e church of Rome. The ejected clergymen were still excluded from the
pulpit, and the Catholics were still the victims of persecuting statutes.
In 1650, an act was passed[a] offering to the discoverers of priests and
Jesuits, or of their receivers and abettors, the same reward as had been
granted to the apprehenders of highwaymen. Immediately officers and
informers were employed in every direction; the houses of Catholics were
broken open and searched at all hours of the day and night; many clergymen
were apprehended, and several were tried, and received[b] judgment of
death. Of these only one, Peter Wright, chaplain to the marquess of
Winchester, suffered. The leaders shrank from the odium of such sanguinary
exhibitions, and transported the rest of the prisoners to the continent.[1]

But if the zeal of the Independents was more sparing of blood than that of
the Presbyterians, it was not inferior in point of rapacity. The
ordinances for sequestration and forfeiture were executed with unrelenting
severity.[2] It is difficult to say which suffered from them most
cruelly--families with small fortunes who were thus reduced to a state of
penury; or husbandmen, servants, and mechanics, who, on their refusal to
take the oath of abjuration, were deprived

[Footnote 1: Challoner, ii 346. MS. papers in my possession. See note.
(G).]

[Footnote 2: In 1650 the annual rents of Catholics in possession of the
sequestrators were retained at sixty-two thousand and forty-eight pounds
seventeen shillings and threepence three farthings. It should, however, be
observed that thirteen counties were not included.--Journ. Dee. 17.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Feb. 26.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. May. 19.]

of two-thirds of their scanty earnings, even of their household goods and
wearing apparel.[1] The sufferers ventured to solicit[a] from parliament
such indulgence as might be thought "consistent with the public peace and
their comfortable subsistence in their native country." The petition was
read: Sir Henry Vane spoke in its favour; but the house was deaf to the
voice of reason and humanity, and the prayer for relief was indignantly
rejected.[2]

[Footnote 1: In proof I may be allowed to mention one instance of a
Catholic servant maid, an orphan, who, during a servitude of seventeen
years, at seven nobles a year, had saved twenty pounds. The sequestrators,
having discovered with whom she had deposited her money, took two-thirds,
thirteen poun