of her jointure or dower, was disabled from being executor or administratrix to her husband, or obtaining any part of his goods, and was liable to imprisonment unless her husband. redeemed her by a ruinous fine. All Popish recusants within three months of conviction, might be called upon by four justices of the peace to renounce their errors or to abandon the kingdom; and if they did not depart, or if they returned without the King's licence, they were liable to the penalty of death. By this Act the position of the Catholics became one of perpetual insecurity. It furnished a ready handle to private malevolence, and often restrained the Catholics from exercising even their legal rights. Catholics who succeeded in keeping their land were compelled to register their estates, and all future conveyances and wills relating to them. They were subjected by an annual law to a double land-tax, and in 1722 a special tax was levied upon their property.'

A legislation animated by the same spirit extended to other portions of the empire. In the English colonies in North America there existed, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, an amount of religious liberty considerably greater than had yet been established in Europe. The Virginian Episcopalians, it is true, proscribed the Puritans and Catholics, and the New England Puritans proscribed and persecuted the Episcopalians and the Quakers; but the constitutions of the Quaker States, and the constitution of Rhode Island, which was founded by Roger Williams in 1636, laid down, in the most emphatic and unqualified terms, the doctrine of complete religious liberty. It is, however, a remarkable fact that Maryland, which was founded by the Catholic Lord Baltimore, as early as 1632, and which contained a large proportion of Catholics among its earliest colonists, preceded them in this path. It accorded perfect freedom to all Protestant sects, welcomed alike the persecuted Puritans of Virginia and the persecuted

'Blackstone, bk. iv. ch. 4. Butler's Hist. Memoirs of the English Catholics, ch. xxxiv. The chief laws were, 11

and 12 Wm. III. c. 4; 1 Geo. I. Stat. 2. c. 13; 1 Geo. I. Stat. 2. c. 55; 3 Geo. I c. 18.

Episcopalians of Massachusetts, granted them every privilege which was possessed by the Catholics, and exhibited, for the first time since the Reformation, the spectacle of a Government acting with perfect toleration and a steady and unflinching impartiality towards all sects of Trinitarian Christians. Something, no doubt, has been said with truth to qualify its merit. The measure was a defensive one. The toleration was only extended to the believers in the Trinity. The terms of the charter would have made the suppression of the Anglican worship illegal; but still the fact remains, that, so far as Trinitarian Christians were concerned, the legislators of Maryland, who were in a great measure Catholic, undertook to try the experiment, not only of complete religious toleration, but also of complete religious equality; and that, at a time and in a country where they were almost entirely uncontrolled, they fulfilled their promise with perfect fidelity. In 1649, when the Legislature contained both Protestants and Catholics, a law was made, solemnly enacting that no person within this province, professing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall be in any way troubled, molested, or discountenanced for his or her religion, or in the free exercise thereof;' and by the Catholics, at least, the promise of this law was never broken. The shameful sequel is soon told. The Protestants speedily multiplied in the province. They outnumbered the Catholics, and they enslaved them. The aristocratic constitution of the State, which produced a strong democratic opposition to Lord Baltimore, assisted them, and the Revolution in England gave the signal for the complete destruction of religious liberty in Maryland. The Catholics were excluded from all prominent offices in the State which a Catholic had founded. Anglicanism was made an Established Church, and in 1704 the mass was forbidden, the priesthood were proscribed, and no Catholic was any longer permitted to educate the young. Laws of a very similar character were enacted in New York, and in other American States; and even Rhode Island, which had been still more tolerant than Maryland-for it extended its protection to

