John Morley: “The issue at stake was the maintenance of the supremacy of the Church, and the ancient Christian organisation of France…”

But the Poet Laureate has written his own song on the hearts of his countrymen that can never die.

There lay Ireland,—squalid, dismal, sullen, dull, expectant, sunk deep in hostile intent.

All alike concerned themselves with its truth or falsehood, with what they counted to be its abstract fitness or unfitness.

But they were barren of any institutions by which the country could be governed and kept in prosperity for the future.”(166) This is a statement of the case that biographer and historian alike should ponder.