and learned gentleman, after one of the most able and eloquent displays of oratory ever heard within the walls of that house, moved that the petition be referred to the grand committee on courts of justice. Mr. Goulbourn, the secretary for Ireland, opposed the motion, which went, he said, to fix a stigma upon the whole administration of the law in Ireland. After a debate of considerable length, and a sarcastic reply from Mr. Brougham, the House divided. For the motion, 59-against it, 139.-Majority 80. Sir Henry Parnell and Mr. Abercromby supported the motion; and Mr. V. Fitzgerald, Colonel Barry, and Mr. Peel opposed it. FRANCE, On the 12th of May the archbishop of Valencia assisted by several Spanish ecclesiastics, celebrated a pontifical mass in the church of the Visitation at Toulouse, to return thanks to the Almighty, in consequence of the entrance of the French armies into Castille. A numerous body of emigrant and refugee Spanish clergy and religious assisted at the ceremony. Another illustrious and virtuous exile has sought for hospitality and protection amongst the French. Peter Joseph de Font, archbishop of Mexico, has been obliged to quit his diocese, which is at present the scene of revolutionary movements, and political anarchy, and where religion is persecuted by each contending and ambitious chief. This prelate was born in 1777 at Lenaré, in the diocess of Saragossa, and was consecrated archbishop of Mexico in 1815. A manuscript to which is affixed the signature of the duchess of Angouleme, has been for some years past in private circulation. It details the events which took place in the temple from the 13th of August, 1792, until the death of the dauphin, Louis the 17th. This work has at length been printed, but without the signature : no doubt however remains as to its illustrious author; for she alone was witness to many occurrences therein related; and the spirit of forbearance and forgiveness which pervades the whole piece, with the expression of gratitude for every service performed, all accord with the character of our virtuous princess. ROME. On the 16th of May, his holiness held a secret consistory, in which he declared two new cardinals, one of whom is father Placed us Zurla, born in Legnago, on the 2nd of August 1769, of the order of Camaldulensis, consultor of the Propaganda, and of the Index, and prefect of Studies at the college of Urbain; the other is Anne Louis Henry de la Fare, archbishop of Sens, to which dignity he was raised in the year 1817. He was born in the diocese of Lucon on the 8th of September, 1752. At the same consistory his holiness also nominated 14 new bishops, to fill the vacant sees in France. And on the 19th of May a public consistory was held, at which cardinal Zurla received his hat, and took the customary oaths. A consistorial advocate, monsignor Invernizzi, pleaded in this consistory in favour of the beatification of the venerable servant of God, Bartholomew de Marteribus, archbishop of Braganza, in Portugal. PRUSSIA. The concordat which has been arranged a considerable time back between his holiness the Pope, and the king of Prussia, could not be acted upon, in consequence of a variety of obstacles occurring, which prevented its execution; these are at length happily surmounted. Catholic bishops are to be immediately appointed, who are to have episcopal jurisdiction over the Catholics residing in the Prussian dominions; and the concordat itself was put in full force on the first day of last April. A division has arisen among the The melancholy fate of Don Raymond Strauch, bishop of Vich, deserves to be recorde.l. He had been for some time confined in the citadel of Barcelona, and in April last was brought before a tribunal, which, although it declared him innocent, ordered him to be conducted to Tarragona, and enjoined him to fix his resis dence in that town. A detachment of troops had the care of him, and also of a priest, and of a religious on the road; they arrived on the 16th of the same month at Ordalt; here the bishop was ordered to alight from the carriage by the commander of the detachment, who immediately fired at him with a pistol, and shot him dead upon the spot. The priest and the religious met their death in the same manner. The bishop was 63 years of age, and belonged to the order of Cordeliers, he was consecrated in 1816, and was considered: one of the most worthy prelates of Spain. Don Simon Antony de Rentêria, bishop of Lerida, is also generally supposed to have met the same fate, He had only been nominated bishop in 1819, and. had been for some time past in the hands of the Constitutionalists at Barcelona. Since the commission of these, murders, several religious have been, embarked from the same port, for the purpose, as was given out, of transporting them to Carthagena, but as the vessels which took out these venerable men, returned on the following day, it was generally believed that their destruction had already been accomplished. Letters have been received from Bayonne, dated the 14th of June, which state, that accounts had arrived from Seville, of the total suppression of the convents of both sexes, by a decree of the Cortes. DIED. On the 8th of May, of a disorder in his chest, cardinal Vivien Orsini. His eminence was born at. Foligno, on the 23d of August, 1751, and was only declared cardinal in the consistory held on the 10th of March last. On the 2d of June, aged 83, Mrs. Mary Edridge. On the 11th, the rev. Thos. Furby. On the 16th, at the age of 75, Mr. Thomas Cleghorn, formerly a merchant in the city, and afterwards of St. Omer's college. From the time that the members of this establishment were obliged, by the French revolution, to seek a refuge in England, this gentleman has constantly resided at Old Hall Green. His death was nearly sudden, although he had long prepared himself for the awful event. The natural goodness of his heart, with the suavity of his manners, and his affectionate disposition, had endeared him to his numerous friends, while his fervent and unaffected piety affords a well-grounded hope, that he has changed a mortal life for a blissful eternity. AMBROSE CUDDON, Printer, 