AN GAODHAL.
495
GAEL GLAS on the PROPHSIES.
(Fourth Letter.)
Oct. 4th, 1885.
To The Editor of the GÆL:
Dear Sir, — As the question of Irish freedom
will hereafter constitute the prelude to the fulfill¬
ment of the most important prophetic predictions
connected with the future, I shall again refer to it
with the view to the further elucidation of my sub¬
ject; so that no cavilling wrangler, or dodging
sophist may successfully dare assail my impregna¬
ble position. In my last letter I undertook to
prove the futility of the views of the learned Abbe
MacGeoghegan, who, by negative arguments
which logically prove nothing, essayed to estab¬
lish the unreality of Pope Adrian's bull: And
here again I adduce new facts, historical and cir¬
cumstantial, in order to further facilitate the pro¬
per understanding of a question upon which alto¬
gether depends the national autonomy of Ireland
and all the happy consequences which must inevi¬
tably result therefrom. Donald O'Neill, who rul¬
ed his clansmen as King of Ulster, about the year
1317, transmitted to Pope John XXII. a manifesto
exhibiting the gross cruelty, injustice and tyranny
under which the people of Ireland had been suffer¬
ing from the government of England at that period
and blaming the bull of Pope Adrian as the origi¬
nal cause of the miseries of his nation: upon re¬
ceipt of which document the said pope dispatched
a written missive to the court of King Edward III
of England, entreating that monarch to govern
Ireland with justice and moderation; and remind¬
ing him that he held his crown from God, and that
King Henry II. had obtained from Pope Adrian
IV. a grant of the kingdom of Ireland: and he
sent at the same time to the said Edward a copy of
the bull of Adrian (vide MacGeoghegan page 333).
Now it is not probable that the said O'Neill would
have mentioned to the Vicar of Christ a fraudulant,
spurious commission which had no actual exist¬
ence, nor is it at all likely that the said Vicar
would have sent to the court of England a copy of
a papal diploma which was altogether imaginary
and fictitious. And it is more reasonable to sup¬
pose that Pope John and O'Neill who flourished
about 140 years after the invasion of Ireland, were
better judges of the authenticity of the bull than
was MacGeoghegan who wrote his history of Ire¬
land after the siege of Limerick, and more than
520 years after the said invasion. I will now, to a
certain extent, remove the discussion of this sub¬
ject from the arena of historic controversy, and try
what fate may await the opinions of the Rev. Ab¬
be in the impartial court of reason. He tells us
that immediately after the murder of the Archbi¬
shop of Canterberry Pope Alexander, the then
ruling Pontiff, despatched into England two car¬
dinals with power to make full investigation as to
what extent King Henry had been connected with
that atrocious crime. This action on the part of
the pope was extremely commendable. But when,
in the following year, that unscrupulous, ambitious
monarch, ignoring and setting at nought every
principle of justice, and the peaceful comity and
harmony which then existed between the nations
of Christendom, invaded and subverted the gov¬
ernment of an unoffending, ancient nation that had
been independent for at least seventeen hundred
years before St. Patrick preached the Gospel to
its people, and for more than seven hundred years
after the arrival of that saint; and that had pro¬
duced altogether 172 independent monarch in the
Milesian line, fifty of whom were Christians, the
said pontiff instituted no inquiry into the henious¬
ness of so flagrant and notorious an act of nation¬
al usurpation; which in fact plainly demonstrates
the complicity of the said pope in this wicked out¬
rage :— complicity more fully established by the
conduct of the Irish bishops at the time who held
a synod in Waterford wherein the unanimously
resolved to acquiesce in the submission of their
country to the regal domination of the British mo¬
narch. Another incontrovertible argument, in the
order of reason, is fully established by the fact
that Scotland, geographically joined to England,
and possessing a population much inferior and
not more brave than that of Ireland, maintained
her freedom and furnished one of her independent
kings to be the successor of Queen Elizabeth, not
less than 430 years after the Green Isle had been
degraded from the rank of a free nation :— a con¬
summation that could never have been accomplish¬
ed if the popes of Rome had not by their bulls and
commissions, and in virtue of the supreme spirit¬
ual power vested in them by Christ's promise to
St. Peter of binding and loosing, had not created
an evil destiny for Ireland, which they had not pre¬
pared for Scotland. It was this evil destiny that,
according to Sir James Ware, on a certain
occasion, caused the sun to apparently stand still
in the heavens to enable the English to reap the
full advantage of a battle which they had gained
over the Irish. And which, according to the his¬
torian Wright, was so propitious to the English
that whenever on dark nights the Irish projected
an attack upon their encampments or positions the
former were always aroused by means of thunder
and lightning. It was this untoward fatality, al¬
ways so favorable to England and so detrimental
to Ireland, that scattered, wrecked and destroyed
the great Spanish Armada, — that drove, by ad¬
verse storms, the French fleet of General Hoche,
with fifteen thousand invaders on board, from the
shores of Bantry Bay, — that held weather-bound
for six weeks in the Texel the Dutch fleet under
Admiral De Winters, until the expedition to Ire¬
land had to be abandoned; that formerly prevent¬
