valid; and in this emergency they sought the advice of some of the clergy around them in whose knowledge and discretion they had confidence. David Rothe, the aged bishop of the diocese, was deemed the best theologian on the episcopal bench; and to him, and certain other divines selected to aid him by their counsel, they applied for information. Seven queries were submitted to them for solution. (1) They asked-Are the articles of the Cessation against the Catholic religion, or do they warrant a sentence of excommunication? (2) Does the appeal made by us to Rome, against the sentence, meanwhile suspend its execution? (3) Do certain answers returned by us to the proposals of the Nuncio render us liable to excommunication? (4) Does opposition to the Cessation, in defiance of the positive orders of the Supreme Council, by those who have taken the oath of association, involve the guilt of perjury? (5) If the law of the land, even as it existed in Catholic times, is violated by the sentence, are the Nuncio and his adherents at liberty to publish the excommunication and interdict? (6) Can any one, without the concurrence of the General Assembly, obtain a dispensation to break the Oath of Association? (7) Can any of the Confederates, under pretence of submitting to the Nuncio, disobey the orders of the Supreme Council? To all these queries the old Bishop of Ossory and his coadjutors promptly returned replies most satisfactory to the interrogators. They declared that the Cessation supplied no proper reason for a sentence of excommunication; and that, as such sentence was in itself groundless and invalid, an appeal was virtually unnecessary. They affirmed that the Pope himself might make mistakes; and that, if even he delivered a false judgment, he was not entitled to obedience. "If," said they, "his Holiness-who is the Supreme ecclesiastical judge on earth, and from whom there is no appeal, in matters belonging to his judicature, otherwise than from himself to himselfdid, upon ill information, or for any other cause whatsoever, give judgment or pronounce censure contrary to justice and conscience, or which would be disadvantageous to our public cause, or destructive of our commonwealth, or of the lives, liberties, or fortunes of the Confederates, or of the

dissenters and fanatics see what we intend as to Church government."1

There are times when the utter want of principle in persons holding a high social position is revealed with startling evidence. Never, perhaps, was a disregard even for outward consistency more glaringly exhibited than at the period of the Restoration. Many of the leading men in Ireland now, all at once, changed their religious profession. In the days of the Commonwealth, Sir Charles Coote had been the bitter persecutor of both Prelatists and Presbyterians. Now, created Earl of Mountrath, he was not ashamed to take the lead in urging conformity to the Book of Common Prayer. Lord Broghill had been won over to the side of Cromwell: and had supported the Protector in his policy. Now, under the title of the Earl of Orrery, he made himself conspicuous as an ardent Royalist and high-flying Episcopalian. Others, who had pledged themselves by oath to adhere to the Solemn League and Covenant, now assailed it in the language of execration. Most of the members of the Irish House of Commons of 1661 had been long connected with Independent, Baptist, or Presbyterian congregations: and yet, with marvellous facility, they agreed to require all the subjects of the kingdom to conform to the Episcopal mode of Church government and the English Liturgy. The Covenant, which not a few of them had sworn to maintain, was ordered to be burned in all cities, and corporate and market towns, by the hands of the common hangman.* Nor did the Irish senators stop even here in their anxiety to testify their zeal for the restored ritual. At their own request the Lord's Supper was administered to the members of the House of

1 See letter from the Earl of Orrery to the Duke of Ormond. Mant, i. 631. 2 Reid, ii. 239.

3 Mant, i. 632. The Declaration on this subject, agreed to by both Houses, was adopted in the Lords on the motion of Viscount Montgomery of the Ards, who had twice sworn to the Solemn League and Covenant. Reid, ii. 272,

note.

The only Irish magistrate who scrupled to burn the Solemn League and Covenant was Captain John Dalway, Mayor of Carrickfergus. He was involved, in consequence, in considerable trouble; and he appears to have very reluctantly complied.

Reid, ii. 273, note.

Commons in June, 1661, by Primate Bramhall-the most distinguished representative of High Church intolerance.

These legislators had special reasons of their own for their ecclesiastical subserviency. They held their estates by a most precarious tenure. These estates consisted, to a large extent, of confiscated lands which they had very recently acquired, and which were still claimed by the former proprietors.2 The present holders were therefore most anxious to recommend themselves to the King-who was known to be bent on the re establishment of prelacy; and they were well aware that, by opposing the Royal wishes in relation to the Church, they would imperil their possessions. Powerful influence was used to induce Charles to restore the forfeited lands to their previous Roman Catholic owners ;3 and, had not reasons of State interposed, he would have felt very much inclined to eject those who now enjoyed them. The new

senators were sensible of the insecurity of their position: and as most of them had all along been mainly desirous to accumulate wealth in Ireland, it is not difficult to account for the time-serving spirit which they now exhibited.

There is nothing more remarkable in this portion of the ecclesiastical history of the country than the sudden collapse of both Anabaptism and Independency. We have seen1 that,

1 Mant, i. 633. It would appear that at this time there was only one Roman Catholic returned to the Irish House of Commons. Froude's English in Ireland, i. 147. Of the Peers, twenty-one are said to have been Romanists, and seventy-two Protestants. Haverty, p. 602.

