On the following days the Sessions were held, and criminals judged and ” put to execution.” This progress, ” which equally resembled a gaol delivery and an episcopal visitation, tvherein the Archbishop and hangman played their parts alternately,” can scarcely have produced many sincere conversions.

The Council certainly boasted that eight bishops and two archbishops came before them in Clonmel and took the required oaths, but it is suspicious that neither the names nor the Sees of these bishops are mentioned. They may well have been mere creations of the King. Of bishops of Papal creation who certainly ” conformed ” we know of only five. When the news of their action reached Rome they were ” deposed for heresy,” and their Sees, and those which became vacant by death, were filled up by the Pope in the usual manner. Of the inferior clergy, few within the Pale, and scarcely any outside it, took the Supremacy Oath.