Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/558

 OF ELIZABETH. [CH. the Anglo-Irish owners were in scarcely less disorder. And if this was the state of the best governed county in the realm, Sir Henry left the Queen to infer the condition of the rest. The children were growing up unbaptized, the churches were falling to pieces, ' the archbishopricks and bishopricks pilled and ruined, partly by the prelates themselves, partly by the poten- tates, their noisome neighbours.' * The Crown was most immediately to blame. Sir Henry entreated that in the Crown benefices at least care should be taken to provide competent ministers. Elizabeth listened, but did nothing. It was no policy of hers that two opposite creeds should grow up to- gether to generate hatreds and quarrels ; and since she four churches in the morning, every church a mile or two miles asunder, and there once a week readeth them only a gospel in Latin, and so away, and so the poor people are deluded.' -MSS. Ireland, December, 1584. Three years later an English re- sident in Ireland writes : 'There is no divine service in the country all the churches are clean down, ruinous, and in great decay. The ministers will not be accounted ministers but priests. They will have no wives. If it would stay there it were well ; but they have harlots, which they make believe it is no sin to live and lie with them, but if they marry they are damned. "With long experience and some extraordinary trial of these fellows, I cannot find whether the most of them love lewd women, cards, dice, or drink best, and when they must of necessity go to church, they carry with them a book in Latin of the Common Prayer, set forth and allowed by her Majesty, but they read little or nothing of it, or can well read it ; but they tell the people a tale of Our Lady, or St Patrick, or some other saint, horrible to be spoken or heard of, and do all they may to dissuade and allure the people from God and their prince, and their due obedience 1o them both, and persuade them to the Devil the Pope.' Andrew Trollope to Walsingham, October 26, 1587: MSS. Ireland. 1 Sir Henry Sidney to the Queen, April 28, 1576 : MSS. Ibid.