dignity then established, of Primate, and
Metropolitan of All Ireland; while, by a
curious etiquette, the Archbishop of Dublin
is styled Primate of Ireland, without the
All.  About two years after the foundation
of Armagh, Patricius. by this time probably
raised to the rank of archbishop, went over
to England for coadjutors, and took the
opportunity to preach against the prevailing
Pelagian and Arian heresies, reclaiming
many.  Returning by way of Liverpool,
when he approached that maritime village,
the people from all sides flocked to meet
him, and erected a stone cross in his honour.
On his voyage back to Ireland he visited the
Isle of Man, where, we are informed he
found the people much addicted to magic —
an old accusation against them; for they were
believed to involve their island at will in
supernatural mists, so that no ship could find
it.  Here he preached with his usual success,
and left behind him Germain, one of his
disciples, as first bishop of Man.  Having
returned to Armagh, he held a synod, the
eighth canon of which forbids a clerk to enter
the lists with a heathen for trial by combat (a
mode of decision not known to have existed
in England till long after this time, and
commonly spoken of as introduced by the
Normans), and the fourteenth lays penance
on whosoever should seek to divine the
future by soothsaying or inspection of the
entrails of beasts.  After this he went to
Bally-ath-cliath (afterwards called Dublin,
the Black Stream), the people flocking out to
him; and baptised the king and many others
in a well, therefore called St. Patrick's Well;
near to which a church was built, on the site
now occupied by St. Patrick's Cathedral.
Archbishop Usher says he saw the well, and
that in sixteen hundred and thirty-nine it
was shut up in a private house.

In a subsequent synod, we learn; that four
other ecclesiastical dignitaries were unwilling
to submit to the authority of Archbishop
Patricius; especially as he was a foreigner;
but they at last agreed.  He settled the Church
of Ireland solidly, and appointed bishops and
priests everywhere, well earning his title of
Apostle of Ireland.  He travelled continually
— a winged labourer, as Chrysostom terms
St. Paul — until too old; when he spent his
last years in retirement and contemplation,
though not neglecting to hold synods and
councils, and rule the affairs of the church.
The latest part of his life was passed alternately
in Armagh, and in the Abbey of
Sahal; and in the latter place, where he had
adventurously founded the first of several
hundred churches, he expired, full of good
works and honours, on the seventeenth of
March, four hundred and sixty-five, aged
seventy-eight.  This is in accordance with
Lanigan's chronology, which contradicts
Usher, Ware, and others, who place the
event in four hundred and ninety-three, in
the one-hundred-and-twentieth year of his
age. His obsequies lasted through twelve
successive days and nights — made bright as
day with torches and tapers— and were attended
by multitudes of the clergy from all
parts of Ireland.  He was buried at Down,
thence called Down-Patrick, and the old
rhyme says, —

     In Down three saints one grave do fill ;
     Patrick, Bridget, Columbkill.

In eleven hundred and eighty-six, seventeen
years after the English invasion, the remains
of these three were solemnly translated into
the cathedral of Downpatrick, a cardinal
legate being specially sent by Pope Urban III
to attend the ceremony; but the rolling centuries
changed men's minds, and in the reign
of Henry the Eighth, Anno Domini, fifteen
hundred and thirty-eight, Lord Deputy Leonard
De Grey, invading Ulster, desecrated
the cathedral, and defaced the statues of the
three saints; and in the same year the
famous staff or crozier, so long an object of
veneration, was publicly burned along with
many other relics, in High Street, Dublin, by
order of Archbishop Browne.  With this implement
is said to have been accomplished
the saint's traditionary feat of banishing
noxious animals from the Emerald Isle, —
when, according to the song,

     He bothered all the vermin,
and forced the snakes into the rash act of
committing suicide,
     To save themselves from slaughter.

But a more credible, and truly beautiful
story, is connected with the same staff,
namely, that when St. Patrick was baptising
Aongus, King of Munster, at Cashel, he
accidentally rested the spike of his iron-shod
crozier upon the king's foot, and, leaning
forward, pressed it deeply in, inflicting a most
painful wound.  But Aongus, believing this
to be part of the ceremony, made no sign of
suffering, and with calm and reverential
demeanour, allowed the unconscious prelate
to proceed with a baptism which was at the
same time a petty martyrdom.

St. Patrick is said to have been a man of
small stature, but of great energy and
activity of mind and body, and we have
some proofs that his very aspect must have
inspired regard and submission.  He was
truly humble, wore coarse garments, and
worked cheerfully and stoutly with his own
hands.  He was " Most sweet and affable in conversation,
by which he accommodated himself
to all sorts and conditions of people, and
did so gain their affections, that if it could be
done, they would have plucked out their eyes
and given them to him."  Countless gifts
were pressed upon him, which he always
refused, except it were to relieve the poor,
or build religious houses.  He slept on the
bare ground, a stone his pillow, till fifty-five
years old.