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CHAPTER I.

RESTORATION OF CHARLES II. - ACT OF SETTLEMENT.

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ORMOND'S ATTEMPT TO GALLICANIZE THE IRISH CHURCH.-SYNOD OF 1666. -LORD BERKELEY'S VICEROYALTY.- -THE NEW TEST ACT."THE POPISH PLOT."-MARTYRDOM OF PRIMATE PLUNKETT. ASSASSINATION OF COUNT REDMOND O'HANLON.

AFTER ten years of exile, Charles II. was restored to the throne of England, in the spring of 1660. His ministers were chosen from among the companions of his banishment-the principal being Lord Clarendon, for chancellor, and the Marquis, now Duke of Ormond, for lord lieutenant of Ireland. Ormond brought with him to Dublin a lively recollection of the opposition given to his designs, twenty years before, by the bishops, and powers of intrigue which the shifts of exile had practised to perfection.

The king, in his declaration, signed and sealed at Breda, the year before his restoration, had pledged himself against persecution. "We do declare," he said, "a liberty to tender consciences; and that no man shall be disquieted, or called in question for matters of religion which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom; and that we shall be ready to consent to such an act of Parliament, as, upon mature deliberation, shall be offered to us for the full granting of that indulgence." The year of his restoration, in his speech to the new Parliament, he had also said, "I hope I need say nothing of Ireland, and that they alone shall not be without the full benefit of my mercy; they have showed much affection to me abroad, and you will have a care of my honor and of what I have promised them." Such was Charles's personal relation to the Irish Catholics.

Respect for the king's pledges, as well as his natural turn of mind, led Ormond again to temporize with the Irish

bishops. In this case, he employed Father Peter Walsh, a native of Kildare, and graduate of Louvain, a Franciscan by profession, but a Gallican and a tuft-hunter. Early in 1661, Father Walsh procured, from the Irish prelates on the continent, a power of attorney to act as their 66 procurator," within certain limits. "You must humble yourselves more," wrote Walsh to his principals; “I dare not show your letters to the duke." Bishop French, "seeing he could not satisfy God and his grace together," refused a more complete submission, and Walsh, having drawn up "a remonstrance," or protestation of Catholic loyalty, could obtain only the signature of the bedrid Bishop of Kilmore, about seven of the Catholic gentry, a few of the priesthood, and the townsmen of Wexford. With these names it was presented to King Charles, "who reserved a clean copy of it for his own use." The same year the statute of uniformity was reenacted at Westminster.

The Catholic gentry fared almost as ill as the exiled prelacy. The Irish Puritan proprietors kept as their agents at court Sir James Shean and Sir John Clotworthy, at whose disposal they placed between twenty and thirty thousand pounds, to "dispose of it properly," in "making presents." Shean assures his chief employer, Orrery, that he made a good use of it, being so "wary as to pay the money by other hands" than his own. In Ormond and Clarendon these agents had powerful friends, and by them the act of settlement was obtained, by which all who had not gone over to Ormond in the confederate war, or who had "resided in the enemies'" quarters, were declared disentitled to their estates. In vain eight thousand old proprietors appealed to the king's mercy and to his honor. Out of that number less than a thousand were heard, and about a score were successful. In Ulster Lord Antrim and Sir Henry O'Neil, in Connaught Lord Clanrickarde, Lord Mayo, Colonel O'Kelly, and Colonel Moore only were restored. The act of explanation, formally indorsing the new arrangement of Irish titles, was passed in 1665, and received the king's sanction. For their services in procuring its enactment, Clarendon had eight thousand

pounds, Sir Heneage Finch, the king's solicitor, six thousand pounds, and Ormond over sixty thousand pounds, besides the fee simple of Kilkenny city, procured for him by the Puritan lords. The Cromwellians by this act had seven million eight hundred thousand Irish acres confirmed to them. The situation of the old Irish proprietors, hangers-on at the court of Charles, was miserable in the extreme. In vain Lord Castlemaine (or whoever wrote, in 1666, the memorial called "Castlemaine's Apology for the Catholics") represented their case in most moving terms. "Consider, we beseech you," he said, "the sad condition of the Irish soldiers now in England; the worst of which nation could be but intentionally so wicked, as the acted villany of many English, whom your admired clemency pardoned. Remember how they left the Spanish service when they heard their king was in France, and how they forsook the employment of that unnatural prince, after he had committed the never-to-be-forgotten act of banishing his distressed kinsman out of his kingdom. These men left all again to bring their monarch to his home: and shall they then be forgotten by you?" All in vain! No eloquence could reach the Parliament, still largely tinctured with Puritanism. Their fanaticism may be judged from the fact of their attributing the great fire of London, in 1666, to the Papists, instead of to narrow streets and wooden houses.

