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.}

The custom of sending Irish youths to the Continent for education had already begun in the reign of Elizabeth. It was partially with a view of checking this practice that Dublin University (consisting of one college only, ” Trinity College “) was founded by Elizabeth in 1593. It was, at first, liberally subscribed to by Catholics, but, as it soon appeared that the Reformed doctrines were to be taught, and attendance at the Reformed services was made compulsory on the students, it did not achieve its object.

The Irish gentry represented to the Pope the difficulties of their case. They must either send their sons to the heretic university, or leave them without higher education altogether. In consequence of this, the Sovereign Pontiffs encouraged, and sometimes themselves assisted in, the foundation of colleges for the education of Irish youths in the different countries of Europe. The first, and one of the most important, was the Royal College of Salamanca, founded by Philip II. Others followed in rapid succession, at Lisbon, Louvain, Antwerp, Rome and elsewhere. They were all of a university type, and the students were rarely admitted before the age of fifteen or sixteen. Regarding the education of Catholic girls during this period, we have little information.

Already, in the reign of Henry VIII (1537), an Act had been passed for the establishment of Primary Schools in every parish in Ireland, and another Act, thirty-three years later, ordered that a free Grammar School be opened in the chief town of each diocese. The object in both cases was, of course, the spreading of the Reformation and of the English language amongst the children. Of the new Grammar Schools, however, We hear little, and of the Primary Schools scarcely anything, till a period much later than that with which we are now dealing. In 1612, King James, by a special decree, assigned certain portions of the confiscated lands of Ulster for the foundation and endowment of Royal Free Schools in various parts of the province.

The students of Trinity College, Dublin, were almost exclusively the sons of those who had adopted the Reformed faith, except in the case of Government wards, who were placed there by the guardians assigned them, to be ” maintained and educated in the English religion and habits.”

In the more remote districts, some of the old Celtic schools, where poetry and history were taught, and where the Irish manuscripts, which the English authorities sought to destroy, were diligently copied, still struggled on. In them were trained poets and seanachies, and men versed in all the old native learning for which Ireland had once been so famous, but which her new rulers, and many of her own unworthy sons, now despised.