Ireland History

Of the grievances from which the Irish Catholic laity suffered, they appear to have felt none more acutely than the difficulty, under the existing laws, of obtaining a liberal education for their sons. During the reign of Elizabeth, this had also been complained of, but now that the English authority had extended itself over the whole island, the state of the case had become worse. Investigations were made, and schoolmasters who had not conformed to the State religion were ordered to close their schools, however efficient these might be. It is certain that, in this as in other matters, evasions were often practised with success.

The great schools which had long existed in many of the principal towns, as Waterford, Limerick, Galway and Kilkenny, continued to flourish. To what extent they were ” reformed ” it is °ften difficult to say ; certainly, amongst the men trained in them during the later sixteenth and the earlier seventeenth centuries, were found ^{many steadfast champions of Catholicity. In these schools the classical languages, and especially Latin, were the chief subjects of instruction but, in several, Irish, the native tongue, was also cultivated.}

Nor was the Irish Catholic Church without its martyrs during Elizabeth’s reign and that of her successor. Several prelates and a great many of the clergy suffered death for their faith. The execution of Dermot O’Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel, in 1584, was accompanied by circumstances of great atrocity. His feet, enclosed in metal boots partly filled with oil and butter, were ” toasted ” in a fire, till the flesh fell from the bones. He was afterwards hanged. Bishop Patrick O’Hely of Mayo was also tortured on the rack, before being put to death (1578). Laymen and women who gave shelter to bishops or priests were often punished

by imprisonment.