ELIZABETH'S REFORMATION IN IRELAND.

IT now remains for us to notice the measures employed during the reign of Elizabeth to propagate the "reformed" religion in Ireland. One would naturally suppose that religion had been lost sight of amid all the slaughter, devastation, and hideous cruelty which characterized this reign. But no; the propagation of the Protestant religion was actually one of the pretences put forward by the English government for its "vigorous policy" toward the Irish! Protestantism and persecution went hand in hand; and while Grey, Carew, and Mountjoy were burning and devastating in Munster, Leinster, and Ulster, the zealous propagandists of the new religion were laboring to extend their creed by means of torture and cruelty. Many Catholic bishops and priests were put to death during Lord Grey's administration, for exercising their spiritual functions; some were hanged and quartered; others were beaten about the heads with stones, till their brains gushed out; others were murdered in cold blood, sometimes at the

very altar; others had their bowels torn open, their nails and fingers torn off, and were thus painfully destroyed by slow torture, their remains being afterward treated with the most revolting indignity. The most common method, however, of executing the sentence of the law upon these Catholic recusants was as follows: They were first hanged up, and then cut down alive; they were next dismembered, ripped up, and had their bowels burned before their faces; after which, they were beheaded and quartered; the whole process lasting above half an hour, during which the unfortunate victims remained conscious and writhing under the agonies inflicted on them by their Protestant persecutors.

While the Catholic clergy were thus treated, the Protestants who had been created teachers of the State-religion by Act of Parliament, were notoriously profligate, lewd, simoniacal, slothful, and intemperate, even according to the testimony of English Protestant writers themselves. They were the refuse of the English Church—we had almost said, of England-of whom nothing else could be made but Irish parsons. They went to Ireland for gain, for tithes, for plunder; caring nothing for the souls of the flock, and watching over them rather with the care of the wolf than that of the shep

herd. The Irish Church was, in fact, henceforward looked upon as a mere refuge for hungry adventurers from England, who, born within the atmosphere of gentility, were too idle to work; but were not beneath extracting from the hard earnings of the poor the means of profligate luxury and riotous extravagance. What was the consequence? That the great body of the Irish people, in whose eyes Protestantism had become identified with everything that was odious and intolerable, clung to their ancient faith, and to the native pastors who had been faithful to them for centuries.

Such was the reign of "good Queen Bess" in Ireland one of the darkest and bloodiest passages to be found in history. In her time, almost the entire country was reduced to the condition of a desert, and at least half the entire population perished by famine or the sword. Nearly forty rebellions occurred during the half century that she occupied the throne-many of which rebellions were stirred up and fomented merely for the purpose of rapine, confiscation, and plunder. Famine and pestilence were then openly advocated as the only pacificators of Ireland, by one who is known in England as the most elegant and graceful of her early poets. In the Irish mind, however, Edmund Spenser is associated, not with the

Faery Queen, but with the royal vixen of England, of whose cruelty and ambition he was found the unscrupulous advocate. Sir Walter Raleigh, too, the chivalrous and polite, is known to Ireland only as the instrument of ruthless tyranny and barbarity. Elizabeth's entire reign, indeed, was a continued series of disgusting cruelties and crimes. Famine and devastation were the "good queen's' handmaidens; the rack, the gibbet, and the dungeon, her Protestant missionaries. And thus, at last, was Ireland "pacified"; and, after a contest of 440 years, brought under the dominion of the crown of England. The cost to Elizabeth was most serious. More than £3,000,000 sterling was expended on the conquest, with an incalculable number of her bravest soldiers. And after all, as the queen was assured by her own servants, "little was left in Ireland for her majesty to reign over but carcasses and ashes"!

The "Reformation from Popery" was also “completed" in Elizabeth's reign. The history of this movement in Ireland is, throughout, one of merciless persecution, of wholesale spoliation, and of murderous cruelty. The instruments by which it was accomplished were despotic monarchs, unprincipled ministers, a rapacious aristocracy, and venal and slavish parliaments. It sprung from

brutal passion, was nurtured in selfish and corrupt policy, and was consummated in bloodshed and horrid crime. "The work," observes a contemporary, "which had been begun by Henry, the murderer of his wives, was continued by Somerset, the murderer of his brother, and completed by Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest." Such was the "Reformation," and such were its instruments; and the consequences which flowed from it, at least in Ireland, were of a kindred character for centuries to come.

SAMUEL SMILES,

History of Ireland and the Irish People, under the Government of England.