Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/556

 536 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 62, that the old creed had been shaken to its base, while carelessness or atheism were revelling among its ruins. In the three Irish provinces the religious houses had fallen to the chiefs. About half of them were still oc- cupied by friars. The lands were annexed to the patri- monies of the O'iNeils, the Desmonds, the O'Briens, and the O'Donnells, who allowed the old occupants to re- main in possession ; but the monks had lost for the most part even the outward show of religion, and were little better than organized bands of freebooters. In the Pale the suppression had been complete. The houses were destroyed or given to laymen. The benefices which had been attached to them were impropriated to the Crown, and farmed at the best prices which specu- lators would offer for them, the Queen being eager only to wring from Ireland some driblet of revenue to meet its enormous expenses, and troubling herself apparently not the least about the spiritual condition of the people. But the Irish were constitutionally religious. They could not long remain without some kind of spiritual sustenance, and a strong Catholic reaction was now set- ting in. Young men of family were going to Louvain, or to the Spanish universities, to study, and were re- turning filled with the passions of the counter- reforma- tion. The Irish dioceses began to be of concern to the Pope, and the sees, as they fell vacant, to be supplied by Papal nominees. So dangerous a movement could be encountered only by the teaching of the so-called purer creed, and Sidney felt it his duty to lay before his mistress the condition of one single diocese inside