Saturday 5 September 2015

14. Hugh Lacy, Bishop of Limerick

HUGH LACY, born of a noble family in Munster, was chosen Bishop of Limerick1
while Henry VIII. was still obedient to the Church.
When the King apostatized, he could not induce Hugh to join in his rebellion or to stain himself by subscribing to this supremacy.
Wherefore he was deprived first of his revenues and afterwards of his bishopric.
When the King could effect nothing by these means, he had Lacy shut up in a noisome prison in Cork, the filth of which almost caused his death.
When he was released he returned to Limerick, to his flock.
As the evil grew in strength during the last years of Henry’s reign he fled, and went to France.
When Mary ascended the throne, he was called back by Cardinal Pole, to the great delight of all the diocese, where he tended his flock for many years.
When he was over sixty years of age, Elizabeth, began to lay waste the vineyard of the Lord.
Lacy, was again driven from his See, and cast into prison, because he would not take the oath of Supremacy.
Worn out by these sufferings, he died on the 26th March, 1577.2
The date given by Rothe, 1580, is most probably, the correct one, for Holinshed says, Lacy was upon some suspicions committed prisoner to his own house in 1579, and his successor was appointed in 1582.
1 Brady says he was appointed in 1556. Ep. Succ., ii.42


2 The date given by Rothe, 1580, is most probably, the correct one, for Holinshed says, Lacy was upon some suspicions committed prisoner to his own house in 1579. Chron., vi. 429 ; and his successor was appointed in 1582. See Moran’s Archbishops, p. 186

13. Maurice Gibbon Archbishop of Cashel



MAURICE GIBBON, a native of Munster, and Archbishop of Cashel, was confined in prison for many years in Cork because he refused to take the oath of Supremacy,
and died there in 1578.