the almost absolute security which the Protestant clergy, scattered thinly over wild Catholic districts, have usually enjoyed during the worst periods of organised crime, and the very large measure of respect and popularity they have almost invariably commanded, whenever they abstained from interfering with the religion of their neighbours.

We may add to this the very curious fact that the Irish people, though certainly not less superstitious than the inhabitants of other parts of the kingdom, appear never to have been subject to that ferocious witch mania which in England, in Scotland, and in most Catholic countries on the Continent, has caused the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent women. The case of Dame Alice Kyteler and her accomplices, one of whom was burnt at Kilkenny for witchcraft in 1324, is well known;' but there was no Irish law against witchcraft till after the Reformation. Coxe mentions that in 1578 the Lord Deputy 'executed twenty-two criminals at Limerick and thirty-six at Kilkenny, one of which was a blackamoor, and two others were witches, who were condemned by the law of nature, for there was no positive law against witchcraft in those days.'2 In 1586 a law was enacted against witchcraft, but the Irish cases of capital punishment for this offence were very few, and it is probable that more persons have perished on this ground in a single year in England and Scotland than in the whole recorded history of Ireland. One case which seems to have excited some attention, occurred at Youghal in 1661,3 and another in Antrim in 1699,4

1 It has been printed by the Camden Society.

2 Coxe's Hist. of Ireland, i.

354.

"Glanvill's Sadducismus Triumphatus, Relation vii. It is not said whether the culprit was exe

cuted. There is no Irish case in the long catalogue of executions in Hutchinson's Hist. of Witchcraft.

4 I mention this on the authority of a letter by Crofton Croker in the Dublin Penny Journal, i.

and in 1711 a certain panic on the subject appears to have existed among the Protestant and half-Scotch population of Carrickfergus. Eight women were accused of having bewitched a woman in the island Magee. The judges were divided as to the nature of the evidence; the jury convicted the prisoners, and they were imprisoned and pilloried. This, as far as I have been able to discover, was the last trial for witchcraft in Ireland. Of active disloyalty among the Catholic population there was surprisingly little. No doubt an intense animosity against the Government smouldered in the minds of a considerable number of the priests and of the more intelligent laymen, but several powerful causes conspired to counteract it. The conduct of Charles II. at the time of the Act of Settlement, the conduct of James II. after the battle of the Boyne, and the ferocious laws which had been passed against the Catholics under Anne-the last English sovereign of her house-had together destroyed all enthusiasm for the Stuarts; and the Hanoverian sovereigns having in their German dominions shown a remarkable toleration of the Catholics, their accession to the British throne was received in Ireland rather with satisfaction than

the reverse. The few Catholic nobility and gentry had fairly given up the struggle. They desired chiefly to retain their property and position, and they showed themselves steadily, sometimes even extravagantly loyal. The tendency of the Church in the eighteenth century was everywhere to strengthen authority. The mass of the people were reduced to a condition of ignorance, degradation, and poverty, in which men are

341. Croker, whose knowledge of Irish local literature was very great, says that this case and the three at Kilkenny are the only Irish instances of capital punish

ment for witchcraft he has met with.

1 McSkimin's Hist. of Carrickfergus, p. 22. See, too, the Dublin Penny Journal, i. 341, 370.

occupied almost exclusively with material wants, and care very little for any political question; the Irish brigade drew away to the Continent nearly all the active elements of disaffection; and the Jacobites who remained at home clearly saw that the most valuable service they could render to their cause was to send fresh recruits to be disciplined in the armies of France or of Spain. These are, I believe, the causes of the very remarkable fact that, during the first sixty years of the eighteenth century, though Great Britain was convulsed by two rebellions, and though Ireland was more than once menaced by a French invasion, the Irish people remained perfectly passive. Alarms, indeed, were not unfrequent. In 1708, on the rumour of an intended invasion of Scotland by the Pretender, forty-one Roman Catholic noblemen and gentlemen were, as a matter of precaution, imprisoned in Dublin Castle. We have seen how the houghing in 1711 and 1712 was attributed by many to a Jacobite source, and how the troubled aspect of English politics in 1714, 1715, 1743, and 1744 led to sterner repressive measures against the Catholics of Ireland. In 1721, when Alberoni had espoused the cause of the Pretender, letters from abroad were intercepted, foreshadowing an invasion of Ireland, and some alarm was expressed at the very extraordinary devotions, fastings, and penances, among the Irish all over the country.'

