Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/302

REIGN' OF ELIZABETH. [ctt. tinued to confess and administer the sacraments, but it was in the chiefs' castles, or at stations in the mountain glens, to scanty and scattered families, and the single restraint upon the passions of the people was fast dis- appearing. ' Religion hath no place/ reported Tremayne. * There recommended by the brilliancy of its moral influences. In the year 1570 Doctor Richard Dixon was appointed Protestant Bishop of Cork. Eighteen months later Adam Loftus, the Archbishop of Dublin, had to write the following letter about him to Lord Burghley : ' Please your Lordship, "Where- as Richard Bishop of Cork, notwith- standing he had and hath a married wife, did, under colour of matrimony, take and retain another woman of suspected life in the city of Cork as his wife, and thereof by public fame and crying out of that his deed, the matter coming to our ears, he being called before us to answer thereunto, confessed the same ; and we, con- sidering the heinousness of that tur- pitude and sin, the great exclama- tion of the whole realm against him, and the offence and slander engen- dered by that his fact against the professors of God's Word, namely bishops and their marriages, to the no little glory of the adversaries and grief of the godly, thought meet that he should do public penance for the same, and also that we should depose Mm from his bishopric. For the first part it is already done. He, like a penitent, came to the Cathe- dral Church of Dublin, and there, standing under the pulpit, acknow- ledged his offence, though not in such penitent sort as was thought meet to put away the offence of so grievous a crime. For the deposi- tion, doubting whether we were sufficiently warranted to depose a bishop, we thought good to suspend our further proceedings until we were further resolved ; and having no great trust in the lawyers here, our request is that it will please your Lordship, after conference with such learned lawyers as you shall think meet, to direct us what we may do. And if it appear that we may not proceed therein, it will please your Lordship to think of some good order to be taken therein, as by pri- vate commission to such as her Ma- jesty shall please to appoint.' The Archbishop of Dublin to Lord Burghley, 1571 : MSS. Ireland. In consequence of this letter a commission was appointed, of which the Archbishop was a member, to try the case ; and Richard Dixon was deprived of his bishopric by the Queen's authority, November 26, 1571 : MSS. Ireland.