Catalogue description JOHN ALEN to CARDINAL WOLSEY.

As you have admitted me to your service, I have thought it my duty to write to you from time to time "of the causes committed to me." Enclosed is a "scrow" of the dispensations and other things which have been sped by your authority "since our coming into these exile parts, containing what sums of money have and shall be received for the same." It it great marvel that so much is done, considering the poverty of the Irishry, which is said to be greater than hitherto. "We have no resort to us ought (out) of the Irishry for any of your faculties," and although messengers hitherto might pass safely, yet they have often been robbed and murdered. If my Lord of Dublin were not Chancellor, with temporal power to punish those who resist your authority, it were not likely to be executed here with so much honour as it is; "for much doubt is made about your Grace's bulls, whether ye be Legate here or not, [Here occurs a note in the margin, as follows: "D. Primas cum eius suffraganeis ac consiliariis tenent expresse et palam, quod non est Legatus in Hibernia, et multum nocent, quia ejus ecclesia Armachana et tota provincia, præter dioc. Miden., sunt inter Hibernicos in Ultonia."] insomuch we be in fear to show the transumpts of them, and besides that we have neither bridgements nor transumpts according to your Grace's commandment." I beseech you to let me have the transumpts of all your bulls from your first creation as Legate; "for your Grace hath some faculties that ye use not, whereof one is, after deprivation by your Grace made of an abbot or prior, &c., from their dignity, ye may make provision of the same, notwithstanding election." This was granted to Laurence [Campeggio] and your Grace jointly, but Leo confirmed it to your Grace, as though it had been granted to you alone.

About the degrees of consanguinity and affinity, your Grace's bulls are not very clear for this country. I therefore send you "a copy of a bull of this Pope granted heretofore to the collector, which Raphael Maruff did use in Ireland, wherein the doubts that I moved to your Grace about the same you shall mowe see right well declared; trusting your Grace will have yours after the same wise.

My Lord Chancellor is very difficile in granting of your dispensations, which hindereth your Grace and is less to be regarded in this land than anywhere; for many parts under the King's obeisance there been penal statutes that no Englishman shall marry with the Irish, so that they be so intricate in consanguinity or affinity, and besides that the people of themself be so propine to evil, they would marry without dispensation, or else be enforced to sue to the Court of Rome, whereof hath ensued the decay of the Church of Ireland; for when an idle person goeth to the Church of Rome, the compositions be to Irishmen so small for their poverty, that by him many other exorbitant matters be sped; so that in this land your Grace's dispensations be necessary to be granted with less difficulty than elsewhere, for the avoiding of contempt of holy canons, and the occasion of the inconvenience that followeth of these Rome runners." If the compositions be reduced from sterling money to the money of this country on account of the poverty, we should speed three dispensations then to one now.

May it please your Grace to remember us, who are "returned from our own, living here as it were in captivity in great fear daily of our enemies; insomuch the Chief Justice sheweth me, that if English power cometh not shortly, we shall be fain to return from hence at Michaelmas; and I by the Deputy's and Council's indifferent election, occupying (unworthy) the clerkship of the Council, do perceive and know the patched and inhonorable treuges, which by inforcement of pure necessity be tolerated.

Dublin, 1 June. Signed: J[ohn Alen].

Broadsheet. Addressed: Rmo. &c. D. Thomæ, &c. Cardinali, ap. sedis in Angl. et Hibern. de latere legato. Endorsed: "Letters from John Alen.

S.P. II., 102.

Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth, ed. J. S. Brewer & W. Bullen (6 vols., 1867-73), vol. I, document 22.