almost wholly shaped by the Irish Government; and even when they interfered with advice, they did so with little energy or persistence. When Fox and Lord Moira introduced into the British Parliament a discussion upon the military outrages, the Ministers replied that those matters were within the sole competence of the Irish Parliament and Government. If they resented Sir Ralph Abercromby's order, it was because it was certain to furnish a formidable weapon to the English Opposition; if they opposed an absentee tax, it was chiefly because it would affect men who had great political influence in England. They assisted the Irish Government, by intercepting the correspondence of suspected rebels, and by collecting evidence through confidential agents on the Continent, and they more than once assisted them by loans in the great financial crisis of the war. On the other hand, they insisted that a considerable though much diminished number of lucrative Irish posts should be bestowed on Englishmen, and they wished to make the Irish peerage in some measure a reward for English services. For the rest, they only asked that Ireland should not be an embarrassment; that England should derive trade advantages from her connection with her, and that Ireland should contribute larger forces to carry on the war, than were needed for keeping her in her allegiance.

The advice of the English Government was usually in the direction of moderation, and especially in the sense of conciliating the Catholics. To separate as much as possible the Catholics from the Dissenters, and the Catholic question from the question of reform, was for some considerable time the keynote of the Irish policy of Portland. He was much struck with the fact that Protestant Ulster was the most disaffected of the four provinces; that at least five-sixths of the leaders of the United Irishmen were Protestants; that Munster, though now profoundly disturbed, had shown itself perfectly loyal during the French expedition at the end of 1796; that Connaught, the most purely Catholic province in Ireland, was the one province which was still almost untainted. He believed with good reason that the genius of the Catholic Church was essentially opposed to the revolutionary spirit, and that the higher clergy, at least, were sincere in their hostility to it, and he probably hoped that the

CH. XXVIII.

RELATIONS WITH THE VATICAN.

461

influence of the papacy might contribute something to the peace of Ireland.

The great French war which was raging, had among its other consequences produced, for the first time since the Revolution of 1688, a close and friendly communication between the English Government and the Vatican. In 1794 the 12th Lancers had gone from Corsica to Civita Vecchia, where they remained for three months, mounted guard, and discharged other garrison duty. Their officers were presented to Pius VI., who took one of their helmets in his hands and blessed it, and who on the departure of the regiment gave each commissioned officer a gold medal, and each non-commissioned officer a silver one, as an expression of his gratitude for the excellent behaviour of the English troops.' Lord Hood's fleet, when excluded from the other ports in the Mediterranean, was, with the approval of the Pope, provisioned in the papal dominions.2 Burke at this time strongly urged the policy of establishing a formal diplomatic connection with Rome. I would,' he wrote, 'if the matter rested with me, enter into much more distinct and avowed political connections with the Court of Rome, than hitherto we have held. If we decline them, the bigotry will be on our part, and not on that of his Holiness. Some mischief has happened, and much good has, I am convinced, been prevented, by our unnatural alienation.'

The English Ministers were not prepared to face the outcry which might have followed such a step, and it was still forbidden under an unrepealed statute of Elizabeth; but it is a remarkable. and little known fact, that in the reign of George III. a real though unofficial diplomatic connection subsisted for some years between London and the Vatican. The English representative was Mr.--afterwards Sir John-Hippisley, who had been at

See Cannon's Historical Records of the British Army, 12th Royal Lancers, p. 19. Sir J. Hippisley, Substance of Additional Observations intended to have been delivered in the House of Commons on May 13 or 14, 1805, pp. 93, 94; Hippisley's Statement of Facts presented to Pius VII. pp. 73, 74; Bullen's Historical Outlines of Political Catholicism, pp 92, 93 1799 British sailors cleared the papal dominions of their enemies the French,

In

and British marines were sentries at Rome till the evacuation by the French.

2 Sir J. Hippisley, Substance of a Speech on the Motion of the Right Hon. H. Grattan, April 24, 1812 (with Appendix), pp. 102-104.

This letter was written Oct. 10, 1793, to Hippisley. See his Substance of Additional Observations, pp. 94,

95.

tached to the embassy at Naples, and who negotiated at Rome, not only on the common interests of the two Powers in their struggle with France, but also on various matters connected with the interests of the Catholic subjects of the King. The regulation of the Catholic churches in Corsica and Minorca; the appointment 'of a bishop in St. Domingo, and the nomination of the superiors of the British and Irish seminaries at Rome, were all made matters of very amicable arrangement, and Hippisley succeeded in obtaining from Cardinal Antonelli an assurance, that no friar should in future be appointed to the Irish episcopacy.1 His position was clearly recognised in letters of the Congregation de Propaganda Fide, and of the Congregation of State; 2 and on his recommendation, the Pope in 1793 sent over to London, Monsignor Erskine, a member of the great Scotch family of Mar, and the grandson of an Earl of Kellie, as resident at the Court of England. Erskine was not of course officially recognised, and his mission was not generally known, but he appears to have been received unofficially at Court, and he resided in London for several years.3 Bishop Douglas, the Catholic prelate who presided over the London district, had previously held confidential communications with Lord Grenville; and Hippisley, after his return to England, was much employed in negotiating with the Irish prelates. Catholic chaplains were appointed, under the royal sign-manual, for the new Franco-Irish brigade in the English service.5

1 Castlereagh Correspondence, iii. 82, 83, 89, 92, 117; Hippisley's Substance of a Speech, May 18, 1810, pp. 24, 25; Hippisley's Letters to Lord Fingall, pp. 68, 69; Statement of Facts presented to Pius VII. (1818), pp. 66, 67.

