This act seems not to have been strictly insisted upon; and the episcopal clergy, though their advocates did not forget to raise a cry of persecution, which was believed in England, are said to have been treated with singular favour. De Foe challenges them to show any one minister that ever was deposed for not acknowledging the church, if at the same time he offered to acknowledge the government and take the oaths; and says they have been often challenged on this head. Hist. of Church of Scotland, p. 319. In fact, a statute was passed in 1695, which confirmed all ministers who would qualify themselves by taking the oaths: and no less than 116 (according to Laing, iv. 259) did so continue; nay, De Foe reckons 165 at the time of the union. P. 320.
The rigid presbyterians inveighed against any toleration, as much as they did against the king's authority over their own church. But the government paid little attention to their bigotry; besides the above-mentioned episcopal clergymen, those who seceded from the church, though universally jacobites, and most dangerously so, were indulged with meeting-houses in all towns; and by an act of the queen (10 Anne, c. 7) obtained a full toleration, on condition of praying for the royal family, with which they never complied. It was thought necessary to put them under some fresh restrictions in 1748, their zeal for the Pretender being notorious and universal, by an act 21 Geo. II., c. 34; which has very properly been repealed after the motive for it had wholly ceased, and even at first was hardly reconcilable with the general principles of religious liberty; though it ill becomes those to censure it who vindicate the penal laws of Elizabeth against popery.
[462] Archbishop Tenison said, in the debates on the union, he thought the narrow notions of all churches had been their ruin, and that he believed the church of Scotland to be as true a protestant church as the church of England, though he could not say it was as perfect. Carstares, 759. This sort of language was encouraging; but the exclusive doctrine, or jus divinum, was sure to retain many advocates, and has always done so. Fortunately for Great Britain, it has not had the slightest effect on the laity in modern times.
[463] Sir James Ware's Antiquities of Ireland; Leland's Hist. of Ireland (Introduction); Ledwich's Dissertations.
[464] Id. Auct.: also Davis's Reports, 29, and his "Discovery of the true Causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued till his Majesty's happy Reign," 169. Sir John Davis, author of the philosophical poem, Γνωθι Σεαθτον was chief-justice of Ireland under James I. The tract just quoted is well known as a concise and luminous exposition of the history of that country from the English invasion.
[465] Ware; Leland; Ledwich; Davis's "Discovery," ibid.; Reports, 49. It is remarkable that Davis seems to have been aware of an analogy between the custom of Ireland and Wales, and yet that he only quotes the statute of Rutland (12 Edw. I.), which by itself does not prove it. It is, however, proved, if I understand the passage, by one of the Leges Walliæ published by Wotton, p. 139. A gavel or partition was made on the death of every member of a family for three generations, after which none could be enforced. But these parceners were to be all in the same degree; so that nephews could not compel their uncle to a partition, but must wait till his death, when they were to be put on an equality with their cousins; and this, I suppose, is meant by the expression in the statute of Rutland, "quod hæreditates remaneant partibiles inter consimiles hæredes."
[466] Leland seems to favour the authenticity of the supposed Brehon laws published by Vallancey. Introduction, 29. The style is said to be very distinguishable from the Irish of the twelfth or thirteenth century, and the laws themselves to have no allusion to the settlement of foreigners in Ireland, or to coined money; whence some ascribe them to the eighth century. On the other hand, Ledwich proves that some parts must be later than the tenth century. Dissertations, i. 270. And others hold them to be not older than the thirteenth. Campbell's Historical Sketch of Ireland, 41. It is also maintained that they are very unfaithfully translated. But, when we find the Anglo-Saxon and Norman usages, relief, aid, wardship, trial by jury (and that unanimous), and a sort of correspondence in the ranks of society with those of England (which all we read elsewhere of the ancient Irish seems to contradict), it is impossible to resist the suspicion that they are either extremely interpolated, or were compiled in a late age, and among some of the septs who had most intercourse with the English. We know that the degenerate colonists, such as the Earls of Desmond, adopted the Brehon law in their territories; but this would probably be with some admixture of that to which they had been used.
[467] "The first pile of lime and stone that ever was in Ireland was the castle of Tuam, built in 1161 by Roderic O'Connor, the monarch." Introduction to Cox's History of Ireland. I do not find that any later writer controverts this, so far as the aboriginal Irish are concerned; but doubtless the Norwegian Ostmen had stone churches, and there seems little doubt that some at least of the famous round towers so common in Ireland were erected by them. See Ledwich's Dissertations, vii. 143; and the book called Grose's Antiquities of Ireland, also written by Ledwich. Piles of stone without mortar are excluded by Cox's expression. In fact, the Irish had very few stone houses, or even regular villages and towns, before the time of James I. Davis, 170.
[468] Ledwich, i. 395.
[469] Antiquities of Ireland, ii. 76.