HISTORIE

CATHOLICÆ IBERNIÆ

COMPENDIUM,

DOMINO PHILIPPO AUSTRIACO,

HISPANIARUM, INDIARUM, ALIORUM REGNORUM ATQUE MULTARUM
DITIONUM REGI CATHOLICO MONARCHÆQUE
POTENTISSIMO DICATUM,

A

D. PHILIPPO O'SULLEVANO BEARRO, IBERNO.

CUM FACULTATE S. INQUISITIONIS, ORDINARII ET REGIS,
ULYSSIPONE EXCUSUM A PETRO CRASBEECKIO REGIO TYPOGRAPHO:
ANNO DOMINI 1621.

O'Sullivan-Beur, Phily's

EDIDIT, NOTULISQUE AC INDICIBUS ILLUSTRAVIT

MATTHEUS KELLY,

IN COLLEGIO S. PATRICII APUD MAYNOOTH PROFESSOR, ETC.

DUBLINII:

APUD JOHANNEM O'DALY,

ANGLESEA-STREET NO. 9.

1850.

DUBLIN:

GOODWIN, SON, AND NETHERCOTT,

79, Marlborough-street.

SHOULD a student propose to himself to write the Church History of
the Irish Catholics since the Reformation, he would find that the ma-
terials for the chief part of that desirable work remain as they were
nearly a century ago. The research which has contributed, es-
pecially during the last ten years, so many original accessions, both
to profane and to mediæval ecclesiastical history, has added but little
to the materials for modern ecclesiastical history, which are contained in
the Hibernia Dominicana. Many valuable manuscripts, and some
books almost as rare as manuscripts, which it appears the learned
author of that work never saw, still await, and will amply repay the
cares of an editor. It is true, the story of the Irish Catholics has
been so fertile a theme for orators, pamphleteers, and historians,
that a library might be stocked with works, written during the last
seventy years, on that subject alone. These compilations, how-
ever, principally regard Catholics in their relations to the civil power;
they record the edicts of the persecutors, but seldom introduce us to
the private history of the catacombs; and closely though the religious
and political history of the Irish people has been blended, you will
often search in vain in all these works for the first elements of eccle-
siastical history; the lives and succession of the prelates in the diffe-
rent sees; a consecutive history of the religious orders; the means by
which the clergy were recruited and supported; the places of public
worship; the biography of eminent ecclesiastics; the various plans de.
vised by fanaticism to eradicate the Catholic faith; and many other
topics which belong exclusively to ecclesiastical history.

A Church History of Ireland is, therefore, a work of no ordinary difficulty, requiring for its for its execution a collection of books hardly ever found in the same private or even public library; manuscripts scattered wherever the Irish ecclesiastical exiles found a home; and free access to the records of government offices, of courts of justice, and of corporations, and to the copious materials in the public libraries of England and Ireland.

To remove some of those obstacles which obstruct the historian's path, and following up the resolution intimated in the preface to the Apologia pro Hibernia, the editor has completed his preparations for publishing a series of rare works, illustrating the history of the Irish Catholics, with several manuscripts already in his possession, and others which he may be able to procure. These works shall be published at a price which will make them as accessible as similar works in other countries, instead of having them, as they are at present, objects of epicure bibliomania, purchased for their weight in silver or gold. For the information of those who may not be acquainted with the prices which those works on Irish Catholic History usually bring, it may be sufficient to state, as an example, that the work which is now given to the public generally sells for £10 or £15.

O'Sullivan's Catholic History comes first on the list: for, though not first in the order of time, it is second to none in historical value. It was compiled from the narratives of persons who had been engaged in those fierce wars which ended in the general plunder of the Irish Church and people by Elizabeth and James I. The author was one of those old Irish nobles who forfeited their properties and country in the contest for the liberty of their faith. He tells his story with all the warmth of a patriot and a zealous Catholic. His tastes, and the character of those from whom he derived his information, led him to pay such attention to merely ecclesiastical details, that he has been transcribed copiously, and sometimes without acknowledgment, by ecclesiastical historians, who owe to him alone some of their most interesting pages. On matters of general history, also, the value of his labours is duly attested by the very copious extracts which the editors of some of the most valuable modern publications have very judiciously inserted from him.

The author's poem, subjoined to this preface, gives a brief ac

Of the successors

Auliffe, brother
From them the

count of his family. Before the English invasion, the O'Sullivans
had occupied rich tracts in the south-east of Tipperary; but being,
like most of the old Irish families of Munster, expelled from their fer-
tile valleys by the invaders, they retreated westward, and, preying on
weaker tribes, took possession of the western parts of Cork and
Kerry. The wild and mountainous tracts around Bantry Bay, co-
extensive with the barony of Bear and Bantry, were possessed by the
O'Sullevan Bear down to the close of Elizabeth's reign; and it was in
the island of Bavi Bearra, now Dursey, at the extreme point of the
promontory between Kenmare and Bantry Bays, that our author was
born. His grandfather, Dermod O'Sullivan, who is warmly eulogized
by the Four Masters, was accidentally killed by an explosion of gun-
powder in his castle of Dunboy, in the year 1549.
in the chieftancy little is known except their deaths.
of Dermod, and Donald, his son, fell by the sword.
principality passed to Owen O'Sullevan, who held it until the year
1593, when he was deposed by the influence of the English, and Dun-
boy, the key of his inheritance, was given up to his nephew, Donald.
During the thirty years of Owen's government, he appears not to have
taken an active part in the field with Fitzmaurice, or any of the Ca-
tholic insurgents. Once, indeed, he was seized as a hostage by the
Earl of Ormond, in 1580; but a few years later, his name is found
among those who were present during the parliament of 1585. His
successor, Donald, continued faithful to his patrons nearly ten years,
not shaken in his allegiance by the decisive victories of the northern
chieftains, nor awed by the triumphant march of Hugh O'Neil to
Munster in 1600. It was only when the Spaniards landed at
Kinsale that he resolved to fight for the liberty of his church.
He received foreign garrisons into his castles, and, by a formal
document, still extant, transferred his allegiance to the king of
Spain.

Hitherto the conduct of the heads of this family had not left much to adorn the pages of the "Catholic History." Philip's father, Dermod, however, like many of the younger sons of the great families, did not adopt the policy of his chiefs. In all the Munster wars, from the year 1569, when St. Pius V. excommunicated Elizabeth, down to the death of the Earl of Desmond in 1585, Dermod was in the field at the head of