ARCHBISHOP USSHER.* This painstaking account of the great Irish primate,
and his anxious and troublons times, should not be overlooked by those students of English history who are attracted by the profound mazes and entanglements of our own strange and fascinating ecclesiastical annals. Ussher was not only the most learned Churchman of the sister isle—" the Cape merchant of all learning," as Fuller so quaintly and characteristically styled him—but he takes rank as one of the veritable fathers and founders of the Church of Ireland, and as such must ever have an attraction for all loyal and thoughtful English Churchmen.
In his modest and necessary introduction, Dr. Carr explains his reason for undertaking his present task. His object, a most laudable one for an Irish clergyman, is to provide us with a more handy and popular account of Archbishop Ussher than has hitherto been published. It would be perhaps uncritical, to the verge of flattery, to pronounce that he has succeeded in this aim; but the reader must bear in mind that. Dr. Carr's task is one of the most difficult which can fall to the lot of a modern biographer. Ussher's life was spent largely in forgotten theological con- troversies, and in conflicts political and religions, which are now either forgotten or popularly misunderstood. To make of such material a smooth, flowing tale, were a labour demanding the deft hand of a great literary artist; and this is not one of Dr. Carr's endowments. The reader, therefore, who takes up this Life of Archbishop Ussher, ex- pecting it will afford him a pleasant means of whiling away a spare hour, will find himself disappointed. The book is none too interesting, even to such as bring to its perusal minds well stored with the history of the first Charles, of Laud and Strafford ; but without such knowledge the book must appear heavy and uninviting, if not unintelligible.
Dr. Carr has, however, brought forth the results of his researches into the story of Archbishop 'flasher's life and times, at a singularly opportune time. Anything that directly or indirectly touches upon the career of Land, has now an overpowering interest for the most active and intelli- gent section of the Anglican communion. We have lately seen an imposing religions ceremonial held on the very spot, "in Central London's roar," where the greatest of English Archbishops rendered up his life in defence of those anti-Puritanical principles which the foremost followers of Pusey and Liddon uphold with all their strength and might. Such men will turn with avidity to any careful and scholarly account of the relations between the learned Irish Archbishop and the less learned but much greater and more masterful Englishman. And they will find much in these pages over which to linger and reflect ; though we make bold to say that William Land, and his great lay representative in Ireland, the Lord-Deputy Strafford, had a far less lofty opinion of flasher than Dr. Carr fondly imagines. Still, the mutual rela- tions and entanglements of such remarkable men are profound and of almost dramatic interest. Dr. Carr seems to think that Ussher, in the main, despite his early Calvinistic leanings, was a Landian in his Irish Church policy. We hold that this was not Land's own opinion. The truth is, the two Archbishops were absolutely opposed in temperament and character, as well as in training and environment. Ussher was a man of curious and profound knowledge, a scholar and even a book- worm. Land was, above all, a man of action, to whom books, learning, even knowledge itself, were but means to an end, and that end the establishment of a strong Anglican Catholic Church—independent of Rome and of Protestantism—and as a corollary of this, the enforcement of the Divine Right of the King to rule his realm. Ussher was, on the contrary, a learned Protestant divine, who to his dying day regarded Rome as the one great enemy, and cared little for English Catholicity or Divine Right. The two men were opposed utterly in their ideals ; and we think that Dr. Carr makes far too little of this, in his otherwise judicious and carefully com- piled work. At the same time, Dr. Carr presents a most truthful picture of the deplorable condition of the Irish Reformed Church at the close of the sixteenth century, which we commend to those fiery spirits who blame the Pope, or the Celtic weak- nesses of the aboriginal Irish, for all the evils, spiritual and
a The Life and Times of James Ussher, Archbishop of Armaih„ By J. A. Carr D.D. London: Wel's C ardder, Darton. and Co.
