Anglo-Norman and Celt, feudalist and tribesman, alike were Catholics. A common religion might have been a bond, a common clergy might have been a mediating power. But race and language prevailed over religion. The Churches, though outwardly of the same faith, remained inwardly separate, and not only separate but hostile to each other, the clergy on both sides sharing the spirit and the atrocities of race enmity and frontier war. The Church of the tribes was still very rough and irregular. The Norman on his part was devout. He was a founder of monasteries, thereby discharging his conscience of a load not seldom heavy. Whatever of religious life and activity there was in the Pale seems to have been monastic. Our glimpses of the secular clergy show that they were secular indeed. Among them not neglect of duty only but criminality appears to have been rife. In the little commercial towns of Danish foundation on the coast which had been taken over by the Norman, life was probably rather more civilized; but they were too diminutive to exert any influence beyond their gates. Galway in time became the port of an active trade with Spain which is supposed to have left a Spanish trace on its architecture and a Spanish strain in the blood of its people. II It was not likely that the colony, in the state in which it was, would gain by emigration from England. It was probably losing by depletion. English kings drew soldiers from it for their wars. There being no university or means of education, youths who wanted to study went to Oxford, where, though they were not native Irish, they seem to have played in academical brawls the part which native Irish might have played. Thus the colony was emptied of its intellect. Fiefs by feudal rule of descent passed to absentees and to women, weakening its military force. In every way the life-blood of the English and feudal settlement was being continually withdrawn. Of the kings of England, Richard I. was away on crusade, John and Henry III. were wrestling with rebellion at home. The thoughts of Edward I. were turned to Ireland; but his energies were absorbed by Scotland, Wales, and Gascony. He too drew soldiers from Ireland.