espite in the religious changes
which he was forcing on the conquered dependency; but with the accession
of Edward the Sixth the system of change was renewed with all the energy
of Protestant zeal. In 1551 the bishops were summoned before the deputy,
Sir Anthony St. Leger, to receive the new English Liturgy which, though
written in a tongue as strange to the native Irish as Latin itself, was
now to supersede the Latin service-book in every diocese. The order was
the signal for an open strife. "Now shall every illiterate fellow read
mass," burst forth Dowdall, the Archbishop of Armagh, as he flung out of
the chamber with all but one of his suffragans at his heels. Archbishop
Browne of Dublin on the other hand was followed in his profession of
obedience by the Bishops of Meath, Limerick, and Kildare. The
government however was far from quailing before the division of the
episcopate. Dowdall was driven from the country; and the vacant sees
were filled with Protestants, like Bale, of the most advanced type. But
no change could be wrought by measures such as these in the opinions of
the people themselves. The new episcopal reformers spoke no Irish, and
of their English sermons not a word was understood by the rude kernes
around the pulpit. The native priests remained silent. "As for preaching
we have none," reports a zealous Protestant, "without which the ignorant
can have no knowledge." The prelates who used the new Prayer Book were
simply regarded as heretics. The Bishop of Meath was assured by one of
his flock that, "if the country wist how, they would eat you."
Protestantism had failed to wrest a single Irishman from his older
convictions, but it succeeded in uniting all Ireland against the Crown.
The old political distinctions which had been produced by the conquest
of Strongbow faded before the new struggle for a common faith. The
population within the Pale and without it became one, "not as the Irish
nation," it has been acutely said, "but as Catholics." A new sense of
national identity was found in the identity of religion. "Both English
and Irish begin to oppose your Lordship's orders," Browne had written to
Cromwell at the very outset of these changes, "and to lay aside their
national old quarrels."

[Sidenote: The Peace of Passau.]

Oversea indeed the perils of the new government passed suddenly away.
Charles had backed Mary's resistance with threats, and as he moved
forward to that mastery of the world to which