least four prelates of dioceses without the pale.

The native chieftains made no more scruple than the lords of the council
in renouncing obedience to the Bishop of Rome, and in acknowledging
Henry as the "supreme head of the Church of England and Ireland under
Christ." There was none of the resistance to the dissolution of the
abbeys which had been witnessed on the other side of the channel, and
the greedy chieftains showed themselves perfectly willing to share the
plunder of the Church.

But the results of the measure were fatal to the little culture and
religion which even the past centuries of disorder had spared. Such as
they were, the religious houses were the only schools that Ireland
contained. The system of vicars, so general in England, was rare in
Ireland; churches in the patronage of the abbeys were for the most part
served by the religious themselves, and the dissolution of their houses
suspended public worship over large districts of the country. The
friars, hitherto the only preachers, and who continued to labor and
teach in spite of the efforts of the government, were thrown necessarily
into a position of antagonism to the English rule.

Had the ecclesiastical changes which were forced on the country ended
here, however, in the end little harm would have been done. But in
England the breach with Rome, the destruction of the monastic orders,
and the establishment of the supremacy had aroused in a portion of the
people itself a desire for theological change which Henry shared and was
cautiously satisfying. In Ireland the spirit of the Reformation never
existed among the people at all. They accepted the legislative measures
passed in the English Parliament without any dream of theological
consequences, or of any change in the doctrine or ceremonies of the
Church. Not a single voice demanded the abolition of pilgrimages or the
destruction of images or the reform of public worship.

The mission of Archbishop Browne in 1535 "for the plucking down of idols
and extinguishing of idolatry" was a first step in the long effort of
the English government to force a new faith on a people who to a man
clung passionately to their old religion. Browne's attempts at "tuning
the pulpits" were met by a sullen and significant opposition. "Neither
by gentle exhortation," the Archbishop wrote to Cromwell, "nor by
evangelical instruction, neither by oath of them solemnly taken nor yet
by threats of sharp correction, may I pe