II. 1709 Jesuit, or unregistered parish priest. To keep up CHAP. the supply of priests, and to enable a priest newly made to swear that he did not know by whom he had been ordained, large numbers of the Catholic clergy had been in the habit of meeting at stations or funerals, with a bishop in the middle of them undistinguished by dress or ornament; and they had held ordinations by laying on many hands together, that the party receiving the orders might not know in whom the power was lodged.' It was now made penal for a priest to officiate anywhere except in the parish church for which he was registered, and the last rivet was driven into the chain by the compulsory imposition of the Abjuration Oath, which every priest was made to swear at his registration. As if this was not enough, any two magistrates received power to summon any or every Irish subject above the age of sixteen, to offer him the oath, and to commit him to prison if he refused it.' They might also, if he was a Catholic, ask him where he last heard mass, and by whom it was celebrated. If the priest officiating was found to have been unregistered he was liable to be transported. Once more passing back from these personal provisions upon the land, for the more effective detection. of illegal trusts, leases, mortgages, or conveyances by which Catholics might still endeavour to defeat the 1 The Abjuration Oath, as modified by the 22nd of the 1st of Anne, contained nothing which could have tried in any way a loyal Catholic's conscience. It contained simply an admission that Queen Anne was lawful sovereign; and that the Pretender had no right or title to the Crown. The oath was to be faith- II. 1709 any BOOK object of the statute, a fatal clause was added, that Protestant whatever who discovered and was able to prove before a Protestant jury, the existence of any purchase or lease of which a Catholic was to have secretly the advantage, should himself be put in possession of the property which was the subject of the fraud.1 The evasion of a law so contrived that every unscrupulous scoundrel in Ireland was its self constituted guardian became almost impossible. Of the operations of the act, now at last made really effective, I shall speak in detail in a future chapter. That it was unjust in itself, never occurred as a passing emotion to any Protestant in the two kingdoms, not even to Swift, who speaks approvingly of what he deemed must be the inevitable result. That neither this nor any other penal legislation would of itself give peace to Ireland, that it would not even repress the religion at which it was aimed, unless Protestantism could assume a nobler aspect, and gird itself to nobler work than in its present distracted and divided condition was likely or possible, no one saw more clearly than Lord Wharton; no one endeavoured more honourably to enforce that much needed and ever neglected lesson on the obstinate and bewildered Parliament. 'My lords and gentlemen,' he said, in closing the session, 'I need not put you in mind that the good laws we have passed will be of little advantage to you unless life be given to them by a just and impartial execution. That will now depend upon yourselves. . . and I make no question you understand too well the true interest of the Protestant religion in this kingdom, not to endeavour to make all such 1 Irish Statutes: 8 Anne, cap. 3. Protestants as easy as you can who are willing to CHAP. defend the whole against the common enemy. It is not the law now passed, nor any law that the will of man can frame, will secure you against Popery, while you continue divided amongst yourselves. Unless there be a firm friendship and confidence among the Protestants of this kingdom, it is impossible for you either to be happy or safe; and I am directed to declare to you, as her majesty's fixed resolution, that as her majesty will always maintain the Church as by law established, so it is her royal will and intention that the Dissenters shall not be persecuted or molested in the exercise of their religion.'1 The words were as if spoken to the wind. The passions of Irish Churchmen were as the passions of Swift. The Dissenters were not relieved of the undeserved note of ignominy which had been stamped on them. The Bishops and their officials continued to harass them so far as their power extended; and the Presbyterian emigration to New England continued also, and gathered volume, to assist, as Hely Hutchinson foretold, in dismembering the British Empire. The Popery act, meanwhile, was both operative and inoperative; operative so far as it now at last compelled Catholic land and leaseholders to affect an insincere conversion to escape the eyes of informers; inoperative so far as the religion itself, in the extinction of which would have lain the only justification of such an act, and the only security for those who passed it-remained vigorous as ever, gathering strength from the cowardice which shrunk Commons' Journals, August 30, 1709. II. 1709 BOOK II. 1709 from acting upon its own laws. The Catholics may feel legitimate pride in the triumph of their principles over unsuccessful violence. There is no disgrace like the disgrace of a religious persecution which has failed in its object. Yet the means to which the best of them condescended to escape the penalties of a legislation, which as unjust they held themselves exonerated from obeying, furnish some justification also of the desire to extinguish a creed of subtlety and artifice. The Abjuration Oath had been imposed at length reluctantly in consequence of the last attempt of the Pretender. The form had been purged of every expression which could offend the conscience of a loyal Catholic. The Pope was not named, and, except so far as he assumed a right to decide between rival claimants to the British throne, a right which no government can be required to acknowledge, his prerogative was not touched upon. The Catholic to whom the oath was an offence, declared in his objection that he regarded the Pretender as his lawful sovereign. But, since laymen were no longer exempt, and the parish priests must take the oath as it now stood, or lose their licences and be transported, perjury under the peculiar circumstances of the case was made a venial sin, and a system was introduced in harmony with those features of the Catholic organization which Protestantism most dreaded and most denounced; by which an oath could be taken dishonestly, and the falsehood be covered by absolution. Forswearing was not encouraged or distinctly allowed. It was still treated as an offence which required penitential expiation, and the power of pardoning it was reserved to particular persons. Yet in that expiation, when it was made, there was not included the only step which would have given it real value, the public retractation which would have taken away from the sinner the advantage which he had gained by his guilt. The following letter from a vicar-general to the parish priest of Ballinrobe needs no explanation: 'Reverend sir,-You know the abjuration as public and scandalous perjury was hitherto reserved specially, and shall be still in this our district, save the few that we design shall act for us, and by our own power, which we cannot subdelegate. Wherefore, if any abjurers within this our district should pretend to have been hitherto absolved, you must know by whom, that such may be punished and made sensible of their errors and ignorance, and those so unlawfully absolved must be again absolved by you as one now authorised, upon the following conditions and terms: First, that each of them shall sign and acknowledge the annexed declaration,' which you must be sure to keep private, for we do not design to expose anybody but as little as we can. In the second place, they must oblige themselves henceforth never to pretend to defend or command the taking of said oath to anybody, but rather, as far as shall lay in them, censure it as the Church does, and as it deserves. Thirdly, that each of them shall, without delay, cause the holy sacrifice of the mass to be at least once offered for them, and perform what pilgrimages, fasts, alms, and praying, you shall think fit to impose, according to the condition and constitution of each person, and finally that, for the CHAP. II. 1709 |