Murder of Dr. Allen, Archbishop of Dublin.

XII. - Murder of Dr. Allen, Archbishop of Dublin.

On the committal of the Earl of Kildare to the Tower the enemies of the Geraldines used every means to incite Silken Thomas into open revolt. They reported the Earl was executed. Silken Thomas believed it. On the 11th June, 1533, at the head of 140 horsemen, he left Leixlip Castle for St. Mary’s Abbey. He rushed into the council chamber and surrendered to the Chancellor, Archbishop Cromer, his sword and robes of state, and renounced his allegiance to the King, in spite of the tears and remonstrances of Archbishop Cromer. The murder of Dr. Allen, the Archbishop of Dublin, is the blackest and reddest stain on the character of Silken Thomas. During his siege the Archbishop made his escape, and endeavoured to cross over to England. In the night-time he embarked on a vessel which lay in the river off Dame’s Gate. The vessel ran ashore at Clontarf. The Archbishop took refuge in a house at Artane. As soon as Silken Thomas heard the news he set out with two of his uncles, John and Oliver. They found the Archbishop at dawn of day. The Archbishop was dragged out of his bed. The venerable prelate in tears fell upon his knees, and implored them to spare his life. While with eyes and hands uplifted to heaven, he was invoking the Divine clemency, Silken Thomas cried out:- “Take the clown away.”

In the presence of the Geraldines, their attendants fell on that suppliant form. On that sad 28th July, they brutally murdered the Archbishop of Dublin. All who participated in the sacrilegious murder were excommunicated. And the unhappy Earl, lingering in the Tower, read the sentence which was transmitted to the Tower, in which, in the following September, he died of a broken heart.

Sequel of the Murder of Archbishop Allen.

The murder of the Archbishop of Dublin marked a new epoch in the religious history of Ireland. Henry VIIL had renounced the authority of the Pope, and arrogated to himself the title of “Head of the Church,” which was divinely given by Christ to St. Peter and his successors in the Pontificate. This was his opportunity. In 1534 George Browne, an apostate Augustinian Friar, the confidential agent of Cranmer, the friend of Cromwell, the counsellor of the royal Renegade, was one of royal commission for the establishment of the Reformation in Ireland. The Earl of Ossory and his son were pledged by it “to resist the ursurpation of the bishop of Rome,” and to assign as the cause of the national misfortunes “the manner in which the Pope had exercised his authority in filling up the Irish benefices.” It was he who performed the secret marriage of Henry VIII. with Anne Boleyn - without even a divorce from Catherine, the lawfully married Queen. In the beginning of March, 1535, Henry VIII. - not the Pope of Rome - Henry VIII., the father of the Reformation, appointed this man, Browne, to the vacant See of Dublin. Would Silken Thomas have consented to the murder of Archbishop Allen had he known the awful story that would follow? Browne had no credentials from Rome. He was consecrated by Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, from whom he received his unauthorised pallium; and with amazing ignorance and stupidity and malice, Protestant writers call him the successor of St. Laurence O’Toole! All honour to the memory of St. Laurence O’Toole! He was consecrated, not by an Archbishop of Canterbury or by a foreign prelate - but by the Primate of Armagh. Neither he nor any of his successors took an oath of obedience or submission to the See of Canterbury. It was St. Laurence O’Toole who emancipated the Irish Church from all dependence on the Primate of All England. It was in 1179, in the General Council, St. Laurence in Rome secured from Alexander III. the independence of the Irish Church. Cranmer, then, had no more call to the See of Dublin than to the laager of General Louis Botha.

Besides, Browne, before his appointment had, according to Ussher and Mant, before his appointment, renounced Popery - and the authority of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of which our Saint was “Lucerna ardens et lucens.”

Browne was a bad man. On 7th July, 1537, Henry VIII., in a letter, threatened “to remove you again, and to put another man of more virtue and honesty in your place.”

He destroyed crosses, images, relics - the crozier of St. Patrick. He suppressed monasteries and religious orders. He destroyed, in his hatred of the Mother of God, her miraculous images at Trim and Navan, with their abbeys. So venerable was the latter heirloom of the Irish people, that in 1454 a parliament held in Dublin ordered protection to all, whether rebels or others, who were pilgrims to that sacred shrine. And in 1460, in a preamble to another act of the parliament, states how a Mr. Stackbolle, whose tongue had been cut off and his eyes put out, when brought before the image of the Blessed Virgin “was, by her grace, mediation, and miraculous power, restored to his sight and speech.” [Hardiman, “Sat. of Kilkenny,” pp. 25 & 51.]

Henry VIII. characterised his lightness of behaviour, the elation of his mind in pride, etc., etc.

The Protestant Bishop of Ossory describes his morality “the lewd example of the Archbishop of Dublin.” He declares him guilty of drunkenness and gluttony, and styles him an epicurious archbishop, a brockish swine, and a dissembling proselyte.

Dear Protestant scribes, is this your estimate of a successor of the illustrious and mortified St. Laurence O’Toole?

Far be it from us to cast undue aspersion on the name of the Geraldines. Silken Thomas who, before his death, was left almost naked in his cell, and had to crave from his fellow-prisoners some scanty clothing to cover his perishing body, may not have wished the death of Dr. Allen. His impetuous words may have been misinterpreted by his excited attendants.

Like all the Geraldines he was more Irish than the Irish* *themselves. Henry VIII. did not reward him or punish him for the death of Dr. Allen. He tortured him because he hated tyranny, and he loved Ireland. It was for this he was executed at Tyburn. And though, afterwards, they “conformed” the Geraldines long before the Cromwellian and Williamite colonisation, the chiefs of the Clan Geralt spared neither their estates, their reputation, nor their life’s blood in the cause of Irish Independence.

We find the Earl of Kildare, as a parliamentarian, at a time when his sword was locked in its scabbard, going into the presence of the King, “bearding the lion in his den,” and t the amazement of all boldly presenting on behalf of oppressed Ireland his remonstrance.

He contended, what might be asserted today, that the national discontent arose not so much from faction as the malfeasance of Ministers. He complained of the duumvirate of the Primate and Viceroy. The Viceroy he likened to Strafford, and the Primate to Laud and Wolsey.

Besides the secretary of Dr. Allen, who was an Englishman, was John Allen, the Secretary of the Council, and afterwards Master of the Rolls. He was an uncompromising enemy of the Geraldines. The Earl of Kildare deprived Dr. John Allen, Archbishop of Dublin, of the Chancellorship. He made Dr. Cromer, Archbishop of Armagh, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. And the report of the commission, drawn up by John Allen as secretary, concluded that not the “wild Irish lords only, but the treason, rebellion, extortion, and wilful war of the aforesaid earls (viz., Desmond, Kildare, and Ossory), and other English lords,” were responsible.’ [“State Papers,” lxiii, -iv, and ix.]

It is true that Dr. Allen was an Englishman, that he was Wolsey’s chaplain, and, according to Mageoghegan, he was an agent in the suppression of 40 English monasteries, to found his colleges at Ipswich and Oxford. But this was a considerable time before Henry VIII. began his work of confiscation. Dr. Allen’s works, “The Black Book of Christ’s Church7’ and his “Reportorium Viride,” prove he was a prelate of studious life, and not such as to provoke enmity with politicians. Did Silken Thomas, rash, impetuous youth that he was, mistake one John Allen for the other John Allen? That he repented it is to be hoped, and was absolved from the excommunication.

At any rate, it is an awful illustration of the error of making the sacred character of religion secondary to politics. The surest means of success, in bringing down the blessing of heaven on our national struggle, is to erect, above and before all other standards, the standard of that “faith which overcometh the world.”

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