Note 288 — Chapter LVI · THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES

Macaulay saw only part of the question when he wrote (chap. vi.): ‘The most absurd ecclesiastical establishment that the world has ever seen. Four Archbishops and eighteen Bishops were employed in looking after about a fifth part of the number of churchmen who inhabited the single diocese of London. Of the parochial clergy a large proportion were pluralists and resided at a distance from their cures. There were some who drew from their benefices incomes of little less than a thousand pounds a year, without ever performing any spiritual function.’ Lingard’s report to Ormonde, 1668, calendared among State Papers, Ireland, p. 674. Collier’s Ecclesiastical Hist., vii. 383. Swift to Harley, September or October 1610, in his Correspondence, ed. Ball, i. 200.