e, Catholic as
well as Protestant, a just and impartial administration of the law. No
one in Ireland, he was resolved, should tyrannize except himself.

[Illustration: JACOBUS USSERIUS, ARCHIEPISCOPUS ARMACHANUS, TOTIUS
HIBERNIAE PRIMAS]

He and Laud, the primate, were close allies, and both were bent upon
bringing the Church of Ireland to an absolute uniformity with that of
England, and, with this object, Wentworth set a Court of High Commission
to work to root out the Presbyterian ministers and to suppress, as far
as possible, dissent. The Irish bishops and episcopalian clergy were,
with hardly an exception, Low Churchmen, with a leaning to Calvinism,
and, upon these also his hand was heavy. His regard for the Church by no
means stood in his way either in his dealings with individual churchmen.
He treated the Primate Ussher--one of the most venerated names in all
Irish history--with marked contempt; he rated the Bishop of Killaloe
upon one occasion like a dog, and told him that "he deserved to have his
rochet pulled over his ears;" boasting afterwards, to his correspondent,
of how effectually he had "warmed his old sides."

In another letter to Laud, we get a graphic and rather entertaining
account of his dealings with Convocation. The Lower House, it seems, had
appointed a select committee, which had drawn up a book of canons upon
the lines of what were known as the "Nine Articles of Lambeth."
Wentworth was furious. "Instantly," he says, "I sent for Dean Andrews,
that reverend clerk, who sat, forsooth, in the chair at this committee,
and required him to bring along the aforesaid book of canons; this he
obeyed, ... but when I came to open the book, I confess I was not so
much moved since I came into Ireland. I told him certainly not a Dean of
Limerick, but an Ananias had sat in the chair at that committee, and
sure I was that Ananias had been there in spirit if not in body[10]."

[10] Earl of Stratford's "Letters and Despatches," vol. i. p. 342.

The unhappy Ananias naturally submitted at once to the terrible deputy,
and, although Archbishop Ussher and most of the bishops defended the
attacked canons, Wentworth carried his point by a sheer exercise of
power. Throwing the list of canons already drawn out aside, he drew up
another of his own composition, and forced the Convocation to accept it.
"There were some hot spirits, sons of thunder, amongst them," he tells
Laud boastfully, "who moved that they should petitio