1*76.1 THE DESMOND REBELLION. 533 three or four bishops of the provinces of Cashel and luam, which bishops, albeit they were Papists, sub- mitted themselves to the Queen's Majesty, acknow- ledging that they held their temporal patrimony of her Majesty, and desiring to be inducted into their eccle- siastical prelacies. 7 1 It was a grand and imposing reception, filling even Sidney's unsanguine mind with hopes of brighter days for Ireland. So changed had the people become, so willing to do all that was reasonable to please him, that he records of Cork, 'We got good and honest juries there, and with their help twenty-four malefactors were honourably condemned and hanged/ The gallows everywhere was the perhaps much needed but the un- fortunate symbol of each advance of English authority. It might have worked better had justice been even- handed, and had scoundrels of both nations been hung upon it indifferently. From Cork the progress was continued to Limerick 1 ' There was some hold,' Sidney continues, ' between the bishops and me too long here to be recited ; for they stood still upon salvo suo ordine, and I of the Queen's absolute au- thority.' He does not say how the dispute terminated, which it is likely that he would have done if he had brought them to submission. But the passage any way requires explanation from, those who main- tain that all the bishops in Ireland, except those of Meath and Kildare, took the oath of supremacy at Eliza- beth's accession, and conformed to the Reformation. Here in Munster, after she had been Queen eighteen years, were three or four bishops described by the Viceroy as Papists, unsworn as yet, and in actual pos- session of the temporalities of their Sees. Who and what were they? Bishops still surviving who had been appointed by Mary, or bishops since appointed by the Pope ? one of the two they must have been. Sidney to "Walsingham, March I, 1583 : Carew Papers.
