out proclamations' for the use of the Prayer-book; but the Prayer-book was not used, and the disobedience was not noticed. The Archbishop of Dublin expostulated. St Leger put him. off with a 'Go to, go to, your matters of religion will mar all;' and placed in his hands 'a little book to read,' which he found 'so poisoned as he had never seen to maintain the mass, with transubstantiation and other naughtiness.'[1]
Bellingham's captains, too, troubled the new deputy with acting out their old instructions. Sir Andrew Brereton, one of the best of them, had been a thorn in the side of the Earl of Tyrone. No Bishop of Monluc, or other doubtful ecclesiastic, could land in Ulster but what Brereton had his eye on him; no French emissary could leave Tyrone's castle but what Brereton would attempt to waylay him and relieve him of his despatches; and he had succeeded in intercepting one letter in which the Earl invited a French invasion,[2] and undertook especially to betray Brereton and destroy the Lecale colony.[3]
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ 'Tyrone desired the French King to come with his power, and if he would so prepare to do, to help him to drive out the Jewish Englishmen out of Ireland, who were such as did nothing to the country but cumber the same and live upon the flesh that was in it, neither observing fast-days nor regarding the solemn devotion of the blessed mass or other ceremony of the Church, the French King should find him, the Earl, ready to help him with his men and all the friends he could make.'—Complaints of Sir Andrew Brereton: Irish MSS. vol. iii. State Paper Office.
- ↑ Ibid.
the professors of the gospel.—The Archbishop of Dublin to the English Council: Irish MSS. Edward VI. vol. iii. State Paper Office.
