LIFE OF LORD REDESDALE
departments of the State. Ecclesiastics bearing scandalous
reputations were appointed to high offices, solely because
they had influential friends or were themselves in a good
social position, and the archbishops were powerless in the
matter. Some of the clergy appear to have received secret
service money.1 Dr. Knox, Bishop of Derry, whose official
income is stated to have been .£10,000 per annum, is
down in an official document as having been given fifty
pounds for secret information, and the names of lesser
clergy of both churches are included in the list. One
reverend gentleman is credited with ^300. Many of the
wealthier clergy lived in English fashionable resorts and
gave a curate a miserable pittance to perform their duties.
The absence of the bishops was a crying scandal. The
churches were in a dilapidated condition and the life of
the Church was at a very low ebb. "The clergy of the
Established Church are so negligent of their duties," the
Chancellor told the Speaker, "and the bishops in general
so intent on the accumulation of wealth and of preferment
in their families, and Lords insisting that their booby sons
must be bishops, however unfit even for the duties of a
curate, that the overthrow of the Establishment must take
place if a reform should not early be made/'2 Lord
Redesdale also impressed on the Viceroy that "the fate
of Ireland at this moment depends in a great degree on the
appointment of Bishops who will do their duty as such,"
and he was anxious to induce both the bishops and the
lesser clergy to exert themselves to bring law and order
into the country. This was made more difficult by the
fact that many of them heartily disliked their flocks.
The wealthy offices and dignities had often been given
1 J. T. Gilbert, Documents relating to Ireland, 1795-1804 (1893), p. 77-
2 Diary and Correspondence of Lord Colchester (op. cit.), L 525.
206