suppressed with zealous, immediate severity. Thus its intellectual as well as political position was the precise reverse of what it occupied in Britain and Ireland.

Though a few Protestant or sceptical minds in France, Spain, and Italy opposed Catholicism, and in France acquired some influence for a short time, yet the intellect and political power of these countries steadily maintained it, while the non-Catholics in southern Europe apparently made no definite alliance with the successful Protestants in the north.2 The Irish Catholic clergy, therefore, accustomed to associate their faith at home with poverty and legal oppression, found it thoroughly triumphant in southern Europe, supported by almost despotic power, favoured by all the devotion of art, wealth, and intellect, and firmly maintained by the national conviction.3

They returned to Ireland often enlightened, even accomplished, owing to instruction derived from the Continent, yet prejudiced and hostile respecting all recent changes in British literary thought, feeling, and sentiment. Hence the scornful anger and political

• Hallam's "Middle Ages," Buckle's "Civilisation"; also Sir. G. C. Lewis's "Influence of Authority."

2 Hallam's "Middle Ages," Buckle's "Civilisation," and Macaulay's Essay on Ranke's "History of the Popes."

3 "Governments have attempted to extirpate religious error by persecution, and to favour religious truth by endowment, but as the governments of different countries adopted different creeds, that which was considered religious error by one government was considered religious truth by another."-Sir G. C. Lewis's "Influence of Authority," p. 75.

suspicion with which they were viewed by most Protestant writers on Ireland, who saw little in them but implacable hatred to Protestantism, which tended both to maintain and increase the ancient Irish enmity to England. Britain and northern Germany were now the religious examples, allies, and supporters of Irish non-Catholics, while the unshaken devotion of southern Europe to the intellectual and religious supremacy of the Pope was the consolation, example, and hope of the Irish Catholic majority.

The almost incredible animosity, however, between Irish religious divisions has always prevented their either acknowledging or perhaps believing in the intellectual gifts, as well as the redeeming qualities, of each other. Irish literary talent, therefore, has been usually devoted with lamentable success irritate passions, rather than to soothe them. Readers of most Irish histories will generally find that the talents and enthusiasm of the authors, render their prejudices even more dangerous and misleading than the comparatively stupid bigotry of ignorant or frivolous believers.

to

CHAPTER VII

J

THE HOUSE OF STUART

AMES I.'s accession early in the 17th century found most of his British subjects firmly opposed to Catholicism. Popular literature, historic recollections, and foreign enmities aided to produce this result in Great Britain. The sufferings of Protestants in Mary Tudor's reign were described and pictorially illustrated in Foxe's "Book of Martyrs," written and published in Elizabeth's reign, but the full effect of its study appeared in the prejudiced horror with which Catholicism was generally regarded in James I.'s reign. This feeling was shared by the king, a weak, pedantic monarch, yet not without shrewdness and intelligence.

He earnestly tried to strengthen Protestantism in Ireland by "planting," as it was then called, a colony of enterprising, industrious British Protestants in its northern counties. This settlement, called the Plantation of Ulster, was highly favoured by the British

1 See Macaulay's description of James I.-"History of England," Vol. Ist; also Scott's account in "Nigel." Both these eminent Scotchmen give much the same account of the king.

Government, justly thinking it a loyal garrison amid a hostile population. These colonists, however, while preserving their faith with resolute, conscientious tenacity, had neither the power, nor perhaps inclination, to diffuse it among the surrounding Catholic majority, who thought them, and were thought by them, hereditary foes in religion and race.

Some French Protestants, or their descendants, expelled from Catholic France for alleged rebellion,I aided in colonising Ulster, and increased by their history the religious enmity of British colonists to Irish Catholics. In all theological strife, as proved by the popularity of Foxe's work, the thorough partiality of authors and readers is evident. All sympathy, all admiration, all interest are claimed exclusively for Protestants, while Catholics are represented as mere fanatics, slaying fellow-creatures without any admitted provocation. Yet it must be owned that this work, written soon after religious strife was at its height, told much truth, but certainly not the whole truth. Had impartial truth been told, it would probably have produced a different result. Intelligent readers would then have found that persecution for religious opinions was, in its principle, fully sanctioned by many distinguished Protestants.2 Most Christian denominations also denounced death against all persons thought guilty of witchcraft.3 Nothing

I See Buckle's "Civilisation."

2 Hallam's "Middle Ages," Buckle's and Guizot's "Histories of Civilisation," and Lecky's "Rationalism."

3 Lecky's "Rationalism," also Scott's "Bride of Lammermoor."

less than the extreme penalty of the law inflicted in its cruellest form was thought sufficient for the sins of those who, whether guilty of damnable superstition, heresy, or witchcraft, were alike foes to God, and instruments or followers of Satan. It seems, therefore, that one of the first employments of printing was to expose people to legal punishment for matters of opinion.

Papal anathemas against heresy accompanied Protestant denunciations not only of Catholicism, but of differing sections of Protestantism. The result of combined learning, zeal, and earnestness in promoting religious intolerance or persecution, appears in the literature of this time, especially in its legal acts and political enforcements, which both illustrated and obeyed such teaching.2

One of the first and most eminent Prelatist divines, Richard Hooker (1553-1600), in his "Ecclesiastical Polity," had vainly deprecated religious bigotry, but the practical recognition of his excellent book was

I See Guizot's and Buckle's "Histories of Civilisation," Hallam's "Middle Ages," and Lecky's "Rationalism."

2

"Until the age of the Reformation, the received doctrine in Christian England was that the State was bound to treat religious error as a crime, and to punish heresy as it would punish homicide or theft. Conformity, exile, or death were the three alternatives. Notwithstanding the complaints justly made by the Presbyterians of England and Scotland with respect to their treatment by the Established [Prelatist] Church, they, nevertheless, when they had the power, showed a similar disposition to enforce their own faith by penal sanctions."-Sir G. C. Lewis's "Influence of Authority," p. 292-3.