The great invasion under Turgesius occurred, the most fatal in its effects of any that desolated Ireland. At this time the Danes had established themselves in various parts of Ulster, and in 836, Turgesius, at the head of a large force, pillaged and burnt the city of Armagh, with the Cathedral and other sacred edifices-expelled Faranan, the Bishop, with all the students of the college, and burnt every manuscript and relic which the most minute search could discover. In fact, such was the deplorable condition of the city, and of Ireland in general, that Father Walsh thus expressed his sorrows for his ruined country :-" There was no monarch in Ireland now, (ninth century) no more the renowned schools of Ardmagh, Lismore, or Cashel, no more an University or Academy, or College of learning in all the land, nor foreign(rs corning to admire and study in them, nor so much as the natives to enter then), but only to stand aloof and weep over their ruins as the Jews did over Jerusalem." The descent of these Northern pirates upon the shores of Ireland brought heavy calamities and evil times upon the Church. Being heathen, their chief animosity was directed against the Church and its clergy, and even when they were converted to Christianity after a long lapse of time, they stood aloof from the Church of Ireland, and sent their Bishops to Canterbury for consecration, and promised canonical obedience to the Archbishop of that See. Thus was schism first introduced into Ireland by the Danish settlements in Dublin, Cork, Waterford, and Limerick. This was towards the end of the eleventh century, and it was thus that Rome first obtained a footing in Ireland." (Primate Beresford's Visitation Charge, 1879) The circumstance most to be regretted with regard to old Irish history is, that the Danes in their frequent ravages and invasions of Ireland, during the ninth and tenth centuries, burnt all the books and monuments of antiquity that fell in their way: and that what they had spared, or which were afterwards compiled, went to wreck when the English took possession of the island, and in the many wars which they had for 200 years with the natives. It is therefore to be wondered at that they have any manuscripts or records at all remaining. It was supposed that many of these manu-scripts were carried by the Danes into Denmark, and deposited in their libraries, but it has been ascertained that the Danes carried none of the Irish manuscripts out of the island, but destroyed them all upon the spot. In ancient times Ireland was divided into several little principalities-the chiefs of which assumed the style of kings, and being at variance with one another, made the island a continual scene of rapine, violence and bloodshed, in acts of which, like other northern nations, they seemed to place all their glory. Their intestine wars and divisions made them at length a prey to the Danes, whom the conquests of Charles the Great had caused to infest these parts of the world. And so it was in the time of Henry II, when Dermot MacMur-rough, King of Leinster, called in the assistance of the English to aid him in the recovery of his kingdom from which he had been driven by the kings of Meath and Connaught. -AD 838. The Danes made a fort, and had shipping on Lough Neagh for the purpose of spoiling and wasting the North of Ireland. During the subsequent year, Ardmacha was burnt by the Danes of Lough Neagh, together with the Oratories and Great Church.