actised. He adds:
"So far hath that policy, or rather lack of policy, in keeping
dissensions among them, prevailed, as now, albeit all that are alive
would become honest and live in quiet, yet there are not left alive, in
those two provinces, the twentieth person necessary to inhabit the
same." Sidney at once proceeded to remedy the evils under which the
unfortunate country groaned, by enacting other evils. We shall leave him
to give his own account of his proceedings. He writes thus, in one of
his official despatches: "I write not the names of each particular
varlet that hath died since I arrived, as well by the ordinary course of
the law, as of the martial law, as flat fighting with them, when they
would take food without the good will of the giver, for I think it no
stuff worthy the loading of my letters with; but I do assure you the
number of them is great, and some of the best, and the rest tremble. For
most part they fight for their dinner, and many of them lose their heads
before they be served with supper. Down they go in every corner, and
down they shall go, God willing."[426]

When we remember Sidney's own description of the desolation of country,
and read of the fashion in which he remedied that desolation we cannot
wonder at the piteous account given a few years later by the English
poet; for who could escape the threefold danger of "ordinary law,
martial law, and flat fighting." Nor was the state of religious affairs
at all more promising. The Deputy describes the kingdom as "overwhelmed
by the most deplorable immorality and irreligion;"[427] the Privy
Council, in their deliberations, gives a similar account. "As for
religion, there was but small appearance of it; the churches uncovered,
and the clergy scattered."[428] An Act of Parliament was then passed to
remedy the evils which Acts of Parliament had created. In the preamble
(11th Elizabeth, sess. iii. cap. 6) it mentions the disorders which
Sidney had found, and complains of "the great abuse of the clergy in
getting into the said dignities by force, simony, friendship, and other
corrupt means, to the great overthrow of God's holy Church;" and for
remedy, the Act authorizes the _Lord Deputy_ to appoint, for ten years,
to all the ecclesiastical benefices of these provinces, with the
exception of the cathedral churches of Waterford, Limerick, Cork, and
Cashel.

But it was soon evident that Acts of Parliament could not effect
ecclesiastical reform, though