FOXE'S BOOK OF MARTYRS
The bishop being brought to Dublin, the chief city of the Kingdom, was kept
many days in chains in a dark, dismal, and foetid prison, until that day in the
following year, which is kept under the name of the Lord's Supper, on which day he
was attacked by the heretics in this manner first, he was brought before Adam the
Chancellor, and Henry, the Treasurer, and civilly and kindly invited to follow the
tenets of the heretics, and promised large rewards on condition of abjuring his sacred
character, relinquishing the office received from the Pope, and (O villainy!) entering
upon the archbishopric under the Queen's authority. He told them that he was bound
and resolved never to desert the Church, Faith, or Vicar of Christ Jesus for any
consideration. Then the Chancellor and Treasurer endeavoured to deceive him by
cunning arguments, straining every nerve to establish the truth of their falsehoods.
Dermot, not relishing this, especially as he was not allowed to reply to their nonsense,
bade them, stupid and ignorant men (such was his high spirit), not to offer ridiculous
and false doctrines to him, an archbishop, and doctor of celebrated academies. Then
the heretics, filled with anger, exclaimed if we cannot convince you by argument, we
will make you quit this, your false law, and embrace our religion or feel our power.
The bishop was bound hand and foot, was thrown on the ground, and tied to a large
stake. His feet and legs were encased in top boots (a kind of boot at that time
common, made of leather, and reaching above the knee) filled with a mixture of salt,
bitumen, oil, tallow, pitch, and boiling water. The legs so booted were placed on iron
bars, and horribly and cruelly roasted over a fire. When this torture had lasted a whole
hour, the pitch, oil and other mixtures boiling up, burnt off not only the skin, but
consumed also the flesh, and slowly destroyed the muscles, veins and arteries; and
when the boots were taken off, carrying with them pieces of the roasted flesh, they
left no small part of the hones bare and raw, a horrible spectacle for the bystanders,
and scarcely credible. But the martyr, having his mind filled with thoughts of God and
holy things, never uttered a word, but held out to the end of the torture with the same
cheerfulness and serenity of countenance he had exhibited at the commencement of
his sufferings. When however, in this savage way, the tyrants had failed to break the
unconquerable spirit of the martyr by their more than Phalaric cruelty, he was by their
order, brought back to his former prison, a foul place filled with a dense fog, ready to
endure worse torments, if such could be devised.
There was at this time in Dublin, Charles Mac Morris, a priest of the Society
of Jesus, skilled in medicine and chirurgery, who because he was of the faith of
Christ, had been imprisoned by the English, and again discharged by them on account
of curing some difficult cases for certain noblemen. This man visited the holy bishop
in prison, and gave him such medical treatment, that on the fourteenth day he was
able to get up from his bed for a little while. The Chancellor and Treasurer, learning
of this, and that the Earl of Ormonde was coming, by whose influence and power they
feared Dermot would be saved, determined in their malign wickedness to put him to
death as soon as possible. Fearing, how ever, that the people would raise a
disturbance, and rescue their pastor from death if it were generally known by the
citizens that he was to be executed, they ordered the dregs of their soldiers and
executioners to bring out the bishop on a car, early in the morning, before sunrise, and
before the people were up, and hang him on a gallows outside the city. Which being
done, out of all the citizens, he was met by only two, and a certain friend who had
been extremely faithful to him, and had made him his particular care from the time of
his capture. These followed him; and before he was strung up the archbishop, seizing
the hand of his friend, and strongly squeezing it, is said to have impressed on the palm
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