George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 5, 13th edition.

[63] held the ascendant over the Anglo-Norman Irish.

chap. IV.} 1763.

The laws of supremacy and uniformity were adopted, in the words of the English statutes; the common prayer was appointed instead of mass, and was to be read in the English language, or, where that was not known, in the Latin.

The Anglican prelates and priests, divided from the Irish by the insuperable barrier of language, were quartered upon the land, shepherds without sheep, pastors without people; strangers to the inhabitants, wanting not them but theirs. The churches went to ruin; the benefices fell to men who were held as foreigners and heretics, and who had no care for the Irish, but to compel them to pay tithes.¹ The inferior clergy were men of no parts or erudition, and were as immoral as they were illiterate.²

No pains were taken to make converts, except by penal laws; and the Norman-Irish and Celtic-Irish now became nearer to one another, drawn by common sorrows, as well as by a common faith; for ‘the people of that country's birth, of all degrees, were papists, body and soul.’³

The Anglican church in Ireland represented the English interest. Wild and incoherent attempts at self-defence against relentless oppression were followed by the desolation of large tracts of country, new confiscations of land, and a new colonial garrison in the train of the English army. Even the use of parliaments was suspended for seven and twenty years. The accession of James the First, with the counsels