Like his friend Laud, then Archbishop of Canterbury, he desired general uniformity. In order to attain it, he summoned a meeting of Convocation, and directed it to supersede the ” Confession of Faith,” passed in 1615, and to substitute the English Articles of 1562 (see Chap. IV). When the bishops and clergy hesitated to comply with this order, he called certain of them before him, and so violently rated and threatened them that in terror they submitted, as did the whole body of Convocation subsequently, so that the desired Articles were passed (1634).

To maintain what he conceived to be proper discipline amongst the clergy, he erected on the king’s order alone, and therefore illegally, a Court of High Commission to deal with ecclesiastical offences. The Connacht Plantation Scheme.—In spite of all Wentworth’« efforts, the Irish revenue was far from yielding the sums which he desired, and he began to consider other methods for obtaining from the country money for the royal Treasury.

Attempts to Spread the Reformation in Ireland : George Browne Appointed Archbishop of Dublin.—In 1535 Henry appointed a Commission to begin the enforcement in Ireland of the Reformation, as it soon came to be termed. At its head was George Browne, formerly an English Augustinian friar, but who had been recently chosen Archbishop of Dublin by the King, and consecrated for that office by Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, without any authority from the Pope. The new Archbishop was tactless and uncharitable, domineering when he dared, but subservient to meanness when it suited him to be so. He seemed anxious only to obey the tyrannical master who, as he reminded him, could as easily pull him down as before he had elevated him, and we look in vain in his utterances for any trace of religious zeal.

As might be expected, Browne achieved in his episcopal labours no success worth mentioning. Of the bishops, only Staples of Meath supported him, while the clergy, with few exceptions, slighted his authority, and refused to declare in their churches ” the just title of our illustrious prince ” at his command. With Grey he quarrelled violently, and his letters to England are full of complaints of the Deputy.