political, of that still distracted isle. Take this picture of one of the "reformed" Irish Bishops :—
" Many of the Bishops who accepted the new order of things, and outwardly conformed, were altogether unworthy of their positions. One of these was the notorious Miles Magratb, `that wicked Bishop' (as Strafford calls him in a letter to Laud), and who lived well into the times of Ussher. Originally an Irish Franciscan, in the early part of Elizabeth's reign, he is found the Roman Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor. He then con- formed, and strange to say proved a special favourite with the Queen, visiting her Court frequently. He became Bishop of Clogher in 1570, and subsequently Archbishop of Cashel. After having held the Archbishopric of Cashel and bishopric of Emly for this ty-six years, the two cathedrals were found in ruins. Twenty-six livings were held by his sons or near relations, and in nearly every case there was no provision for divine worship. The Archbishop himself held more than twenty-six livings, and received the profits without order taken for the service of the Church.' In the two dioceses there was not one preacher, or good minister, to teach the people their duty. In addition to the above sees, Magrath managed to get possession likewise of the bishoprics of Waterford and Lismore."
Little wonder, with such shining examples of the blessedness of the Reformation, that the majority of Archbishop Magrath's countrymen down to this day have preferred to remain in the Papal fold.
It is the especial glory of Ussher that, coming at a time of such chaos and confusion, he, by his high character and profound learning, gave a stability and lent a dignity to the reformed Church of Ireland which it certainly did not acquire or deserve under Elizabeth's episcopal nominees. Hence arose Trinity College, of which, in a very particular sense, Ussher is the abiding glory. He was not alone, be it remembered, in this good work. The real master of the situation, while he held power, was that terrible little man, "the Pope of Canterbury," backed up as he was in everything by the all-powerful Lord-Deputy. It was Laud who made the Irish plunderers—lay and clerical—of Church endow- ments, disgorge their ill-gotten gains, and then appointed a worthy set of Irish Bishops, the most notable of whom, Bedell, Bishop of ICilmore, the great friend of Father Paul Sarpi, has justly won the profound admiration of Mr. Gladstone even in the days of his Home-rule heresy. Still Ussher, on the whole, gave his earnest support to the " Landian " policy of Sr afford in this work of Irish Church reform, and for so doing deserves much of the commendation which Dr. Carr so freely lavishes upon him.
The learned Irish primate, as is well known, lived to see the downfall of both the English and Irish Churches. It was he who attended Strafford in his last dread hour on Tower Hill ; while from a neighbouring roof in Whitehall he saw the beheading of Charles L, and fainted when the axe fell. Strangely enough, Ussher was afterwards treated in a most friendly fashion by Cromwell, who pensioned him, and gave him a public funeral at Westminster Abbey. Just as Dr. Carr makes rather too much of the good understanding that he supposes to have existed between Laud and Ussher, so does he make far too little of the evident friendship and genuine regard which Cromwell displayed towards the deposed Irish primate. Con- sidering how the Church was persecuted and suppressed under the Commonwealth, and what a small regard the Protector had for all that English Churchmen, then held, and now hold, as sacred, it is, to say the least of it, strange, that Cromwell could not only tolerate but patronised and befriended 'Crasher. We believe the explanation lies neither in the assumed toleration of Cromwell (though he was certainly broad- minded, if judged by the standard of his times), nor in any insincerity or double-dealing on the part of the deposed Irish Archbishop. The fact is, that Oliver Cromwell, sectarian as he was in religion, was a profound statesman and patriot, and a man of unerring insight into those inner recesses of
character which are often hidden even from their own pos- sessor. He recognised that the ex-Archbishop, despite his former high office and his intimate relations with Laud and
Strafford and the King, was at heart like himself in sympathy with the Protestant movement on the Continent, as well as at home. By befriending such a man, the politic Protector won the applause of learned Europe, and strengthened, rather than weakened, his own position in England. But it would serve to mark the broad, impassable barrier dividing the
great English from the great Irish Archbishop, if for a moment we try to picture Cromwell offering Land a pension
of 2400 a year, or Land accepting the boon from what he would deem those blood-stained and sacrilegious hands.
Previous page