2 Hippisley's Statement of Facts presented to Pius VII. (1818), p. 68. Hippisley adds: After two centuries and a half, during which no political or ecclesiastical intercourse between the two Courts was permitted, or at least avowed, with an exception to a few letters which had passed between the Cardinals de la Lanze and Buoncompagni, and the late Mr. Dutens, at that time appointed Secretary of Embassy to the Court of Spain, Sir J. H. had the gratification of finding that, through his own instrumentality, this state of estrangement was interrupted and an intercourse revived.

At

. . . He had also the gratification of having his conduct on that occasion distinctly approved, both by the Government of his own country and that of his Holiness.' The earlier communications referred to in this pas sage, were in 1777 and 1786. Hippisley's pamphlets, and his letters in the third volume of the Castlereagh Cor. respondence, throw much light on this curious page of eighteenth-century history.

Several interesting particulars about Monsignor Erskine and his mission will be found in Moroni, Dizionario Ecclesiastico, tome xxii. (Erskine). See, too, Castlereagh Correspondence, iii. 87, 88.

88.

Castlereagh Correspondence, iii.

Hippisley's Statement, p. 126; Supplementary Note, p. 66.

CH. XXVIII.

PORTLAND'S CATHOLIC POLICY.

463

the suggestion of Hippisley, the Irish prelates introduced into the ordinary catechism employed in Ireland, some additional clauses, enforcing the duty of obedience to the civil power.1 In the Canadian Catholic Church, the King seems to have virtually possessed the nomination of the bishops; 2 and when the Cardinal of York, the last direct heir of the Stuarts, was plundered by the French, he was relieved by a liberal pension from George III.3

All these things show the very friendly relations that subsisted between the Vatican and the Court of St. James, in spite of the strong sentiments of George III. about Catholic emancipation. The English Ministers saw in this good understanding, a powerful instrument for one day pacifying Ireland. Archbishop Troy appears at this time to have been much suspected by the Irish Government, and his letters were opened at the Post Office. Among them was found one from Monsignor Erskine, urging the Archbishop 'to prevail on his brethren and his flock, to exert themselves on behalf of the law and Government.' Camden communicated this gratifying fact to Portland, but he found that Portland was already aware of it, for Monsignor Erskine had been in communication with the Ministers, and had informed them of what he had written. In reply to one of the letters that have been quoted, Portland wrote that, 'notwithstanding the very unpromising return which was made by the Catholic proprietors of the Bank to the liberality which the Parliament has manifested in the course of the session to the Seminary of Maynooth, the meritorious and exemplary conduct of the whole province of Connaught' induced him to recur to a suggestion which he had before made, that it would be in a high degree useful to the State, to make a provision for the Catholic clergy. In another letter he wrote, that he had been informed of 'the spoliation and sacrilege which had been committed in several of the Roman Catholic chapels, for the express purpose,' as he believed, 'of exasperating the lower orders of these people against the present Establishment of Government;' and he suggested that the Irish Government should offer

Castlereagh Correspondence, iii.

134-136.

2 Hippisley's Letters to Lord Fingall, p. 68.

Castlereagh Correspondence, ii.

332; iii. 14-16, 385, 386.

Portland to Camden, April 20, 1798. Camden called Erskine the Pope's Nuncio.

Ibid. March 20, 1798.

rewards for the discovery of the perpetrators of such outrages.1 At the same time, he desired to encourage, as much as possible, all voluntary loyalist efforts in Ireland, even when they assumed an ultra-Protestant character. From two quarters, he said, he had heard that an association is formed by the Orangemen of Ulster, which consists already of 170,000 persons, and has been joined by all the principal gentry and well-affected persons of property in that province, for the purpose of protecting themselves against the combinations which have been formed by the United Irishmen ;' and he added, 'It seems to me, that such a proof of energy on the part of the country, would be likely to do more than all the military force you could apply.'2

4

There is nothing said in the replies of Lord Camden, about the spoliation of Catholic chapels, and the letter of the Duke of Portland is, as far as I know, the earliest allusion to the revival of a form of outrage which, a few weeks later, became common.3 The policy of paying the priests, though a profoundly wise one, was naturally not acceptable to such men as Clare, Foster, and Beresford; and Camden, while stating that 'the servants of the Crown' were wholly opposed to it, added, 'I am indeed convinced that the strong prejudices now entertained by the House of Commons against the Catholics, would prevent Government from carrying the measure were it thought expedient to introduce it. Indeed, there seems much reason to think the Catholics in general are not hostile to these commotions, and that even some of the most loyal of them wait with some hope that a revolution in Ireland will restore them to those possessions, and that consequence, they have lost.' The strength of the Orange Society, also, was much less than Portland had been told. There were perhaps 40,000 men enrolled in it, and Camden thought that much caution must be used in dealing with

1798.

Portland to Camden, April 2,

2 Ibid. March 24, 1798.

I have already mentioned that it was one of the Peep of Day Boy outrages.

McNally, in a letter dated Sept. 22, 1802, gives the outline of a very elaborate and skilfully devised plan for paying the priests, which he had drawn up and submitted to the Go

vernment several years before the rebellion. He says that at that time he took great pains to ascertain the sentiments of the priests, and that he found the secular clergy favourable, but the regulars strongly opposed to a Government endowment; and he adds, the latter description of clergy were, in general, active fomenters of the rebellion. (I.S.P.O.)