"An act to explain and amend an act to prevent Papists being solicitors or sheriffs," etc.*

Clauses are introduced into this act, by which Catholics are prevented from serving on grand juries, and by which, in trials upon any statute for strengthening 'the Protestant interest, the plaintiff might challenge a Papist: which challenge the judge was to allow.

During all Queen Anne's reign the inferior civil officers, by order of government, were incessantly harassing the Catholics with oaths, imprisonments and forfeitures, without any visible cause but hatred of their religious profession. In the year 1708, on the bare rumor of an intended invasion of Scotland by the Pretender, forty-one Roman Catholic noblemen and gentlemen were imprisoned in the Castle of Dublin; and when they were afterward set at liberty, the government was so sensible of the wrong done to them, that it remitted their fees, amounting to £800. A custom that had existed from time immemorial, for infirm men, women and children to make a pilgrimage every summer to a place called St. John's Well, in the county of Meath, in hopes of obtaining relief from their several infirmities, by performing at it certain acts of penance and devotion, was deemed an object worthy of the serious consideration of the House of Commons, who accordingly passed a vote that these sickly devotees "were assembled in that place to the great hazard and danger of the public peace and safety of the kingdom." They also passed a vote on the 17th March, 1705, "that all magistrates, and other persons whosoever, who neglected or omitted to put them [the penal laws] in due execution, were betrayers of the liberties of the kingdom;"† and in June, 1705, they resolved "that the saying and hearing of Mass by persons who had not taken the oath of abjuration, tended to advance the interest of the Pretender; and • 6 Anne, c. I. "Com. Jour.," 3, 289.

that such judges and magistrates as wilfully neglected to make diligent inquiry into and discover such wicked practices, ought to be looked upon as enemies to her majesty's government; "* and upon another occasion they resolved "that the prosecuting and informing against Papists were an honorable service to the government "+

"Com Jour." 3, 319.

† Ib.

PENAL LAWS

IN THE

REIGN OF GEORGE I.

1714-1727.

THE following acts of parliament were passed in this reign, for the purpose of strengthening the system which had been adopted by William and Anne for preventing the growth of Popery.

"An act to make the militia of this kingdom more useful."*

By the eleventh and twelfth clauses of this act, the horses of the Papists may be seized for the militia.

By the fourth and eighteenth clauses, Papists are to pay double toward raising the militia.

By the sixteenth clause, Popish housekeepers in a city are to find Protestant substitutes.

"An act to restrain Papists from being high or petty constables, and for better regulating the parish watches."+ "An act for the more effectual prevention of fraudulent conveyances, in order to multiply votes for electing members to serve in parliament," etc.

By the seventh clause of this act, no Papist can vote at an election unless he takes the oath of allegiance and abjuration.

"An act for better regulating the town of Galway, and for strengthening the Protestant interest therein." §

2 George I, c. 9.

+ Ib., c. 19. This act expired in three years, and was not renewed.

Ib.

§ 4 George I, c. 15.

"An act for better regulating the corporation of the city of Kilkenny, and strengthening the Protestant interest therein."*

"An act by which Papists, resident in towns, who shall not provide a Protestant watchman to watch in their room, shall be subject to certain penalties." +

By 12 George I, c. 9, sec. 7, no Papist can vote at any vestry, held for the purpose of levying or assessing money for rebuilding or repairing parish churches.

These acts of parliament originated in the same spirit of persecution which disgraced the reigns of William and Anne, and were, like the penal laws against the Catholics of those reigns, palpable violations of the Treaty of Limerick.

Though a glimmering of toleration had found its way into the councils of England, and given rise to "an act for exempting Protestant dissenters of this country [Ireland] from certain penalties to which they were subject," the Catholics were excluded, by a particular clause, from any benefit of it. And though it was in this reign that the first act passed "for discharging all persons in offices and employments from all penalties which they had incurred by not qualifying themselves pursuant to an act to prevent the further growth of Popery,'" the favor conferred by it was a favor conferred on Protestant dissenters only, as no Catholic had been placed in any public office since the passing of that penal law.

The loyalty of the Catholics was in this reign put to a complete trial by the Scotch rebellion of 1715. If, after having fought three campaigns in support of James's pretensions to the throne of Ireland; after having experienced the infractions of every part of the Treaty of Limerick, and been exposed to a code of statutes by which they were totally excluded from the privileges of 4 George I, c. 16.

t 6 George I, c. 10.

Ib., c. 9.

504

Penal Laws in the Reign of George I.

the constitution; and if, after they had become subject "to the worst of all oppressions, the persecution of private society and private manners," they had embarked in the cause of the invader, their conduct would have been that of a high-spirited nation, goaded into a state of desperation by their relentless tormentors; and, if their resistance had been successful, their leaders. would have ranked among the Tells and Washingtons of modern history.

But so far from yielding to the natural dictates of revenge, or attempting to take advantage of what was passing in Scotland to regain their rights, they did not follow the example of their rulers, in violating, upon the first favorable opportunity, a sacred and solemn compact; and thus they gave the strongest testimony that they had wholly given up their former hopes of establishing a Catholic prince upon the throne. Their loyalty was not, however, a protection to them against the oppressions of their Protestant countrymen. The penalties for the exercise of their religion were generally and rigidly inflicted. Their chapels were shut up, their priests dragged from their hiding-places, hurried into prisons, and from thence sent into banishment. †

Burke's Letter to a Peer of Ireland.

"In 1732 a proclamation was issued against the Roman Catholic clergy, and the degree of violence with which it was enforced made many of the old natives look seriously, as a last resource, to emigration. Bishop O'Rorke retired from Ballinagare, and the gentlemen of that neighborhood had no clergyman for a considerable time to give them Mass, but a poor old man, one Pendergast, who. before day-dawn on Sunday, crept into a cave in the parish of Baslick, and waited there for his congregation, in cold and wet weather, hunger and thirst, to preach to them patience under their afflictions, and perseverance in their principles, to offer up prayers for their persecutors, and to arm them with resignation to the will of heaven in their misfortunes. The cave is called Poll-anAifrin, or Mass-cave, to this day, and is a melancholy monument of the piety of our ancestors."—" "Mem. of the Life and Writings of the late Charles O'Connor," vol. i, p. 179.