pared for the change, should have obstinately resisted? Is it strange that their obstinacy should have grown in proportion to the severity of the measures employed to enforce the obnoxious maxim? In vain the highest ecclesiastical preferments in Ireland were offered to the most able and most uncompromising advocates of the new doctrine. Few in number, unaided by their clergy, coldly supported in general by the Deputy, the cardinal doctrine of English Protestantism fell unheeded from the lips of a few right reverend preachers. Received with menaces and defiance even in the cathedral of Dublin, guarded as it was by the Deputy and his soldiers, it found no hearers beyond those walls, it made no proselytes.* Sick of the fruitless attempt, Protestant bishops yielded to the storm of opposition they encountered, and either were silent altogether, or only roused into occasional exertion by a sharp rebuke from England. The letters of Brown, the Archbishop of Dublin, an active promoter of Protestant doctrine, furnish a most curious and striking illustration of this subject.† Originally an Augustinian

* See Abp. Brown's account of a riot in church on one of these occasions, not the only one,-in Carew Papers, I. 135, 139.

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"Your humble servant (meaning himself), receiving your mandate, as one of his Highness' Commissioners, hath endeavoured almost to the danger and hazard of this temporal life, to procure the nobility and gentry of this nation (Ireland) to due obedience, in owning of his Highness their supreme head, as well spiritual as temporal, and do "find much oppugning therein, especially by my brother Armagh, who "hath been the main oppugner, and so hath withdrawn most of his "suffragans and clergy within his see and jurisdiction. He made a speech "to them, laying a curse on the people whosoever should own his Highness' "supremacy, saying that this isle, as it is in their Irish chronicles, Insula "Sacra, belongs to none but the Bishop of Rome, and that it was the Bishop of Rome's predecessors [who] gave it to the King's ancestors. The common people of this isle are more zealous in their "blindness than the saints and martyrs were in truth at the beginning "of the gospel." (Abp. Brown to Cromwell, Nov. 28, 1535. Life in the Phoenix, p. 121.)

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friar, and provincial of his order, Brown had embraced the Reformation, and was appointed successor to John Allen, whose violent death in 1534 is described in the Carew Papers.* Supported mainly by Cromwell, Brown had taken possession of his diocese with a fixed resolution to denounce the ancient religion and the orders in which he had been brought up. Such a task would have been formidable to a man of greater prudence, forbearance, and wisdom than Brown. He soon got involved in disputes with his clergy, in disputes with the Lord Deputy, in disputes with Dr. Staples, the Bishop of Meath, the only other vigorous champion of the Protestant religion in Ireland besides himself. But even he felt, after a time, the enervating influence of his position, and, resolute and active as he was, he began to fold his arms.

Disappointed, justly, perhaps unjustly, in the expectations which he had formed, Henry VIII. addressed the bishop in a letter as characteristic of the Tudors in their treatment of churchmen as it must have been mortifying to this well-meaning but injudicious prelate :

Whereas, before your promotion and advancement to that order, dignity, and authority of an archbishop, ye showed an appearance of such entire zeal and affection, as well to the setting forth and preaching the sincere Word of God, and avoiding of all superstition used against the honour of the same, as to employ yourself always diligently for your part to procure the good furtherance of any our affairs, as much as in you lay, and might appear to be to our contentment and satisfaction, that thinking your mind to be so earnestly fixed upon the same, that ye would persevere and continue still in that your good purpose; yet, nevertheless, as we do both partly perceive, and partly by sundry advertisements and ways be informed, the good opinion that we

* Vol. I., p. 56.

† Carew, I. 141. See also State Papers, III. 1. And see note † on p. xxii.

State Papers, II. 465.

had conceived of you is, in manner, utterly frustrate. For neither do ye give yourself to the instruction of our people there in the Word of God, ne frame yourself to stand us in any stead for the furtherance of our affairs. Such is your lightness in behaviour, and such is the elation of your mind in pride, that glorying in foolish ceremonies, and delighting in we and us, in your dream comparing yourself so near to a prince in honour and estimation, that all virtue and honesty is almost banished from you. Reform yourself, therefore, with this gentle advertisement, and do first your duty towards God in the due execution of your office; do then your duty towards us, in th' advancement of our affairs there, and in the signification hither, from time to time, of th' estate of the same; and we shall put your former negligence in oblivion. If this will not serve to induce you to it, but that ye will still so persevere in your fond folly and ingrate ungentleness, that ye cannot remember what we have done, and how much above many others ye be bound, in all the points before touched, to do your duty, let it sink into your remembrance that we be as able, for the not doing thereof, to remove you again, and to put another man of more virtue and honesty in your place, both for our discharge against God, and for the comfort of our good subjects there, as we were at the beginning to prefer you, upon hope that you would in the same do your office, as to your profession, and our opinion conceived of you, appertaineth." [31 July 1537.]

