Before we enter upon the question we have selected, the dedication of the book claims from us some notice, and much gratitude towards the author. The work is dedicated to Archbishop Cullen, to whose frequent conversations on Ireland, during pleasant summer walks with the author in the neighbourhood of Tivoli, and to whose requests, oft repeated in after days, Mgr. Theiner declares his collection of Irish ecclesiastical documents to be due. He tells us, moreover, that the Archbishop's words found him a willing labourer for the sake of Ireland; deep feelings of admiration and compassion had long since touched his heart, and won his pen to the cause of that stricken nation. "Who can sufficiently admire", asks he, "that almost incredible piety and unflinching hereditary constancy in the profession of the Catholic faith, in which, from the earliest times, the Irish have been so firmly rooted that no assaults could ever weaken or shake them, even though they had to struggle against tyrannical laws, or the violence and cunning of perverse men? How glorious a thing this is, all history is the witness; witnesses are our ancestors and ourselves; witnesses are all the nations of Europe, who with one accord proclaim the Irish nation a spectacle of fortitude, so that among all Christian peoples it is deservedly styled a nation of martyrs". The troubles that clouded the early years of the reign of the youthful King Henry III. were watched with anxiety by Honorius III. In a letter to the Archbishop of Dublin (_Theiner_, n. 4, p. 2), that Pontiff enumerates the reasons why he felt so much solicitude for the welfare of the English monarch. The king was a vassal of the Roman Church, and a ward of the same; he had taken the Cross, and the Pope was apprehensive of aught that could impede the Crusade; besides, both his kingdom and his person had been solemnly confided to the protection of the Pope by his father, King John, when on his death-bed in the castle at Newark. The dangers that threatened the boy-king (he was but nine years of age when he succeeded) were of such a nature as to demand from his well-wishers strenuous exertions on his behalf. With the crown he had inherited a war with Louis, afterwards Louis VIII. of France, who on English soil had received the homage of the English barons at London, June 2, 1216; and to this was added the bitter hostility of the barons themselves, whom King John's perfidy had disgusted. These perils were increased by disturbances in Scotland, where Louis had allies, and in Ireland, where there existed a formidable party hostile to the king. On the same day, January 17, 1217, Honorius III. wrote to Scotland and to Ireland in the hope of calming these commotions by his authority, and of bringing into submission those who were in arms against Henry. In his letter to the Archbishop of Dublin he appointed that prelate delegate of the Apostolic See, with a command to use the powers which that position