As to the religious state of the country, it was much on a level with its political condition.

Feuds and misrule told fatally on ecclesiastical discipline.
The bishops were political officers, or hard fighters like the chiefs around them; their sees were neglected, their cathedrals abandoned to decay.

Through whole dioceses the churches lay in ruins and without priests.

The only preaching done in the country was done by the begging friars, and the results of the friars' preaching were small.

"If the King do not provide a remedy," it was said in 1525, "there will be no more Christentie than in the middle of Turkey." [Sidenote: Ireland and the Supremacy] Unfortunately the remedy which Henry provided was worse than the disease.
Politically Ireland was one with England, and the great revolution which was severing the one country from the Papacy extended itself naturally to the other.