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 foreigners or Irishmen brought up under foreign influence, and who, like Malachy, 'drew no more from the country of their birth than the fishes of the sea draw from their native element.' Their sympathies were with Henry more than with any Irish ruler. Answering to the king's summons, they assembled in synod at Cashel in 1172, and passed enactments decreeing uniformity between the Irish and the English Churches.

Only one thing remained to be done. It was to destroy those establishments where the old Irish monastic system remained still in force. According to the Romish view, these places were well described by Pope Adrian as 'nurseries of vice.' They kept alive a spirit of opposition to the innovations of the new-comers; and they had with them the hearts of the people—a thing in which the new-comers had to a great extent failed. As long as they remained, the decrees of synods were made only to be broken.

If Henry had been able to establish a vigorous control over the whole of the island, this work could have been easily and promptly accomplished. But the English over-lordship was for a long time only a moderate extension of the old Danish settlements. The allegiance rendered by the native kings who swore fealty to the English sovereign, was very like the allegiance which in former times they gave to their own ardrigh or chief king; that is to say, it was a variable, and often a negative quantity. Within certain circumscribed limits English law reigned supreme, and in these districts the native establishments were ruthlessly destroyed. New monasteries were founded on the ancient sites, and in some places it was made a rule that no Irishman should for the future be admitted as an inmate. These proceedings caused bitter hatred on the part