Excerpt from St. Patrick Apostle of Ireland: A Memoir of His Life and Mission, With an Introductory Dissertation on Some Early Usages of the Church in Ireland, and Its Historical Position From the Establishment of the English Colony to the Present Day The author feels that some apology is required for having occupied in this volume so large a space with merely introductory matter. But Irish history is so little known, that it became necessary to explain at considerable length certain customs or usages of the antient Church of Ireland, which by some writers have been greatly misunderstood, and by others concealed or kept out of View. It was important to make it clear that those usages were not of the nature of heretical or schismatical irregularities, nor all of them, strictly speaking, peculiar to Ireland. Some of them were the result of the insulated position of the country, combined with the social condition of the people under the govern ment of their aboriginal Chieftains; some of them were antient customs, which continued to exist in Ireland long after they had been abolished elsewhere and some had been abolished elsewhere for reasons which did not apply to Ireland. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.