ch, his name has not come
down to us. He is thus commemorated in 1583 by the English agent in
Italy: "In April there came from Rome to Naples an Irishman, _whom the
Pope created Bishop of Ross in Ireland_" (_Letter of Francis Touker to
Lord Burghley_, 22nd July, 1583). He is also mentioned by the Bishop of
Killaloe, Dr. Cornelius O'Mulrian, in a letter addressed from Lisbon to
Rome, on the 29th October, 1584: "Episcopus Limericensis et Episcopus
Rossensis postquam venerant Romam in curia Regis Hispaniarum degunt"
(_Ex Archiv. Vatic._) No further particulars connected with this Bishop
of Ross have come down to us. He had for his successor the renowned Owen
M'Egan, who with the title and authority of Vicar-Apostolic of this see
was sent to our island by Pope Clement VIII. in 1601. A bull of the same
Pontiff granting some minor benefices to the same Owen M'Egan in 1595,
is preserved in the _Hibernia Pacata_, page 670. In it he is described
as a priest of the diocese of Cork, bachelor in Theology, master of arts
and "most commendable for his learning, moral conduct, and manifold
virtues". Towards the close of the century he undertook a journey to
Spain to procure aid for Florence M'Carthy and the other confederate
princes of the South: and he himself on arriving in Ireland as
Vicar-Apostolic in 1601, shared all the privations and dangers of the
Catholic camp. At length, as Wadding informs us, he was mortally wounded
while attending the dying soldiers, and on the 5th January, 1602-3,
passed to his eternal reward. The hatred borne to him by the agents of
Elizabeth is the best proof of his disinterestedness and zeal. His
death, says the author of _Hibernia Pacata_, "was doubtlessly more
beneficial to the state than to have secured the head of the most
capital rebel in Munster" (page 662).

As regards the Bishops nominated by the civil power, we find one
commemorated during Henry's reign. So little, however, is known about
him, and that little belonging to a period when a canonically appointed
Bishop held the see, that even Protestant historians scarcely allow him
a place amongst the bishops of Ross. During Elizabeth's reign Dr.
O'Herlihy was indeed deprived of the temporalities of the see in 1570,
yet no Protestant occupant was appointed till 1582. Sir Henry Sidney
wrote to her Majesty in 1576, soliciting this bishopric for a certain
Cornelius, but his petition was without effect. Lyons was more
successful; he not only obtaine