could not be here mentioned. It next lays to their charge all the beggary and vagrancy that then prevailed in England-and says, "how difficult it is now to make laws against them, for they are stronger in your own parliament than yourself. Oh! how the substance of your realme, your sacred power, crown dignity, and obedience of your people ruinate headlong into the unsatiable whirlpool of these greedy gulphes; and all this because they say, they pray for us to God, to deliver our souls out of the pains of purgatory." The Supplicators then laugh bitterly at purgatory, and argue against the pope, as follows-"If," say they, "the pope may, with his pardon, deliver for money one soul thence, he may deliver him as well without money-if he deliver one, he may as well deliver one thousand-if one thousand, he may deliver all, and so destroy purgatory; and then he is a cruel tyrant without all charity, if he keep them there in paine, till men will give him money.” The supplication then urges the complaint how the clergy, not content with their own duties, had got almost all the law offices into their hands, and concludes as follows:- "What remedye to relieve your poor, sick, lame, and sore beadsmen-make hospitals for the relief of poor people? Nay truly, the more the worse, for ever the fat of the whole foundation hangeth on the priest's beardsdivers of your noble predecessors have granted lands to monasteries, to give a certain summe of money yearly to the poore people— whereof for the ancientry of the time they give never one pennythey have likewise given to them, to have certain masses said daily for them, whereof they say, never a one. If the abbot of Westminster should sing every day, as he is bound to, by his foundation, as many masses as he should do, a thousand monks were too few. Let then these sturdy loubies abroad in the world, to get them wives of their own-tye these holy idle thieves to the carts, and whip them through every town till they fall to labour, and not take away the alms from us sore, impotent, and miserable people, your poor beadsmen. Then shall you have full obedience of your people-then shall the idle be set to work-then shall matrimony be better kept-then shall your commons increase in riches then shall the gospel be preached-then shall none beg our alms from -then shall we have enough, and more than shall suffice us, which will be the best hospital that ever was founded for us then shall we daily pray to God for your most noble estate long to us endure." The famous Sir Thomas More, wrote an answer to this tract, in which, as Fox says, he called the author an ass, a goose, a fool, and a heretic-but it did its work, the subject matter sunk deeply into the king's mind, and the monasteries were dissolved.* * Speed gives an accurate statement of ecclesiastical property as it existed at this period, and sets down the total value of it, as amounting to £320,180. 10s. 3d. of which, as the property of the monasteries, Henry converted to temporal uses, £161,100. 9s. 7d.; to this may be added the sum of £43,333. 6s, Od, which it was calculated the five orders of begging friars collected through the I have now taken up my allotted space, and shall, therefore, conclude this preliminary letter, hoping that I have proved what I desired that tithes and other ecclesiastical property were usurped by the regular clergy, and withheld from the right owners, the parish priests that this usurped property was, while in the hands of the monastics, misapplied and lavished. In a future letter, I trust, I shall be able to show how this property, rightfully belonging to the parochial clergy, and which might in their hands be consecrated to its primitive uses of supporting hospitality, and relieving the poor, never reverted to its proper channel, but still remains in the hands of the laity; and as the Protestant clergy of England have not a fourth, nor the Protestant clergy of Ireland an eighth of what the clergy of the Church of Rome possessed, so it is as absurd as it is unjust, to call upon them to build churches, keep hospitality, or maintain the poor, which had they their tithes and glebes in full possession they would be as willing as able to undertake. C. O. PETER PROVEIT, OR COUNTRY CONTROVERSIALS. (Continued from page 359.) Time, that strange thing, which, when counted by minutes, seems so tedious; but which, when reckoned by years, so exceeding brief, time rolled on with Peter Abbot, carrying him with its accustomed steadiness of undeviating progress, from youth to manhood, from manhood to mature age. It is not our intention to detail the various scenes and stages of this alteration. Suffice it to say, that all the preliminary ordeal of a young soldier's noviciate having been endured; the rattanings of the 'drill-serjeant's cane; the ridicule of his fellow-privates; the snubbings of young ensigns and lieutenants just promoted; he at length embarked with his regiment for America. In that won. drous land, where every thing in the natural world seems upon a great scale-by "Kentucky's wood-encumbered brake, amidst all the variety of sylvan