and had actually reduced some of the most ancient, noble, and opulent Roman catholic families of the kingdom, with their numerous descendants, to absolute beggary. The commons then sitting, and justly apprehending from his majesty's known equity and commiseration, that such application might meet with some success; resolved upon a petition, wherein among other things, they tell his majesty plainly, and even with a kind of menace, " that nothing could enable them to defend his right and title to his crown so effectually as the enjoyment of those estates, which have been the forfeitures of the rebellious Irish, and were then in the possession of his protestant subjects; and therefore, that they were fully assured, that he would discourage all applications or attempts that should be made in favor of such traitors or their descendants, so dangerous to the protestant interest of this kingdom." This petition produced the wished for effect. The king in his answer assured the commons, "that he would for the future discourage all such applications and attempts."

But the commons not content with this assurance, and still fearing, that those popish solicitors, who had been employed by the catholics in their late unsuccessful attempt, might prevail upon their clients to renew their application at another more favorable juncture, brought in a bill, absolutely disqualifying all Roman catholics from practising as solicitors, the only branch in the law profession which they were then permitted to practise.

While this bill, which was afterwards passed into a law, was under debate in the house of commons, certain Roman catholics of Dublin and Cork, not imagining that their making legal opposition to it, would give the least offence to government, began to set on foot a collection among those of their persua sion residing in these two cities, in order to enable them to defray the necessary expences attending on such opposition. In this business some of their clergy in Munster happened to be engaged; among whom, one Hennesy, a parish priest in that province, having, for his notoriously scandalous behaviour, been lately suspended by his superior, sought revenge, by giving in examinations against him, importing that the money which had been thus collected by him and others, in different

parts of the kingdom, was intended for no other service, but the bringing in of popery and the pretender. Upon which these gentlemens papers were seized, and submitted to the inspection of a certain knight, who laid them before the house of commons, where they underwent the strictest scrutiny for many weeks; that venal and versatile commoner, but constant brawler against popery, exerting all his boisterous eloquence to persuade the house, for the sole evidence of these papers, though obviously harmless and insignificant in themselves, that a deep and dangerous popish plot was actually carrying on for the before-mentioned wicked purposes. And yet it appears after all, by the committee's printed report on this occasion, that the sum collected to accomplish this mighty design of bringing in popery and the pretender, did not amount in the whole to full five pounds.

The committee, however, resolved,' that it appeared to them, that under colour of opposing heads of bills, great sums of money had been collected and raised, and a fund established by the popish inhabitants of the kingdom, through the influ ence of their clergy, highly detrimental to the protestant interest, and of imminent danger to the present happy establishment; and therefore resolved further, "that an humble address should be presented to his grace the lord lieutenant, to issue his proclamation to all magistrates, to put the laws against popery in execution." In consequence of this address, the proclamation was issued by his grace, and the laws against popery were strictly executed by the magistrates in every part of the kingdom.*

These frequent resolutions of the commons, aided by inflam matory anniversary sermons, and equally inflammatory pamphlets, occasionally preached and published, diffused such a spirit of rancour and animosity against catholics, among their

1 Com. Jour. vol. vi. f. 352.

On the 9th of March, 1731, "Resolved unanimously, that it is the indispensable duty of all magistrates, and officers, to put the laws made to prevent the further growth of popery in Ireland, in due execution." k was also at the same time resolved, nem. con. (being the end of the session) "that the members of that house, in their respective countries, and sta tions, would use their utmost endeavors, to put the several laws against popery in due execution,”—Lom, Jeur, vol, vi. f. 183.

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protestant neighbours, as made the generality of them believe that the words popery, rebellion and massacre, really signi— fied the same thing, and thereby excited such real terrors in these latter, as often brought the liberties and sometimes the lives of the former into imminent danger. The most shocking circumstances of the Irish insurrection in 1641, and of the English gunpowder treason in 1605, were studiously revived and aggravated in these sermons and pamphlets, with a degree of virulence and exaggeration, which, as it surpassed the most extravagant fictions of romance or poetry, so it possessed their uninformed, though often well-meaning, hearers and readers with lasting and general abhorrence of these people. The crimes, real or supposed, of catholics dead more than a century before, were imputed, intentionally, to all those who survived them, however innocent, of the same religious persua sion. By these means, an antient nobleman and privy-coun sellor, of great power and influence, was so enthusiastically in censed against them, that, in the year 1743, on the threatened invasion of England by the French, under the command of marshal Saxe, he openly declared in council, "that as the papists had began the massacre on them, about an hundred years before, so he thought it both reasonable and lawful, on their parts, to prevent them, at that dangerous juncture, by first And although the barbarity of that. falling upon them." suggestion was quickly over-ruled in that honorable assembly; yet so entirely were some of the lower northern dissenters possessed and influenced, by this prevailing prepossession and rancor against catholics, that in the same year, and for the same declared purpose of prevention, a conspiracy was actually formed by some of the inhabitants of Lurgan, to rise in the night-time and destroy all their neighbours of that denomination in their beds. But this inhuman purpose was also frustrated, by an information of the honest protestant publican, in whose house the conspirators had met to settle the execution of their scheme, sworn before the Rev. Mr. Ford, a justice of the peace in that district, who received it with horror, and with difficulty put a stop to the intended massacre.

