Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/326

After Limerick Bishop of Clontarf for more than thirty years was for a long time an imbecile, and his diocese was scandalously managed by a young woman of twenty, whom he had married. Many of the Irish prelates doffed their ecclesiastical character and seem to have been chiefly distinguished for their great drinking powers. "A true Irish bishop," said Archbishop Boulter, with fine irony, "has nothing more to do than to eat, drink, grow fat, rich, and die."

And so the Irish Protestants, no less than the Irish Catholics, were excluded from the highest offices in the service of their country, and in consequence gentlemen were in great distress what to do with their sons. The curse of absenteeism, which lay heavily upon Ireland was thus intensified. Those Englishmen who held sinecure offices in Ireland were absentees as a matter of course, while many of those who held important Irish posts lived in England during a great part of their term of office. But as time went on, more and more of the Irish Protestant gentry became absentees. It was difficult for an Irishman to rise to a high position in the service of Government, and so the position of the Irish landlord possessed little attraction. The evils of absenteeism can hardly be exaggerated. It was a tremendous drain to a poor country to have 314