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treaty in question, the following Documents, collected from Records, State Papers and Letters, and other authentic sources are now submitted.

That the Roman Catholics of Ireland in general never were, by any law, deprived of those rights which they now seek to recover, until the reign of King William the Third, it is submitted, the History and the Statute Law of the nation abundantly testify. Persons holding particular offices under the Crown were, indeed, by the Statute, Second of Elizabeth, chap. I. compelled to take the Oath of Supremacy, but no other description of persons were by that Statute prevented from the enjoyment of any Rights or Privileges they enjoyed at any previous period.-(See DOCUMENTS subjoined, No. 1, page 1.)

Mr. Carte in speaking of the Oath of Supremacy says, "The Oath contains only a Declaration that the Queen (or King) is the only supreme Governor of this Realm, as well in Spiritual or Ecclesiastical things or causes as Temporal; and that no Foreign Prince, Prelate, State or Potentale, hath or ought to have, any jurisdiction, power, superiority, preeminence or authority Ecclesiastical or Spiritual within this Realm; with a promise of renouncing such foreign authority, and of maintaining that of the Crown of England. To guard against any wrong construction or perverse interpretation of this Oath, she at the same time published înjunctions, wherein she declared that she pretended to no priestly power, and that she challenged no authorily, but what was of ancient time due to the Imperial Crown of England, that is, under God to have the sovereignty and rule over all manner of persons born within her dominions, of what estate, whether ecclesiastical or temporal soever they be, so as no other sovereign power shall or ought to have any superiority over them: and she allowed every body to accept the Oath with this interpretation and meaning." (Carte's Life of the Duke of Ormond, folio, London, p. 38.)

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It is a well known historical fact, that all through the reign of Elizabeth the Roman Catholic Peers sat and voted, in the House of Lords, and the Knights, Citizens and Burgesses, sitting in the House of Commons, during the same period, were indiscriminately chosen from the Catholic and Protestant Bodies, and by Catholic and Protestant Electors. Indeed so well were the Protestant l'arty convinced that the Roman Catholics would have a majority in the House of Commons for the rejection of the Act for establishing the Queen's Supremacy, and that for the "Uniformity of Common Prayer and Service in the Church and the Administration of the Sacraments," (Second Eliz. cap. 2,) if the House were regularly constituted, and the full number of representatives returned to sit in Parliament, that they were obliged to have recourse to a stratagem to prevent the defeat of the Bill. This Parliament was convened by Thomas, Earl of Sussex, Lord Deputy of Ireland, who came over with special instructions for establishing the reformed worship. To enable him to act up to his instructions, in this particular, he took spécial care that out of the twenty Counties, into which Ireland was then divided, ten Counties only were summoned to return representatives to the House of Commons. The Counties summoned were Meath, Westmeath,Louth, Kildare, Catherlow, Kilkenny, Waterford, Tipperary and Wexford, The Counties not represented were Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Connaught, Clare, Antrim, Ardee Down, King's County and Queen's County. The other members of the House of Commons were Citizens and Burgesses of those Cities and Towns in which the Royal Authority was predominant, by which a majority for the Queen's wishes was secured. The entire number of the Commons amounted to only seventy-six. The number of Peers who sat in the House of Lords was only forty-three, of which twenty were Bishops, and of these only two, Welsh of Meath, and Leve

reux of Kildare, were strict adherents to the Roman Catholic Religion. Of the Lay-Peers, though the majority of them were Catholics, the other party being joined with the Bishops give the preponderance to the Protestants, and by this ingenious contrivance of a packed Parliament, the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity were carried through both Houses. (See Rolls of Chancery, second Eliz. and Leland's History of Ireland, Dublin edition, 8vo. 1814, vol. 2, p. 224.)

