III. 1715 coming a widower, he married again, and had another CHAP. son and a twin daughter. Family quarrels followed. The eldest son, supported by his mother's brother, insulted his stepmother, disobeyed his father, squandered money in idleness and extravagance. The father withdrew his allowance; the son, of course with the worst motives, declared himself a Protestant, and appealed for maintenance to the Court of Chancery. The case came before Sir Richard Cox, in 1705. The son pleaded that the settlement made at the first marriage had been tampered with. The father replied, that he had acted only within his legal powers. The original settlements were examined and reported on. The Court allowed the son 801. a year during his father's lifetime, which was afterwards raised to a hundred.1 Infants were not allowed to plead conversion, though supported by Protestant relatives. Application being made for maintenance for a boy of nine years old, the court ruled that the act gave no relief till 'a child had come to years of discretion to conform." Fitz Patrick v. Fitz Patrick was a case resembling that of the Cusacks. An elder son married against his father's consent, turned Protestant, and applied for an allowance. The Chancellor, severely condemning the son's conduct, gave him 801. a year, as the least which the law would permit, and enabled the father to encumber the estate very heavily, for the use of his Catholic children.3 Although the law encouraged informers, their occupation was odious. Their attempts to possess themselves of other men's properties were defeated when 1 Case of Cusack v. Cusack, 1704-5. MSS. Dublin Castle. 2 Fitzgerald . Fitzgerald, June 30, 1762. Howard's Popery Cases. II. BOOK defeat was possible; and again, informers themselves were often in collusion with those against whom they informed, in trust for some concealed party. 1715 Cases of course can be produced of an opposite kind;' and the practice of the courts was a very school of lying, and a discipline of evasion. No laws could have been invented, perhaps, more ingeniously demoralizing. Yet unquestionably the acts were not, as a whole, carried out with the triumphant recklessness of a dominant faction. The Catholics had themselves rendered legislation necessary, by introducing the question of religion into the disposition of inheritances.2 The judges in these decisions at least recognized the necessity of preventing the law from being abused by profligate children. 1 The case of Martin Blake is a good illustration of the worst operation of the act, and shows among other things, that it sometimes defeated its own object. Martin Blake, a Catholic, bought some lands in the name of Sir Henry Bingham, and other lands in the name of Lynch. Sir H. Bingham, evidently in collusion with Blake, brought an action of ejectment under the Popery Act, for the lands bought by Lynch, and got a verdict. Afterwards Blake became a Protestant, and Sir H. Bingham conveyed the estate to him openly. But, on proof twelve years later, that Blake had enjoyed the profits of the lands. ever since the original purchase, and that Sir H. Bingham never meddled with them, all the lands were decreed to the discoverers, and Blake was made to account for the rents which he had received meanwhile, there being a manifest combination to elude the act.'Howard's Popery Cases, June 16, 1727. 2 The Nugents' case indicated a real grievance. Hyacinthe Nugent, eldest son of Thomas Nugent, of Pallas, called Lord Riverstown, a Catholic, with large estates, conformed to the Established Church, and married Susanne Catharine, daughter of Sir Tristram Beresford the Popery Act being accepted by the Beresfords as guaranteeing a settlement on the wife. Lord Riverstown refusing to make an allowance, the son joined the English army in Spain, and served as a cornet of dragoons. Thence he returned to Ireland, when, 'by pernicious Popish counsels and other wicked insinuations,' he was prevailed on to forsake his wife and return to Popery; and,' in order to elude the law and injure his wife,' went, 'by means of his Popish relations, into France to the service of the French king.' The case came before Parliament, and, by a private act, in 1711, the wife was allowed a maintenance out of Lord Riverstown's estates. -MSS. Dublin Castle. SECTION III. III. 1715 THE working of the second branch of the penal CHAP. laws directed against the succession of the clergy, may be described more briefly. These laws, though more definite in theory than the laws affecting property, more in accordance with the general practice of Europe, and justified by provocations with which no people in the world but the English would have dealt so forbearingly, remained a dead letter on the statute book, and were heard of only in periodical lamentations over their neglect. The Catholic religion, though proscribed and insulted, was 'suffered to grow unchecked, to take exclusive possession of the increasing numbers of the peasantry, to educate them, to mould and shape them from their cradles to their graves, and to neutralize the natural disposition to please their political superiors, which, had they been let alone, would have swept them into conformity. 