Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/182

 162 RElGtf OF ELIZABETH. |CH. 42. if it did not yield beyond the pay 500^. a year. The companies appeared in the pay books as having their full complement of a hundred men. The actual number rarely exceeded sixty. The soldiers followed the ex- ample of their leaders, and robbed and ground the pea- santry. Each and all had commenced their evil ways, when the Government itself was the first and worst offender. A few more years perhaps months of such doings would have made an end of English dominion. Sir Thomas Wroth described the Pale on his arrival as a weltering sea of confusion ' the captains out of credit/ ' every man seeking his own, and none that which was Christ's ; ' ' few in all the land reserved from bowing the knee to Baal ; ' ' the laws for religion mere words.' l Something too much of theological anxiety impaired Wroth's usefulness. He wished to begin at the outside with reforming the creed. The thing needful was to reform the heart and to bring back truth and honesty. Wroth therefore was found unequal to the work ; and the purification of the Pale was left to Arnold a hard, iron, pitiless man, careful of things and careless oi phrases, untroubled with delicacy, and impervious to Irish ' enchantments.' The account books were dragged to light ; where iniquity in high places was registered in inexorable figures. The hands of Sir Henry Ratcliffe, the brother of Sussex, were not found clean. Arnold 1 Sir Thomas Wroth to Cecil, April 16: Irish M88.
 * the soldiers' mutinous, the English Government hated ;