Milcho, a chief of Dalriada, whose flocks he tended for
seven years, as a shepherd, on the mountain called Slemish,
in the present county of Antrim. The date of Nial's death,
and the consequent return of his last expedition, is set
down in all our annals at the year 405; as Patrick was
sixteen years of age when he reached Ireland, he must
have been born about the year 390; and as he died in the
year 493, he would thus have reached the extraordinary,
but not impossible age of 103 years. Whatever the exact
number of his years, it is certain that his mission in
Ireland commenced in the year 432, and was prolonged till
his death, sixty-one years afterwards. Such an unprecedented
length of life, not less than the unprecedented power,
both popular and political, which he early attained,
enabled him to establish the Irish Church, during his
own time, on a basis so broad and deep, that neither
lapse of ages, nor heathen rage, nor earthly temptations,
nor all the arts of Hell, have been able to upheave its
firm foundations. But we must not imagine that the powers
of darkness abandoned the field without a struggle, or
that the victory of the cross was achieved without a
singular combination of courage, prudence, and
determination--God aiding above all.

If the year of his captivity was 405 or 406, and that of
his escape or manumission seven years later (412 or 413),
twenty years would intervene between his departure out
of the land of his bondage, and his return to it clothed
with the character and authority of a Christian Bishop.
This interval, longer or shorter, he spent in qualifying