The million-peopled city
Garwood, John
1853
The Reformation in Ireland.
The Irish had succeeded in freeing themselves to a con- | |
250 | siderable extent when the Reformation in England took place. Until our conquest of , in the reign of ., , like England, had retained much inde- pendence of , and appointed her own bishops. This privilege was, however, afterwards ceded by succeeding English Kings, who did not care to sacrifice for what they were jealous of for England, and which established the connexion of more closely than that of England with , even although had not himself upheld the superadded doctrines and practices of which the Reformation again removed. The Pope soon began to tax heavily, which created great distress; and the bishops appointed by him were equally rapacious and intole- rant, in imitation of their spiritual head. The consequence was, that, at the time of the Reformation, " whatever pre- tensions may have been justly advanced by , in pre- vious ages, to the title of ' the island of saints,' an examina- tion of its subsequent condition shows that its profession of Christianity had become such as to preclude its continued claim to that appellation, and that it was weighed down by a burden of corruption and error." |
" It was by the abrogation of the Papal supremacy and the assertion of the Sovereign's right to the undivided dominion over all his subjects, as well ecclesiastical as civil, that the first advance was made towards the reformation of religion,-the providence of God converting the counsels of the Monarch, for the maintenance of his own royal preroga- tive, into the means of purifying and renovating his Church. King Henry having succeeded in causing his supremacy in the to be 'recognised by the clergy and authorized by Parliament,'[1] was desirous of establishing the like supremacy in the Church of , 'forasmuch as was depending and belonging justly to the Imperial | |
251 | Crown of England.[2] "' " [3] * The Archbishopric of being then vacant, the King appointed to it , a confirmed Protestant. The numerous difficulties with which this exercise of authority was accompanied are thus enume- rated by Mant:- |
" The general condition of the country; the disunion, dis- sensions, and mutual jealousies which prevailed among dif- ferent classes of its inhabitants, especially between those of different national origin or parentage; the hereditary anti- pathy in the descendants of the earlier inhabitants against the Sovereign, as not of indigenous extraction, nor a native of the soil; their prevalent disposition to indulge in resist- ance to his authority, and to seek assistance from foreign powers to support them in their resistance; the remoteness of their situation, which rendered them less accessible to the visitations of the King's power, and less fearful of his indig- nation; their continual intestine agitations, which had indis- posed the mind, and afforded little convenient occasion for speculative inquiries and for intellectual or spiritual improve- ment; the absence of any pervious extraordinary impulse for directing the mind to seek for knowledge, and the want of literary institutions for giving efficacy to the impulse, if it had existed; the people's habitual subjection to their clergy, and the ignorance of the clergy themselves, and their blind and superstitious devotion to their ecclesiastical superiors; the long and deep-rooted prepossession in favour of one who had pretended to supreme authority in the Church for 3 or 4 centuries, and whose character they had been accus- tomed to venerate as all but divine; and, with all this, a persuasion of the fact, that the earliest English King who had claimed dominion in derived his claim, in the | |
252 | first place, from a Papal grant, so that the royal authority, however it may have been afterwards upheld, had been originally, as they were taught to believe, founded on a power which it now sought to displace and supersede: these and the like impediments in the state and prepossession of the inhabitants co-operated with the zeal of the Primate in obstructing the inroad which the dominion of the Sovereign was attempting to make on that of the Pope." [4] |
An Act of Parliament was passed at this time, directing that spiritual promotions were to be given " only to such as could speak English, unless, after 4 proclamations in the next market-town, such could not be had." All who were appointed had also to take oath that they would teach the English language and preach only in that tongue, which rendered the proceedings still more unpopular. | |
Footnotes: [1] English Statute, 26 Henry VIII., c. 1. [2] Irish Statute, 26 Henry VIII., c. 5. [3] Bp. Mant's " History of the Church of Ireland," vol. i., pp. 105-7. [4] Vol. i., pp. 108, 109. |
