HUGH LACY, was chosen Bishop of Limerick
while Henry VIII was still obedient to the Church.
When the King apostatized, he could not induce Hugh to join in his rebellion
or to stain himself by subscribing to this supremacy.
Wherefore not only did he lose the King’s favour, but he was deprived first of his revenues and afterwards of his bishopric.
When the King could effect nothing by these means, he had Lacy shut up in a noisome prison in Cork, the filth of which almost caused his death.
When he was released from his imprisonment he returned to Limerick, to his flock, which had been scattered by the attacks of the English wolf.
As the evil grew in strength during the last years of Henry’s reign and under the sway of Seymour, the Calvinist, who governed the kingdom for Edward VI., the persecution was renewed against Hugh.
Wherefore, he fled to that Catholic country France.
When Mary ascended the throne, he was called back by Cardinal Pole, to the great delight of all the diocese.
When he was over sixty years of age, Elizabeth, like a wild beast, began to lay waste the vineyard of the Lord.
Lacy, full of the spirit of God, was again driven from his See, deprived of all the means necessary or his support, and cast into prison, because he would not take the oath of Supremacy.
He died on the 26th March, 1577.
The date given by Rothe, 1580, is most probably, the correct one,
for Holinshed says, Lacy was upon some suspicions committed prisoner to his own house in 1579, and his successor was appointed in 1582.