2 At the Restoration there were two classes to whom no favour was to be shown, that is, those directly implicated in the massacre of 1641, and those concerned in the death of Charles I. Many of the Anglo-Irish Roman Catholic nobility and gentry had all along been more favourable to the King than most of those who had recently obtained possession of their forfeited lands.

3 The great difficulty in the way was the influence of those who now had possession. The attempt to expel them might have sent Charles a second time into exile. 4 See before, p. 123. Those who at the present day are called Baptists were then generally known as Anabaptists; because they rebaptized their converts. Roman Catholic writers account, in their own way, for the disappearance of the Protestant colonists. They declare that they were "struck with Egyptian plagues" which carried them off in vast numbers! They were not," says one writer, as yet three months in Ireland when most fetid vermin crawled forth from their bodies in such swarms that their hair, and beard, and garments were covered with them, so that they could not appear in public through shame, nor could they

66

when Cromwell attained to supreme power, seven-eighths of all the ministers paid by the State were connected with these two denominations. The Baptist and Congregational preachers were located in the chief garrison towns of all the four provinces; and were specially favoured in the way of maintenance.1 But, thirty years after the Restoration, pastors and flocks had almost entirely disappeared. It was computed, in 1672, that nearly one-half of the Irish Protestants of English origin dissented from the Established Church;2 and almost all these non-conformists must have belonged to the two denominations of "sectaries" whom the Protector specially encouraged. It is now perhaps impossible to trace, with any great degree of accuracy, the progress of their extinction. Some of them returned to England; perhaps a larger number emigrated to America ; and many were gradually absorbed by the Episcopal Church. "Two are better than one, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken;" but their system of ecclesiastical polity--ignoring any firm bond of confederation-peculiarly exposed them in a time of trial to disintegration and decay. There is reason to think that in a few generations, in consequence of inter-marriages and

anywhere find rest . . . it was confined to the strangers alone, and by that disease and in other ways God so humbled their pride that from 1641 to 1650 more than 180,000 English in various parts of Ireland, were carried away, not so much slain in war as destroyed by this Herodian disease and other plagues."-MORAN'S Persecutions of the Irish Catholics, pp. 170, 171. It is well known that Roman Catholics suffered even more than Protestants from the plague which raged in Ireland during the last three years of the Roman Catholic Confederation; and Roman Catholics themselves admit that the Presbyterians of Ulster entirely escaped that visitation. See before, p. 100, note (1).

1 Thus, whilst Presbyterian ministers had £100 per annum, several Baptists and Independents had twice that sun.

2 Sir Wm. Petty's Political Anatomy.

Tracts, p. 305.

The Presbyterians can be easily ascertained; and there is no reason to believe that at this time they amounted to more than one-third of the Protestant population. The Episcopalians formed another third. See Petty's Political Anatomy, p. 305. In 1659 there were no Scotch settlers in the provinces of Munster or Connaught, and but seven in the province of Leinster."-Observations of W. H. Hardinge, M.R.I.A., on the Earliest Known MS. Census Returns of the People of Ireland. Trans. R. I.A., vol. xxiv. Antiq. part iv., p. 326. Dublin, 1865. • Froude's English in Ireland, i. 156.

Romish authorities in questions of casuistry. It was forthwith committed to the press; and it appears to have at once produced a deep and extensive impression. No one ever attempted a reply.1 Thomas Dease, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Meath-a prelate widely respected for his piety and learning-published his approval of it; and several other divines of eminence testified in the same way that, in all its parts and pages, "truth was enfranchised, ignorance enlightened;" and the proceedings of the Supreme Council in regard to the Cessation "vindicated from injustice." 2 Even the Jesuit fathers at Kilkenny attested that it was “a learned and laborious performance," most worthy to be published "to remove scruples," and "to settle the consciences of all sorts.' "3 In the end, the Supreme Council were joined in their appeal to Rome by fourteen prelates and all the secular clergy in their dioceses, as well as by many of the monastic orders. But the Pope rejected the appeal as frivolous; and, for many years afterwards, the ban of the Church rested on those who supported the Cessation with Inchiquin. Though Rothe was thus permitted to close his earthly career under the sentence of excommunication, he did not cease till his death to perform all the functions of a Roman Catholic prelate. At first the Dominicans and Franciscans at Kilkenny shut up their churches in obedience to the interdict; 7 but the Jesuits in the same city kept their chapels open.8 The like course was generally pursued; and thus the ecclesiastical censures of Rinuccini proved practically abortive.

6

The immediate result of the intemperate conduct of Rinuccini was the virtual destruction of the Confederacy.

1 O'Conor's Hist. Address, p. 165.

Walsh's Hist. of the Remonstrance, appendix of Instruments. 3 Ibid. Queries, ii.

4 Carte, ii. 34; O'Conor's Hist. Address, part ii. 348.

Queries, iii.

5 O'Conor's Hist. Address, part ii. 414. It appears that the Roman Catholic nobility and gentry of Ireland were not unconditionally absolved until 1698! See Burke's Hib. Dominicana, p. 691. Ware says that, in 1665, "Pope Alexander VII. absolved the Irish from the excommunication of the Nuncio, upon their doing penance." -Gesta Hibernorum.

6 O'Conor's Hist. Address, p. 168.

7 Walsh's History of the Remonstrance. To the reader, p. xlv.

8 Ibid.