I told him I had read with great interest a pastoral of his, issued some five years before, in which he said that an interesting peculiarity of his diocese, in respect of which it stood almost alone in the country, was that its Catholicity was almost exclusively represented by districts which had always clung to the faith, places where in the Penal days no priest dared show himself in public, but visited the Catholic centres in turn as a layman by night and gathered the children together to instruct them as far as he was able.  This was, he said, of extraordinary interest on a day like that, when we were specially honouring the memory of the great saint who had sown the seeds which had continued to bear fruit through so many centuries.  We also spoke of the singular fact that he had that day preached on the spot on which St. Columba himself had stood, and in the same language that he spoke, a language which had been in existence long before the present English tongue was spoken.  As showing that the Scottish and Irish Gaelic were practically the same, as distinguished from the Celtic tongue spoken by the Welsh and Bretons, Bishop MacDonald told me he could read quite easily a book printed in the Irish characters.

As a bye-election brought me to the sacred scene of the labours of our great Irish saint, Columba, so did another bye-election bring me to the spot where a martyr for Ireland suffered in 1798—­Father O’Coigly.  There was a bye-election at Maidstone, where the martyr priest had been tried for treason, and near it is Pennenden Heath, where he was executed, so that both places will for ever be held sacred by patriotic Irishmen.  Besides securing a pledge for Home Rule from one of the candidates, and organising the small Irish vote in his favour, I took the opportunity of inaugurating a movement for the erection of a memorial to Father O’Coigly.  With the co-operation of the London branches of the United Irish League the movement was brought to a successful issue.  On two succeeding years there were Pilgrimages to the spot where Father O’Coigly was executed, at which Mr. James Francis Xavier O’Brien, who himself had been sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, was the chief speaker one year, and Mr. John Murphy, M.P., on the other.

Besides this, chiefly through the exertions of Mr. John Brady, District Organiser, funds were raised, and there have been erected in the Catholic Church at Maidstone a Celtic Cross and three beautiful stained-glass windows, of Irish manufacture, to commemorate the martyrdom of Father O’Coigly.

A gratifying thing in connection with our Pilgrimage was, I reminded those I addressed on Pennenden Heath, that a man pledged to support self-government for Ireland, the Cause for which Father O’Coigly had suffered, had been elected to Parliament for Maidstone.