altar, delivered an address suitable to the ceremony’ (Embassy, p. 91). There was nevertheless a certain antagonism between the nuncio and the bishop of the diocese, whose catholicism was rather Anglo-Irish than ultramontane (cf. Spicilegium Ossoriense, i. 294). In the internecine struggle between nuncio and council, Roth was generally for the native notables and against the Italian emissary. He seldom left his house, but was much consulted, and was against extreme courses. In January 1648 Rinuccini reported to Pope Innocent X that Roth was ‘extremely old and inefficient, and no longer able to fulfil any of his duties’ (Embassy, p. 365), but he found a few months later that Roth had vigour enough to take the lead in nullifying the interdict fulminated by the nuncio on 27 May against all who were willing to treat with Inchiquin (ib. p. 399). As soon as Rinuccini was clear of Ireland, he urged the suspension of Roth, as ‘the first to refuse obedience to the interdict, as though he were the supreme judge and owned no superior’ (ib. p. 467). Too late to be of any real use, peace was made between Ormonde and the confederates. On 17 Jan. 1648–9, with other Anglo-Irish prelates, Roth signed a letter protesting their loyalty, and their satisfaction at being friends with the king's lieutenant. ‘The substance of the peace,’ they say, ‘as to the concessions for religion, is better than the sound’ (Confederation and War, vii. 213). In March Roth was one of four bishops who addressed the pope in favour of the Capuchins (Spicilegium Ossoriense, i. 322). In August following he describes himself as ‘old and bedrid’ (Murphy, p. 312), but was carried about in a litter to minister to sufferers from the plague (ib.). At the beginning of March 1650, when Cromwell was approaching Kilkenny, he was ‘carried out in a vehicle prepared for flight, stripped of his raiment, wrapped in a common cloak hopping with vermin, and put away in some wretched place where he died in the following month’ (Spicilegium Ossoriense, i. 341). This was written on 6 June by Archbishop Fleming, Roth's metropolitan, who was in Ireland at the time. ‘Locus abjectus’ does not mean ‘loathsome dungeon,’ as Father Murphy assumes. Bishop Lynch, who wrote from Clonfert between three and four months after Roth's death, says he ‘attempted to escape, but was brought back by the enemy, stripped of his raiment and mocked [illusus], but allowed to enter the nearest house, where he died.’ Probably the aged bishop was harboured by poor but faithful friends in some squalid tenement (Graves and Prim, p. 296). Axtell's regiment was quartered in the cathedral, where Roth had prepared his tomb. His remains were consequently laid in St. Mary's church with the usual ceremonies, and without interference by the conquerors. A portrait of Roth, perhaps by an Italian in Rinuccini's suite, is preserved at Jenkinstown, co. Kilkenny, and reproduced by Graves and Prim, who mention other relics.
Of Roth's great learning there can be no doubt, though he was not free from the credulity which besets hagiologists. Thomas Messingham, moderator of the Irish seminary at Paris, describes him as ‘doctissimus et accuratissimus.’ It is still more to the point that he corresponded with the protestant champion Ussher, who acknowledges considerable obligations, and calls him learned, illustrious, and ‘a most diligent investigator of his country's antiquities.’ He was all his life more or less occupied with an ecclesiastical history of Ireland; but no such work was published, and the only part known to exist is a fragment on the diocese of Ossory, of which there are manuscript copies in the British Museum and in Trinity College, Dublin. It has been accurately described by Graves, and partly printed in the ‘Irish Archæological (Kilkenny) Society's Journal’ for 1859, and adversely criticised by John Hogan in the same journal for 1871. Roth's ‘Hierographia Hiberniæ,’ an account of the Irish saints, was never printed, but was used and quoted by Ussher.
Besides the ‘Analecta,’ of which Cardinal Moran published a complete edition in 1884, Roth published: 1. ‘Brigida Thaumaturga, sive dissertatio partim encomiastica in laudem ipsius sanctæ,’ &c., Paris, 1620. 2. ‘Hibernia resurgens, sive refrigerium antidotale adversus morsum serpentis antiqui,’ &c., Rouen, 1621; and another edition at Cologne in the same year. His ‘De Nominibus Hiberniæ tractatus’ and ‘Elucidationes in Vitam S. Patricii a Joscelino scriptam’ are printed in Messingham's ‘Florilegium Insulæ Sanctorum,’ Paris, 1624.
[Journal of the Hist. and Archæolog. Assoc. of Ireland, 4th ser. vii. 501, 620; Moran's Spicilegium Ossoriense, vols. i. and ii.; Graves and Prim's Hist. of St. Canice's Cathedral; Rinuccini's Embassy in Ireland, English transl.; Ware's Bishops (art. ‘Griffith Williams’) and Writers of Ireland, ed. Harris; Contemporary Hist. of Affairs in Ireland, and Hist. of Confederation and War in Ireland, ed. Gilbert; Brady's Episcopal Succession; Murphy's Cromwell in Ireland; Walsh's Hist. of the Remonstrance, 1674, to which the Kilkenny queries and Roth's answers are appended; Catalogue of the Lough Fea Library, p. 294, where Ussher's references to Roth are collected; Brennan's Ecclesiastical Hist. of Ireland; Hogan's Kilkenny (Kilkenny,