It

was said that many hundreds went daily barefooted to church, that men who had long been confined to their houses or their beds now joined in the devotions, and that when they were asked the reason, they replied 'that they were commanded to do it for the good of their souls and the advantage of another person.'

1 Curry's Historical Review, i. 243.

2 L. Osborne to J. Busteed.

Cork, Dec. 12, 1721. Irish Re cord Office.

But whatever truth there may have been in these rumours, it is at least certain that not a shot was fired in rebellion, and the complete tranquillity of Ireland during the struggle of 1745, as well as the entire absence of all trace in the papers of the Pretender of Irish conspiracy, attest beyond dispute that disloyalty as an active principle was not powerful in the country. In 1756, when war was raging with France, and when rumours of invasion were abroad, Wesley was astonished at the absolute security he found reigning in Ireland.1 In 1760, when these rumours were revived, another English traveller bears testimony to the good service rendered by some of the priests in warning their congregations against the seduction of French politics.2 An army of 12,000 men was indeed habitually maintained, and was especially useful in keeping order in remote districts; but, as we have already seen, in seasons of danger a great part of it was usually withdrawn. The existence of so large a body, paid altogether from Irish resources, at a time when there was an extreme jealousy of a standing army in England, was justly regarded as a great source of strength to the Empire.3

It is, however, certain that during all this time the legitimacy of the title of the Pretender was a received doctrine among the priests. In a few cases priests appear to have been concerned in enlistments for the Continent. Among the presentments of the grand juries in 1744, is one of the grand jury of Kilkenny,

1 Wesley's Journal, April 1756. 2 Derrick's Letters from Liverpool, Chester, Cork, and Killarney (1767).

3 Dobbs, part i. p. 65. Trenchard's Hist. of Standing Armies (1739). These troops were frequently sent on foreign service.

In 1729 Boulter reports the bitter complaints on account of the Irish regiments being sent to Gibraltar (Boulter's Letters, i. 330), and the defenceless state in which Ireland was left was, at a later period, the origin of the Volunteers.

stating that Colman O'Shaugnessy, the titular Bishop of Ossory, had been domestic chaplain to the Pretender, and was appointed at his special request.1 Another Bishop of Ossory-the illustrious De Burgo-in his great work on the Irish Dominicans,' which appeared as late as 1762, enunciated sentiments so glaringly Jacobite, that a council of Irish Bishops held at Thurles ordered a portion of the book to be expunged. It was not, however, until the present century that the very curious fact was acknowledged, that by virtue of an indult conceded to James II., both his son and his grandson retained and exercised to the end of their lives the privilege of nominating bishops to the Roman Catholic sees in Ireland.2

There can be little doubt that if the Catholics had been permitted to enlist in the British army they would have availed themselves in multitudes of the privilege, and would have proved as loyal and as brave under the British flag as they have in every campaign during the present century. Such a permission would have attracted to the British service numbers of courageous soldiers who actually found their place among the enemies of England. It would have been an inesti

1 Informations and Presentments, Irish State Paper Office. One letter relating to an episcopal appointment was intercepted by the Government. It was written by one Laurence Connellan to Joseph Wodberry, at the Hague, Feb. 28, 1752, asking him to make use of his interest with the friends of the Pretender, that the writer should be appointed successor to Dr. McDonagh at Ennis. The writer says the priests of Ennis had sent to the Chevalier a postulatum, giving in order the names of several priests,

one of whom they desired to be named. The letter fell into the hands of Lord Holdernesse. Departmental Correspondence, Irish State Paper Office.

2 This fact was first made generally known by Bishop Doyle, in his evidence before a parliamentary committee. Fitzpatrick's Life of Doyle, i. 396. See, too, Lenihan's Hist. of Limerick, pp. 615-617. The Scotch Protestant Bishops were likewise nominated by the Pretender.