365 



and it is recorded by the same authority, that some bands of archers, 

 " plurimas sagittariorum turmas," who were quartered in the twelfth 

 century at Finglas near Dublin, having been guilty of a misprision 

 of sacrilege, in cutting down and lopping the ash trees and yews 

 which holy hands had planted in its churchyard, were immediately 

 afflicted with a sudden and singular disease, as a punishment for their 

 impiety.* Perhaps this act of violence was the cause of the 20th 

 canon of the Synod of Comyn, whereby it was provided, that all 

 archers, and all others who carry arms not for the defence of the peo- 

 ple, but for plunder and sordid lucre, shall on every Lord's day, be 

 excommunicated by bell, book, and candle, and at last be refused 

 Christian burial. -f- 



-All 1iiX}l lO ';-. .. iiliV I. . . ■> 



had become exceedingly scarce in Ireland in the time of Edward the Fourth, for by an act of 

 the twelfth year of his reign, every merchant importing goods thither, was at the same time 

 obliged to import a certain number of bows, which can only be properly made of this wood. — 

 See Anth. Hib. vol. i. p. 131. 



* In fraxinos et taxos arboresque varios, quas nobilis Abbas Kenacus aliique viri sancti, 

 (quorum frequens religio locum illustrayerat,) propriis manibus quasi ad ornatum ecclesiae 

 circa ca;meterium olim plantaverant, enormiter et irreverenter desaevire caeperunt. * * * 

 Sed incontinenti a Deo divina indignatione, * * * * subita quadam et singulari pesti- 

 lentia percussi sunt." — Gir. Cambr. Top. Hib. Dist. 2. c. 54. 



t Ware's Bishops, p 317. . ^ . 



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