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Rh hardly probable. On 12 Oct. 1565 he was appointed bishop of Down and Connor by papal provision, but the temporalities were practically at the disposal of Shane O'Neill, whom he visited in August 1566 along with Archbishop Richard Creagh [q. v.] (Spicilegium Ossoriense, i. 44). In May 1567 Magrath went to the lord deputy, Sir Henry Sidney, at Drogheda, and then, or soon afterwards, professed himself ready to conform and to hold his bishopric of the queen. In September 1570 he was appointed to Clogher and restored to the temporalities; but he could have made little of them in the then state of Ulster. In February 1571 he was made archbishop of Cashel and bishop of Emly, and no fresh appointment was made to Clogher until 1605. John Merriman became legal bishop of Down in 1569, but Magrath still held on under the pope. He was in England in 1570, and had a fever there. In July 1571 he imprisoned friars at Cashel for preaching against the queen, and they were forcibly, or perhaps collusively, liberated by Edward Butler. James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald [q .v.] informed Magrath that if they were not released he would burn everything and everybody connected with him to ashes. In 1572 Magrath brought accusations against Ormonde himself, but no one believed him. During the succeeding years, and to the end of the Desmond war, he was generally resident in his province, making himself useful to the government, and intriguing all the time with the rebels. He was not always successful in keeping in with both sides, for in 1575 he was attacked and badly wounded by a rebel kern on his way to Dublin. The papal patience was at last exhausted, and he was deprived of Down and Connor in March 1580 ‘for heresy and many other crimes’ (, i. 265). He had thus been nine years a papal bishop and an Anglican archbishop at the same time.

In October 1582 Magrath went to England with a strong letter of recommendation from the Irish government, as having continually given most useful information about the rebels. He complained of poverty, saying his archbishopric was worth only 98l. The sees of Waterford and Lismore were given him in commendam—not without misgivings on Burghley's part—and he held them till 1589. In 1584 he found himself strong enough to arrest Murrough MacBrian, papal occupant of his see of Emly. MacBrian died in Dublin Castle two years later; nor is this the only service of the kind recorded of Magrath, though he was said secretly to favour recusants. In March 1589 he wrote strongly recommending the Kerry undertaker, Sir William Herbert (d. 1593) [q. v.] He lost the bishoprics of Waterford and Lismore in this year, but they were restored to him in 1592 on the death of Bishop Wetherhead. In 1591 Magrath went to England without leave from the Irish government, and in his absence many grave charges were made against him, the truth of which did not stop his preferment (Irish State Papers, October 1591). He offered his ministrations to O'Rourke on the scaffold at Tyburn, but they were contemptuously rejected. The archbishop's cousin, Dermod Magrath—or Creagh as he is generally called—was in Ireland from 1582 until after Queen Elizabeth's death: he was papal bishop of Cork, with legatine authority in Munster. Meiler kept on good terms with his kinsman, and sometimes expressed anxiety about his own soul. He sought credit from the government for giving information, but took good care that Creagh should not be captured (to his wife, 26 June 1592, State Papers;, ii. 89). It was his habit to talk of repentance and of possible reconciliation with Rome. In 1599 he was taken prisoner by Tyrone's son Con, but the rebel earl peremptorily ordered the release of his archiepiscopal ‘friend and ally,’ no one but the pope having ‘authority to lay hands on his person, nor any other priest whatever.’ Magrath is said to have promised Hugh O'Neil, earl of Tyrone [q. v.], ‘to return from that way [i.e. protestantism], saving only that he could not but take order for his children first, seeing he got them.’ Con O'Neill released the archbishop upon conditions, including a money payment; the O'Meara's son, who was related to Mrs. Magrath, was one of the securities (Cal. of Carew MSS., 29 March, 3 April 1599). In 1600 Magrath was in London, and on the whole satisfied Cecil of his good faith, though appearing a turbulent person. His many requests were ordered to be granted as far as possible, and a pension to be paid him. He returned to Ireland with the unfortunate ‘Queen's Earl’ of Desmond. In the following year Cecil complained that he was said ‘very irreligiously to suffer his church to lie like an hogsty.’ He had lost much by the war, but was not so poor as he pretended, and the secretary besought Carew to expostulate with him respecting his neglect of episcopal duty, ‘even for the honour of Her Majesty and God's church, wherein he hath so supreme a calling’ (Cecil to Desmond, ib. 25 Jan. 1601).

Under James, as under Elizabeth, Magrath was serviceable to the government, but his shortcomings were too great to pass quite unpunished. On 20 Feb. 1604 Sir John Davies told Cecil that Magrath was ‘a notable example of pluralities,’ having ‘in his hands four bishoprics, Cashel, Waterford, Lismore,