On the Anglo-Irish side there were also some great names, and especially in the domain of history, notably Stanyhurst and Hammer, Moryson and Campion and Davies, and, above all, Ussher and Ware.  James Ware died in 1666, and though a Protestant and an official of the Protestant government, and living in Ireland in an intolerant age and in an atmosphere charged with religious rancor, he was, to his credit be it said, to a large extent free from bigotry.  He dealt with history and antiquities, and wrote in no party spirit, wishing only to be fair and impartial, and to set out the truth as he found it.  James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, was a much abler man and a much greater scholar than Ware.  His capacity for research, his profound scholarship, the variety and extent of his learning raised him far above his co-religionists, and he has been rightly called the Great Luminary by the Irish Protestant church.  It is regrettable that his fine intellect was darkened by bigotry and intolerance.

Far different was the character of another Protestant bishop, the great Berkeley, of Cloyne, a patriot, a philosopher, and a scholar, who afterwards left money and books for a scholarship, which is still in existence, at the then infant Yale College in New England.  He lived in the first half of the eighteenth century, when the whole machinery of government was ruthlessly used to crush the Catholics.  But Berkeley had little sympathy with the penal laws; he had words of kindness for the Catholics, and undoubtedly wished them well.  Nor must Swift be forgotten, for though he took little pride in being an Irishman, he hated and despised those who oppressed Ireland, and is rightly regarded as one of the greatest of her sons.

The short period during which Grattan’s parliament existed was one of great prosperity.  It was then that Maynooth College was established for the education of the Irish priesthood.  But Catholics, though free to set up schools, were still shut out from the honors and emoluments of Trinity College, the one university at that time in Ireland.  Still, Charles O’Connor, MacGeoghegan, and O’Flaherty were great Catholic scholars in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

In the following century, while Protestant ascendancy was still maintained, the Catholics had greater scope.  Away back in the days of Queen Elizabeth, Campion found Latin widely spoken among the peasantry, and Father Mooney met country lads familiar with Virgil and Homer.  In 1670, Petty had a similar story to tell, in spite of all the savageries of Cromwell and the ruin which necessarily followed.  And in the eighteenth century the schoolmaster, though a price was set on his head, was still active.  With an inherited love of learning, the Irish in the nineteenth century would have made rapid progress had they been rich.  But their impoverishment by the penal laws made it impossible for them to set up an effective system of primary education, and until