It was this temper, so common in the Anglo-Irish Protestant, which separates him in his policy from his eminent and amiable contemporary, Bishop Bedell. But the latter was a stranger brought over from England to be Provost, who, with all the generosity and all the kindliness of his noble nature, set himself to instruct the native Irish, and to work out the regeneration of these barbarians by teaching them religion through the Irish language. So sterling and single-hearted was the Bishop, that even the excited rebels of 1641, amid their rapine and massacre, spared and respected the excellent old man, and at his death honoured him with a great public funeral. But it is plain from Primate Ussher’s dealings with him that this policy of persuading the natives was not to the Primate’s taste. Ussher probably believed that there were serious dangers in the policy of reclaiming the natives through kindness, and their priests through persuasion; and if the historians note it as curious that, of all those who ruled the College, those by far the most anxious to promote Irish studies were two Englishmen,[28] Bedell and Marsh, it will be replied by many in Ireland, that this contrast between the views of the English stranger, and of the English settler who knows the country, is still perpetuated. Such, then, was the attitude of the early rulers of the College, and such their controversies. All of them that were not complete Puritans felt what Provost Chappel says in his autobiographical (iambic) poem--_Ruunt agmine facto in me profana turba Roma Genevaque_. But from the very commencement the College was Puritanical enough to save it from Ecclesiasticism. There is therefore nothing strange in the habit of making lay Fellows read short sermons (commonplaces) in the Chapel as part of their duty--a practice only abandoned within the memory of our seniors in this century.[29]