truth and calumny; he calls upon Dr. King to shew even one protestant church in Ireland, that was taken away, either by king James's order or connivance. He affirms that his ma jesty was so very careful of the protestants, in that point, that even at Dublin, where he kept his court, neither the cathedral, nor any parish church in the whole city was taken from the protestants; he owns that he took Christ Church for his own use, because it was always reputed the king's chapel.* But Dr. King himself," adds he, " and others then preached passive obedience in their own pulpits in Dublin; and that to such a degree, as to give offence to some of their pro testant hearers, who thought they stretched even to flat, tery."+ These positive assertions, publicly and grievously impeaching Dr. King's veracity, having never since been contradicted, or even questioned by him or his friends, afford the strongest presumption, that they were, at that time, generally known and acknowledged to be undeniably true. 5 Answer to King. cession of his kingdoms, and still less to make an attempt upon the crown." And a little after; "I ought to intreat your imperial majesty to be assured, that, I will employ all my credit to provide, that the Roman catholics of that country may enjoy liberty of conscience, and be put out of fear of being persecuted on account of their religion." Sir John Dalrymp, Mem. vol. iii. p. 170. See Append.-Not only the emperor, but the pope himself, was cajoled by these deceitful assurances. And yet Dr. King, at the same time, confesses," that the protestants, in their application to government for the recovery of some churches, had the luck to gain several of the popish nobility to favor their suits.”— Ubi supra, p. 176. "King James, says Macpherson, was peculiarly unfortunate; he was charged by the protestants of violence in favor of the papists; he was accused by the papists of too much lenity to the protestants."-Hist. of Gr. Brit. vol. i. p. 564. Yet some adverse writers have taken the liberty to charge K. James with violating his coronation oath. Was it for protecting the protestants, or allowing the catholics the free exercise of their religion, they forged this calumny? For king James's Coronation Oath, see the Appendix, ad finem. + "Dr. King then used to say, that persecution never hurted religion, but that rebellion destroyed it; and that it would be a glorious sight to see a cartful of clergymen going to the stake for asserting the principles of religion, with regard to passive obedience.”—Lesley, Answ. Pref. CHAP. XIV. King William's treatment of the episcopal clergy in Scotland, compared with king James's behavior towards the protestant clergy in Ireland. MR. LESLEY has drawn a parallel between king William's behavior to the episcopal clergy of Scotland, and king James's to those of the established church of Ireland, at the same time, viz. in the year 1689; by which it appears, that the former did actually effect in Scotland, what the latter was only suspected to have designed in Ireland. "When," says he, "the states of Scotland were convened by king William's circular letter of March 1689, the oaths requir ed by the law to be taken by all members of parliament, or any judicature, before they can sit and vote there, being laid aside, the antimonarchical and fanatical party were admitted into the house; and thereby, becoming the greater number (when the major part of Scotland, and much the greater part of the nobility and gentry, were episcopal) did afterwards frame an act of grace, pardoning and acquitting all those that had been con cerned in the open and public rebellions of Pentland-hills and Bothwell-bridge; and thus these furies incarnate, the assassinates of the lord archbishop of St. Andrew's, as many of them Preface to his answer to King. "On the 3d of May, 1670, Dr. Sharp, archbishop of St. Andrew's, on his way to that city, was attacked by a party of these furious zealots. The most of his servants were absent; his daughter only accompanied him in his coach. Having fired on him in vain with their carbines, they dis patched him with their swords. His murder was accompanied with circumstances of the utmost barbar ty: when he stretched forth his hand for mercy to one of the assassins whom he seemed to know, the inhuman vil, lain almost cut it off with a stroke of his sword. His daughter was wounded in several places, endeavoring to cover her aged father from the murderers; they even mangled the dead Ledy; they at length left the torn carcase with every mark of indignity on the high way. Men were shocked at an enthusiasm that gave the name of a religious action to the worst of crimes. An universal joy followed the murder of Sharp among the adherents of the covenant, the pulpits thundered forth the applause of the assassins, and even some, who approved not of the manner of the deed, ́expressed their gladness at the removal of the arch-enemy of their forms,” Macpherson's Hist. of Gt. Erit. vol. i. p. 272. ament. as were then alive, were enabled to become members of parliThe fanatical mob, that had rabbled the episcopal clergy, were armed, and made the guard of this meeting of the estates, and resolved to sacrifice any who durst oppose their designs. They attacked the archbishop of Glasgow in the streets of Edinburgh, where the convention sate."* "On the 31st of May, 1689, king William sent instructions to duke Hamilton, commissioner, in these words: “You are to pass an act, turning the meeting of the estates into a parlia ment, and the three estates are to consist of the noblemen, barons, and burgesses." Accordingly, the meeting, where the bishops formerly sate, was on the 5th of June, 1689, turned into a parliament, the bishops being first excluded. Two days after, that parliament passed an act settling presbyterian church-government, and on the 22d of July following abolished episcopacy. This was done in consequence of new instructions sent to duke Hamilton in these words: "you are to touch the act abolishing episcopacy, as soon as you can; and to rescind all acts inconsistent therewith." These instructions were signed by the king, at Whitehall, July 17th, 1689, and the act was touched at Edinburgh, on the 22d of the same month; and thus fell episcopacy in Scotland, two months and eleven days after king William and Mary took upon them the crown of that kingdom, which was the 11th of May, 1689."