Dublin Folktales by Brendan Nolan

travel in disguise for their personal safety. O’Hurley opted to travel alone to avoid spies and informers who wanted to benefit by unmasking any priest they could find to the authorities. A bishop would carry a fine reward for the informer. O’Hurley was particularly cautious on his return to his native land not to be apprehended. For added security, his papers and everything to do with his new job were sent as cargo in another ship. As fortune would have it, the second ship was taken by pirates. But the pirates were themselves taken in by the authorities.
    The Papal Bulls declaring O’Hurley’s consecration as a bishop, his letters of introduction, and all his documentation were produced in evidence against him when he himself appeared as a prisoner, in court in Dublin. Earlier, on arrivalin Ireland, O’Hurley travelled quietly to Waterford. But he was recognised, captured, and placed in prison to be interrogated. He managed to escape and moved up the country to continue his work.
    He travelled to Carrick-on-Suir, where he was welcomed by the Earl of Ormond. However, while he was sheltering at Slane Castle he was seized by Thomas Fleming, Baron of Slane, and in chains was brought to Dublin. It was said his sufferings on the road were intense and that every indignity and hardship possible was inflicted upon him by his captors. Lodged securely in chains in Dublin Castle, O’Hurley was brought before Loftus, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, and Sir Henry Wallop, for examination. He freely told his interrogators that he was a priest of Rome, and an archbishop, to boot. The captured cleric was confined in a dark, dismal, and fetid dungeon in the Birmingham Tower, at the centre of the castle. He was kept in chains there until the following year while interrogations went on. Despite a long series of examinations, no crime was discovered against him, other than having a different faith to that of the established church.
    In frustration, Wallop ordered that O’Hurley be subjected to the ‘Boots Torture’, in the hope that if he could not extort a confession from him, then he might force him to deny his professed faith and to embrace Protestantism. It is recorded in Collins Chapters of Old Dublin that the executioner placed the archbishop’s feet and calves in tin boots filled with a mixture of salt, bitumen, oil, tallow, pitch, and boiling water through which ran small streams of boiling oil. They fastened his feet in wooden shackles or stocks, and placed fire under them. The boiling oil penetrated the feet and legs so deeply that morsels of skin and flesh fell off and left the bones bare.
    If the officials of the government gathered there in the Castle Yard hoped that this torture would turn O’Hurley’s beliefs around, they were mistaken. During all his agony, the archbishop did not cry out beyond praying that Jesus,Son of David, would have mercy upon him. Even this searing torture could not wring a confession of falsehood from him. Finally, an exhausted O’Hurley lay on the ground, just short of death but in such a way that the executioner feared he had exceeded his orders of torture to confession. He had the victim carefully removed from the apparatus and taken back to his cell where he received medical treatment for his appalling injuries.
    In time, the archbishop recovered to face another danger concocted by his tormentors. Both Loftus and Wallop were to be replaced in office by Sir John Perrot. There was to be a formal ceremony of handing over the sword of office as power passed from the pair. Loftus and Wallop thinking that the new regime would release O’Hurley, decided to try him by court martial and have him condemned to death, before they left office.
    Loftus told the story two years later in his official report:
    We thought it meet, according to our direction, to proceed with him by court martial, and for our farewell, two days before we delivered over the