Trinity, probably that of Hounslow. The most probable explanation of Lopez's account is that he, or whoever he took it from, found in the Trinitarian annals of the house from which the site of Crutched Friars was bought, an account of the Priory of S. Cross, and took it as a foundation on which to found a tale of a Trinitarian house. Except the foundation, Lopez's history of the imaginary Trinitarian convent bears no resemblance to that of the real S. Cross. He tells how in 1535 some eighty monks of his imaginary convent were hanged, drowned in the river, burnt alive, and otherwise put to death, at the same time as the Carthusians; and his tale is evidently an embroidered version of the fate of the latter.* The prior of the real convent

Lopez's account of the Carthusians is not quite accurate.

It

of S. Cross, in Hart Street, Edmund Streetham, subscribed to the king's supremacy on the 17th April, 1534, and his convent was surrendered to the king on 13th November, 1539.* We will examine Lopez's history of the convent of Oxford more at length later; but one point in it may be mentioned here as illustrating how he manufactured fictitious Trinitarian history out of real facts relating to other orders. He says (p. 22, referring to Figueras's Annals) the Trinitarian Priory of Öxford was much augmented in possessions and rents by Thomas Hatfield, Bishop of Durham, in 1518. Fortunately we have most full and ample histories of every event connected with the See of Durham; and thus we learn that in 1290, Prior Holon, with the aid of the Convent of Durham (a Benedictine convent), instituted a house in Oxford for eight Benedictine monks. Bishop Hatfield, who was appointed 1344 and died 1381, enlarged the endowment of this house and made it permanent, appointing that the eight monks should be chosen out of the Benedictine Priory of Durham; † but he neither gave nor left anything to the Trinitarian house of Oxford which, as we shall see later, hardly, if at all, existed in his life.

We will now proceed to examine what is probably the most interesting part of Lopez's work,-his account of the sufferings endured for the faith by members of his order in these countries in the reign of Henry VIII. It is clear that it is not enough to say that those sufferings and those deaths are not now known to have been recorded by other writers of the period. The times were troubled, and the Irish records that have survived are few. But, on the other hand, Lopez is precise, and gives full details. He refers to numerous authorities, and gives places, dates, numbers, and every detail with equal authority. He is therefore either wholly trustworthy, or utterly unworthy of belief. All his facts are true, or none are to be relied on. Now, let us give a brief summary of what he relates. It amounts to this. That between the years 1539 and 1550 upwards of two hundred Trinitarian friars, including one bishop, were put to death in Ireland with every circumstance of cruelty and publicity, in the great towns from Dublin to Cork. At page 96 Lopez gives his authorities. Of these the only Irish

* See Dugdale, Tanner, Stowe's London, &c.

+ See Surtees's History of Durham.

Dates, however, are never perfect tests. Many contemporary writers narrate facts within their own knowledge, but mistake the exact year in which they occur. This remark applies, however, only to a variation of a few years. It will not do to suggest that a detailed account, given by Lopez, of events in the reign of Henry VIII., may refer to something that occurred under Cromwell.

ones are Baron and O'Sullivan, in his "Patriciana Decas," published in 1629. We will examine his account a little later; in the mean time let us point out that no mention is made of any one of these events by any other and more nearly contemporary author with whom we are acquainted. The Four Masters speak in general terms of the persecution as most fierce. "They ruined the orders-the possessions and livings of all these were taken up for the king-they broke into the monasteries; they sold their roofs and bells, &c.; " but they do not say that any were put to death, with one exception. They mention the fate of the members of one convent of their own order, under date 1540. "The English in every place throughout Ireland persecuted and banished the religious orders, and particularly they destroyed the monastery of Monaghan, and beheaded the guardian and a number of the friars."* Is it possible that they would have been ignorant of, or silent regarding, the glorious martyrdom of a Trinitarian bishop, and of the hundreds of Trinitarian fathers massacred in all the great towns of Ireland? In 1619 Doctor Rothe, bishop of Ossory, published his "Processus Martyrialis," in which he professes to give a complete catalogue of all, especially bishops and priests, who had suffered death or imprisonment for the faith. He mentions that he had access to several manuscript catalogues kept during the preceding fifty years; and although he laments that some names may have escaped him, there can be no doubt that his catalogue is substantially complete. But he breathes no word of all the Trinitarian martyrs. The same may be said of the authors of the "Persecutio Hiberniæ," printed in 1619; of Dominick a Rosario, who in his "Relatio Persecutionis Hiberniæ " is equally silent. The Dominican annals contain accounts of all those of their order who suffered death in Ireland, but mention none before the reign of Elizabeth; and, with the one exception of the Franciscan friars of the monastery of Monaghan, no religious are known to have suffered before that date. Is it then credible that in those years upwards of two hundred Trinitarians should have suffered death, and no memory of the fact have been preserved amongst us? Further, we have the copious correspondence of the agents of the Reformation and of the English Government with their employers in England during all these years, now published in the "State Papers."

