of peace, and confined in her house. Though the husband conformed, he was to pay £10 monthly for his recusant wife, and was disabled during her recusancy from holding any public office in the community.

If she was convicted of being a popish recusant, then, if she was a baroness, she might be committed to prison by one of the privy council, or the bishop of the diocese, and if she were under that rank, she might be committed to prison by two justices of the peace, and remain there till she conformed; unless her husband should pay to the king £10 a month, or the third part of her lands, so long as she continued a recusant and out of prison.

6th. The same persecuting spirit appears in the legislative provision respecting his children.

If he christened them after the Catholic rite, he forfeited £100. At nine years of age his children might be presented, and at sixteen, indicted for recusancy; at sixteen too the oath of supremacy might be tendered to them. If to educate his children at home, he kept a shoolmaster, he forfeited for every day, forty shillings; if he sent them abroad, he forfeited £100, and the child was disabled from taking lands by descent or purchase until he conformed.

7th. The same spirit extended also to his friends and servants; if he harboured, maintained, or relieved any recusant servant, sojourner, or stranger, his father and mother excepted, he forfeited for every month, £10.

This act had a dreadful operation," Many servisable men and women," says a contemporary writer now before me, became in consequence of it absolutely destitute of succour, and were obliged in order to obtain employment and food, to travel beyond the five miles, within which the law confined them, under the severe penalties which have been mentioned. If they had not the means of paying the forfeitures, thus incurred, the law enjoined them to abjure the realm; if they refused, or if having abjured it, they afterwards returned to it without license, they were adjudged to be felons."

8th. The recusants also were liable to all the severities of the ecclesiastical courts: they might be summoned by the ecclesiastical judges at their pleasure; if they attended, they might be fined at discretion; if they did not attend, they were

excommunicated; whether they attended or not, warrants were generally sent to search and seize their religious books, chalices, and every article which served for use or ornament in their religious worship; the search was generally made with unfeeling contumely.

9th. By several Acts, some of which were a pleasing, some a necessary attention to his religion, a Catholic was subject to a præmunire:-As 1st The receipt of an agnus dei, a crucifix, beads or pious medals. 2nd. Aiding, abetting, taking or giving absolution by a bull from the Pope. 3rd. Concealing au offer made to him of such a bull. 4th. Sending relief topriests beyond seas. 5th. Maintaining the Pope's jurisdiction: and 6th. The first refusal of the oath of supremacy.

10th. By three acts, the Catholics incurred the penalties of felony: 1st. Receiving a priest: 2nd. Returning from banishment: 3rd. Departing from the realm without taking the oath of allegiance.

11th. For the oppression of the Catholics, five new treasons were invented: 1st. The second refusal of the oath of supremacy: 2nd. Maintaining a second time the Pope's spiritual authority or jurisdiction: 3rd. Giving or receiving absolution from the see of Rome: 4th. Reconciliation or persuasion to the Catholic religion: 5th. receiving holy orders beyond the seas.

12th. Finally, the law pursued them even to the grave. If a recusant convict, man or woman, not being excommunicated, was buried in any other place than in the church, the executors of the persons so buried were to forfeit £20.

13th. It should be observed, that the Catholics were subject in the same manner as the Protestant dissenters, to the proceedings of the high commission, and to act for suppressing conventicles. How oppressive these were, and how severely the Protestant dissenters suffered under them, appears from the histories of Mr. Hume, Mr. Neale, and Mr. Laing. It is asserted in the preface prefixed to De Laune's Plea for Nonconformists, by the editor of that work, that 8000 non-conformists perished in the reign of Charles II. merely for dissenting from the established church; but as the Catholics were much more odious to the sovereign and his ministers, than the Protestants, there is great reason to believe that they suffered. much more severely under them.

Thus the code against the Catholics stood at the death of Charles the First: the enactments inflicting the several penalties we have mentioned, may be easily traced by consulting the summary of the acts against popery, in the 3rd vol. of Burn's Ecclesiastical Law. To pursue the statement

14th. The 13th of Charles II. stat. 2, c. 1,-commonly called the Corporation Act,-enacted, that no person should be legally elected to any office relating to the government of any city or corporation, unless within a twelvemonth immediately preceding it, he had received the sacrament of our Lord's Supper, according to the rights of the Church of England, and should take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy at the same time that he took the oath of office.

15th. By 25 Car. 2, c. 2, commonly called the Test Act, all officers, civil and military, were directed to take the oath of allegiance and supremacy, and receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper at the time therein mentioned, (afterwards enlarged to six months), under the penalty of forfeiting their offices.

