"Ware, in the 5th section of the 35th chapter of his Antiquities, observes, that the Irish hermits were called Inclusi, because they shut themselves up in their cells and hermitages;
yet their confinement was not so strict, but by dispensation they might leave them, except that of St. Fechin's, in Foure, or Baille-leabar, i.e. the City of Books, a description of which is contained in the lines underneath:
Quae capit a Iibris nomen, celebrata perenni
Fama, Ires jactat villa forea dotes.-.
Hic stat sacra domus, glauca constructa palude,
Hic monstrat patulos. Anarchoreta lares,
Vertitur hic nullo pellenti flumine rota,
Quae tria sunt longa concelebranda die.
The anachoretical cell of Foure, the oratory of which is the burial place of the earl of Westmeath, was inhabited longer than any of the others in Ireland; for, in 1616, died there the Rev. Patrick Beglin, whose monumental inscription we here subjoin:
En ego Patricias Beglin sacra incola Eremi
Hoc fapidurn tumulo condor humorque cavo,
Rupe sub aeria, monumento et sede Sacrata,
Intemerata adyto, tum sine labe domo,
Quisquis is est ergo qui cernit busta viator
Dicat Eremicolae spiritus astra petat.
After the death of Mr. Beglin, the Rev. Mr. Daly became anchoret at Foure; and after he died, the Rev. Patrick Clonan; after him the Rev. Mr. John Nugent, who was succeeded by the Rev. Mr. Charles Fagan; and in 1719, the Rev. Mr. George Fleming resigned the parish of Castletown-Delvin, which for many years he served, and retired to the eremetical cell of Foure, where, in three or four years after, he died; since which time, there has not been an anchoret there, nor do we know any other cells of this nature in Ireland, except Lismore and Kilkenny. In the registry of Octavian de Palatio, archbishop of Armagh, there is mention made of an Observantine Franciscan, who, having lost his sight, was, on the 10th of July, 1508, admitted by the archbishop to lead the life of an anchoret, near the cathedral of Cashel, where he had built himself a cell in the wall; and the archbishop granted forty days' indulgence to those who should give aid in finishing it. Ware also informs us, that the rules for regulating the anchoret's lives to have been extant in a manuscript, formerly belonging to St. Thomas's abbey in Dublin, to which is annexed an epistle of one Robert, a priest, to Hugh, an anchoret, written about the reign of Henry the II."
(Patrick Lynch, The Life of Saint Patrick (Baltimore, 1854), p.157-158.)