ought
sufficient to wash out even the stain of his Saxon extraction. He soon
proved himself worthy of the confidence of his patrons. On the bench of
justice he declared that there was not one heretic in forty thousand
who was not a villain. He often, after hearing a cause in which the
interests of his Church were concerned, postponed his decision, for the
purpose, as he avowed, of consulting his spiritual director, a Spanish
priest, well read doubtless in Escobar, [115] Thomas Nugent, a Roman
Catholic who had never distinguished himself at the bar except by his
brogue and his blunders, was Chief Justice of the King's Bench, [116]
Stephen Rice, a Roman Catholic, whose abilities and learning were not
disputed even by the enemies of his nation and religion, but whose
known hostility to the Act of Settlement excited the most painful
apprehensions in the minds of all who held property under that Act, was
Chief Baron of the Exchequer, [117] Richard Nagle, an acute and well
read lawyer, who had been educated in a Jesuit college, and whose
prejudices were such as might have been expected from his education, was
Attorney General, [118]

Keating, a highly respectable Protestant, was still Chief Justice of the
Common Pleas: but two Roman Catholic judges sate with him. It ought to
be added that one of those judges, Daly, was a man of sense, moderation
and integrity. The matters however which came before the Court of Common
Pleas were not of great moment. Even the King's Bench was at this time
almost deserted. The Court of Exchequer overflowed with business; for it
was the only court at Dublin from which no writ of error lay to England,
and consequently the only court in which the English could be oppressed
and pillaged without hope of redress. Rice, it was said, had declared
that they should have from him exactly what the law, construed with the
utmost strictness, gave them, and nothing more. What, in his opinion,
the law, strictly construed, gave them, they could easily infer from a
saying which, before he became a judge, was often in his mouth. "I will
drive," he used to say, "a coach and six through the Act of Settlement."
He now carried his threat daily into execution. The cry of all
Protestants was that it mattered not what evidence they produced
before him; that, when their titles were to be set aside, the
rankest forgeries, the most infamous witnesses, were sure to have his
countenance. To his court his countrymen came in mu