In the late summer of 1542 the Henrician Church of Ireland acquired a new religious settlement. This settlement was not enshrined in any legislation enacted by the Irish parliament. Nor was it set out in any formularies or injunctions issued in the name of the king. It rested instead upon the word and authority of the viceroy, Sir Anthony St Leger who, in dealing with the fallout from Henry VIII's sudden call in March 1541 for a statutory prohibition on clerical concubinage, had shifted the crown's religious policy away from the radical reforming agenda of the late 1530s, by affirming royal support for traditional forms of doctrine, liturgical practice and clerical behaviour. In plotting this change of direction, St Leger was attempting to do more than simply satisfy the theological demands of his capricious sovereign. He was equally determined that it would address two of his most pressing, domestic political concerns: his need to attract native, and locally influential, conservative clergymen into the ranks of the ‘king's party’, in support of his plans to make Henry VIII's kingly rule a political reality in Ireland; and his need to protect, on account of their dependability as supporters of the royal supremacy, the married ecclesiastics in his own administration. The settlement that emerged in 1542, then, was not the product of rigid, confessional design.