scenery which the northern por tions of the New Continent afford, Abbot learned by hardships danger and privation, how different is the ideal soldiering which fills kingdom, (each house-holder paying them five pence a quarter) and it will make the sum of £204,433, 17s. 7d,; and, inasmuch as money was ten times the value then it is now, or would buy ten times as much food or raiment, we may calculate the yearly income, abstracted from the regular clergy, and reverting back to the laity, at more than two millions. The lands held by the two Abbeys of St. Alban and Glastonbury, were, one hundred years ago, valued as worth half a million yearly. To this immense property, enjoyed by monks and friars, it is beyond calculation what they raised from the people for masses, satisfactories, anniversaries, obits, requiems, dirges, placebos, trentals, lamps, lights, blessed candles, &c. VOL. IX. 3 M the mind of a raw recruit, from the reality of actual campaigning. Being naturally of a vigorous constitution, he was enabled to bear up where numbers of others perished; and having good abilities, which he was glad to improve, after age and experience had taught him their value, he found himself at length at the conclusion of thirty-two years of service, returning homeward, a retired serjeantmajor upon full-pay. As the recollection of his birth-place had often come o'er his 'soul, sweet and sad, while far away from his native land; so it was the first wish of his heart to settle him down quietly in the village where he had first drawn his breath, and lay his bones under the sod which grew over the dust of his fore-fathers. Ballybroughill, the pole-star of his affections was, in this respect, favourable to his long-indulged scheme of reviving early impressions in full force, since it had undergone in the long period of his absence scarcely any change worth mentioning. It is true, the sign of the Red Lion had required new hinges; that to the new hinges after a period, was added a new sign; and ultimately to both, a new sign post. But the Lion still ramped aloft in air in his original blazonry. The identity might, indeed, be as puzzling to prove, as that of the good ship Argo, so often repaired, and which proved such a stumbling block to Grecian wits. But who could prove, that the eyes with which Peter Abbot, aged fifty, gazed upon this same sign, were the identical eyes which peered on it from under the straggling elf-locks of Peter Abbot, aged eighteen? nobody. Yet he was the same, and of course the sign was the same too. the flux of matter there might be continued alteration of the integral particles of things, but while they wore the same form as usual that was sufficient. The river unquestionably rolled under the same one arched-bridge. Coppices of birch, alder, and hazel, still fringed its banks in the same places as before. Groups of dirty beggars crowded round the same greasy chapel-steps as before; red, black, and white cows, came home at sun-set to be milked down the same broken irregular little roads from the very same hill-sides as before. Asses, not having the fear of land-bailiffs before their eyes, and goats which despised the whole range of statutes against trespassing made and provided, brayed and bleated out of the very same pound as before; lamenting old women thrusting grass to them through the gate; and the water dribbling through their rueful feet as before-in short Ballybronghill looked just the same irregular, odd, dirty, agreeable Irish Ballybroughill, which it did thirty-two years agone. In In this village, then, serjeant Abbot sat him down to finish his days. He had purchased a small neat cottage which commanded a pleasant view of the bridge and church, in which cottage he had laid out in order many strange things which he brought home with him from his wanderings abroad. But of all the strange things which he brought with him was none more wondered at, and considering the use he made of it, none more disliked, than a certain brass-clasped pocket bible, out of which he used continually to read both for himself and for his neighbours. The fact was, that through the instrumentality of a Scotch corporal who went out with him in the same vessel from Falmouth, Abbot had been made acquainted with that Gospel of the grace of God, which though he had often heard before, he had never before learned to value. The Bible from that time had been his constant companion, to temper his joys in prosperity, and to alleviate his sorrows in adversity; and perceiving how many things he had hitherto taken upon trust, which were by no means according to the sacred volume; and how much the world about him did the same; he acquired the habit of referring every thing to Scripture, allowing of nothing which could not be countenanced thereby. As it was his custom frequently when arguing any matter, to cry out, "I'll prove it to you in a moment," at the same time drawing out of a very capacious coat pocket the aforesaid brass-bound bible; the serjeant acquired among his neighbours and particularly his Roman Catholic ones, the nick-name of Peter Proveit. The