+ • "The blow (says Macpherson) which the royal prerogative received in Scotland, in the memorable 1688, established licenciousness, instead of freedom in that kingdom. The parliament was placed in a situation to make the most for themselves, at the hands of the king, while the people felt nothing from the alteration in government, but a change of tyrants." -Hist. of Great Britain, vol. ii. p. 332. "They were printed at London, by order of king William, ann. 1689 and the Scots acts of convention and parliament, above quoted, are collected and extracted from the registers and records of the meeting of estates and parliament there by the commissioner, then exercising the office of clerk-register, and printed, cum privilegio, at Edinburgh, ann. 1690."— Lssley, ib. "By an act made in Scotland in 1695, episcopal ministers were prohibited to baptize or solemnize matrimony, on pain of perpetual imprisonment, but repealed 10th of queen Anne, and no person to incur any penalty for resorting to episcopal meetings, nor their pastors for preaching, administering the sacraments, or marrying."-Summary of penal laws, p. 79. CHAP. XV. The true cause of the decline of the protestant religion in Ireland in the reign of king James II. THE decline of the protestant religion in Ireland, in the reign of king James, was not owing, as Dr. King supposes, either to the violence of his government, or the artifice, or in. dustry of his priests; but to the negligence at first, and afterwards to the self-interestedness and tergiversation of its own clergy. Of their negligence, lord Clarendon himselft fre 1 State Lett. vol. i. p. 215. * "I did not find (says marshal Schomberg, in a letter to king William, from Lisburn, December, 1689), that the ministers apply themselves enough to their duty; whilst the Romish priests are passionate to exhort the people to die for the church of Rome, in putting themselves at their head.”—Dalrymp. Mem. vol. iii. p. 59. In one of these letters, he tells his grace," that very few of the clergy resided in their cures ; but employed pitiful curates, which necessitated the people to look after a Romish priest, or a non-conformist preacher, of both which there was plenty. That he found it an ordinary thing in Ireland for a minister to have five or six, or more curates, and to get them supplied by those who will do it cheapest. When (adds he) I discourse with my lords the bishops on these things, I confess, I have not satisfactory answers." Dalrymp. Memoirs, vol. i. p. 223.-Even marshal Schomberg complained to king William in 1690, "that the (established) clergy of Ireland were people, that were little attached to their parishes.”—Ib. vol. ii. Append. p. 79. Lord Clarendon complained in 1685-6, "that several of the clergy were absent in England; and among these the archbishop of Tuam, and the bishop of Down and Connor: that the former, after three years absence, was resolved to come home; but that the latter, who had been absent from his charge six years, desired to have his licence of absence renewed; and that yet,'it was really a shame to think how his diocess lay."— State Lett. vol. i. p. 215. "Some (clergymen) says his lordship, hold five, six or nine hundred pounds per annum in ecclesiastical preferments, and get them all served for one hundred and fifty pounds a-year, and do not preach once a-year themselves. Several of the clergy, who have been in England, sent to renew their licences of absence, but I have refused most of them, which has brought some of them home, and the rest must follow."-Ib. p. 215. In the journals of the house of commons, October 1695, there is a petition of Peter Aris, Thomas Baker, Richard Adams, and other inhabi quently complained, in his letters to the archbishop of Canterbury, whom, as I have already observed, the king had ordered him to consult, in all the religious affairs of that kingdom. And the effects of that negligence, together with the ensuing war (for which religion was the pretence) were such, that Mr. Lesley says, "he was himself a witness, that atheism, contempt of all religion, debauchery, and violence, were more notorious and universal, in the protestant army in Ireland, from the year 1688 to 1692, and more publicly owned than since he knew the world. That to his knowledge, several had turned papists, on account of the lewdness of the army, and the apostacy of the clergy. And that, however it might seem a paradox, it was nevertheless true, that there had been more converts to popery in England also, and from the same causes, within the four years above-mentioned, than in four years after that period." That is to say, more in the four years after king James's abdication, when he could make use of neither force nor allurements to gain converts to his religion, than in all the time that he had it so amply in his power, to employ both these means of conversion for that purpose.* Bishop Burnet has accounted for this sudden growth of irreligion and immorality, at that juncture, in the same manner. "A disbelief," says he,3" of revealed religion, a profane mockery of the christian faith, and the mysteries of it, became scandalous and avowed; and it must be confessed, that the behaviour of many clergymen gave athiests no small advantage. 2 Ubi supra, p. 36-7-8. 3 Hist. of his own Times, vol. ii. tants of the parish of Newcastle in the county of Wicklow, complaining that they have had no service in their parish-church since the troubles (1688) though their church be in good repair, and at least three hundred protestants in the said parish; under colour of an union to the parish of Delgany, though in truth there was no such union; presented to the house and read.-Vol. ii. f. 728. * A late ingenious writer observes, "that the number of Roman catholics did not increase when they had the particular favor of the court. From the dissolution of the Oxford parliament to the end of the reign of James II. none embraced their doctrine but a very few persons, who were called court catholics, and they after the revolution all returned to the profession of the protestant religion, except Mr. Dryden (the great poet)."—Consideration on the Penal Laws against Roman catholics, p. 66. SR |