16th. The act passed in the 30th year of Charles II. St. 2, chap. 1. enacts, that peers should take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and make the declaration against popery before they should take their seats in the House of Lords.

17th. Immediately after the commencement of the reign of William III. an act (1 Wm. & Mary, c. 9), was passed for removing all Catholics ten miles from London and Westminster. Another (1 Wm. & Mary, c. 26), prohibited them from keeping arms. A third (1 Wm. & Mary, c. 15), vested the presentations of benefices belonging to them in the two Universities. An act of the 7th, c. 8, of his reign, (chap. 27), rendered persons refusing to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, liable to suffer as popish recusants. And the act of the 11th year of his reign, offered a reward of £100 for apprehending priests or jesuits; it subjected priests or jesuits, convicted of exercising their functions, or keeping a school, to perpetual imprisonment; and disabled Catholics not taking the oaths of allegiance and supremacy within six months after their attaining the age of 21 years, from taking any estate or interest in landed property. 18th. A law passed in the 12th year of the reign of queen

Ann, aggravated the former acts, by which Catholics were disabled from presenting to advowsons.

The 1st of Geo. 1st sta. 2. c. 13, prescribes an oath of allegiance, and an oath of supremacy, and an oath abjuring allegiance to the Stuart dynasty, to be taken by all persons holding civil and military offices, or any fee or wages by patent or grant from his majesty, or in his navy or of his household; all ecclesiastical persons, serjeants at law, councellors, barristers, advocates, attornies and notaries, and various other persons; and incapacitated those, who neglected or refused to take them, from holding any office or employment, or receiving fee or wages from his majesty. Thus far this enactment was sufficiently severe; but it proceeded to authorize any two justices of the peace to tender these oaths to any persons, and that, on their refusal to take them, they should be considered as persons convicted of popish recusancy, and subject to all its consequential penalties and disabilities; these it has been shewn were immoderately severe. This was termed constructive recusancy.

19th. By a statute passed in this reign, and afterwards annually passed till the 32nd of his late majesty, Catholics were subjected to a double Land tax.

20th. A statute passed in the 9th of Geo. 2nd. obliged them to register their names and estates. An act in the 13th of his reign obliged them to enroll their deeds and wills under heavy penalties.

21st. It was a serious aggravation of all these enactments, that, even when they were not carried into execution, they had a silent and better operation, which tended to make every Catholic an object of odium; to lessen his few remaining comforts; and to abridge his few remaining rights. When these were withheld or contested, if the Catholic complained or resisted, or attempted to enforce them by law, he was generally reminded that he might be proceeded against for recusancy and the threat was often executed.

Such was the penal code, imunuensus aleanum super alias accervatorium tegum cumulus (Livy), when his late Majesty, George III. succeeded to the throne. The acts passed for the relief of the English Roman Catholics, will be the subject of a Letter in your next number. S.

To the Editor of the Catholic Miscellany.

Mr. Editor-I have lately seen in your Miscellany a short statement of the Penal Laws made against the Roman Catholics of England and Ireland, and I entirely agree with your Correspondent that it is quite necessary to "look to these Penal Laws," whenever the passing events call our attention to the Sister Kingdom. These, as he well observes, though now partly repealed, have left a moral sting, which length of time only and conciliating measures can entirely eradicate.

But besides these Penal Laws, the page of history informs us, that there are also some other causes which have produced much irritation in the Irish mind-an irritation which has not yet subsided; and which certainly, not less than the Penal Laws, call for such healing measures as alone can cordially unite the kingdom of Ireland with that of England. With these causes, the public at large is, perhaps, as little acquainted as it was with the Penal Laws, before T. R. favoured us with his statement of them.

Allow me then, Mr. Editor, to present to your view some of these other causes which your correspondent also hints at; and to give them in the words of a respectable writer,* who professing religious principles not according with those of the great mass of the Irish nation, and in which he was rigidly educated, and to which, he says, he is still warmly attached, cannot justly be suspected to have any other bias in their favour than such as the influence of the truth always produces on the candid and upright mind of an intelligent observer.

I will begin with the downfall of Charles I. and of the kingly form of government in this country.

The puritanical party having succeeded in their designs for the subversion of constitutional liberty in England, turned their black anger, says my author, against the royal adherents in Ireland; and the scourge of Providence was placed in the hands of Oliver Cromwell, who made all parties in that devoted country, feel to the last point of endurance, the weight of the visitation. The Catholics, who, from their number as well as inclination, supplied the chief material for the royalist Reid's Travels in Ireland in 1822.