rose, and I mentioned the fact that Lord Lucan, whose knowledge
of the smallest details of Irish life is amazingly thorough, puts it
down at about ten shillings a year per house in the average Irish
parish.

He rated Father M'Fadden and his curate of Gweedore, for example,
without a moment's hesitation, at a thousand pounds a year in the whole,
or very nearly the amount stated to me by Sergeant Mahony at Baron's
Court. This brought from Mr. Davies a curious account of the proceedings
in a recent case of a contested will before Judge Warren here in Dublin.
The will in question was made by the late Father M'Garvey of Milford, a
little village near Mulroy Bay in Donegal, notable chiefly as the scene
of the murder of the late Earl of Leitrim. Father M'Garvey, who died in
March last, left by this will to religious and charitable uses the whole
of his property, save L800 bequeathed in it to his niece, Mrs. O'Connor.
It was found that he died possessed not only of a farm at Ardara, but of
cash on deposit in the Northern Bank to the very respectable amount of
L23,711. Mrs. O'Connor contested the will. The Archbishop of Armagh, and
Father Sheridan, C.C. of Letterkenny, instituted an action against her
to establish the will. Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, lying in Londonderry
jail as a first-class misdemeanant, was brought from Londonderry as a
witness for the niece. But on the trial of the case it appeared that
there was actually no evidence to sustain the plea of the niece that
"undue influence" had been exerted upon her uncle by the Archbishop, who
at the time of the making of the will was Bishop of Raphoe, or by
anybody else; so the judge instructed the jury to find on all the issues
for the plaintiffs, which was done. The judge declared the conduct of
the defendant in advancing a charge of "undue influence" in such
circumstances against ecclesiastics to be most reprehensible; but the
Archbishop very graciously intimated through his lawyer his intention of
paying the costs of the niece who had given him all this trouble,
because she was a poor woman who had been led into her course by
disappointment at receiving so small a part of so large an inheritance.
Had the priest's property come to him in any other way than through his
office as a priest her claim might have been more worthy of
consideration, but Mr. M'Dermot, Q.C., who represented the Archbishop,
took pains to make it clear that as an ecclesiastic his client, who had
no