complaints of the decay of piety and the increase of immorality, epitomizes the state of the country thus:  “I never saw the land so far out of good order."[401] Pages might be filled with such details; but the subject shall be dismissed with a brief notice of the three props of the Reformation and the King’s supremacy in Ireland.  These were Dr. Browne of Dublin, Dr. Staples of Meath, and Dr. Bale of Ossory.  The latter writing of the former in 1553, excuses the corruption of his own reformed clergy, by stating that “they would at no hand obey; alleging for their vain and idle excuse, the lewd example of the Archbishop of Dublin, who was always slack in things pertaining to God’s glory.”  He calls him “an epicurious archbishop, a brockish swine, and a dissembling proselyte,” and accuses him in plain terms of “drunkenness and gluttony.”  Dr. Browne accuses Dr. Staples of having preached in such a manner, “as I think the three-mouthed Cerberus of hell could not have uttered it more viperously.”  And Dr. Mant, the Protestant panegyrist of the Reformation and the Reformers, admits that Dr. Bale was guilty of “uncommon warmth of temperament”—­a polite appellation for a most violent temper; and of “unbecoming coarseness”—­a delicate definement of a profligate life.  His antecedents were not very creditable.  After flying from his convent in England, he was imprisoned for preaching sedition in York and London.  He obtained his release by professing conformity to the new creed.  He eventually retired to Canterbury, after his expulsion from Kilkenny by the Catholics, and there he died, in 1563.

[Illustration:  SCULPTURES AT DEVENISH.]

[Illustration:  BOSS ISLAND.]

FOOTNOTES: 

[380] Persecution.—­Smith’s Ireland Hist. and Statis. vol. i. p. 327.

[381] Doom.—­See The Earls of Kildare, vol. i. p. 106, for Wolsey’s reasons for not removing him from the Viceroyalty, notwithstanding his dislike.

[382] Ally.—­He was charged with having written a letter to O’Carroll of Ely, in which he advised him to keep peace with the Pale until a Deputy should come over, and then to make war on the English.  The object of this advice is not very clear.

[383] Salus Populi.—­There is a copy of this book in MS. in the British Museum.  The name of the author is not known.

[384] Letter.—­The deposition accusing Kildare is printed in the “State Papers,” part iii. p. 45.  The following is an extract from the translation which it gives of his letter to O’Carroll.  The original was written in Irish:  “Desiring you to kepe good peas to English men tyll an English Deputie come there; and when any English Deputie shall come thydder, doo your beste to make warre upon English men there, except suche as bee towardes mee, whom you know well your silf.”