prorogued Parliament, with a severe rebuke, ordering
the Clerk to enter his protest against the proceedings of the Commons on
the journals of the House of Lords. The hopes of the English were
raised, and the Parliament brought forward the subject of the Limerick
articles, with torrents of complaints against the Irish in general, and
the Irish Catholics in particular. William received their remonstrance
coolly, and the matter was allowed to rest for a time. In 1695 Lord
Capel was appointed Viceroy. He at once summoned a Parliament, which sat
for several sessions, and in which some of the penal laws against
Catholics were enacted. As I believe the generality even of educated
persons, both in England and Ireland, are entirely ignorant of what
these laws really were, I shall give a brief account of their
enactments, premising first, that seven lay peers and seven Protestant
bishops had the honorable humanity to sign a protest against them.

(1) The Catholic peers were deprived of their right to sit in
Parliament. (2) Catholic gentlemen were forbidden to be elected as
members of Parliament. (3) It denied all Catholics the liberty of
voting, and it excluded them from all offices of trust, and indeed from
_all remunerative_ employment, however insignificant.[548] (4) They were
fined L60 a-month for absence from the Protestant form of worship. (5)
They were forbidden to travel five miles from their houses, to keep
arms, to maintain suits at law, or to be guardians or executors. (6) Any
four justices of the peace could, without further trial, banish any man
for life if he refused to attend the Protestant service. (7) Any two
justices of the peace could call any man over sixteen before them, and
if he refused to abjure the Catholic religion, they could bestow his
property on the next of kin. (8) No Catholic could employ a Catholic
schoolmaster to educate his children; and if he sent his child abroad
for education, he was subject to a fine of L100, and the child could not
inherit any property either in England or Ireland. (9) Any Catholic
priest who came to the country should be hanged. (10) Any Protestant
suspecting any other Protestant of holding property[549] in trust for
any Catholic, might file a bill against the suspected trustee, and take
the estate or property from him. (11) Any Protestant seeing a Catholic
tenant-at-will on a farm, which, in his opinion, yielded one-third more
than the yearly rent, might enter on that far