in some members of the Established Church, left behind by the traditions of Bramhall and Jeremy Taylor. The Churchmen had fared no better than the Presbyterians at the hands of the Parliament of James; but, if they feared the Catholics, they hated the Nonconformists. There was a latent wish with some of them that the Catholics might not be weakened beyond a point where the Ormond and Strafford games might be played over again; and that, when the lawful sovereign came back, he might still find a loyal Ireland to bear him up against dissent and revolution.1 The ground, however, had been well prepared. Capel was accused of having used undue influence. He appealed to his own Parliamentary life in answer. For thirty years he had taken a freedom in voting,' he said, and the liberty he claimed for himself he allowed to others.' He had secured, at any rate, the two most formidable opponents. Without Rochfort and Brodrick,' he admitted that he would have failed.2 The session opened on the 29th August. The Commons promised in their address, that they would avoid heats and animosities, and do their best to pass CHAP. I. 1695 BOOK II. 1695 useful measures, which would give quiet to the country. Money was voted, and 'the sole right' question was not raised. The Articles of Limerick were left unapproached. The King himself, perhaps, was unwilling to precipitate a decision which was sure to be unfavourable. But the objections to anulling the proceedings of James's Parliament were not maintained. It was decreed to have been an unlawful assembly, and its measures to have been void. The Commons consented, in express words, that the journals should be cancelled, and the acts passed there should be erased from the roll, that no memorial might remain among the records, of the proceedings of that assembly.'1 By an act of Henry the Eighth, which had been revived by Elizabeth, every incumbent in Ireland had been required to keep a free school in his parish for instruction in English; and every diocese was to have its public Latin school. Performance had lagged terribly behind promise. Few parish schools or Latin schools had Ireland seen of Protestant institution. But now at last the dream was to become a reality. The act was revived. The magistrates were directed to see to the obedience of the clergy. The judges on circuit were to report if magistrates were negligent; and, a proper education being thus provided by the state, the Catholics were forbidden to have schools of their own at home, or to send their children to learn disloyalty and Popery abroad, under penalties of outlawry and forfeiture.2 The positive part of this act was so gross a mockery, that the prohibition remained necessarily dead. While three-fourths of the benefices in Ireland were without 17 William and Mary, cap. 3. Irish Statutes. incumbents, and the stipends of the few who were scattered about the country sufficed barely to keep them alive, to order them to provide schools for the whole population was to order a simple impossibility. As little, so long as there was no substitute within reach, could the Catholics be compelled to leave their children to grow up savages. The Irish Parliament awoke later to a keener sense of their responsibilities in this matter, and nobly redeemed their neglect; till then statutes such as this were worse than idle. Remaining minatory merely, like scarecrows which the birds soon learn to laugh at, they served but to teach the Irish once more a lesson which they had no need to learn, that laws were made to be disobeyed. A disarming act was more rational and more effectual. The measure which the Catholics, in their day of power, had inflicted on the Protestants was retorted on themselves. By the 5th of the 7th of William and Mary all licences to bear arms were revoked, and the Catholics were ordered to deliver up whatever guns, muskets, or ammunition they possessed. Lords and gentlemen within the Articles of Limerick were permitted, on taking the oath of allegiance, to retain their swords and pistol-cases, and to keep a fowlingpiece to shoot game. This was the sole exception to a measure which implied that from them alone in Ireland was violence to be anticipated. Magistrates were empowered to search their houses. Horses it was assumed that they did not need, except for agriculture; and, therefore, they were forbidden to possess horses above five pounds in value. Any Protestant might demand and take a Catholic's horse from him, on paying five guineas to the nearest magistrate for the owner's use. Finally, gunmakers CHAP. I. 1695 IL. 1695 BOOK and sword-cutlers, that the very knowledge of the art of making dangerous weapons might be taken from them, were not allowed to receive Catholics as apprentices; and they themselves were required, before practising their trade, to take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration, and subscribe the statutory declaration against Transubstantiation.' 6 On the breaking up of James's army the Tories and Rapparees, from which it had been recruited, fell back to their old haunts and their old work. The forests and mountains were again peopled with political banditti, who carried on a guerilla war against their conquerors. 'Out on their keeping,' as the legal phrase described them, they lived, like their forefathers, on plunder, but on the plunder of the invader. They beset the high roads. They came down at night on the outlying farmer, houghed his stock, burnt his haggard, or cut the throats of himself and his family. To put these villanies down by a regular police was found impossible, the Popish inhabitants choosing rather to suffer strangers to be robbed and despoiled of their goods than apprehend the offenders, the greater part of whom were people of the same country, and harboured by the inhabitants.' If Ireland was to be a civilized country brigandage must in some way be ended; and the methods hitherto found effectual were again resorted to. The baronies were made responsible, and the Catholic inhabitants were required to make good any loss or injury inflicted within their boundaries: persons presented by grand juries as on their keeping' were to be proclaimed; and, unless they surrendered to take their trials, they were outlawed. To conceal or harbour them 1 7 William and Mary, cap. 5. Irish Statutes. I. was made felony, and any one who would bring in a СНАР. proclaimed Tory, dead or alive, might claim a reward of twenty pounds.1 These measures formed the most important part of the work of the first successful session of William's Irish Parliament: some wise in themselves; some wise or unwise, according as they were or were not put in force; all natural, however, and, as times went, inevitable, if the Irish Catholics were not to gather courage from the fears of the Government, and venture another rebellion. One matter only of consequence the House of Commons attempted, which threatened a renewal of the former quarrel. They could not forgive Porter, whom they accused of having been Lord Sydney's chief adviser. The impeachment in England had failed; it was renewed in Ireland, and the Chancellor was accused, by Colonel Ponsonby, of having abused his position to thrust Catholics into the commission of the peace, and to favour them in their suits with Protestants. Porter, after all, had been but the King's instrument. Unusually irritated, William reproached Capel for not having prevented an attack which he interpreted as directed against himself. Capel excused himself by saying, that the first vote against the chancellor had been taken before he had heard that the prosecution was intended. He was, perhaps, wise in abstaining from interference. Porter defended himself in person. The House of Commons decided, by a large majority, that his answers were sufficient; and further difficulty about him was removed by his death in the following year. 1 7 William III. cap. 21. 2 Lord Capel to Secretary Ver non, November 23, 1695.' MSS. 1695 |