In Ireland Sidney's victory had been followed by ten years of peace. Had the land been left to itself there would have been nothing more than the common feuds and disturbances of the time. The policy of driving its people to despair by seizing their lands for English settlements had been abandoned since Mary's day. The religious question had hardly any practical existence. On the Queen's accession indeed the ecclesiastical policy of the Protestants had been revived in name; Rome was again renounced; the Act of Uniformity forced on the island the use of the English Prayer-Book and compelled attendances at the services where it was used. There was as before a general air of compliance with the law. Even in the districts without the Pale the bishops generally conformed; and the only exceptions of which we have any information were to be found in the extreme south and in the north, where resistance was distant enough to be safe. But the real cause of this apparent submission to the Act of Uniformity lay in the fact that it remained, and necessarily remained, a dead letter. It was impossible to find any considerable number of English ministers, or of Irish priests acquainted with English. Meath was one of the most civilized dioceses of the island, and out of a hundred curates in it hardly ten knew any tongue save their own. The promise that the service-book should be translated into Irish was never carried out, and the final clause of the Act itself authorized the use of a Latin rendering of it till further order could be taken. But this, like its other provisions, was ignored; and throughout Elizabeth's reign the gentry of the Pale went unquestioned to Mass. There was in fact no religious persecution, and in the many complaints of Shane O'Neill we find no mention of a religious grievance. [Sidenote: Ireland and the Papacy.]