Charles II
a subject and virtually disfranchised caste. The colonists, numbering little more than a fourth part of the population, possessed, according to the calculation of Sir William Petty, three-fourths of the lands, five-sixths of the housing, and nine-tenths of the housing within corporate towns.53 No law as yet excluded Catholics from the House of Commons, but to the single parliament elected during this reign only one Catholic was returned.54 The corporations, whose political importance it would scarcely be possible to exaggerate, had, before the Great Rebellion, been largely Catholic55; Cromwell had made them exclusively Protestant; and a special provision had been introduced into the Act of Settlement to perpetuate this arrangement.56 The Lord Lieutenant and Council had, it is true, power to remodel these bodies at discretion,57 but this power does not appear to have been exercised until the time of Tyrconnel. The tests which excluded Catholics from positions of authority and influence were less stringent than in England58; but the Privy Council, which a law of Henry the Seventh had virtually erected into an additional branch of the legislature,59 the courts of justice, and the executive Government in all its branches were throughout this reign exclusively Protestant60; and it was only during
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