England had become identified with Protestantism and Spain with Catholicism that the Irish became intensely Papal.  On the other hand, the Reformation, as a religious movement, made no headway in Ireland.  It was purely negative and destructive, and emanated from the Government, not from the mass of the people.  The monasteries were destroyed; hence there were no vicars to supply the parish churches, which fell into ruin; the king endeavoured rather to Anglify than to Protestantise the people by sending to them bishops and clergy from England—­but they were mere state officials, not fathers in God; unable even to speak the Irish language; what real preaching there was was done by friars sent from Rome and Madrid.  Henry’s efforts at establishing parish schools were also a total failure.  Had there not been later immigrations from England and Scotland, Irish Protestantism would probably have died out.  Yet it is but fair to state, and to bear in mind, that there was no religious persecution as such in Ireland during the Tudor period.  Elizabeth’s policy was, without making any actual promise of freedom of conscience, to leave the question of religious opinions alone as far as possible.  The real difficulty came from the political nature of the Church of Rome; when the Pope deposed Elizabeth and gave Ireland to Philip of Spain every Irish Roman Catholic had either to be false to his religion or to become a traitor—­in esse or in posse—­to the queen.

When Henry had resolved to do his utmost to bring Ireland to a state of civilization, there were not wanting advisers who urged upon him that his only safe course was absolutely to destroy the whole native population by sword and famine and re-people the vacant lands by immigrants from England.  Such a course would have been quite in accordance with the ideas of the time.  Not thirty years previously, the combined forces of Church and State had pursued the heretic population of the Loise into the mountain fastnesses to which they had fled, and had piled logs of wood at the mouths of the caves in which they had taken refuge, and set them on fire.  Then, when all the unhappy people—­men, women and children, numbering some thousands in all—­had perished, their lands were distributed amongst strangers brought in from a distance to occupy them.  And at a later date—­in the middle of the sixteenth century—­the native inhabitants of the Canary Islands were exterminated by the Spanish Inquisition, and their lands taken by the invading race.  But to Henry it appeared that there was one milder course that might still be possible.  Might not the native chiefs and the degenerate Normans who had shown that their only idea of independency was anarchy yet be brought together as nobles under a strong central government with a Parliament representing not merely the Pale, but all Ireland?  Might not the mass of the people, whose native customs had been well nigh crushed out by civil wars, be persuaded to adopt the law of England?  This was the policy deliberately adopted by Henry and acted on by him during his life.  It is easy for writers living in modern times to sneer at some of the details of his scheme; but it is not so easy for them to point out what other course would have been better; or indeed, whether any other course short of a policy of extermination, would have been possible.