CHAPTER I. JAMES I. - FLIGHT OF THE EARLS - CONFISCATION OF ULSTER - PENAL LAWS - PARLIAMENTARY OPPOSITION.

The spirit of religious persecution was exhibited not only in the means taken to exterminate the peasantry, to destroy the northern chiefs, and to intimidate the Catholics of "the Pale" by abuse of law, but by many cruel executions. The Prior of the famous retreat of Lough Derg was one of the victims of this persecution; a Priest named O'Loughrane, who had accidentally sailed in the same ship with the Earls to France, was taken prisoner on his return, hanged and quartered. Conor O'Devany, Bishop of Down and Conor, an octogenarian, suffered martyrdom with heroic constancy at Dublin, in 1611. Two years before, John, Lord Burke of Brittas, was executed in like manner on a charge of having participated in the Catholic demonstrations which took place at Limerick on the accession of King James. The edict of 1610 in relation to Catholic children educated abroad has been quoted in a previous chapter, apropos of education, but the scheme submitted by Knox, Bishop of Raphoe, to Chichester in 1611 went even beyond that edict. In this project it was proposed that whoever should be found to harbour a Priest should forfeit all his possessions to the Crown - that quarterly returns should be made out by counties of all who refused to take the oath of supremacy, or to attend the English Church service - that no Papist should be permitted to exercise the function of a schoolmaster; and, moreover, that all churches injured during the late war should be repaired at the expense of the Papist inhabitants for the use of the Anglican congregation.