This atrocious design was known and attested by several of the inha. bitants of Lurgan; and an account of it was transmitted to Dublin by a considerable linen-merchant, then at Lurgan on his private mercantile afairs,

CHAP. XI.

The conduct of the catholics of Ireland in the time of the rebellion in Scotland, 1745.

ON account of the Scottish rebellion in 1745 in favor of the pretender, in which it will presently appear that not a single Irish catholic, lay or clerical, was any way engaged, the minds of the protestants all over the kingdom were so much irritated by the inflammatory means before-mentioned, together with the additional incentives of pastoral letters, of the like evil tendency, from all the bishops of the kingdom to their respective diocesans, that dreadful consequences, with regard to these inoffensive people, were justly apprehended; and probably would have ensued, had not the great wisdom and lenity of their then chief governor, frequently and earnestly interposed. That nobleman, though pressed from all quarters by their powerful enemies, on a pretended knowledge of their disaffection, but really from the malignity of prejudice, to put the laws in force against them, always eluded their importunities, either by his own uncommon sagacity and resolution, or by some happy turn of pleasantry, which never failed to expose the folly of their apprehensions; for he quickly discovered, that they had neither the power nor the inclination to give the government any disturbance. And he even assured both houses of parliament, "that France, which alone encouraged and supported the rash adventurer, had made use of him only as the occasional tool of their politics, and not as the real object of their care. That although Great Britain had, in the course of this century, been often molested by insurrections at home and invasions from abroad, Ireland had happily and deservedly enjoyed uninterrupted tranquillity." And in short, that this attempt to shake his majesty's throne, would serve to establish it the more firmly, since all Europe must know the unanimous zeal and affection of his subjects, for the defence of his person and government."

The great goodness and mercy of providence in sending such a governor among us, at that period of suspicion and danger,

* Earl of Chesterfield.

will be for ever most gratefully remembered by these people. Even their enemies in parliament, at the close of his adminis tration, seem to have, in some measure, retracted their former councils of rigor and severity; for the commons in their address at the end of the session, after mentioning their late unquiet apprehensions, " acknowledged, with chearfulness and the utmost gratitude, that the profound tranquillity which, without any extraordinary increase of public expense, the nation had hitherto enjoyed, was the result of his excellency's wise and vigilant administration; formed upon the principles, and carried on by the uniform exercise of lenity without remissness, and of firmness without severity.”

I promised to make it appear, that no Irish catholic, lay or clerical, was any way engaged in the Scottish rebellion of 1745. I shall now endeavor to make good that promise. In the year 1762, upon a debate in the house of lords about the expediency of raising five regiments of these catholics, for the service of the king of Portugal, Doctor Stone (then Primate), in answer to some common-place objections against the good faith and loyalty of these people, which were revived with virulence on that occasion, declared publicly in the house of lords, that "in the year 1747, after that rebellion was entirely suppressed, happening to be in England, he had an opportunity of perusing all the papers of the rebels, and their correspondents, which were seized in the custody of Murray, the pretender's secretary; and that, after having spent much time and taken great pains in examining them (not without some share of the then common suspicion, that there might be some private understanding and intercourse between them and the Irish catholics), he could not discover the least trace, hint, or intimation of such intercourse or correspondence in them; or of any of the latter's favouring, abetting, or having been so much as made acquainted with the designs or proceedings of these rebels. And what," he said, "he wondered at most of all was, that in all his researches, he had not met with any passage in any of these papers, from which he could infer, that either their Holy Father the Pope, or any of his cardinals, bishops, or other dignitaries of that church; or any of the Irish clergy, had either directly or indirectly, encouraged, aided, or approved of, the commencing or carrying on of that rebellion."