ry's policy of establishing a national church, remained
opposed to any change in faith. But the articles had been drawn up by
Henry's own hand, and all whisper of opposition was hushed. Bishops,
abbots, clergy, not only subscribed to them, but carried out with
implicit obedience the injunctions which put their doctrine roughly into
practice; and the failure of the Pilgrimage of Grace in the following
autumn ended all thought of resistance among the laity.

But Cromwell found a different reception for his reforms when he turned
to extend them to the sister-island. The religious aspect of Ireland was
hardly less chaotic than its political aspect had been. Ever since
Strongbow's landing, there had been no one Irish church, simply because
there had been no one Irish nation. There was not the slightest
difference in doctrine or discipline between the Church without the pale
and the Church within it. But within the pale the clergy were
exclusively of English blood and speech, and without it they were
exclusively of Irish. Irishmen were shut out by law from abbeys and
churches within the English boundary; and the ill-will of the natives
shut out Englishmen from churches and abbeys outside it.

As to the religious state of the country, it was much on a level with
its political condition. Feuds and misrule told fatally on
ecclesiastical discipline. The bishops were political officers, or hard
fighters, like the chiefs around them; their sees were neglected, their
cathedrals abandoned to decay. Through whole dioceses the churches lay
in ruins and without priests. The only preaching done in the country was
done by the begging friars, and the results of the friars' preaching
were small. "If the King do not provide a remedy," it was said in 1525,
"there will be no more Christentie than in the middle of Turkey."

Unfortunately the remedy which Henry provided was worse than the
disease. Politically Ireland was one with England, and the great
revolution which was severing the one country from the papacy extended
itself naturally to the other. The results of it indeed at first seemed
small enough. The supremacy, a question which had convulsed England,
passed over into Ireland to meet its only obstacle in a general
indifference. Everybody was ready to accept it without a thought of the
consequences. The bishops and clergy within the pale bent to the King's
will as easily as their fellows in England, and their example was
followed by at