For the benefit of those who may not be acquainted with “the Bull Laudabiliter,”[359] I may explain that the document in question is inserted in the ‘Expugnatio Hibernica’ of Giraldus Cambrensis,[360] published in or about 1188, and is asserted by him to be the document brought from Rome by John of Salisbury in 1155. He also gives with it a confirmation of it by Alexander III., obtained, he states, by Henry II. after his visit to Ireland. Apart altogether from these two documents are three letters from Alexander III., which are, similarly, only known to us at second hand, being transcribed in what is known as the Black Book of the Exchequer.[361] Broadly speaking, for the moment only, the main difference between these letters and “the Bull Laudabiliter” is that while, in the latter, Pope Adrian commends the intention of king Henry to go to Ireland and reform the gross scandals prevailing there, Pope Alexander, in the three letters, commends the action of the king in having gone there for that purpose. Having thus given a general idea of the five documents to be considered, I must now glance at the motives that have animated the attack on the “Bull.” The first of these is the reluctance of the Irish, as Roman Catholics, to believe that it was the Pope who authorized an English king to reign over Ireland; the second is their refusal to admit that the state of things in Ireland is truly described in the “Bull.” Taking these reasons for attack separately, the first, as I hinted at the outset, is a curious misconception. I need only, to prove that it is so, print side by side the words of two bitter assailants of the Bull--Father Gasquet and Father Morris. FATHER GASQUET. FATHER MORRIS. By this instrument ... The document by which Pope Adrian IV. gave the sovereignty Adrian is supposed to have made of the island to our English over Ireland to Henry king Henry II.... From time Plantagenet.... to time the ‘fact’ that an English Pope made a donation of In this letter there is not one Ireland to his own countrymen word which suggests the idea of is used ... for the purpose temporal domination.[363] of trying to undermine the inborn and undying love and devotion of the Irish people for the sovereign Pontiffs.... (But) Dr. Moran, the learned Bishop of Ossory, adduced many powerful, if not conclusive, reasons for rejecting the ‘Bull’ as spurious.[362] The fact is that the unfortunate document, denounced for its sanction of Henry’s enterprise, does little, if anything, more than the three Black Book letters, which emphatically approve that enterprise, when undertaken, and sanction its results. Yet these letters are accepted, we shall see, while the Bull is denounced as “spurious.”