The Reformed Doctrines’ Little Progress
Amongst the laity the opposition to the Reformed doctrines, instead of diminishing, increased as time went on. At first, when the externals of worship had been but little changed, the common people had not fully understood that a new religion, condemned by the Pope, was being forced on them by the ” Saxon ” Government, but when they came to realise this, resistance became general. The towns, in which the majority of the inhabitants were of English blood, were no more obedient than were the rural districts. Waterford, always renowned for its ” loyalty,” became no less so for its ” Popery.” ” At Waterford the Gospel is abhorred; the Church deserted; sacraments eschewed; Masses in every corner ; beads carried openly; images set up at the house doors and worshipped; friars maintained,” says the (Reformed) Bishop Middleton (1580).
All classes were equally implicated. Judges and jurymen would not take the oaths; in Armagh no one could be found willing to become a Justice of the Peace, for fear that the said oaths would be tendered to him. When, in Dublin, there was a Thanksgiving service for the Armada victory (1588), few people attended. Archbishop Adam Loftus reports (1565) that the chief gentlemen of the Pale go to Mass. Sometimes, indeed, the authorities have more satisfactory news to tell. The Lord Deputy (Fitzwilliam) writes that 2,000 people assisted at a solemn Thanksgiving sermon in Cork (1589). But these instances are rare and cannot outweigh the strong testimony that, in general, no progress whatever was being made in the propagation of the new faith.
The Court of Wards took charge of the children of the nobility and gentry, when either they were left minors at their father’s death, or when they had passed into the hands of the Government as hostages. It placed them in English schools where they were educated as Protestants, and by this means a certain amount of progress was made in altering the religion of some of the chief families of Ireland. But still a good many of the wards, when they attained manhood, reverted to the faith of their ancestors. At the end of the reign, of twenty-five Irish temporal peers, nineteen were Catholics.