16 'If the Popish clergy were as effectually removed as the Huguenot ministers,' says the writer whom I have so often quoted, we should soon see our churches filled with converts.' It was first necessary that there should be churches for them to fill. Zealous as they had been for their own privileges-clamorous against Dissenters-in possession of all the wealth of the ancient sees so rich that, when they went to England, they required separate vessels to carry their horses and servants to Holyhead-with sufficient influence over the peers and the leading gentry to perpetuate 1 Reflexions and Resolutions for the Gentlemen of Ireland. BOOK II. 1715 his the disabilities of the Presbyterians, and drive them by swarms into exile, the hierarchy of the Irish Establishment had provided, in 1728, for the spiritual instruction of the entire island 600 beneficed clergy.1 That was the sum of their militant forces all told. So poor were the incumbencies, that though pluralities were unabated, and eight, nine, sometimes twelve or thirteen cures of souls were heaped on one man, whole income did not always reach 100l. a year. On these 600 men were thrown, by the law, not only the Church services but the duty of providing schools in every parish; yet the Government allowed the Bishops to prohibit the scattered Protestant settlements from electing pastors of their own; and, in the face of so extraordinary a combination of negligence and bigotry, the execution of the law to prevent the incoming of priests from abroad, or the ordination of fresh priests at home, was of course impossible. It was left to stand a confession of impotence, to bring law itself into contempt. While he gave so miserable an account of the Establishment, the Primate was obliged to add, that there were 3,000 priests in Ireland. All, or almost all of them, were by that time, according to the letter of the statute, liable to transportation; and to death as felons if they returned. Yet chapels were built, and mass was 1 There are in Ireland 600 incumbents and, I fear, near 3,000 Popish priests. The Primate (Archbishop Boulter) to the Duke of Newcastle, March 7, 1728.' MSS. Record Office. By contrasting the number of incumbents with the number of priests, the Primate indicates that the curates were either too few in number, or too insignificant in themselves to be worth considering. The bulk of our clergy,' he goes on, 'have neither parsonage houses nor glebes. Yet, except we get more churches and chapels, and more resident incumbents, instead of gaining ground on the Papists, we must lose to them as we do in many places.' III. 1715 said openly without interference. Occasionally CHAP. when there were threats of invasion, some spasmodic onslaught was directed half insincerely from the Castle. But sheriffs shrunk from issuing warrants. Grand juries might send up bills, but petty juries refused to convict. Informers, so ready to betray Rapparees and Tories, could neither be bribed or frightened into giving evidence against the clergy. Country magistrates, without a certainty of support from the Government, would not court unpopularity by gratuitous activity, which might embroil them with their tenants; and the Government at home, in alliance usually with one or other of the Catholic powers, made a merit of yielding to the intercession of foreign ambassadors, and ordering the suspension of the laws against their co-religionists.1 Even when there was real alarm, and the Castle authorities 1 From the multitude of reports I select two almost at random. In the alarm of 1715 the grand jury of King's County desired Secretary Dawson to acquaint the Viceroy, that the late insolent behaviour of the Papists in that county was owing to the priests not being brought to justice,' and 'that several persons who were active in summoning persons to give evidence against them had been threatened.' "That priests officiated generally who had not taken the Oath of Abjuration, and who were not registered.' 'That many indictments had been presented by the Grand Jury, but only one priest in the county had been tried and convicted.' The Grand Jury of Galway reported that:-'Great numbers of friars had within very few years come into the kingdom, and settled themselves in that county. At the |