2, Carthusian-street, Aldersgate-street.. WHOM the English, the Irish, and the Scots, have at different periods claimed as their countryman, was born according to Leland, upon the authority of some old records preserved in Merton college Oxford, at Dynstan, or Dunston, a messuage belonging to that college, in the parish of Emildon, or as Cam den and Harpsfield spell it, Hemildon, in the county of Northumberland. It seems probable that he was an Englishman, for by the statutes of Merton, no one but an Englishman could be admitted to a fellowship in that college, and his name occurs in the manuscript catalogue of fellows under Edward the second. All authors agree that his parents trod in the humble walks of life; and many relate that in his childhood he exhibited no marks of those superior talents which afterwards burst forth with so much eclat, and which rendered his name celebrated all over christendom; nor of that aptness in disputation, and of that dexterity in discussing the scholastic questions of the day, which procured him the title of the Subtle Doctor. However, as soon as he displayed some sparks of extraordinary abilities, he was placed at Oxford; and here the progress he made in learning was so rapid, that it was not long before he was elected a fellow of Merton college. He afterwards returned to his native county, and although he was still very young, he received the habit of saint Francis in a convent of the or der at Newcastle. After the expiration of his novitiate, he made his profession, and was again sent to Oxford, where he pursued his studies with incredible avidity under the celebrated William Ware. "Here," says Collier, "he afterwards commenced doctor of divinity, and was made professor of that faculty, and read upon the master of the sentences. From Oxford he travelled to Paris, where he had likewise the honour of the divinity chair. At last he settled in the same function at Cologne where he performed to a great degree of reputation. He had the distinction of the subtle doctor; for, as Pits represents him, he had the faculty of penetrating the most abstruse subjects, and distinguishing the most difficult questions; insomuch that there was scarce any thing too hard for his understanding. He was a great champion of the immaculate conception, and by the advantage of his public disputations upon this argument, he prevailed with the audience to desert Albertus Magnus, and come over to his sensiments." It is remarkable that he appeared as a public professor at Oxford when he was no more than twenty-four years of age; Michael Hoyer even says that he was only twenty, and that his lectures were attended both by the old, and by the young: and that professors of long standing were seen eagerly catching the truths which fell from the young doctor's lips. His reputation now became so great that the general of the Franciscans, Gonsalvus, ordered him, in virtue of a decree of a general muster held at Toulouse, to proceed to Paris, that he might become a professor and regent of studies in that city. He instantly obeyed the summons, and set out on his journey as a simple religious, travelling on foot, and begging for support on his road and for his passage across the sea. At Paris he filled the divinity chair with universal applause, and publicly defended the opinion of the immaculate conception against Albertus Magnus with so much talent and address, that the university of Paris presented him with a doctor's cap and stiled him the subtle doctor: this happened in the year 1304, when he must have been about twenty-six years of age: a decree was moreover unanimously passed, by which every future candidate for the doctor's cap was obliged to adopt upon this point the sentiments of Scot; the same was afterwards done by the universities of Co logne, Salamanca, Naples, Mentz, Alcala de Henares, and Se ville. At this time all Europe resounded with the praises of the subtle doctor; but what most redounded to the honour of one who was considered in the schools as a paragon of learning, and who ranged without an equal in the wide field of scholastic disputation, was the blameless simplicity of his life, his unaffected piety, his ready submission to the commands of his religious superiors, and his strict attention to the rules of his order, even in the slightest observances; of this we have the following remarkable instance. He was walking to take the air with some of his religious brethren, and busily employed in conversation, when á messenger from the general delivered to him a letter, which he immediately perused, and finding that it contained an order for his removal to Cologne, he instantly set off for the place of his destination, without taking leave of his friends and scholars, altho' he was earnestly pressed by his less scrupulous brethren to return to his convent and oncé moré seé his religious companions before he quitted them, probably for ever; but Scot chose rather to be thought wanting in civi lity than in obedience. The inhabitants of Cologne by some means received intelligence of his near approach to their city: many of them therefore, with the magistates and clergy at their head, went out to meet him, and conducted him with much ceremony to the convent of his order here he opened a school, which was soon crowded with scholars to these he read the master of the sentences, which he illustrated with his own commentaries, and sustained with universal applause, and if it were possible even increased the high character he had already obtained. He was also greatly instrumental in forming an university, which was completely established in 1388, under pope Urban the sixth, when it received the same privileges as the university of Paris. After a short and laborious life, spent as a public professor in Oxford, Paris, and Cologne, always teaching, writing, or holding public disputations, he expired in the latter city, on the eighth day of November 1308, in the thirtyfourth year of his age: as he had always lived in exact conformity to the vows he made when he entered upon his religious life, and in every thing had followed the rules of the gospel, so he died the death of the just, and was interred in the church |