Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 1.djvu/361

ALLEN leave of her parents to go to Montreal ostensibly to learn French, but in reality to become more familiar in a convent school with the belief and practices of Catholics. They consented, but first required her to be baptized by the Rev. Daniel Barber, a Protestant minister of Claremont, New Hampshire. She became a pupil of the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame, at Montreal, in 1807.



One day, a Sister requested her to place some flowers on the altar, recommending her also to make an act of adoration of the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the tabernacle. When the young woman attempted to step into the sanctuary she found herself unable to do so. After three futile attempts, she was filled with conviction of the Real Presence, and fell upon her knees in humble adoration.

She was instructed and received baptism, her lack of proper disposition having rendered that conferred by Mr. Barber invalid. At her first Communion she felt within her an unmistakable vocation to the religious life. Her parents promptly withdrew her from the convent and sought by bestowing on the young girl every worldly pleasure and social enjoyment to obliterate the religious sentiments with which she was imbued. The pleasure and excitement of such a life did not distract her from the desire of a religious life, and as soon as the year, which she had consented to pass with her parents before taking any step in the matter, was at an end, she returned to Montreal and entered the Hôtel-Dieu, making her religious profession in 1810. The convent chapel was thronged, many American friends coming to witness the strange spectacle of Ethan Allen's daughter becoming a Catholic nun. After eleven years of zealous life in religion, Frances Allen died at the Hôtel-Dieu, of lung trouble, 10 December, 1819.

2em  Allen,, educator, b. at Milton, Vermont, 17 December, 1808; d. in Worcester, Mass., 28 May, 1876. He was graduated at the University of Vermont in 1827, and admitted to the bar in 1831. Later, he studied theology, and was rector of an Episcopal church at St. Albans, Vt., from 1834 to 1837. In 1837, he became professor of ancient languages in Delaware College, at Newark, Del., and in 1845, he held the same chair at the University of Pennsylvania, at Philadelphia, where he was afterwards professor of Greek. He became a Catholic in 1847.

2em  Allen, (1476–1534), Archbishop of Dublin, canonist, and Chancellor of Ireland. He was educated at Oxford and Cambridge, graduated in the latter place, and spent some years in Italy, partly at Rome, for studies and for business of Archbishop Warham of Canterbury. He was ordained priest 25 August, 1499, and held various parochial benefices until 1522, about which time he attracted the attention of Cardinal Wolsey, (q. v.) whose supple and helpful commissary he was in the matter of the suppression of the minor monasteries. As such, his conduct, says Dr. Gairdner, "gave rise to considerable outcry, and complaints were made about it to the king". He continued to receive ecclesiastical advancement, assisted Wolsey in his legatine functions, among other things "in the collusive suit shamefully instituted by the cardinal against the king in May, 1527, by which it was sought at first to have the marriage with Katharine declared invalid without her knowledge" (Gairdner). In the summer of the same year he accompanied the cardinal on his splendid mission to France, and finally (August, 1528) was rewarded with the archiepiscopal see of Dublin. At the same time he was made by the king chancellor of Ireland (Rymer, "Foedera", London, 1728, XVI, 266, 268). He was relieved from asserting, against Armagh, the legatine authority of Wolsey by the latter's fall (October, 1529). With the rest of the English clergy he had to pay a heavy fine (1531) for violation of the "Statutes of Provisors" and "Præmunire", in recognizing the legatine authority of Wolsey, then, in the king's eyes, a heinous crime, and a reason for the cardinal's indictment. Allen wrote a treatise on the pallium, "Epistola de pallii significatione activâ et passivâ" on the occasion of his reception of this pontifical symbol, and another "De consuetudinibus ac statutis in tutoriis causis observandis." He seems also to have been a man of methodical habits, for in the archives of the Anglican archdiocese of Dublin are still preserved two important registers made by his order, the "Liber Niger", or Black Book, and the "Repertorium Viride", or Green Repertory, both so called, after the custom of the age, from the colour of the binding. The former is a "chartularium" of the archdiocese, or collection of its most important documents, and the latter a full description of the see as it was in 1530. Archbishop Allen was murdered near Dublin, 28 July, 1534. As a former follower of Wolsey, he was hated by the followers of the great Irish house of Kildare (Fitzgerald), whose chief, the ninth earl, had been imprisoned by Wolsey in the Tower from 1526 to 1530, and again, by the King, early in 1534. Soon a false rumour spread through Ireland that the earl had been put to death, and the archbishop was killed in consequence of it by two retainers of his son, the famous "Silken Thomas" Fitzgerald. It does not appear that Lord Thomas contemplated the crime or approved of it. He afterwards sent his chaplain to Rome to obtain absolution for him from the 