as on some other occasions, breaks through the "cloud of your religious and party zeal. You accordingly express a wish, that the comme"moration of the powder plot were abolished, as tending to perpetuate ancient animosity;' and you argue very justly on the inconsistency of "tolerating the Catholics as friends, and treat“ ing them as enemies.""

XVI. 7.

The Oath of Allegiance required from the English Catholics by James I.

After considering, with great attention, what I have written on this subject in my Historical Memoirs, and in my sixteenth letter to Doctor Southey, I find nothing inaccurate in either: Your account of the oath, and of the conduct of the Catholics in respect to it, contains several inaccuracies; some I shall take the liberty to mention.

1. In page 282, You say, that "the oath "disclaimed the Pope's deposing power absolutely, "and without any qualification.'

Had it rested upon this disclaimer, very few Catholics would have objected to it; but it applied to this doctrine the epithets of "heretical," and "damnable." To swear that it was heretical, before the church had formally declared that it contained heresy, was objected to by many:-and what is the meaning of the word "damnable?"

Thus the case stood,-it was not to the doctrine, but to the epithets affixed to it, that the objections were raised.

2.-You say, (page 287), that "the second prohibitory bull of the Pope was obeyed:" This is a mistake; the oath continued, notwithstanding this bull, to be taken by the great majority, both of the Catholic clergy and the Catholic laity.

In the same page, You say, "that the same "kind of oath is still required, and that objections "of the same nature are still urged."

This passage contains more mistakes than lines.

1. The oaths prescribed by the acts of his late Majesty, are not of the same kind as that prescribed by James: they contain unequivocal disclaimers of the deposing doctrine; but they contain none of the objectionable epithets applied to it in James's oath.

2.-No objection to any of these oaths was ever made by a single Catholic.

3.-There is no division upon these oaths among the Roman Catholics.

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4. They are taken universally, cheerfully, and without the slightest reluctance, by all Catholics who are required or expected to take them.

From these mistaken premises, You draw the most groundless conclusions, and express them in the strongest language.

XVI. 8.

General View of the Laws passed against the Catholics, in the Reigns of Elizabeth and James.

The laws which were passed by the last monarch of the house of Tudor, and the first of the house of Stuart, against the English Catholic subjects, for their religious principles, and the exercise of their religion, were irreconcileable with every principle of justice and humanity :-I shall now present the reader with a succinct view of their general effect and operation.

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1.- From the planting of Christianity in our island, till the infant reign of Edward the Sixth, the mass was the solemn service at which the Catholics of England, as their brethren throughout the world, assembled, to express their adoration of the Deity, to commemorate the death and passion of his Son, to thank him for his blessings, and to implore his protection and favour on themselves and their neighbours. It was restored by queen Mary. "We," it is said in the statute which passed for that purpose, "found it in the "Church of England, left to us by the authority "of the church." It was proscribed, and another service substituted in its stead, by Elizabeth; and by a law passed in her reign, a priest who should say or sing mass, was to forfeit two hundred marks, and suffer imprisonment for one twelvemonth; and the hearer was to forfeit one hundred marks, and to be imprisoned for six months.

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2. A person who refused to assist at the church service, devised in the reign of Edward the Sixth, and established by the Act of Uniformformity, which, whatever might be its merit, was certainly (as it is termed in the statute of queen Mary) "a new thing," was denominated in the law a recusant; he was to forfeit twelve pence (three shillings in the present value of money) for each Sunday's absence; was to be presented by the churchwarden to the ecclesiastical court, and there excommunicated; the excommunication was to be certified into Chancery; the writ de excommunicato capiendo was to be issued against him : this authorized the sheriff to break open his house, to attach and imprison him, or to present him at the next assizes; an indictment was then to be framed, to which no plea, but the general issue, or conformity, was to be admitted.

If the indictment was found by the jury, a proclamation was to be made, that the recusant should surrender himself to the sheriff; if he did not appear, or confess the indictment, or if the jury found it against him, he was denominated a recusant convict; his conviction was to be certified into the exchequer; if he had not paid the forfeitures which he had incurred, process was to be awarded for levying them from his lands, goods, and chattels.

3. Having thus become a recusant convict, he was immediately to pay down the sum of 20 l. (60% in the present value of money), and from

this time, was to pay 207. (60s. in the present value of money), a month, and be bound with sufficient sureties for his good behaviour; if he could not pay it, he was to forfeit all his goods, and during his recusancy, two parts of his lands; if afterwards the profits of the two parts of his lands exceeded the 20l. (or 60 l. in the present value of money), monthly, the king was to choose which he would have, the 20l. or 60l. of our money, or the two parts.

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*In the reign of James, a circumstance of great aggravation attended the penalties of recusancy: "James was surrounded "by numbers of his indigent countrymen. Their habits were "expensive, their wants many, and their importunities in"cessant. To satisfy the more clamourous, a new expedient was devised. The king transferred to them his claims on some of the more opulent recusants, against whom they were at liberty to proceed by law in his name, unless the sufferers "should submit to compound by the grant of an annuity for "life, or the immediate payment of a considerable sum. This

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was at a time when the jealousies between the two nations "had reached a height of which at the present day we have "but little conception. Had the money been carried to the

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royal coffers, the recusants would have sufficient reason to "complain: but that Englishmen should be placed by their "king at the mercy of foreigners; that they should be stripped "of their property to support the extravagance of his Scottish "minions; this added indignity to injustice, exacerbated their "already wounded feelings, and goaded the most moderate "almost to desperation."-Lingard's Hist. vol. VI. ch. 1. p. 29. 4to ed.

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"The lay Catholics continued liable to the fines of recu

sancy, for which the king, according to his own account, re"ceived a net income of 36,000 l. per annum. But the "statute of 1606 severely aggravated their sufferings. They

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