in sanctioning the Norman conquest of England was a logical outcome of this principle, applied, however unwisely or unjustly, to a particular case. But there was infinitely greater justification for applying the same principle, in the same manner, to the case of Ireland. Neither the labours of S. Malachi, nor the brief visit of John Paparo, nor the stringent decrees passed at the synod of Kells, could suffice to reform the inveterate evils of Ireland’s ecclesiastical system, the yet more inveterate evils of her political system, or the intellectual and moral decay which was the unavoidable consequence of both. On the Pope, according to the view of the time, lay the responsibility of bringing order out of this chaos--a chaos of whose very existence he had but just become fully conscious, and which no doubt looked to him far more hopeless than it really was. In such circumstances Henry’s proposal must have sounded to Adrian like an offer to relieve him of a great weight of care--to cut at one stroke a knot which he was powerless to untie--to clear a path for him through a jungle-growth of difficulties which he himself saw no way to penetrate or overcome. John of Salisbury set forth the plan at Rome, in Henry’s name, in the summer of 1155; he carried back a bull which satisfied all Henry’s demands. Adrian bade the king go forth to his conquest “for the enlargement of the Church’s borders, for the restraint of vice, the correction of morals and the planting of virtue, the increase of the Christian religion, and whatsoever may tend to God’s glory and the well-being of that land;”[429] and he sent with the bull a gold ring, adorned with an emerald of great price, as a symbol of investiture with the government of Ireland.[430] [425] Pet. Blois, Ep. clxviii. (Giles, vol. ii. pp. 116–118). See above, vol. i. p. 497. [426] “Significâsti siquidem nobis, fili in Christo carissime, te Hiberniæ insulam, ad subdendum illum populum legibus et vitiorum plantaria inde exstirpanda, velle intrare; et de singulis domibus annuam unius denarii beato Petro velle solvere pensionem; et jura ecclesiarum illius terræ illibata et integra conservare.” Bull of Adrian IV. to Henry (“Laudabiliter”), in Gir. Cambr. _Expugn. Hibern._, l. ii. c. 5 (Dimock, vol. v. p. 317), etc. [427] “Nam omnes insulæ, de jure antiquo, ex donatione Constantini qui eam fundavit et dotavit, dicuntur ad Romanam ecclesiam pertinere.” Joh. Salisb. _Metalog._, l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v. p. 206).