depredators, receivers of stolen goods, and plunderers, and that without restitution, or intention to restore, as is evinced by the fact; and do also openly admit them to the rites of ecclesiastical sepulture, without exacting security for restitution, although they are prohibited from doing so by the sacred canons, as well as by the institutes of the saints and fathers. All which infers the heavy peril of their own souls, and is a pernicious example to the other believers in Christ, as well as no slight, but an aggravated injury to the numbers despoiled and plundered of their goods, gear, herds, and chattels."[1]
To this lively and picturesque description of the confessors and churchmen of predatory tribes, there may be added some curious particulars respecting the priests attached to the several septs of native Irish, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. These friars had indeed to plead, that the incursions, which they not only pardoned, but even encouraged, were made upon those hostile to them, as well in religion as from national antipathy. But by protestant writers they are uniformly alledged to be the chief instruments of Irish insurrection, the very wellspring of all rebellion towards the English government. Lithgow, the Scottish traveller, declares the Irish wood-kerne, or
- ↑ The Monition against the Robbers of Tynedale and Redesdale, with which I was favoured by my friend Mr Surtees, of Mainsforth, may be found in the original Latin, in the Appendix to the Introduction to the Border Minstrelsy, No. VII. fourth edition.
