country was governed and depopulated at the same time. One
of the latter--a nobleman of the highest rank and acquirements, and of
the most amiable disposition, a warm friend to civil freedom, and a firm
antagonist to persecution and oppression of every hue--this nobleman, we
say, married a French lady of rank and fortune, who was a Catholic,
and with whom he lived in the tenderest love, and the utmost domestic
felicity. The lady being a Catholic, as we said, brought over with
her, from France, a learned, pious, and venerable ecclesiastic, as her
domestic chaplain and confessor. This man had been professor of divinity
for several years in the college of Louvain; but having lost his health,
he accepted a small living near the chateau of ----, the residence
of Marquis De------, in whose establishment he was domesticated as
chaplain. In short, he accompanied Lord ------ and his lady to Ireland,
where he acted in the same capacity, but so far only as the lady was
concerned; for, as we have already said, her husband, though a liberal
man, was a firm but not a bigoted Protestant. This harmless old man, as
was very natural, kept up a correspondence with several Irish and French
clergymen, his friends, who, as he had done, held professorships in
the same college. Many of the Irish clergymen, knowing the dearth of
religious instruction which, in consequence of the severe state of
the laws, then existed in Ireland, were naturally anxious to know the
condition of the country, and whether or not any relaxation in their
severity had taken place, with a hope that they might be able with
safety to return to the mission here, and bestow spiritual aid and
consolation to the suffering and necessarily neglected folds of their
own persuasion. On this harmless and pious old man the eye of Hennessy
rested. In point of fact he set him for Sir Robert Whitecraft, to whom
he represented him as a spy from France, and an active agent of the
Catholic priesthood, both here and on the Continent; in fact, an
incendiary, who, feeling himself sheltered by the protection of the
nobleman in question and his countess, was looked upon as a safe man
with whom to hold correspondence. The Abbe, as they termed him, was in
the! habit, by his lordship's desire, and that of his lady, of attending
the Catholic sick of his large estates, administering to them religious
instruction, and the ordinance of their Church, at a time when they
could obtain them from no other s