How this affair was managed is related by the learned Doctor John Lynch, Roman Catholic Archdeacon of Tuam, in the time of King Charles the First. In his "Cambrensis Eversus," he informs us, that the Statute of Uniformity of the second of Elizabeth was passed by the artifice of a Mr. Stonyhurst of Corduff, then Speaker of the House of Commons, who, being in the reforming interest, privately got together, on a day when the House was not to sit, a few such members as he knew to be favourers of that interest, and, consequently, in the absence of all those he believed would give it opposition. (See also Analect. Sacr. p. 431.)

The Parliament of eleventh Eliz. (1569) was also composed of Catholics and Protestants in both Houses. In this Parliament" several Persons were returned Members for Towns not incorporated, and Sheriffs and Magistrates of Corporations had returned themselves, and numbers of Englishmen had been returned for Towns which they had never seen or known. "Some of these were by the Judges "declared incapable of sitting, but still there was "left to the Government that majority of friends, which so much pains had been taken to acquire." (Leland, vol. 2, p. 242.)

The Parliament of 1585, (twenty-seventh Eliz.) was remarkable for one particular circumstance at

tending it, namely, that several of the Irish Chiefs and heads of tribes were summoned to it, who never before attended an English Parliament.The Annals of the four Masters give the names of fifty-three Irish Chiefs who were summoned and attended that Parliament, some of whom had been created Peers, but whether the other Irish Chiefs sat as Barons of Parliament, which is most likely, or whether they sat in the House of Commons the Annalists do not inform us. Upon this a question might arise which it is foreign to this publication to pursue. Leland tells us (Hist. Ireland, v. 2, p. 295,) that "none of the Northern Counties as yet elected their Knights, except Cavan, which was represented by two loyal Irishmen of the family of O'Reilly, with these we may reckon as reformed Irish, Sir Hugh Mac-Gennis, member for the County of Down; Sir Tirlaugh O'Brien for Clare, Shane M'Brien, for Antrim, and the two members for Longford, of the name of O'Ferghal. Among the spiritual Lords sat the Bishops of Clogher and Raphoe, two sees which Davis assures us never were bestowed by Queen Elizabeth and among the temporal Barons, Tirlaugh, the old Chieftain of Tirowen, was now admitted." For all this he quotes the authority of the Rolls of Chancery, H. A. twenty-seventh of Eliz.. Yet in this there is something like mistake, which we shall not now stop to examine into, but must observe that if Tirlaugh the Chief of Tirowen, who never was created a Peer, sat as a temporal Baron, there is a strong presumption that the other Chieftains also sat as temporal Barons.

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In neither of these two last mentioned Parliaments was there any Act passed, nor any other thing done, to deprive the Catholics of any Civil or Religious Rights or Privileges that they enjoyed at any time before the Reformation. They

exercised in as ample a manner as any Protestant subjects all the functions that any Protestant did, which did not require that the person so exercising should take the Oath of Supremacy, and the malties for the non-compliance with the Act for the Uniformity of Worship were by no means strictly enforced.

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The reign of James I. who succeeded Elizabeth on the Throne of England, in 1602, opened a new field whereon the enemies of the Catholic Religion were allowed to exercise their ingenuity. to deprive the professors of that faith of any privilege they enjoyed, that were forbidden by law; yet during the entire of this reign no attempt was made to deprive them of the liberty of sitting and voting in both Houses of Parliament. This forbearance did not arise from any tenderness that either James or his Ministers felt for the Cathotics, but because they knew there was no law to deprive them of that liberty.

James, though a determined and implacable enemy to the Catholic Religion, had, for some years before the Death of Elizabeth, taken a great deal of pains to make friends among the Catholic Princes of Europe, and had actually commissioned Lord Home, in a secret manner, to hold a correspondence and open a negociation with the Pope; and at the same time employed the Roman Cathodic Archbishop of Glasgow to make friends amongst those of his own Religion whereever he could. He also had his Agents in Ireland fomenting Tirone's War. "Of these intrigues Queen Elizabeth received obscure hints from all quarters." (Robertson's History of Scotland.) "This the Queen gave him to understand, in a letter she wrote to himself in 1599; but still he went -on, and so great was his duplicity that numbers of the Roman Catholics believed him to be of that

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