In the meantime, Sir George Carew was pursuing a policy in Ireland which must of necessity involve the north in fresh troubles.  In his letters to England, he complained that the country ’so swarmed with priests, Jesuits, seminarists, friars, and Romish bishops, that if speedy means were not used to free the kingdom of this wicked rabble, which laboured to draw the subjects’ hearts from their due obedience to their prince, much mischief would burst forth in very short time.  For,’ he said, ’there are here so many of this wicked crew, that are able to disquiet four of the greatest kingdoms in Christendom.  It is high time they were banished from hence, and none to receive, or aid, or relieve them.  Let the judges and officers be sworn to the supremacy; let the lawyers go to the church and show conformity, or not plead at the bar; and then the rest by degrees will shortly follow.’

Carew was succeeded as deputy by Sir Arthur Chichester, descended from a family of great antiquity in Devon.  He had served in Ireland as governor of Carrickfergus, admiral of Lough Neagh, and commander of the Fort of Mountjoy.  Father Meehan describes him as malignant and cruel, with a physiognomy repulsive and petrifying; a Puritan of the most rigid character, utterly devoid of sympathy, solely bent on his own aggrandisement, and seeking it through the plunder and persecution of the Irish chieftains.  That is the Irish view of his character.  How far he deserved it the reader will be able to judge by his acts.  He was evidently a man of strong will, an able administrator and organiser; and he set himself at once, and earnestly, to the establishment of law and order in the conquered territories of the Irish princes.  He sent justices of assize throughout Munster and Connaught, reducing the ‘countries or regions’ into shire-ground, abolishing cuttings, cosheries, spendings, and other customary exactions of the chiefs, by which a complete revolution was effected.  He issued a proclamation, by the king’s order, commanding all the Catholics, under penalties, to assist at the Church of England service; proscribing priests, and other ecclesiastical persons ordained by authority from the see of Home; forbidding parents to send their children to seminaries beyond the seas, or to keep as private tutors other than those licensed by the Protestant archbishop or bishop.  If any priest dared to celebrate mass, he was liable to a fine of 200 marks, and a year’s imprisonment; while to join the Romish Church was to become a traitor, and to be subject to a like penalty.  Churchwardens were to make a monthly report of persons absent from church, and to whet the zeal of wardens and constables, for each conviction of offending parties, they were to have a reward of forty shillings, to be levied out of the recusant’s estate and goods.  Catholics might escape these penalties by quitting the country, and taking the oath of abjuration, by which they bound themselves to abjure the land and realm of James, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, to hasten towards a certain port by the most direct highway, to diligently seek a passage, and tarry there but one flood and ebb.  According to one form, quoted by Mr. Meehan, the oath concluded thus:  ’And, unless I can have it (a passage) in such a place, I will go every day into the sea up to my knees, essaying to pass over, so God me help and His holy judgment.’