The Established Church the Deputy regarded as a State Department, to be strictly controlled by the Government, but at the same time to be maintained in such a position of dignity and honour as would command the respect of the people. 

Anything likely to conflict with this  aim, such as absenteeism or neglect of their duties on the part of the clergy ; the alienation of episcopal lands ;   carelessness regarding the conduct of church ceremonies or the condition of the churches themselves, met with severe rebuke, and at times sharp punishment, at his hands.   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.

A new Plantation appeared to him about the most feasible expedient to which he could resort, and Connacht the most suitable part of Ireland for such a Plantation. The compact made by Sir John Perrott with the chief Connacht land-owners in 1585 has already been mentioned (Book IV, Chap. XIII). 

Most of the land-owners had agreed to the conditions, and the rent had been paid, though doubtless not very regularly. Unfortunately, whether by accident or design, the legal formalities had not all been complied with. In 1616, this point was raised, and James I undertook, in return for a ” gift ” of £3,000 from the Connacht gentry concerned, to have the omission supplied. He received the money, but again there was a mistake ; the Court of Chancery did not enrol the grants. In 1620, and again in 1625, mention is made casually of a project for planting Connacht, but nothing was done till Wentworth’s day.
Only by going back several centuries could a pretext for the intended spoliation be found. In the thirteenth century, Henry III had granted about three-fourths of the province of Connacht to Richard De Burgo. The lands were then ruled by native chiefs and no more than a portion of them ever came under the actual control of either De Burgo or his successor, Walter, Earl of Ulster.

 In 1333, William, the third Earl, was murdered, and left as his sole heir an infant daughter, Elizabeth, who afterwards married Lionel of Clarence, third son of Edward III. Their descendants succeeded to the English throne (1461), and the Connacht lands were therefore regarded as merged in the Crown possessions. In point of fact, however, Elizabeth De Burgo had never actually held any of these territories, for, after her father’s death, they had been seized by junior De Burgos and others.

Neither during her lifetime nor afterwards was any attempt made to recover the Connacht lands of the De Burgos, though occasional allusions are made in State papers, and once in an Act of Parliament (1523), to the Crown claim. The claim, as has been explained, could only extend to a part of the province, and the 1585 ” Composition ” and James I’s agreement in 1616 to confirm it, would seem to show that the English monarchs themselves had ceased to regard it as valid. In addition to this, the ” Grace ” promised by Charles I, that a continuous occupation of land for 60 years might be cited as barring any Crown claim, should, in honour at least, have been considered as disposing of this one, resurrected after a slumber of over three centuries.