This note on the missionary activities of Adam Loftus, bishop of Dublin, first Provost of Trinity College, Dublin and all-round very powerful man indeed was passed on by a friend. It was written by the O' Sullivan Mor in 1650.
I heard of the prelate Diarmuid O'Herlihy who was elevated to the see of Cashel. No more mild or noble a man ever held the crozier of St Cormac [??]. His presence in Ireland was soon discovered and he was consigned to a dark and loathsome prison, and kept in chains until the Holy Thursday of the year 1584. He was then summoned before the Protestant archbishop Loftus. He tempted him with promises of pardon, honours, and preferment and when these failed threathened "other means to change his purpose". He had him again chained and cast into a dungeon from whence he was taken on the fifth day of May and they began their foul work. They bound him firmly to a tree, as his Lord had once been tied. His hands were bound, his body chained, and then his feet and legs were thrust into long boots, filled with turpentyne, oil and pytch, and stretched upon an iron grate, under which a slow fire was kindled. O what sufferings he endured that long night. The spectacle which was exhibited when the instruments of torture were removed has been described to me, but I fear I cannot write a description. All the time he made not a sound and he would not recognise the new religion, even when his apostate sister begg'd him do. On the dawn of the sixth day of May he was taken to that place now called Stephen's-green where what remained of his human life was quickly extinguished, first by putting him again to torture, and then by hanging.
The speeches of Loftus are also online.