The order of the council consequent upon this, in Latin, refers the matter to the Lieutenant and council in Ireland. * * * * * Henry at this time appears to have had considerable intercourse with the see of Rome. In a letter written to his resident ambassador in that city, John Keterich, Bishop of Lichfield, he requires, in very humble language, that his Holiness would not invade the rights of the crown of England as settled by a concordat between Edward III. (p. 245) and Gregory XI; that he would provide for the admission of Englishmen only into the priories in England which the Conqueror had annexed to Norman abbeys; and that he would send strict injunctions to the bishops of Ireland that the people should be taught the English tongue, and that none should be capable of any ecclesiastical preferment who should be ignorant of it, since the best and greatest part of that nation understood it, and experience had shown what disorders and confusions arose from a diversity of languages. It is impossible to read the documents of this time without being struck by the evidence as well of the thraldom under which the Pope held the sovereigns and people of Christendom, as of the spirit of piety which habitually influenced Henry. His confessor had died, and he had applied to the Archbishop of Canterbury to select another for him. That primate's answer is full of interest. The Archbishop gives the King all the authority which he himself possessed; and yet Henry is obliged to seek permission at the court of Rome to have a confessor of his own, and to celebrate divine service at convenient times and in convenient places. He had sent for a chapel, with altars, vestments, and ministers, from England; and the warrant is in existence to press carriages and horses to carry them to the sea, to be transported to him in Normandy. This instrument is dated February 5th, 1418, and it should seem that all these (p. 246) preparations were insufficient till he could obtain the Pope's licence and dispensation in the following August.[185] [Footnote 185: Archbishop Chicheley's letter to Henry is preserved among the manuscripts of the British Museum. MS. Cotton, Vesp. F. xiii. fol. 29.] The Pope then gives Henry permission to have a confessor of his own choice, who should once a year during his life, and once also at the hour of death, give him full pardon for all the sins of which he repented from the heart, and which he confessed with the mouth; provided that the confessor take care to have satisfaction given to those to whom it is due. The Pope adds an earnest hope that this indulgence would not tempt Henry to commit unlawful acts at all more freely than before.[186] [Footnote 186: Gebennis, xv. kal. Sept. Pontif. nost. ann. I. (August 18, 1418.) Rymer.]