But the results of the measure were fatal to the little culture and religion which even the past centuries of disorder had spared.

Such as they were, the religious houses were the only schools that Ireland contained.

The system of vicars, so general in England, was rare in Ireland; churches in the patronage of the abbeys were for the most part served by the religious themselves, and the dissolution of their houses suspended public worship over large districts of the country.

The friars, hitherto the only preachers, and who continued to labour and teach in spite of the efforts of the Government, were thrown necessarily into a position of antagonism to the English rule.
[Sidenote: Ireland and the Religious Changes] Had the ecclesiastical changes which were forced on the country ended here however, in the end little harm would have been done.

But in England the breach with Rome, the destruction of the monastic orders, and the establishment of the Supremacy, had roused in a portion of the people itself a desire for theological change which Henry shared and was cautiously satisfying.