Well might the Archbishop "tremble in body," as he expresses it,* at this instance of his Majesty's displeasure, and wish that "the ground would open and swallow" him if he did not show all promptness "in rebuking the

papistical power, or setting forth benignly the advance"ment of his Grace's affairs." What could he do? He could not create listeners; he could not expect by the mere force of his own preaching, by his own example and that of the Council of Ireland, to draw men to the precepts of the Gospel, which appeared to their ignorant eyes garbed in the guise of the executioner, armed with manacles and instruments of torture. In vain the Arch

* State Papers, II. 513.

bishop threatened and preached; in vain with one hand he held forth the Gospel, and with the other cast friars and popish seminaries into prison. Preachers and people remained equally obstinate. This land, says one of the most zealous admirers of the Archbishop, is in a manner overflown with men "whose pharisaical ceremonies and

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hypocrisy, of so long time continued here, hath not "only trained and brought the people in manner wholly " from the knowledge of God, but also in an evil and erroneous opinion of the King's most noble Grace, and "of all those that under his Majesty be the setters forth " of the true Word of God, and repugnators against those " abuses." *

Again, in another letter from a different hand, but in the same strain, and animated by the same spirit :—†

"Here as yet the blood of Christ is clean blotted out of all men's hearts, what with that monster the Bishop of Rome, and his adherents, in especial the false and crafty bloodsuckers the Observants, as they will be called most holiest, so that there remains more virtue in one of their coats and knotted girdles than ever was in Christ and his passion. It is hard, my good Lord, for any poor man to speak against their abusions here; for except it be the Archbishop of Dublin, which doth here in preaching set forth God's Word, with due obedience to their prince, and my good Lord Butler, the Master of the Rolls, Mr. Treasurer, and one or two more, which are of small reputations, here is else none, from the

* White to Cromwell, 28 March 1538.

† State Papers, II. 570. See also Abp. Brown's letter to Allen, State Papers, III. 1, complaining of the Bishop of Meath when he preached at Christ Church. "He hath not only sithence that time by pen, as you "know his wont full well, railed and raged against me, calling me heretic " and beggar, but also on Palm Sunday, at afternoon, "in Kilmainham, where the stations and also pardons been now as "bremly used as ever they were." It was not a very edifying sight to see the Archbishop of Dublin and the Bishop of Meath, the two most prominent Protestant prelates, thus openly abusing each other in the very sanctuary.

highest, may abide the

hearing of it, spiritual, as they call them, nor temporal; and in especial they that here rule all, that be the temporal lawyers, which have the King's fee."

Nor were the inferior clergy qualified by their learning, zeal, or ability to supply the defects of their superiors. During the latter years of Henry VIII., and at the commencement of Elizabeth's reign, many of the clergy of England had been deprived of their livings. Very few of the more eligible in point of morals or learning were likely to expatriate themselves and accept benefices in Ireland, who might fairly hope to obtain a suitable provision in England. There was nothing in the state of the country, still less in the provision made for the spiritual wants of people, to induce men to sacrifice utility, comfort, ease, and society at home for missionary exertions among the native or Anglican Irish. For this service the English Church had no class of men like the friars,--none who, devotees to peril, hardship, and poverty, were willing to sacrifice themselves to an arduous service with the same zeal, fearlessness, and self-denial as did these barefooted emissaries of the Pope. They plunged into the woods and wastes and desolate fastnesses of the native Irish, with the same animosity and religious fervour as prompted the new-born society of Jesus to brave the terrors of an unknown career in India, China, and Japan. I am not now inquiring into the reasons of this difference. It might be that the motive principles of the two churches naturally led to these consequences; that whilst the Protestant was occupied at home in refuting Romanist errors, and putting forward the great principle of Faith as the pathway to heaven, the Roman Catholic, adhering to the old doctrine of works, found a new scope and practical application of his creed, when monasteries were put down, in missionary labours among the