60 The Reformation. 



Rome herself had confessed with shame the 

 follies and enormities which had disgraced her 

 communion, her votaries in Ireland depended, 

 in their dying hour, on being wrapped in the 

 cowl of St. Francis for their salvation. 



A knowledge of the Gospel had opened the 

 eyes of the people in England to the excesses 

 and abuses of the church of Rome, and pre- 

 pared their minds for a reform in their religious 

 tenets and observances. Foul as was the ele- 

 vated source whence the reformation sprung, 

 the current became purified as it descended 

 among the people, and was soon received and 

 accepted by the nation, as a stream that would 

 fertilize the human mind, and, in the King's 

 assumption of supremacy, extinguish the ful- 

 minating bulls of papal tyranny. At this time, 

 it was by no means difficult to persuade a sub- 

 missive parliament, that whatever laws might be 

 required of them it was their implicit duty to 

 enact : yet did the papal power in Ireland con- 

 tinue unimpeached, the laws considered as little 

 more than a dead letter, and the whole con- 

 tumaciously rejected, notwithstanding the de- 

 clared supremacy of Henry the Eighth. 



Ignorance in Ireland, at this period, seems to 

 nave been regarded in England as a physical 



