Many abbeys and monasteries were built in Ireland during this comparatively tranquil period, and the passion for learning revived to a great extent among the native Irish nobility. Pilgrimages, as of old, were made to distant lands for the purpose of worshiping at famous shrines. Irish teachers and scholars began again to be numerous in Spain, Germany, and Italy. Henry VII, engaged in saving the wreck of England’s almost extinguished nobility, and in hoarding money, for which he had a passion, took little account of Ireland and the Irish. But, already, low on the horizon, a blood-red cloud was forming, and it gradually thickened and extended until, at last, it broke in a crimson torrent on the fated Irish nation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ BOOK II TREATING OF IRISH AFFAIRS FROM THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION TO THE EXILE AND DEATH OF THE ULSTER PRINCES IN THE REIGN OF JAMES I ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER I The “Reformation”—New Cause of Discord in Ireland THE bitterness of race hatred had almost died out when the Reformation, as the opponents of the Church of Rome called the great schism of the sixteenth century, began to shake Europe like an earthquake. Luther, and other dissenters from Catholic faith, carried most of the north of Europe with them. The Latin countries, South Germany, all of Ireland, and most of England, clung to the old faith, and Henry VIII, who succeeded his father at an early age, and was quite learned in theology, wrote a pamphlet defending the Catholic dogmas against Luther and the others. This work procured for him from the Pope the title of the “Defender of the Faith,” which still, rather inappropriately, belongs to the sovereign of England. But Henry was a good Catholic only so long as religion did not interfere with his passions and ambitions. He had been married in early life to Catherine of Aragon, who had been the nominal wife of his elder brother, another Prince of Wales, who died uncrowned. After many years, Henry, who was a slave to his passions, tired of Catherine, and pretended to believe that it was sinful to live with his brother’s widow, even though the latter relationship was but nominal. In truth, he had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, one of Queen Catherine’s maids-of-honor. The Pope was appealed to for a divorce and refused to grant it, after having carefully examined into the case. Then Henry severed England’s spiritual connection with Rome, and declared himself head of the English “Reformed” Church. In this he was sustained by Wolsey, Cromwell, and other high churchmen, all of whom were either ambitious or afraid of their heads, for Henry never hesitated, like his grand-uncle, Richard III, at the use of the axe, when any subject, clerical or lay, opposed his will. But the tyrant, while refusing