revolting at their harshness. Presbyterians, however, were pursued unrelentingly to the extent of the law. The Presbyterian magistrates in Ulster, says Froude, were cleared out. Men having nothing to recommend them but their going to church, were appointed in their places. The power being now in their hands, the bishops fell upon the grievance of the Presbyterian marriages. CathoHc marriages did not trouble them; but, in their view, a marriage ceremony by a Protestant dissenting minister was only a license to sin. It was announced that the children of all Protestants not married in a church should be treated as bastards, and in 1704 many persons of undoubted reputation were prosecuted in the bishop's courts as fornicators for cohabiting with their own wives. Ministers, for the offence of preaching the gospel outside of certain bounds, were arrested and held for trial, while their hearers were threatened with the stocks.
Yet the loyalty of the people to the Crown was unshaken, doubtless owing to the fact that the sovereigns generally were opposed to measures of persecution. William III had opposed them, and George I in vain urged the repeal of the obnoxious laws. Therefore when, in 1715, the rebellion in behalf of the Pretender, son of James II, began in Scotland, and an insurrection in Ireland was looked for, the Irish Presbyterians tendered their services to the government. In the emergency military commissions were distributed to them, although contrary to law, and many regiments were speedily raised. After the danger was over they were threatened with prosecution for even that service.
The chief agents of persecution were the bishops of the established church. Some of these prelates, during the earlier part of the eighteenth century, were not only High Churchmen of the most ultra sort, but at heart it was believed partisans of the Stuart dynasty. Dean Swift, no friend to Dissenters, sarcastically described the nominees to the Episcopal bench of Ireland, "as waylaid and murdered by highwaymen on Hounslow Heath, who stole their letters patent, came to Dublin, and were consecrated in their places." All the Irish prelates, however, did not deserve Swift's wholesale denunciation, notably Bishop Berkeley; and many of the parish clergy were worthy of all honor.
Every effort of enlightened statesmen to obtain a relaxation
