110 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



belonged, was valued at £40, and was in the hands of one Thomas Edens, 

 minister and preacher, sometime student at Oxford, a man of good life and 

 conversation. The rectory was impropriated, the patron being the Earl of 

 Corlc : its value was £2. The ^'icarage was vacant, " propter exilitatem." 

 The cure was not served, " being an island and but one house." 



Again, among a not inconsiderable number of complaints appended to the 

 same document, the seventh is to our purpose — 



" Seventhly I complaine yt there are divers Abbies or Monasteries dis- 

 solved in my Dioces, wherein yet ye people do bury theyr dead out of ye 

 ordinary place of christian buriall to ye contempt of religion and maintenance 

 of theyr superstition. And besides that, to these places many ffriars and 

 Priests doe ordinarily resort and sometimes in ye yeare gi'eat concourse of 

 people publikely : as in ye abby of Quin in ye county of Clare, and abby 

 of Inshinamech [Mona Incha] in ye county of Tiperary ; and in Inishgeal- 

 tragh or ye Hand of Seven Altars' [1] standing in ye midst of ye river of 

 Shanau bordering on ye county of Galway." 



The " man of good life and conversation," Thomas Edens, had some com- 

 plaints of his own to append to those of his bishop. They were to the effect 

 that the mayor and corporation of the city of Limerick do keep from him the 

 profits of the rectory of " Inishkalty " under pretence of their charter granted 

 VII Jacobi ; that his glebe land in the parish of Kilrush was kept from him 

 by " Graneer ye Dutchman " and others claiming under the Earl of Thomond ; 

 and that the Earl of Thomond had ejected him from certain other \acarages 

 to which he had been instituted, and of which he had enjoyed the benefits for 

 a year. The most conscientious Protestant must feel a thrill of satisfaction 

 as he peruses the tale of the minor afflictions of Messrs Eider and Edens. 

 The picture of the poor folk coming from the country-side to bury their 

 dead by the ancient shrines of their fathers, while those two sanctimonious 

 Oxonians stood on the shore uplifting their hands in holy horror, is one not 

 pleasant to contemplate." 



Xo change in the state of Inis Cealtra is to be traced in later documents. 

 In tlie visitation of 1633^ we read : — 



" Innisgaltra : Eect&ria imjn-opriata spcctans ad precepturia de Any in 

 possessione Comitis Corke : val. v. 1 ster. p. an. Vicaria vacat sequestrata." 



' Evidently the bishop analysed the name into Inis nn seacht n-altdir. 



- On the other hand, a practice recently begun, of burying inside the churches, and, 

 above all, in the so-called "Saints' Graveyard," cannot be too strongly deprecated. The 

 Saints' Graveyard must be almost unique in Northern Europe — a burying-ground of 

 the eighth to the twelfth century, with the stones still intact, marking the graves to 

 which they belong. The intrusion on this sacred precinct of ugly modern tombstones, 

 and still uglier porcelain wreaths under glass shades, is most deplorable. 



^ Dwyer, op. cit., p. 160. 



