That the Abbots of the Order exercised that privilege in this country cannot be doubted. We read an instance of it in the _Triumphalia_, so ably edited by the late Father Denis Murphy, S.J., where, even after the Council of Trent and so recently as 1621, a certain secular priest, who had been appointed by the Abbot of Holy Cross to the pastoral charge of the parish attached to that abbey and of one or more outlying parishes subject to the same Abbot, denied after some time, that he had his faculties from the said Abbot, but rather from the Archbishop, or his Vicar. The controversy lasted long, but finally, it was decided in the Abbot's favour, and Dr. Kearney, then Archbishop of Cashel, acknowledged the Abbot's title. And again, in the _Spicelegium Ossoriense_ there is a letter from Dr. O'Reilly, Archbishop of Armagh, written to the Propaganda in 1633, in which he complained that the Cistercians claimed the privilege of "_Visitation, Correction, Summoning to Synods, Approbation to hear confessions, together with entire and absolute episcopal jurisdiction_." And a further proof in favour of the practice is found in the fact that laymen who acquired the suppressed monasteries of the Order claimed and exercised that same privilege. Thus, in 1622, Archbishop Ussher in a Report of Bective parish said it belonged to Bartholomew Dillon, Esq. of Riverstown, his Majesty's farmer of the impropriate property. "This church belongeth to the Abbey of Bectiffe, in the possession of the said Mr. Dillon, who pretendeth to have an exemption from the Lord Bishop's jurisdiction, and doth prove wills and grant administrations." And in 1744, Harris writes of Newry, where once was a Cistercian Abbey also: "A mitred Abbot formerly possessed the lordships of Newry and Mourne, and exercised therein Episcopal Jurisdiction, which after the dissolution of the Abbey was done by the temporal proprietor, and at the present Robert Needham, Esq., to whom the town and manor belong, enjoys an exempt Jurisdiction within the said manors, and the seal of his court is a Mitred Abbot in his Albe sitting in a chair, and supported by two yew trees with this inscription: '_Sigillum exemptæ Jurisdictionis de Viride Ligno alias Newry et Mourne_.'" Which in English means, the seal of the Exempt Jurisdiction of Newry and Mourne. Verily! this savours of Popery; for, it was from the Pope the monks received their exemption. A modern example of this Papal concession, exercised in the Anglican Church, is to be found in the case of the Dean of Westminster who is immediately under the jurisdiction of her Gracious Majesty the Queen, and consequently exempt from that of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is as successor to the Abbot of Westminster that he claims and is allowed that privilege of exemption; for the Abbot was immediately subject to the Pope in pre-Reformation times.