The Government and The Churches

Of the grievances from which the Irish Catholic laity suffered, they appear to have felt none more acutely than the difficulty, under the existing laws, of obtaining a liberal education for their sons. During the reign of Elizabeth, this had also been complained of, but now that the English authority had extended itself over the whole island, the state of the case had become worse. Investigations were made, and schoolmasters who had not conformed to the State religion were ordered to close their schools, however efficient these might be. It is certain that, in this as in other matters, evasions were often practised with success.

The great schools which had long existed in many of the principal towns, as Waterford, Limerick, Galway and Kilkenny, continued to flourish. To what extent they were ” reformed ” it is °ften difficult to say ; certainly, amongst the men trained in them during the later sixteenth and the earlier seventeenth centuries, were found ^{many steadfast champions of Catholicity. In these schools the classical languages, and especially Latin, were the chief subjects of instruction but, in several, Irish, the native tongue, was also cultivated.}

At the time of James I’s accession, the state of the Irish Reformed Church, never since Henry VIII’s day satisfactory, was, owing to the wars and unrest of the last years of Elizabeth’s reign, more unsatisfactory than ever. The King was most anxious to establish order and uniformity, and to correct abuses. Several times he appointed Royal Commissions, to investigate and suggest remedies for the neglect and corruption which nearly everywhere prevailed, but the Commissions could do little beyond making known the extent of the evil. The alienation of the Church lands by the bishops, which had been complained of in the previous reign, continued, and often a prelate, on taking possession of a See, discovered that so much of the land had been disposed of by his predecessors, that little or nothing remained for him to live on.

The inferior clergy were in still worse case. The incomes of many of the so-called ” livings ” were so minute that not even the most frugal housekeeping could make them suffice for the furnishing of the barest necessities ; thus it became necessary for the clergyman to hold several of these offices, and to officiate, or undertake to officiate, in several parishes, in order to be able at all to support himself. The best paid livings, as also the best of the episcopal and archiepiscopal Sees, very frequently went to Englishmen or Scotchmen. In the bestowal of ecclesiastical patronage there was much nepotism.

The Commission of 1607 reports that the family of Meiler McGrath, the Archbishop of Cashel, hold amongst them over 70 livings. The Bishop of Down and Connor has made his brother, who was a tailor, an archdeacon. Protestant livings were, it would seem, sometimes held by Catholic priests, or at least by those who still clung to the old forms and celebrated jvlass ; sometimes too by Catholic laymen.