$90 t proc - B.M.F.C. 



ing off well worked corbels, and the cloisters are wide and well 

 proportioned. Such are now the dim outlines of the fast dis- 

 appearing walls beside which, in 1632, Michael O'Cleary and his 

 companion workers built their temporary huts, in which they 

 lived till August, 1636, while they compiled the "Annals." 

 They called their work " The Annals of the Kingdom of Ire- 

 land," but Colgan, a Donegal Franciscan Father and Professor 

 at Louvain, renamed it the "Annals of the Four Masters," by 

 which title the composition will be for ever known. 



The monastery was founded for the Franciscans of Strict 

 Observance in the year 1474, by Hugh Roe, " The Great 

 O'Donnell." It nourished till 1601, a period of 127 years — 

 short for a monastic existence — but full of life and vigour, the 

 brethren following the footsteps of St. Francis, for good works 

 to the poor, and all others after ; and when the final storm 

 swept over it, with fire and merciless hatred, more than one 

 thousand victims perished miserably in its destruction. This 

 occurred in 1601, when it was invested by the English. The 

 brethren fled on the approach of the hostile forces, some to die 

 in the wilds of Donegal, some by sea to distant lands, where 

 Irish Colleges offered them asylums, and the repose which was 

 denied at home. The monastery was plundered of all it held 

 sacred, and converted into a garrison, only to be destroyed by 

 an explosion of the powder stored by the troops. The Masters 

 record that the powder ignited " so that it burned the boarded 

 chambers and the stone and wooden buildings of the entire 

 monastery." 



Michael O'Cleary, the Irish " Ollamh," was one of a family 

 of historians and poets to the great princes of O'Donnell. 

 After the famcus flight of the chiefs of O'Donnell, he found his 

 way to the Irish College of Louvain, in Belgium. This college 

 was presided over by an Irishman, Father Hugh Ward. Ward 

 obtained permission to employ him to collect materials in Ire- 

 land for him, and this brought O'Cleary back again as a 

 Franciscan to his native land. While on this mission for 

 Ward he conceived the idea of collecting and compiling the 



