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The attempted reformation by Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth produced martyrs like O'Hurley and O'Hely; and there were many more martyrs in the time of the Stuarts, and especially under the short but sanguinary rule of Cromwell. Those were the days of the penal laws, when they who clung to the old religion suffered much.
In 1581 Dermot O'Hurley was appointed to the Archbishopric of Cashel. He had been a distinguished student of Louvain, and was then a professor of Canon Law at Rheims. Hardly had he reached Ireland when the government spies were on his track.
And, indeed, the State Papers contain accounts of those demonstrations written by crown officials which sound very like the solicitor-general's speech to-day. Take, for instance, the execution "according to law" of the "Popish bishop" O'Hurley. Here is the letter of a state functionary on the subject:
Of these we recall among the Hierarchy the names of O'Hely, Bishop of Killala, executed at Kilmallock hi 1578; O'Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel, burned at the stake in Dublin in 1582; Creagh, Archbishop of Armagh, who died a prisoner in the Tower in 1585; Archbishop McGauran, his successor, slain in the act of ministering to the wounded in the engagement at Tulsk, in Roscommon, in 1593; McEgan, Bishop of Ross, who met his death under precisely similar circumstances in Carberry in 1603.
On a soil constantly wet with the blood and tears of its children, it would be vain to expect that scholarship could flourish. And yet the period had its distinguished Irish scholars both at home and abroad. At Louvain, in the sixteenth century, were Lombard and Creagh, who both became Archbishops of Armagh, and O'Hurley who became Archbishop of Cashel.
Of these we recall among the Hierarchy the names of O'Hely, Bishop of Killala, executed at Kilmallock hi 1578; O'Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel, burned at the stake in Dublin in 1582; Creagh, Archbishop of Armagh, who died a prisoner in the Tower in 1585; Archbishop McGauran, his successor, slain in the act of ministering to the wounded in the engagement at Tulsk, in Roscommon, in 1593; McEgan, Bishop of Ross, who met his death under precisely similar circumstances in Carberry in 1603.
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