and he has no doubt, that “within a short time they will be reduced to good conformity.”  He concludes:  “And this course of reformation, the sooner it is begun the better it will prosper; and the longer it is deferred, the more dangerous it will be.”  When remember that such words were written, and such deeds were enacted, by the head of the Protestant Church in Ireland, and sanctioned by the head of the Protestant Church in England, they may surely be content to allow modern controversialists the benefit of their pleasant dream that Catholic bishops conformed.  If they had conformed to such doctrines and such practice, it can scarcely be seen what advantage the Anglican Establishment could gain from their parentage.

Seven years later, when the same prelate found that the more the Church was persecuted the more she increased, he wrote to advise pacification:  “The rebels are increased, and grown insolent.  I see no other cure for this cursed country but pacification, [he could not help continuing] until, hereafter, when the fury is passed, her Majesty may, with more convenience, correct the heads of those traitors."[414] The prelate was ably seconded by the Lord Deputy.  Even Sir John Perrot, who has the name of being one of the most humane of these Governors, could not refrain from acts of cruelty where Catholics were concerned.  On one occasion he killed fifty persons, and brought their heads home in triumph to Kilmallock, where he arranged them as a trophy round the cross in the public square.  In 1582 he advised her Majesty “that friars, monks, Jesuits, priests, nuns, and such like vermin, who openly uphold the Papacy, should be executed by martial law."[415] The English officers seem to have rivalled each other in acts of cruelty.  One is said to have tied his victim to a maypole, and then punched out his eyes with his thumbs.[416] Others amused themselves with flinging up infants into the air, and catching them on the points of their swords.[417] Francis Crosby, the deputy of Leix, used to hang men, women, and children on an immense tree which grew before his door, without any crime being imputed to them except their faith, and then to watch with delight how the unhappy infants hung by the long hair of their martyred mothers.[418]

Father Dominic a Rosario, the author of The Geraldines, scarcely exceeded truth when he wrote these memorable words:  “This far famed English Queen has grown drunk on the blood of Christ’s martyrs; and, like a tigress, she has hunted down our Irish Catholics, exceeding in ferocity and wanton cruelty the emperors of pagan Rome.”  We shall conclude this painful subject for the present with an extract from O’Sullivan Beare:  “All alarm from the Irish chieftains being ceased, the persecution was renewed with all its horrors.  A royal order was promulgated, that all should renounce the Catholic faith, yield up the priests, receive from the heretical minister the morality and tenets of the Gospel.