Having obtained spiritual authority by an act of the temporal power, much in the same way as the Roman emperors obtained divine honours by decrees of the senate, Henry VIII. and Elizabeth set about their new functions, and determined to show themselves worthy leaders of the Reformation. There were many richly endowed monasteries in Ireland at the time of Henry, and several continued to exist even till the days of Elizabeth. The inmates of those institutions passed their time in prayer and study; they had rendered great services to literature by copying and preserving the works of classical antiquity, whilst their labours for religion and the poor were worthy of the highest praise. There were also many convents of religious ladies, who devoted their lives to the service of God and their neighbour, to the education of youth, and who edified the world by the sweet odour of their virtues. By the new heads of the Church, and the new patrons of the Gospel, those merits were looked on as crimes, and all religious orders were suppressed. In Ireland there was an ancient institution founded by St. Patrick, which for more than a thousand years had maintained its connection with the Apostolic See, the true rock on which Christ built His Church, and had always preserved the integrity and purity of the Catholic faith. The existence of that venerable Irish Church was not consistent with the supremacy of the crown in spiritual matters, and its destruction was decreed. At the same time, a religion, with new doctrines, a new ceremonial, new liturgical books, and forms of prayer in the English language, then almost unknown in Ireland, was proclaimed, and all the sanction was given to it that could be derived from an act of parliament or a royal decree. It was pretended that this religion was to restore liberty of conscience to the world; but history shows that it enforced its teaching by penal laws, by fire and sword, and by every sort of violence.