Bishop Webb and Bishop Bedell. Persecutions of Exclamation of a Romish priest concerning him. thorp, bishop of Kilfenora, who was translated to Limerick in 1642, and died in 1649 at Dublin. In the mean time, by reason of the wars, he never received the slightest emolument from his preferment. Two were taken prisoners by the rebels, Webb, bishop of Limerick, and Bedell, bishop of Kilmore; of whom Bishop Webb died the same year in captivity; and Bishop Bedell was seized and carried with his family to the castle of Longhouter, built in a small island, and encompassed with deep water, at a few miles distance. He suffered much from the ruinous state of the building, and its exposure to the inclemency of the weather and the winter's severity. There, after about twenty days' imprisonment, he was exchanged for certain prisoners of distinction among the rebels; but, although previously promised, he was not allowed to proceed to Dublin, the usual place of refuge for the outcast and distressed; and he died shortly after, his death having been hastened by the weight of his sorrow, and the hardships of his confinement. The persecutions of that excellent man are related at length in his life by Bishop Burnet; and they offer an example of piety, resignation, fortitude, and forbearance, worthy of the primitive and best days of Christian martyrdom: an example which, though it was lost upon the titular intruder, who supplanted him in his dwelling, and for a while, in a fit of intoxication, excepted against the burying of the heretick's body in the consecrated ground of his own churchyard, was more duly estimated by another minister of that communion; and contributed with his exemplary life, in drawing forth that memorable exclamation, "O may my soul be with Bedell!" And surely the wish might reasonably be in his tombstone. dulged, for if it be allowable to express an opinion upon the probable condition of a departed spirit, that of Bedell may have been well supposed to be translated to the abodes of blessedness. Meanwhile over the grave, wherein were deposited his mortal re- Description of mains, was laid a tombstone, with a shield, distinguished by his armorial bearings, and surmounted by a mitre; with an open book, and an hour-glass, and other emblems of mortality beneath; and with an ill-arranged, ill-spelt, and coarsely-carved inscription, which has been recorded by Bishop Burnet, though with some inaccuracy, and still exists, but is hardly legible. In the year 1820, a gentleman visited the spot; and communicated the result in a letter dated July the 8th, from Cavan, about three miles distant from Kilmore, to his brother, whose kindness empowers me to mention these particulars. "I had," he observes," in consequence of the gross ignorance regarding Bishop Bedell in this county and town, determined to set this day apart for inquiry at the place of his remains, and in tracing accurately the inscription, and I accordingly succeeded beyond my idea. The annexed is a tolerably correct sketch of the slab. I had much difficulty in reading the inscription; indeed it puzzled me twice, and I was perplexed, but determined to make it clear. The letters are all raised on a brownish slab, broken in pieces, and the edges of the letters are so rounded by time, that there is little shade from them, so as to recognize them from the plane surface. I accordingly awaited the bursting out of the sun, which, as the shadows from the index of a dial, relieved the letters a little for me, and made my success complete. The inscription then is truly and really this: Gulielmi Bideli quondem Kilmorens Bedell's trec. "As a few years will remove all, I wish you to keep this as the fruit of accurate inquiry, and the more especially as I could not obtain any aid in making the matter more easy. I have seen some notices of the inscription, but they are all incorrect. The grave is in a retired part of the churchyard, and a sycamore-tree, of at least twelve feet in circumference, the growth of ages, is flourishing near it, and flinging its time-honoured arms over the hallowed spot." The sycamore tree here mentioned has the traditionary character of having been planted by the hand of Bishop Bedell, and is known by the name of Bedell's tree; being situated on the outside of the churchyard wall, and at one end of a noble terrace, contiguous to the old episcopal residence. When I visited the scene in 1833, about thirteen years after the date of the foregoing narrative, it presented an appearance of singular stateliness and beauty, and extended its branches far beyond the boundary which separated the churchyard from the bishop's demesne, and over the last resting-place of the venerable prelate whose name it bore. I then transcribed the inscription with difficulty, which has been increased, no doubt, by the decay of the intervening years; for a copy of it, recently made by my desire (October, 1839), has been forwarded with the remark, "I send it as it stands: the first letter, like C, is of course G, and the first word in the second Decayed state of line quondam. But the inscription is not at first the inscription. sight intelligible, and it took half an hour's constant kneeling over the stone to make out the sense by means of fingers as well as eyes." To those who can pass with " frigid philosophy" over "scenes that have been dignified by virtue, wisdom, and piety," the foregoing detail may need some apology. To those who are alive to the influence of local associations, this digression to the resting-place of Bedell will plead its own excuse. And they will receive with indulgence, at least, and complacency, the annexed engraving, of which the upper part exhibits the arms and accompaniments, as sketched by the visitor of 1820, and recently examined and corrected on the spot, and the lower the inscription in its actual state of decay and imperfection. The extent of the decay may be inferred from the fact, that in the two copies of the inscription, so carefully traced, the spelling of the bishop's name does not tally. Burial of Bishop Depressed con dition of the Church. At the interment of Bishop Bedell many of the chief rebels assembled, out of their singular value for his excellence, and discharged a volley of shot over his grave, crying out in Latin, "Requiescat in pace ultimus Anglorum!" " May the last of the English rest in peace!" For they had often said, that as they esteemed him the best of the English bishops, so he should be the last to survive among them. And one of a pensive and desponding mind, pondering the actual state and the immediate prospects of the Church, of which he was so distinguished a governor, might not unreasonably, perhaps, have caught in that sound the requiem for the Church herself. She was well nigh spent with her affliction. During the six years, indeed, of war and tumult, which filled up the interval between the Irish massacre and the murder of the king, she struggled, mutilated as she was and enfeebled, to keep up a precarious existence. But although, on the one side, the noble Marquis of Ormonde, the lord lieutenant of Ireland, was exerting his influence to secure or recover for her all that was possible of her rights and privileges, her buildings, her benefices, and jurisdiction; on the other side the Popish hierarchy were here assuming the titles of the episcopacy of the kingdom, and occupying the Church's palaces and temples, and claiming her possessions, and asserting a paramount dominion; and there the parliament of England was putting forth its powers for depriving her of her apostolical eminence and her beauty of holiness, and reducing her to a level with the sects and systems of human and modern invention: till at length the iron hand of Cromwell, red with the blood of his sovereign, laid its strong grasp upon her, and extinguished nearly |