Page:A Compendium of Irish Biography.djvu/348

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MAG

them, and was placed in charge of Killala and Achonry, He contrived to recom- mend himself favourably to Queen Eliza- beth, but appears to have been an unscru- pulous waster of the temporalities of the sees committed to his charge. In the Eegal Visitation of 1615, the Commissioners speak of him as the " Archbishop, Miler Magrath, who would give the Commis- sioners no satisfactory information respect- ing the revenues. He held four bishoprics and a great number of benefices in various dioceses." Among the Patent Eolls of James I. (1624) will be found an important letter from the King to the Lord-Deputy concerning Magrath's abuse of the aich- bishopric. He had four sons and four daughters. Some of the former, although Catholics, contrived to possess themselves of several church livings. Amongst other nefarious alienations from the Church was that of the manor and see lands of Lismore, with the castle, to Sir Walter Raleigh, for the annual rent of £ 1 3 6s. 8d. In 1 602 this property was purchased by the Earl of Cork, from whom the greater part of it is inherited by the present Duke of Devon- shire. In the Life and Letters o/MacCar- tky More will be found well authenticated proofs of the Archbishop's complicity with Carew and Cecil in their high-handed government of Ireland, and in their attempts to secure the assassination of some of the Irish chieftains. After occu- pying the archbishopric for fifty-two years, he died at Cashel in December 1622, aged 100 years, and was buried in the cathe- dral under a monument previously erected by himself, which may still be seen. Upon it are some curious Latin verses, of which the following translation is given in Harris's Ware. One line has doubtless given rise to the tradition that he became a Catholic at the last, and directed his body to be secretly buried elsewhere :

" Patrick, ihe glory of our isle and gown, First sat a bishop in the see of Down. I wish that I succeeding him in place As bishop, had an equal share of grace. I served thee, England, fifty years in jars, And pleased thy Princes in the midst of wars ; [is. Here, where I'm placed, I'm not ; and thus the case I'm not in both, yet am in both the places."

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Maguire, Cathal, Dean of Clogher, an eminent divine, philosopher, and his- torian, and a canon of Armagh, was born about 1438. He was the 7th in descent from Maguire, a distinguished chief of Fermanagh, who died in 1302. Harris's Ware says he wrote Annates Hibernice usque ad sua tempora. They were called Annates Senatenses from a place called Se- nat-Mac-Magnus, in the County of Fer- managh [BeUe Isle in Lough Erne], where

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the author wrote them, and oftener Annates Ultonienses, the Annals of Ulster, because they were compiled in and by natives of that province. They begin in 431, and are carried down by the compiler to his death in 1498; but they were afterwards con- tinued by Eoderic Cassidy to the year 1532. He also wrote a book entitled Aengusius Auctus, or the Martyrology of Aengus enlarged. He died of small-pox on the 23rd of March 1498, aged 59. There are also ascribed to him Scholia, or anno- tations on the Registry of Clogher, a work now lost. Several interesting notes on this annalist, by Dr. O'Donovan, will be found in the A)inals of the Four Masters under the year 1498 ; and O'Curry devotes the larger portion of a chapter of his Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish His- tory to a disquisition on the five copies of the Annals of (lister known to exist. He says " the text is a mixture of Gaedh- lic and Latin, sometimes being written partly in one language and partly in the other." '34 260 339

Maguire, Hugh, Lord of Ferma- nagh, who took a prominent part in the war during Elizabeth's reign, was son of Cuconnaught Maguire, Prince of Ferman- agh, and cousin of Hugh O'Neill. His mother was Nuala, daughter of Mauus O'Donnell. On the death of his father in 1 5 89, he became possessed of the estates held by his ancestors since 1302. He soon took up a defiant attitude towards the Government, replying, when told by the Deputy FitzWilliam that he must allow the Queen's writs to run in Fer- managh : " Your sherifi" shall be wel- come, but let me know his eric, that if my people should cut ofi" his head I may levy it upon the country." He succoured Hugh Roe O'Donnell in his escape from Dublin Castle. In 1 593 he besieged the sheriff and his partyin a church, and would have starved them out, but for the inter- vention of Hugh O'Neill, then an ally of the Anglo-Irish. On 3rd July of the same year Maguire carried off a large prey of cattle from Tulsk, from under the eyes of Sir Richard Bingham, Governor of Con- naught. The Four Masters give a spirited account of the engagement. Sir William Clifford and a few horsemen were slain on Bingham's side, while Maguire lost, amongst several of his party, Edmond MacGaurau (Archbishop of Armagh) and Cathal Maguire. Some months later he unsuccessfully endeavoured to prevent Marshal Bagnall and Hugh O'Neill cross- ing the Erne at Athcullin. We are told that his forces, a great number of whom were slain, consisted of Irish, armed with