DA 25 .G72 V.3 LONDON: Printed by GEORGE E. EYRE and WILLIAM SPOTTISWOODE, Printers to the Queen's most Excellent Majesty. For Her Majesty's Stationery Office. INTRODUCTION. ON the death of Edward VI. in 1553, Sir Thomas Cusack, chancellor, and Gerald Aylmer, were appointed Lords Justices in Ireland, and continued to hold office until the arrival at Dalkey of the new Deputy, Sir Anthony Saintleger, who succeeded Sir James Croft on the 19th of November 1553. In Of the state of Ireland at Mary's accession, the report of Cusack, noticed in the preface of the last volume, gives the most trustworthy and accurate description. Munster, beyond the Pale, the whole country was in such "good quiet" that the judges kept their circuits, not only at Limerick, Cork, and Kerry, but in the most distant shires of the West, without fear or molestation. The Desmonds, the Barries, the McCarthy Mores, and others, the most troublesome and refractory of the Irish chiefs, were content to remain in peace themselves, and to compel the rest of their countrymen to do the same. They accepted the Queen's Commission and acted jointly with the law officers of the Crown. In Connaught, the Earl of Clanricarde, lately restored to his inheritance, gladly submitted to the arrangements made by Cusack out of gratitude to his English supporters. His subjects, turning their swords into ploughshares, abandoned their old habits of plunder for more peaceful, if not more congenial, occupations. McWilliam Burke, the second captain, and the most powerful man in the province, was "of honest conformity," and was ready to support the Earl, or any other chief, in promoting the King's service. The O'Connors, the McDermotts, the O'Kellies, men of subordinate authority and influence, either found resistance hopeless, or readily followed the examples of their superiors. In Ulster only, English authority and English order had as yet made no permanent impression; and of all parts of Ulster, in Tyrone, where the Earl of that name had unlimited sway, the fairest and goodliest country in all Ireland, ruin and devastation stalked unchecked and unheeded through the land. "Irishmen were never so weak, and English subjects never so strong," are the triumphant words with which the contemporary narrator sums up his minute description of the state of Ireland at the close of the reign of Edward VI. Of the condition of the churches at that time, it is impossible to speak with precision. No theory upon this subject can rest upon any surer basis than that of the imagination. It is absurd to suppose that in a country like Ireland any system uniformly prevailed, or that laws affecting ecclesiastical state and discipline were generally observed where even civil order was set at nought and despised unless it was enforced by the hand of the stronger. Dioceses often continued unoccupied for years; bishops were frequently non-resident. The authorities at home, fully occupied in suppressing the feuds of petulant chiefs, or in reducing the refractory to obedience, had little time to bestow upon the rigid observance of episcopal succession, still less to demand of the bishops in a distant and rebellious province an acknowledgment of the royal supremacy. To pass Acts of Parliament was one thing; to see those Acts |