disbelievers in the Trinity-appears to have followed the example.1

In Ireland also the Revolution was speedily followed by the penal code. The Catholic population had naturally remained faithful to their sovereign, whose too zealous Catholicism was in the eyes of the English his greatest fault; and the triumph of William, which brought many benefits to England, consigned Ireland to the most hopeless and the most degrading servitude. For the third time an immense proportion of the soil was torn from its native owners, and bestowed upon foreigners and enemies, and nearly all the talent, the energy, the ambition of the nation was driven to the Continent. One hope, however, remained. At a time when the war was going decidedly against the Catholics, but was still by no means terminated, when Limerick was still far from captured, when the approach of winter, the prospect of pestilence arising from the heavy floods, the news of succours on the way from France, and the dangers of another insurrection at home made the situation of the besiegers very grave, the Irish generals agreed to surrender the city, and thus terminate the war, if by doing so they could secure for their people religious liberty. The consideration they offered was a very valuable one, for the prolongation of the war till another spring would have been full of danger to the unsettled government of William, and the stipulations of the Irish in favour of religious liberty were given the very first place in the treaty that was signed. The period since the Reformation in which the Irish Catholics were most unmolested in their worship was the reign of Charles II.; and the first article of the Treaty of Limerick stipulated that,' the Roman Catholics of this kingdom shall enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion as are consistent with the laws of Ireland, or as they did enjoy in the reign of Charles II.; and their Majesties, as

1 Bancroft's Hist. of the United States, ch. vii., xix. Recent investigations show that the original tolerance of Maryland was less exclusively the work of Catholics than has been asserted, and that the majority in the

Legislature of 1649 which passed the Toleration Act was Protestant. A law securing perfect liberty of conscience was passed in Rhode Island in 1647. See Arnold's Hist. of Rhode Island (3d ed.), I. p. 210.

soon as their affairs will permit them to summon a Parliament in this kingdom, will endeavour to procure the said Roman Catholics such further security as may preserve them from any disturbance upon the account of their said religion.' The ninth article determined that the oath to be administered to such Roman Catholics as submit to their Majesties' government shall be the oath of allegiance, and no other.' These articles were signed by the Lords Justices of Ireland, and ratified by their Majesties under the Great Seal of England.

Such a treaty was very reasonably regarded as a solemn charter guaranteeing the Irish Catholics against any further penalties or molestation on account of their religion. It is true that the laws of Elizabeth against Catholicism remained unrepealed, but they had become almost wholly obsolete, and as they were not enforced during the reign of Charles II., it was assumed that they could not be enforced after the Treaty of Limerick. It is true also that the sanction of Parliament was required for the legal validity of the treaty, but that sanction could not, without a grave breach of faith, be withheld from an engagement so solemnly entered into by the Government, at a time when Parliament was not sitting, and in order to obtain a great military advantage. The imposition upon the Irish Catholics, without any fresh provocation, of a mass of new and penal legislation intended to restrict or extinguish their worship, to banish their prelates, and to afflict them with every kind of disqualification, disability, and deprivation on account of their religion, was a direct violation of the plain meaning of the treaty. Those who signed it undertook that the Catholics should not be in a worse position, in respect to the exercise of their religion, than they had been in during the reign of Charles II., and they also undertook that the influence of the Government should be promptly exerted to obtain such an amelioration of their condition as would secure them from the possibility of disturbance. Construed in its plain and natural sense, interpreted as every treaty should be by men of honour, the Treaty of Limerick amounted to no

less than this. The public faith was pledged to its observance, and the well-known sentiments of William appeared an additional guarantee. William was, indeed, a cold and somewhat selfish man, and the admirable courage and tenacity which he invariably displayed when his own designs and ambition were in question were seldom or never manifested in any disinterested cause, but he was at least eminently tolerant and enlightened, and he had actually before the battle of Aghrim offered the Irish Catholics the free exercise of their religion, half the churches in the kingdom, and the moiety of their ancient possessions. Such an offer is alone sufficient to stamp him as a great statesman, and should have saved his memory from many eulogies which are in truth the worst of calumnies. It must be observed, however, that William, who repeatedly refused his assent to English Acts which he regarded as inimical to his authority, never offered any serious or determined opposition to the anti-Catholic laws which began in his reign. It must be observed also that the penal code, which began under William, which derived its worst features under Anne, and which was largely extended under George I. and George II., was entirely unprovoked by any active disloyalty on the part of the Catholics. To describe the Irish Catholics as having manifested an incurably rebellious and ungrateful disposition because, in the contest of the Revolution, they took the part of the legitimate and hereditary sovereign, te whom all classes had sworn allegiance, and whose title when they took up arms had not been disputed by any act of the Irish