Saint Germains, should be charmed by the graces of Mary of Modena,
should find something engaging in the childish innocence of the Prince
of Wales, should kiss the hand of James, and should return home an
ardent Jacobite. An Act was therefore passed forbidding English subjects
to hold any intercourse orally, or by writing, or by message, with the
exiled family. A day was fixed after which no English subject, who had,
during the late war, gone into France without the royal permission or
borne arms against his country was to be permitted to reside in this
kingdom, except under a special license from the King. Whoever infringed
these rules incurred the penalties of high treason.

The dismay was at first great among the malecontents. For English and
Irish Jacobites, who had served under the standards of Lewis or hung
about the Court of Saint Germains, had, since the peace, come over in
multitudes to England. It was computed that thousands were within the
scope of the new Act. But the severity of that Act was mitigated by a
beneficent administration. Some fierce and stubborn non-jurors who would
not debase themselves by asking for any indulgence, and some conspicuous
enemies of the government who had asked for indulgence in vain, were
under the necessity of taking refuge on the Continent. But the great
majority of those offenders who promised to live peaceably under
William's rule obtained his permission to remain in their native land.

In the case of one great offender there were some circumstances which
attracted general interest, and which might furnish a good subject to
a novelist or a dramatist. Near fourteen years before this time,
Sunderland, then Secretary of State to Charles the Second, had married
his daughter Lady Elizabeth Spencer to Donough Macarthy, Earl of
Clancarty, the lord of an immense domain in Munster. Both the bridegroom
and the bride were mere children, the bridegroom only fifteen, the bride
only eleven. After the ceremony they were separated; and many years
full of strange vicissitudes elapsed before they again met. The boy soon
visited his estates in Ireland. He had been bred a member of the Church
of England; but his opinions and his practice were loose. He found
himself among kinsmen who were zealous Roman Catholics. A Roman
Catholic king was on the throne. To turn Roman Catholic was the best
recommendation to favour both at Whitehall and at Dublin Castle.
Clancarty speedily changed his religion,