* Probably the exceptional fate of the convent of Monaghan may have been caused by its being an Irish convent in the border land of the Pale, the MacMahon territory; and it may have been destroyed in one of the military expeditions of that period. Most of the Trinitarian convents are said to have been in purely Anglo-Irish towns, as Dublin and Drogheda.

In these we find many allusions to the recusancy and resistance of other bishops and clergy throughout Ireland, and accounts of all the most remarkable events that took place, especially in Dublin; but not one word of the public placarding in Dublin of Catholic theses by the Trinitarians, of their public disputation, of their still more public execution. So much for the negative testimony against; let us now examine the positive testimony in favour of Lopez's account. We have said that the only early work by an Irish writer to which he refers is O'Sullivan's "Patriciana Decas." Now, O'Sullivan's account is very remarkable, and to some extent gives a clue to the difficulty. In this work, which was printed in 1619, in the second chapter of the tenth book, as we have already mentioned, he speaks of the Trinitarians who had preached the Gospel in foreign parts and had been martyred; and refers only to "Vetus Historiæ Monumentum." In the eighth chapter, speaking of the immense number of martyrs and confessors who had suffered under Henry and Elizabeth, he gives as a proof of their great number, "id est argumenti quod unius Richardi Goldæi diligentia de Trinitaris religiosis observavit." He then tells us who this Richard Goold was-" an Irishman from Limerick, a Trinitarian monk, Definitor in the kingdom of Castile, and Professor of Sacred Literature in the university of Alcalá." He then adds these memorable words: "ob id locupletem testem eum judico penes illum fides esto." O'Sullivan himself, it is plain, had not heard elsewhere of these hundreds of most remarkable martyrdoms. In this same work there is a notable passage, where it would be natural to find them mentioned; but where they are not alluded to. At page 154, enumerating all the evil deeds of Henry VIII., he says, " he slew the bishop of Rochester (Fisher), Sir Thomas More, the Carthusians, and others, both seculars and ecclesiastics." What need was there for him to travel to England to cite the Carthusians as the one instance of religious put to death by Henry, if he believed that king had caused the death of hundreds of Trinitarians in Ireland? Would he not have associated the name of the martyred Trinitarian bishop of Limerick with that of the bishop of Rochester? O'Sullivan further tells us whence Goold professed to have derived his information. 66 Itaque ut Richardus acceptum a sene

* In 1630, Doctor Arthur, Bishop of Limerick, in a letter to the Holy See, recommended for co-adjutor, amongst others, "R. P. F. Richard Goold familiæ SS. Trinitatis et S. Theol. Professor," then living in Spain; in another letter, a few years later, he is said to be nephew of the martyred Primate Doctor Creagh, and regent of studies in the convent of his order in the university of Alcalá. (See "Irish Ecclesiastical Record," vol. ii. p. 358.)

religioso habebat-ubi primum Henrici edicta." And at the end he adds, " Hæc patris Richardi Goldæi auctoritate secutus scribere putavi, eadem monumentis Trinitariorum Parisiis observata feruntur." The original authorities, then, as far as O'Sullivan knew, were the writings of Father Richard Goold, about 1620, founded on what he had been told by an old monk, whose name is not given; and a report (feruntur) that the same facts were to be found in the Trinitarian records at Paris. We have said that O'Sullivan's account of Father Goold's writings puts us on the track of the origin of Lopez's history of the persecutions, because he gives, in an abridged form, as derived from Goold, all that Lopez narrates, and sums up the number put to death, according to Goold, as at Dublin 50, Adare 50, Galway 20, Drogheda 40, Limerick 50, Cork and Kilmallock 90; besides many others. O'Sullivan, after giving the account of the Trinitarian martyrs of the reign of Henry VIII., on the authority, as he is careful to say, of Father Goold, proceeds to give many other instances of martyrs, referring for each to various authorities, chiefly his own collections; but all these (with the one well-known exception of Doctor John Travers) are from the reign of Elizabeth, the earliest date being 1577, the latest 1622. Clearly, then, O'Sullivan's own researches had not enabled him to find any corroboration of the narrative of Father Goold. We will now proceed to examine a little the internal evidence of authenticity afforded by the history of Lopez. As has been already remarked, if minuteness and accuracy of detail be a proof-and it is undoubtedly a primâ facie proof-of truth, Lopez's account abundantly affords it. The minutest details are given, the discourses of the actors, the mode of death, the exact date. But, on the other hand, if these details are improbable or impossible, the whole tale of which they form a part must fall with them. We will first give Lopez's account of the fate of the convent of Dublin. According to him, in February, 1539, in consequence of the intention on the part of the Government of enforcing the new edicts touching the king's supremacy, the Provincial of the Trinitarians assembled in Dublin many prelates and doctors of Oxford and Cambridge of his order. They determined to post up theses in defence of the Pope's authority, signed by eight doctors. On the 24th February the ministers arrived in Dublin with the edicts, and the next day the Trinitarian theses were posted up. The ministers of the king, enraged at this, killed the Father Provincial in the streets by a musket-shot; suddenly seized Father Theobald, and without any trial put him up on an extempore scaffold, made in the streets, of tables and planks, and, stripping him to the waist, an executioner was sent for,