d with
Henry'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."

[Sidenote: Ireland and the Supremacy]

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