doctrine.  For example, it was he who in 1626 drew up the Irish Protestant bishops’ protest against toleration for Catholics, therein showing a bigotry which consorted badly with his reputation as a scholar.  On account of his well-known attitude towards Catholicism, he was naturally unpopular with those who professed the ancient creed, and hence, when the rebellion of 1641 broke out, much of his property was destroyed by the enraged insurgents.  His person escaped violence, for he happened to be in England at the time engaged in the vain task of trying to effect an accommodation between Charles I. and the English parliament.  He never returned to his see and died in London.

Ussher’s collected works fill seventeen stately volumes.  His magnum opus is undoubtedly the Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti.  It is written in Latin, and is a chronological compendium of the history of the world from the Creation to the dispersion of the Jews under Vespasian.  Published at Leyden, London, Paris, and Oxford, it gained for its author a European fame.  His books written in English deal mostly with theological or controversial subjects, and while they display wide reading, great acumen, and keen powers of argumentation, they yet do not do full justice to his genius.  Those which he published in Dublin are A Discourse of the Religion anciently professed by the Irish and British (1622), in which he tried to show that the ritual and discipline of the Church as originally established in the British Isles were in agreement with the Church of England and opposed to the Catholic Church on the matters in dispute between them; An Answer to a Challenge made by a Jesuite in Ireland (1624), in which his aim was to disprove the contention set forth earlier in the same year by a Jesuit that uniformity of doctrine had always been maintained by the Catholic Church; and Immanuel, or the Mysterie of the Incarnation.  He published in England The Originall of Bishops, A Body of Divinitie, The Principles of Christian Religion, and other works.  So great was Ussher’s reputation that when he died Cromwell relaxed in his favor one of the strictest laws of the Puritans and allowed him to be buried with the full service of the Church of England, and with great pomp, in Westminster Abbey.

Among Ussher’s other claims to distinction, it should be noted that it was he who in 1621 discovered the celebrated Book of Kells, which had long been lost.  This marvel of the illuminator’s art passed with the remainder of his collection of books and manuscripts to Trinity College, Dublin, in 1661, and to this day it remains one of the most treasured possessions of the noble library of that institution.

Sir John Denham (1615-1669), a Dublin man by birth, took an active part on the side of Charles I. against the parliament during the Civil War, and subsequently was conspicuous in the intrigues that led to the restoration of Charles II.  In his own day he had a great reputation as a poet.  His tragedy, The Sophy, and his translation of the Psalms are now forgotten, but he is still remembered for one piece, Cooper’s Hill, in which occur the well-known lines addressed to the River Thames: