92 Mr. Petrie on the History and Antiquities of Tara Hill. 



Archbishop Ussher, who endeavours to shew, from a great number of Irish 

 and foreign authorities, that the first, or Sen- Patrick, was a bishop in Ireland, 

 and died and was interred in the Abbey of Glastonbury, in Somersetshire, in 

 457 ; and that the second, the great Apostle, died in 493, and was interred at 

 Downpatrick, in Ireland. On the other hand, according to Dr. Lanigan, the 

 Sen-Patrick was the only Patrick, and his death and burial occurred at Down- 

 patrick in the year 465. 



It is probable that Ussher may be wrong in the supposition that Sen-Patrick 

 was not the first Patrick who taught Christianity in the country, but it seems 

 infinitely more probable that Lanigan is wrong in the conclusion which he has 

 struggled so laboriously to maintain, that the Sen-Patrick was the only 

 saint of the name. To establish this conclusion he is obliged to reject all the 

 records in the Annals as well as foreign authorities, which place the death of 

 Patrick in 493, and to assume that the true year of Patrick's death was either 

 458, 471, or, truly, as he maintains, 465, and that the story which makes 

 him live 120 years is a mere fabrication to assimilate him with Moses. He is 

 forced also to maintain that all the statements relative to the death and burial of 

 St. Patrick at Glastonbury are monkish forgeries, and that the Patrick of Glas- 

 tonbury was an abbot of the name, who retired there in the year 850, or some 

 other Patrick, perhaps of the seventh or eighth century, who died on the 24th 

 of August. 



Had Dr. Lanigan, while he asserted that the Sen- Patrick of the authorities 

 was the real Apostle of Ireland, acknowledged the existence of a second Patrick 

 In the same age, to whom the title was erroneously given, it might be difficult 

 to controvert his arguments ; and many ancient authorities unknown to him 

 could be adduced to strengthen his position : nor would it have been necessary, 

 in placing the death of the Irish Apostle at any of the years recorded by the 

 annalists as the date of Sen- Patrick's death, to have reduced the period of his 

 life thirty years, in opposition to all the authorities, to accord with his assumed 

 chronology, as those dates would sufficiently support him. Thus the Annals of 

 TIghearnach place the birth of Patrick in 341 : — "A. D. 341. Patricius 

 nunc natus est." And again, his captivity in 357, which identifies this Patrick 

 with the author of the Confessio : — " A. D. 357. Patricius captivus in Hiber- 

 niam ductus est." 



