Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/132

 84 STATESMEN AND SAGES intention of disposing of them as slaves. This outrage, perpetrated in one of the districts where St. Patrick was baptizing, roused his keenest indignation, and he wrote a letter, which he sent by one of his companions, calling upon Coroticus to restore the captives, many of whom had been baptized. But his request being treated with contempt and scorn, he composed another circular epistle, in which he inveighed in the strongest terms against the cruelty of the marauding tribe and its chief. He contrasted his conduct with that of the Christians of the Con- tinent, who were in the habit of sending large sums of money to ransom captives, and concluded by threatening him and his followers with excommunication, un- less he desisted in future from his piratical habits. What was the result of the epistle is not known, but it is to be feared that the attempt to recover the cap- tives was not successful. Slavery and the trade in slaves was almost more diffi- cult to root out than paganism, and the inhuman traffic was in full activity as late as the tenth century between England and Ireland, and the port of Bristol was one of its principal centres. Meanwhile, after a somewhat lengthened sojourn in the district of Lowth and parts of Ulster, St. Patrick reached the district of Macha, containing the royal city of Emania, the residence of the kings of Ulster, the remains of which, under the name of the Navan, still exist about two miles west of Armagh. Here he was cordially received by Daire, a wealthy chief, who made over to him a pleas- ant piece of ground on an eminence, Dniim-saileh, or " Hill of the Willows." The spot pleased St. Patrick, and here he determined to erect a church. The foundations were accordingly laid, and around it rose by degrees the city of Ar- magh, the ecclesiastical metropolis of Ireland ; and here its founder spent the re- mainder of his life, only leaving it now and then to visit his favorite retreat at Saul, round which clustered so many associations of his earliest labors, and of his first convert Dichu. Here, too, having called to his aid the bishops Secundinus, Isserninus, and Auxilius, who next to himself were best qualified by long experience for the work, he proceeded to hold synods, and to make regulations for the general government of the churches he had founded. Again and again he was solicited to revisit his friends and relatives in Scotland, but nothing could induce him to leave his post In his " Confession," written when far advanced in years, he touchingly describes how often he had been requested to come among his kinsmen once more, but how a deep sense of the spiritual love between himself and his flock ever retained him in Ireland. It was while he was staying at Saul that the apostle of Ireland was seized with his last illness. He had lived to a good old age, and the sunset of his life was calm and peaceful. Perceiving that his end drew nigh, and desirous, as we are told, that Armagh should be the resting-place of his remains, he set out thither, but was unable to continue the journey. Increasing weakness, and, as it seemed to him the voice of an angel, bade him return to the church of his first convert; and there he closed his eyes in death, probably in the year A.D. 466, leaving behind him the visible memorials of a noble work nobly done. He and