We pause and draw a hard breath, after this dictatorial description of how to rule a church and have a church, to observe that the Irish Protestant prelates of those days were no mean men; Bramhall was Bishop of Derry, and Bedell of Kilmore, and the primate so hectored and overawed by this Cavalier-Cromwell was no less a personage than James Usher. But being as they were, as they well knew they were, the creatures of the state, what could they do when brought into conflict with the author and finisher of their law?
Omitting the period of the civil wars and the Cromwellian Protectorate as a period phenomenal and exceptional, deserving study apart, we pass to the first parliament of Charles II., (1662,) in which one of the first contributions to the statutes which we find, is the renewal of the Elizabethan act of uniformity. In the same session was passed the acts of settlement and explanation, which have been called "the Magna Charta of Irish Protestantism." These acts confirmed to their Puritan possessors the properties of the Catholic gentry confiscated by Cromwell for their attachment to both Charleses, and extending into almost every county. Of 6000 proprietors, so confiscated, but 60—one per cent—were restored, in part or whole, to their hereditary estates.
Thirty years later, after William's victory over James II., 4000 remaining Catholic proprietors were subjected to a similar proscription—so that in that half-century 10,000 owners of estates forfeited them for their fidelity to their ancient, and their hostility to what Mr. Froude correctly calls "the intrusive religion."
No parliament sat again in Ireland, till that short one of a single session before mentioned, (the 4th James II.,) summoned in 1689. This parliament repealed the acts of settlement and explanation, Poyning's law, and other coercive and intolerant statutes; but the issue of battle went against King James, and the two succeeding reigns became fruitful beyond precedent of penal legislation. Although the 9th of the "Articles of Limerick"—at the close of the war—had simply imposed one unobjectionable sentence as an oath of allegiance on the defeated party, the act (2d and 3d William and Mary) prescribed an elaborate form of abjuration of the doctrines of transubstantiation and of the invocation of saints, and declaring the holy sacrifice of the Mass "superstitious and idolatrous."' The oath of abjuration concluded by the denial to any foreign prince or prelate (namely, the pope) of "any jurisdiction, power, superiority, preeminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within the realm." There never was a more shameful breach of public faith than this statute. The treaty of Limerick had simply prescribed this form of oath for the restoration to their former status of all who chose to take it: "I, A. B., do solemnly promise and swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to their majesties King William and Queen Mary; so help me God."
And the 10th article of the same treaty had provided: "The oath to be administered to such Roman Catholics as submit to their majesties' government, shall be the oath aforesaid and no other." Yet within the same twelvemonths in which William's generals and lord-justices signed this latter compact, the new penal law was passed, and the new oath of abjuration was imposed. In 1691, the tolerant treaty was signed; in 1692, when the few Catholic peers and commoners who ventured to present themselves appeared to be sworn in of the new Irish parliament, they were met by this infamous oath of abjuration, driven out and disqualified. Above a million of their broad acres were forfeited, as a further penalty on those who refused the oath, and we need not be surprised to find, at King William's death, (1702,) that but "one sixth part" of the property of the kingdom remained in Catholic hands.
The 7th and 8th William and Mary re-enacted, with additions, the Elizabethan penal laws. Of these additions the principal were:
1. Authorizing the Protestant chancellor to name guardians for Catholic minors.
2. Act to prevent recusants (Catholics) from becoming tutors in private families, unless by license of the Protestant ordinaries of their several dioceses.
3. An act to prevent Roman Catholics acting as guardians to minor children.
4. An act to disarm Roman Catholics.
5. An act for the banishment of popish priests and prelates.
During the reign of Queen Anne, however, the code received its last finishing contributions. In the 1st and 2d of this queen was passed "the act for discouraging the further growth of popery," of which the following were the principal provisions: