1577-1 THE DESMOND REBELLION. 547 was a boy at Oxford. 1 In some Sees there were bishops nominated from Rome, 2 whom the Government recog- nized or did not recognize as their humour varied. The Bishop of Cork sold the livings in his diocese to ' horse- men ' and ' kerne/ and when called to account, defended himself in a sermon, preached before the Lord President in the cathedral, saying ' that except he sold the livings of his collation he was not able to live, his bishopric was so poor/ At Waterford, where the English service was estab- lished with some regularity, the citizens refused to attend, but took possession of their churches early in the mornings, and heard mass there. They would accept none of the rites of religion from the Reformed clergy. Their own priests married them in private houses. They buried their dead in spots of their own selection, avoiding the churchyards, which they now regarded as profaned, and consecrating these new resting-places ' with prayers and flowers and candles and ringing of bells/ The gallows was the only effective English preacher of righteousness. Sir William Drury, in the second year of his office, reported that he had hanged four hundred persons ' by justice and martial law.' All sorts suffered that he held to be dangerous, and taking especial pains to exasperate Irish sentiment, he hanged a friar in his habit, whom he caught attempting to fly the country ; and he hanged a Brehon ' who was much
- Sir Wm. Fitzwilliam to the I 2 Answer of the Commissioners.
Council, August 16, 1574: JlfSS. [ s Tbid. Ireland. '