serjeant's first efforts were directed, as might reasonably be expected, to the members of his own family. His father had died a short time previous to the return of his son; but his mother, though in her 73d year, retained her faculties of mind and body, and formed a most interesting object for the spiritual assiduities of her offspring. It pleased God in this case to fulfil the Scripture, that "at even-tide it should be light," and the declining years of this poor woman were illuminated by a beam of joy and peace in believing, which had never gilded the previous period of her life. As she always had been, nominally at least, a Protestant; this alteration gave little trouble to the male and female gossips of Ballybroughill; but when the serjeant, encouraged by his success here, urged with still greater vehemence the operations he had commenced with his first-cousin, Brian Falvey, the lame smith, a man who had gone to mass all his days; nay, when Laurence Fagan the tailor, one of the greatest Popish voteens in the whole country side, was found sitting perdue with Abbot one evening, behind the screen of a large oak-leaved geranium which graced the parlour window, ripping up, not old coats, but old controversies, and facing the decaying and dilapidated fronts of his original Romish superstitiousness with great substantial pieces of good sound Protestant principles, the village could bear it no longer. There was a ge neral outcry for help. Was there no man who could argue with Mr. Abbot? Not a layman could be found within ten miles round, qualified in any reasonable degree to enter the lists against the heretical serjeant-major and his tormenting "Prove it." Things were rapidly going from bad to worse. Several Testaments were discovered in private circulation. The right of every man to read the Bible was not inaudibly whisphered by more than two or three knots of enquirers. Purgatory in short was very generally getting below par; in confession and absolution very little doing to what used to be done, when the extreme exigency of the case, brought down to the Church's aid, her legitimate champion, the Rev. Father Remigius O'Connor, parish priest of Bally broughill. This gentleman, one of the old school of priests, educated at St. Omers, before a Protestant government had founded and established a Popish college in Ireland, brought to the contest none of that readiness and acquaintance with his subject, which has since characterized the more modern supporters of the spiritual Babylon. Necessitated by the manifest defalcation in his dues of meal and oats, he came forward indeed, but in much perplexity of spirit. Some discussion should take place-the people expected it-the serjeant challenged him to it. The day, the place, even the subject, had been fixed; on the next Tuesday at twelve o'clock, in Laurence Fagan's house-to maintain the propriety of the worshipping of pictures and images. Truly as he turned over, on the night before the battle, the musty, stained, decayed leaves of an old common-place book, which he had compiled for himself when a divinity student on the Continent, he was, as he wrote to his diocesan, in great sorrow of heart. "I have written to you, my Lord," says he, "for help de profundis clamavi, as I may say, and I have had no answer." Till two o'clock in the morning, as he declared, did he sit over his studies, even ་ as a pelican in the wilderness, and as a sparrow which sitteth alone on the house-top," and could find no comfort. At length arrived the hour. Behold, squeezed together, two millers, one baker, one butcher, one glazier, three publicans, two huxters, the gauger, the butler from the big house, the coachman, and the footman from the rectory. "Alcandrumque, Haliumque, Noëmonaque, Prytanimque." Behold Mr. Fagan's mouth wide open as his own shears; behold the serjeant in the centre, his spatterdashes buttoned tight, his stock fitting close, his hair smoothly combed back into the queue which hung perpendicularly between his shoulders, in his hand the wellknown brass-clasped book; in his countenance the bright hope of victory. Behold the Priest in good thick velveteens, his top-boots well strapped up behind, his riding whip in his hands, with which Caduceus-like, he wont to urge the lazy and to restrain the refractory spirits of his band. At length his Reverence commenced; I am It is not a little strange, Mr. Abbot, for me to find myself here in the character of a disputant. I do not indeed know that I am right at all in so letting myself down. The good of my people alone, whose minds you have endeavoured to perplex, would induce me thus to forego the dignity of the clerical character. perhaps very wrong in discussing points, which the wisdom of the Church has so long ago settled incontrovertibly. Indeed I might almost say it is a departure, on my part, from the way of duty." "Prove it," cried the Serjeant. "Really, Mr. Abbot, I should think this required no proof-it must appear self-evident that for a priest of the holy church to descend to argue with a mere layman of the Protestant sect is not desirable. |