tained in their places to reduce a barbarous country into order, should not set an example of anarchy. A more serious matter than paltry wranglings and quarrels lay in the misrepresentations which had been made to him on the finances. He wrote angrily, expatiating upon the sums which he had spent, and the gulf into which they seemed to have been thrown. 'For all this,' he said, 'what have we gotten since the first stay of the violence of the late rebellion of Thomas Fitzgerald? In words you say we have now great revenues, and so indeed we have; but when anything is there to be paid, we see not what stead the same do stand us in, or to what purpose they serve. Good councillors,' he continued, 'should before their own private gains have respect to their prince's honour, and to the public weal of the country whereof they have charge. A great sort of you—we must be plain—desire nothing else but to reign in estimation, and to fleece from time to time all that you may catch from us.'[1] The rebuke was partially deserved. In part it arose from the misrepresentations of the deputy, whose hasty accusations fell in for the present with the King's anxiety and vexation. On the same authority, Henry singled out for especial admonition Archbishop Brown, who had succeeded the murdered Allen—a man who was perhaps as foolish as he was supposed to be, but he was tolerably right-minded, and scarcely merited the tone in which he was addressed.
'We have advanced you,' the King said, 'in conse-
- ↑ Henry VIII. to the Deputy and Council of Ireland: State Papers, vol. ii. p. 422.