All

The claims of the Catholic gentry being successfully resisted, Ormond lent his hand anew to overreaching the episcopacy. Seeing the king so weak, and the Parliament so strong, the bishops were willing to waive some of the claims advanced at the restoration. Europe had remarked on the breach of the royal faith plighted to them, and it was deemed politic by the king's ministers to show some desire to redeem the pledges of Breda. In this spirit the duke proposed a synod of such of the surviving bishops, abroad, as he should grant passes to for that purpose. Father Walsh's remonstrance, the propositions adopted by the University of Paris in 1663, and some Irish books, pub

lished at Lisbon, advocating the abstract right of Ireland forcibly to separate from England, were to be submitted to them-the first two for approval, these last for formal condemnation. On these topics, the lieutenant anticipated either division or disagreement : "Set them at open difference," wrote the Earl of Cork, "that we may reap some practical advantage thereby." "My object," responded Ormond, "was to work a division among the Romish clergy."

No subjects of debate could be better chosen for the purpose than Gallican and Ultramontane principles.

This memorable synod, which tested so severely the fortitude of the outlawed bishops, met in Dublin, on the 11th of June, 1666, and sat fifteen days. The primate, O'Reilly, the Bishop of Meath, the vicars of four other bishops, (all who then remained alive,) and the superiors of the regular orders attended. The regular clergy at the time, in Ireland, amounted to eleven hundred, and the seculars to seven hundred and eighty. By these, through their representatives, the propositions of Paris were formally repudiated, and "the remonstrance" set aside as of questionable orthodoxy. They condemned the books advocating separation from England, and presented a succinct declaration of their own loyalty. Wherever the propositions or the remonstrance had trenched on the Papal supremacy, they courageously condemned both.† On the 25th, the synod was ordered to disperse, the bishops and vicars fled, and all seminaries and convents were closed by proclamation. Primate O'Reilly, after being imprisoned in England, was allowed to exile himself. In 1669, he died at Brussels, and Dr. Oliver Plunkett, a professor in the College de Propaganda Fide was sent from Rome to fill his place.

* Curry's Civil Wars, book ix. c. 14. Carte's Life of Ormond, vol. ii. Appendix, p. 10. The letter of the duke to Lord Orrery is given in Curry's Civil Wars.

† Walsh's History of the Remonstrance. Charles Butler's Memoirs of the Catholics, vol. iii. p. 420.

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The Catholic exiles abroad filled Europe with their denunciations of Ormond's persecution, which was almost as severe as Cromwell's. The pope and the King of Spain joined in reproaching Charles. court was divided into factions, and he himself seems only to have hoped that the monarchy might outlast his day. In 1669, however, Ormond was removed from the viceroyalty, and after a few months of Lord Roberts, Lord Berkeley, a pro-Catholic, was appointed, through the influence of the Duke of York, afterwards James II. Lord Berkeley's administration was a blessed calm to the Irish Catholics. Primate Plunkett openly visited his diocese, confirming children, consecrating churches, and ordaining priests. A synod was allowed to sit in Dublin, without interference of the state. Peter Talbot, archbishop of the city, was received in his robes at the castle. Chapels were connived at in every ward; new priests arrived by every ship; Catholic aldermen were admitted to the municipal councils, and some Catholic commoners were elected to Parliament.

Emboldened by these signs, the Catholic gentry, disinherited by the act of settlement, appointed Colonel Richard Talbot, one of the Duke of York's favorites, special agent to promote their claims at London. In August, 1671, notwithstanding the rigorous opposition of Ormond, Orrery, and Finch, a royal commission was issued, during the recess of Parliament, to inquire into the allegations of the petitioners. A regular storm arose in consequence, and the Puritan majority of the new House of Commons, in 1673, compelled the king to recall Lord Berkeley, and to rescind "the declaration of indulgence to dissenters," granted three years before. They did not stop here: they proceeded, in the infamous "test act," to declare every person incapable of civil or military employment who did not take the oath of supremacy, renounce transubstantiation, and "receive the sacrament" according to their heretical form; they demanded that all convents and seminaries should be closed, that all Catholics should be expelled from corporate towns, and that Colonel Talbot should be

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