HISTORY.] IRELAND 263 law of canon, for covetise of lucre transitory/ Where his hand reached Henry had little difficulty in suppressing the monasteries or taking their lands, which Irish chiefs swallowed as greedily as men of English blood. But the friars, though pretty generally turned out of doors, were themselves beyond Henry s power, and continued to preach everywhere among the people. Their devotion and energy may be freely admitted ; but the mendicant orders, especi ally the Carmelites, were not uniformly distinguished for morality. Monasticism was momentarily suppressed under Oliver Cromwell, but the Restoration brought them back to their old haunts. The Jesuits, placed by Paul III. under the protection of Con O Neill, " prince of the Irish of Ulster," came to Ireland towards the end of Henry s reign, and helped to keep alive the Roman tradition. It is not surprising that Anglicanism the gospel light that dawned from Boleyn s eyes recommended by such prelates as Browne and Bale, should have been regarded as a symbol of conquest and intrusion. The Four Masters thus describe the Reformation : "A heresy and new error arising in England, through pride, vain glory, avarice, and lust, and through many strange sciences, so that the men of England went into opposition to the pope and to Rome." The destruction of relics and images and the establishment of a schismatic hierarchy is thus recorded : " Though great was the persecution of the Roman emperors against the church, scarcely had there ever come so great a perse cution from Rome as this." Such was Roman Catholic opinion in Ireland in the 16th century, and such it is still, In vulgar Irish the word " Sassenagh" denotes a Protestant as well as an Englishman.
- arc! The able opportunist St Leger, who was accused by one
party of opposing the Reformation and by the other of . " lampooning the Real Presence, continued to rule during the early clays of the protectorate. To him succeeded Sir Edward Bellirigham, a puritan soldier whose hand was heavy on all who disobeyed his dear young master, as he affectionately called the king. He bridled Connaught by a castle at Athlone, and Munster by a garrison at Leighlin Bridge, The O Mores and O Connors were brought low, and forts erected where Maryborough and Philipstown now stand. Both chiefs and nobles were forced to respect the king s representative, but Bellingham was not wont to flatter those in power, and his administration found little favour in England. Sir F. Bryan, Henry VIII. s favourite, succeeded him, and on his death St Leger was again appointed. Neither St Leger nor his successor Crofts could do anything with Ulster, where the papal primate Wauchop, a Scot by birth, stirred up rebellion among the natives and among the Hebridean invaders. But little was done under Edward VI. to advance the power of the crown, and that little was done by Bellingham. - Re- The English Government long hesitated about the official establishment of Protestantism, and the royal order to that , effect was withheld until 1551. Copies of the new liturgy were sent over, and St Leger had the communion service translated into Latin, for the use of priests and others who could read, but not in English. The popular feeling was strong against innovation, as Staples, bishop of Meath, found to his cost. The opinions of Staples, like those of Cranmer, advanced gradually until at last he went to Dublin and preached boldly against the mass. He saw men shrink from him on all sides. " My lord," said a beneficed priest, whom he had himself promoted, and who wept as he spoke, " before ye went last to Dublin ye were the best beloved man in your diocese that ever came in it, now ye are the worst beloved Ye have preached against the sacrament of the altar and the saints, and will make us worse than Jews The country folk would eat you Ye have more curses than ye have hairs of your head and I advise you for Christ s sake not to preach at the Navan." Staples answered that preaching was his duty, and that he would not fail : but he feared for his life. On the same prelate fell the task of conducting a public controversy with Primate Dowdall, which of course ended in the conversion of neither. Dow dall fled ; his see was treated as vacant, and Cranmer cast about for a Protestant to fill St Patrick s chair. His first nominee, Dr Turner, resolutely declined the honour, declaring that he would be unintelligible to the people ; and Cranmer could only answer that English was spoken in Ireland, though he did indeed doubt whether it was spoken in the diocese of Armagh. John Bale, a man of great learning and ability, became bishop of Ossory. There is no reason to doubt his sincerity, but he was coarse and intemperate, Mr Froude roundly calls him a foul-mouthed ruffian, without the wisdom of the serpent or the harmless- ness of the dove. His choice rhetoric stigmatized the dean of St Patrick s as ass-headed, a blockhead who -cared only for his kitchen and his belly. Archbishop Browne was gluttonous and a great epicure. If Staples was gene rally hated, what feelings must Bale have excited ? The Reformation having made no real progress, Mary Mary found it easy to recover the old ways. Dowdall was re- 0553- stored ; Browne, Staples, and others were deprived. Bale Jc fled for bare life, and his see was treated as vacant. Yet the queen found it impossible to restore the monastic lands, though she showed some disposition to scrutinize the titles of grantees. She was Tudor enough to declare her inten tion of maintaining the old prerogatives of the crown against the Holy See, and assumed the royal title without papal sanction. Paul IV. was fain to curb his fiery temper, and to confer graciously what he could not with hold. English Protestants fled to Ireland to escape the Marian persecution ; but respectable evidence exists to show that, had the reign continued a little longer, Dublin would have been no safe place of refuge. Mary scarcely varied the civil policy of her brother s ministers. Gerald of Ivildare was restored to his earldom. The plan of settling Leix and OfFaly by dividing the country between colonists and natives holding by English tenure failed, owing to the unconquerable love of the people for their own customs. But resistance gradually grew fainter, and we hear little of the O Connors after this. The O Mores, reduced almost to brigandage, gave trouble till the end of Elizabeth s reign, and a member of the clan was chief contriver of the rebellion of 1G41. Maryborough and Philipstown, King s county and Queen s county, commemorate Mary s ill-starred marriage. Anne Bolsyn s daughter succeeded quietly, and Sir Elizabetl Henry Sidney was sworn lord-justice with the full Catholic (1558- - AO ritual. When Sussex superseded him as lord-lieutenant, the litany was chanted in English, both cathedrals having been painted, and Scripture texts substituted for " pictures and popish fancies." At the beginning of 1500 a parlia ment was held which restored the ecclesiastical legislation of Henry and Edward. In two important points the Irish Church was made more dependent on the state than in England : anges d eL re were abolished, and heretics made amenable to royal commissioners or to parliament without reference to any synod or convocation. According to a contemporary list, this parliament consisted of 3 arch bishops, 17 bishops, 23 temporal peers, and members returned by 10 counties and 28 cities and boroughs. We know not whether all were present, and therefore the list throws no light on the dispute as to the conformity of Irish bishops in possession at Elizabeth s accession. A careful scrutiny shows that Curwen of Dublin and O Fihily of Leighlin actually conformed. Bodkin of Tuam. De Burgh of Clonfert, and perhaps some others took the oath
