There was no opposition in the Irish Parliament to the change of the king’s title from Dominus to Rex, whereby the sovereignty of the Pope was cancelled, to any article in the king’s assumption of autocratic power over the Church, or to his taking to himself the appointment of bishops. A show of resistance made by the proctors of the clergy in the House of Commons was promptly met by their extrusion. Nor was there the slightest unwillingness on the part of any lord or chief to take his share of the plunder of the monasteries, which, as in England, were suppressed, with confiscation of revenue and goods, including the impropriated tithes of parishes which they had served. A plea put in by the deputy on behalf of six friaries in consideration of their special services to education and their hospitality was not heard.
The iconoclastic part of the revolution, attacking the material objects of popular worship, relics, wonder-working images, and venerated shrines, seems to have encountered some natural resistance, and it appears that the government failed to put an end to pilgrimages, which were the religious pleasure-trips of the people.
The leader of the Reform movement, and specially of iconoclasm, in Ireland, under Henry VIII., was Archbishop Browne, a fervid but apparently not discreet man. He had a rather restive coadjutor in Bishop Staples. No counterpart of Cranmer, Latimer, or Ridley appeared.
The members of the council of Edward VI., being men of the new official aristocracy, opposed to the old houses, attached themselves to the party of movement in religion. In England they completed the work of confiscation, carried iconoclasm a step farther, and made Protestant reforms in the religious system, the last in conjunction with foreign reformers. Their policy in Ireland was the same. They sent over the prayer-book of Edward. But the effect appears to have been small. The way had not been prepared by the advent of Lutheranism or by the use of translations of the Bible. Besides, there was no religious feeling on which it could act. The Deputy St. Leger was a shrewd man of the world, who, while he was ready to put the law in force, disliked all religious agitation. “Tut, tut,” he said to the earnest reformer, “your religious matters will spoil all.” The way of the new liturgy was effectually blocked by the Erse language, and no missionary effort appears to have been made.
The military policy of Edward’s government had a very able though rather grim representative in Bellingham, if he had only been backed by a sufficient force. But the foreign complications of England being what they were, no sufficient force could ever be sent. The system of regular hostings against the natives is now on foot. Bellingham having stormed a position, there ensues a butchery of wood kerne, the equal of which Bellingham supposed there had never been. “Such,” the deputy says, “was the great goodness of God to deliver them into our hands.” Puritanism with its ruthlessness is making its appearance in the lists, on one side, while on the other side enters its mortal foe the Jesuit.
The government incurred deserved hatred in Ireland as in England by carrying to further lengths the debasement of the coin which had been the disgraceful shift of the spendthrift Henry VIII. A petition sent to the king upon the subject, in setting forth the folly of debasement, stated with an accuracy remarkable for the time the function of the precious metals as a medium of exchange. Wholesale fraud on the part of government was not likely to help the cause of the Reformation.
Beyond the English Pale the change of religion never reached the people. Antagonism of religion was henceforth added to estrangement of race. Protestantism was to be the religion of the conqueror; Catholicism was to be the religion of the conquered. The Pope became a rival in sovereignty to the king of England, claiming the allegiance at once of piety and patriotism. Instead of the torpid clergy of the old native Church, now came upon the scene active emissaries of Rome with the Jesuit, master of intrigue, at their head, to do the joint work of propagandism and rebellion. Presently will appear the crusading soldiery of Catholic Spain.
With Mary comes an interlude of reaction. The sovereignty was not restored to the Pope. Grantees of abbey lands in Ireland, as in England, Catholics though they might be, held fast their prey. But the old ritual was for a time legally revived, and the hand of iconoclasm was stayed. Protestantism was rabbled; but Smithfield fires, the martyr’s spirit being absent, there were none.
A story is told of an envoy sent by Mary to Ireland with a warrant of persecution, whose commission a clever Protestant woman, in whose house he put up by the way, stole and replaced by a pack of cards, so that when the deputy opened the wallet at the council board nothing came forth but the pack of cards with the knave of clubs uppermost.