Sir Oliver St. John was in 1616 appointed Viceroy of Ireland. During the interval the Government had been in the hands of Adam Loftus, the indispensable Archbishop of Dublin, whose power was as great as his cupidity and avarice. St. John was a typical soldier of fortune, who had found fame and fortune on the battlefields of the Continent. In 1580, when twenty-one, he was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn, out a legal career ended suddenly as the result of a duel with Best, the navigator. Best died, and {82} St. John fled the country, but after many profitless years he had the luck to come under the notice of the Earl of Essex at Rouen. Essex, who was in need of brave soldiers, enlisted St. John, and took him to Ireland to fight against Tyrone. In a few years St. John was elected member for Roscommon in the Irish Parliament, and followed that up by entering the English House of Commons as member for Portsmouth. Mountjoy knighted him and made him president of Connaught, so that when in 1616 he was made viceroy, he brought to the office a great experience of Irish affairs. His first official act was to banish all those ecclesiastics educated abroad, his second, to make the Protestant religion compulsory, and his third, even more remarkable, took the form of a proposal to emigrate 100,000 Irish persons. This was a short method of dealing with a pressing problem, but it was hopelessly impracticable, and St. John, less successful as a statesman than as soldier, was commanded to deliver the sword of state to Adam Loftus, and return to England. Henry Gary, Viscount Falkland, who succeeded, tried to carry on the St. John policy. Proclamations were issued extensively, and all the Irish were ordered to go to heaven by the Protestant road. Strangely enough, while Lord Falkland was doing his best to establish the Protestant religion, Lady Falkland was secretly a Catholic, and supplying the priests with money. For over twenty years she kept her secret from her husband, but he discovered it eventually, and promptly separated from her. The Privy Council, called {83} upon to judge between husband and wife, declared Falkland's act justified, but ordered him to pay her L500 a year. Falkland retired in 1629 with the character of an unreliable, timid man. [Sidenote: The Earl of Strafford]