XXIX. an undaunted attention to the security of the king- CHAP. dom, continued to issue and enforce his warrants. for the accommodation of the soldiery. Among the numbers who, on this occasion, courted the prevailing interest, with apparently too little regard to principle, was the earl of Orrery, president of Munster, to guard against whose insinuations at court, Ormond repaired in person to the king, leaving the temporary administration in the hands of lord Ossory. After several repeated assurances from his Majesty of his continued favour, he was at length made acquainted in form that lord Robarts, lord privy-seal, was appointed lord lieutenant in his place. Politics. Though the principal business of lord Robarts Change of was to scrutinize the conduct of Ormond, he was 1669. unable to discover, and too candid to fabricate, any solid objections to his administration. Recalled, as unfit for the deep designs of the cabal, Robarts was succeeded by John lord Berkley of Stratton, a creature of Buckingham's, and attended by another creature of the same, Sir Ellis Leighton, secretary, who was to act as a spy on the chief governor, and to retain him in a steady adherence to the purposes of the ministry. These purposes, dark and atrocious, were to establish the Romish religion throughout the British dominions, as less repugnant than the protestant to despotic monarchy, and, by the assistance of the French king, to abolish all rights and privi leges of the people, that no restraint might remain to the royal prerogative. In England a cautious and slow procedure was necessary to the accomplish CHA P. ment of this end; but in Ireland the cabal, with a XXIX. contemptuous indifference to the principles and Remonstrance. passions of its English inhabitants, feared not to begin the business immediately. Accordingly the chief governor, acting conformably to his private, and contrary to his public instructions, gave encouragement to the most dangerous principles and partizans of the Romish church. From the time of Elizabeth a question had been debated among the Irish catholics how far obedience was due to the civil power; and as a submission in temporals was professed and taught by some, many catholics served that queen in her wars with zeal and fidelity. To James, her successor, the most solemn declarations were occasionally tendered of unreserved obedience to his supreme temporal authority; but in the disorders of the following reign, when the question was revived, most of the clergy adhered to Rinunccini, the nuncio, in the maintenance of the pope's temporal, as well as spiritual jurisdiction. On the restoration of Charles the second, some of the clergy, humbled by the chastisement suffered by their party from the republicans, and fearing some farther severities, commissioned Peter Walsh, a Franciscan friar, to present an address to the king in London, congratulating his accession, and imploring the benefits of the peace made with Ormond in 1648. To obviate the objection against the toleration of the Romish religion from its inconsistency with the security of a protestant government, Walsh framed what was termed the remonstrance of the XXIX. the Roman catholic clergy of Ireland. In this they CHAP. acknowledged his Majesty to be supreme lord, and rightful sovereign of the realm of Ireland; that they were bound to pay him faithful obedience and loyalty in all temporal affairs, notwithstanding any power, sentence, or declaration of the pope or see of Rome; that they openly disclaimed "all foreign power, papal or princely, spiritual or temporal, in as much as it may seem able, or shall pretend, to free them from this obligation, or permit them to offer any violence to his Majesty's person or government." They protested against all authority contrary to the doctrine of obedience being due, in all civil affairs, according to the laws of each commonwealth or state, to all supreme governors, as God's lieutenants on earth, of what religion soever they may be. They declared their resolution to detect and oppose all traiterous attempts against the king; and pronounced the opinion impious, that any private subject might kill his prince though of a different religion. On Ormond's objection to the remonstrance that it had been signed only by Walsh, it was immediately subscribed by one Irish bishop, and twentythree of the inferior clergy, and soon after by more, together with a respectable number of lay nobility and gentry. Declarations so inconsistent with the maxims of the papal court were censured, at the instance of the sovereign pontiff, as containing propositions already condemned by the apostolic see, through the agency of cardinal Barberini, and the internuncio of Brussels, superintendant of the ecclesiastical affairs of Ireland. A powerful party was E 4 soon XXIX. CHAP. soon formed against the remonstrance by those who would not openly acknowledge the authority of these censures. A national synod was proposed for the discussion of the business; and application was made to Ormond by two prelates in exile, Reily of Armagh and French of Ferns, for permission to return, and to atone for past offences by sanctioning the remonstrance. In the synod, held on the eleventh of June 1666, in Dublin, Reily, contrary to his engagement, practised zealously against the loyal declaration of the clergy. After a tumultuous debate, in which the rebellion of 1641, and all the acts committed in it, were indirectly justified, the assembly dispersed without a decision, distinguished into two parties violently enflamed against each other, those who supported, and those who opposed, the remonstrance, or the remonstrants and anti-remonstrants. Anti-remonstrants, 1670. On the arrival of lord Berkley in Ireland with secret instructions to encourage popery, the anti-remonstrants, possessed of power by the interest of the pope, displayed a malignant triumph in ejecting the remonstrants every where from their cures and stations, and denouncing them excommunicated. These wretched men, condemned for the odious doctrine of allegiance to their temporal sovereign, and, unless protected by the English government, left without other alternative than to submit to the dictates of their persecutors, or to fly to foreign countries where they might be burned as heretics, applied for relief to the chief governor, Berkley refused to interfere; when they solicited permission to lay their case XXIX. case before him, he denied them an audience: when CHA P. Margetson, the protestant primate, attempted to plead their cause, he was reproved: and when Ormond interfered in their favour, Berkley declared that he would consider any new orders from the council of England as the dictates of the duke, and would pass them quite unnoticed. This lord lieutenant was pointedly favourable to the maintainers of the pope's unlimited authority, a doctrine justly rejected as dangerous in France and other catholic countries. Peter Talbot, brother to Richard already mentioned, created archbishop of Dublin by the pope for the purpose of punishing the remonstrants, appeared before the chief governor and council in the habit of his order, in defiance of the laws, and retired unmolested, though he refused to join in any recognition of loyalty. Leighton, the secretary, lent to this prelate the furniture of the castle for the celebration of a mass with extraordi nary splendour in Dublin; and is said to have accompanied the loan with a complimentary wish that high mass might soon be celebrated at Christ-church, An order was issued for the granting of commissions of the peace to professed Roman catholics, and for their admission to dwell and trade in corporations. Partly by fraud and outrage were some Romish aldermen and a Romish common council established in Dublin, after a violent struggle, to the great alarm of the protestants, who from various causes were terrified with the apprehensions of a general massacre. Crosses, marked on the doors of the catholics from motives |