Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/557

 1576.] THE DESMOND REBELLION. 537 the Pale, the best managed, as he affirmed it to be, in all Ireland, and therefore conveying, in the most strik- ing form, the lesson on which he wished to insist. There were in Meath, he said, two hundred and twenty- four benefices, of which one hundred and five belonged to the Crown. In these hundred and five parishes there was not a single resident clergyman. The roofs of the churches had fallen in, the windows were broken, the doors were off their hinges. No effort had been made to provide educated Protestant minis- ters. A curate, whose duties were distributed between three or four parishes, went occasionally through the form of what he called a service. He had been a priest in the Roman times, and so far as he was anything he was a priest still ; but in reality he was nothing better than ' an Irish rogue.' l The parishes in the hands of 1 It has been stated with much positiveness, that the Reformed liturgy, either in English or Latin, was in use in Ireland, and the Re- formed religion taught at the begin- ning of the reign of Elizabeth. Besides the memorable letter of Sid- ney, other evidence survives on this curious subject which cannot be im- pugned. In the year 1584, eight years therefore after Sidney's re- monstrance, the prebendaries of St Patrick in Dublin wrote thus to the council : ' There is not one in that land which can or will preach the gospel, four bishops and the preben- daries of St Patrick only excepted. There is an infinite number of im- propriated churches in Ireland, all being in her Majesty's hands or her farmers'. There is not in any one impropviation a preacher there is scant a minister to be found among them, but rather a company of Irish rogues, and Romish priests teaching nothing but traitorous practices, all in a manner enemies by profession to God's true religion. This comes of the covetousness of her Majesty's farmers, who for the most part allow not the ministers above forty shillings or three pounds by the year, and therefore seeketh a priest that will serve his cure the cheapest, without regard to person or quality, and then this curate to make his stipend as he may live upon it, travelleth like a lackey to three or