Page:The ancient Irish church.djvu/191

 CHAPTER XX.

more remains to be said. We have seen that the two parties continued for a time to exist side by side. Envy, bitterness and bigotry remained long after every other distinction had passed away. Strange as it may seem, the enmity between Protestants and Roman Catholics, which is still characteristic of some parts of the country, is historically connected with this bitterness of feeling which once existed between the Irish and the Romish Church.

If we are to pay attention to the foreign sources of information which have come down to us, we must believe that the Irish Church had sunk so low that there was nothing to regret in its final extinction. Immorality and incest are said to have been openly practised in the land; and it must be admitted that several authorities bear the same testimony. Nothing in the native sources of information, however, would lead us to conclude that there was the least truth in the charge. It is admitted, too, on all hands that it was a question of morality which first gave the Anglo-Normans a footing in Ireland, and that it was they who supported the adulterer, and not the Irish. There is also reason to suspect that all the authorities who charge the Irish with immoral practices derived their information from the same source, and that they represent, 187