1 - Prologue: Ireland's English reformation

Summary

In 1632 James Spottiswoode was rowed out into the middle of Lough Derg in Co. Donegal. He was a Scot, ordained in the Church of England, who had become Church of Ireland bishop of Clogher in 1621. He bore a mandate issued by the lords justices and privy council of Ireland which permitted him to break down, deface and utterly demolish ‘the chapel and all the Irish houses now situate in that island called St Patrick's purgatory, all the buildings, pavements, walls, works, foundations, circles, caves, cells and vaults … called St Patrick's bed’. Spottiswoode had a miserable time. The secular arm, in the form of the high sheriff of Donegal, failed to turn up and a pilot could not be found. When one was eventually located, the bishop and his companions were nearly sunk and then narrowly avoided being marooned by a storm. Meanwhile onlookers, the ‘country people’, stood by and waited for a divine thunderbolt while Spottiswoode dashed about toppling hostels, chapels and other devotional structures erected by the Franciscans only a few years earlier. All of this took place just four years short of the first centenary of the passing of the Act of Supremacy by the Irish parliament. By that date, 1636, Lough Derg was once again open for business as Catholic Ireland's leading pilgrimage site.

James Spottiswoode wasted his time and risked the lives of his servants.