a.m. to 1652 A.D. (London, 8vo). It is worthless, being founded on Keating and Cambrensis Eversus, without recourse to Ussher and Ware. In the dedication to Charles II Walsh declares himself an ‘unrepentant sinner,’ determined to die as he had lived, the king's ‘most loyal, most obedient, and most humble servant.’ In 1684 appeared Walsh's ‘Causa Valesiana,’ going over much of the old ground, but in Latin, and addressed to the continent rather than to England. The appendix contains a strong attack on Gregory VII by Caron, and a loving account of the latter, with a complete list of his writings, by Walsh. In his preface Walsh represents himself as a victim to the will of the Roman curia, transfixed by the sword of excommunication, but never retaliating in Latin except in the letter to Thomas Harold (‘Valesius ad Haroldum,’ 1672, fol.). In 1686 he published an elaborate answer, written two years earlier, to Bishop Barlow's ‘Popery,’ declaring himself in the preface ready to submit his own writings to a properly constituted œcumenical synod, or even to one of the western church only, or to any learned man who could prove him wrong by argument, ‘but not by the bare dictates or absolute will of a despotical imperious power.’ In the same volume he printed his letter to Essex in 1674, and those to Nicholas French in 1675 and 1676, in connection with that writer's attack on Andrew Sall [q. v.]
Walsh died in London on 15 March 1687–8. Two days before he dictated a letter to Ormonde, who survived him only four months, asking his favour for the Franciscan convent at Kilkenny and for a poor nephew of his, thanking him for his unflinching kindness, and giving him a dying man's blessing. The letter was written by Genetti, a chaplain of the nuncio Adda, and signed by Walsh ‘in a trembling hand.’ On the same day he signed a paper, which was witnessed by Genetti and three Irish Franciscans, in which he submitted everything he had written to the examination and judgment of the holy Roman catholic church and of the ‘vicar of Christ on earth, the Roman pontiff,’ retracting everything that might be condemned, and promising in case of recovery to ‘submit his private judgment to that of the church’ (Report on Carte Papers, p. 126; Clarendon and Rochester Correspondence, ii. 166; Brenan, p. 486). In spite of Dr. Killen, there seems no reason to doubt the genuineness of this document. Walsh thought prayers for the dead might possibly be useful, and gave Dodwell this reason for not conforming to the church of England (Harris). As soon as he was dead the Franciscans carried off his books and papers. He was buried in the church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West.
In many ways Peter Walsh resembles Paul Sarpi. His historical importance lies in his attempt to show that a devout son and priest of the Roman church could preserve liberty of speech and an undivided civil allegiance, in spite of the ultramontane system of papal infallibility and absolute power. He was, says Burnet, the ‘honestest and learnedest man’ he had ever met with among the Roman catholic priests. ‘He was, indeed, in all points of controversy almost wholly protestant; but he had senses of his own by which he excused his adhering to the church of Rome; and he maintained, that with these he could continue in the communion of that church without sin; and he said that he was sure he did some good staying still on that side, but that he could do none at all if he should come over; he thought no man ought to forsake that religion in which he was born and bred, unless he was clearly convinced that he must certainly be damned if he continued in it. He was an honest and able man, much practised in intrigues, and knew well the methods of the jesuits and other missionaries’ (Hist. of his Own Times, i. 195). He often told Burnet that a union between the church of England and the presbyterians was what the popish party chiefly feared, upon which Swift's note is ‘Rogue’ (ib.) Among the Franciscans, who never quite forgot Ockham, Walsh always had some support, and the historian Brenan, who was of that order, has dealt tenderly with his memory. None of Walsh's books are common, and some are very rare. ‘Hibernica,’ which he himself describes as ‘opus bene magnum,’ is not known to be extant; it was never seen by Harris, and there is no copy in the British Museum, in the Bodleian, or in Trinity College, Dublin. Besides the works already mentioned, Walsh published:
- ‘The Controversial Letters, or the Grand Controversy concerning the temporal authority of the Popes over the whole Earth, &c. … between two English Gentlemen, the one of the Church of England, the other of the Church of Rome,’ London, 1673–4.
- ‘An Answer to three Treatises’ (with a preface by Stillingfleet, 1677), London, 1678, 8vo.
The defence of Becket, mentioned by Harris, is incorporated with the ‘History of the Remonstrance’ (pp. 374–462).
