INTRODUCTION.

The certificates abstracted in the following pages were enrolled in Quarter Sessions by Roman Catholic landowners in obedience to the last of the penal laws enacted by Parliament, which for so many generations disfigured the Statute Book.

The word persecution is susceptible of many shades of meaning. It is defined in the New English Dictionary as "the action of persecuting or pursuing with enmity and malignity; especially the infliction of death, torture, or penalties for adherence to a religious belief or opinion as such, with a view to the repression or extirpation of it."

If such had been the object of Parliament in making the penal laws, these certificates or registers would never have been drawn up, for there would have been no Roman Catholic landowners left.

It may be affirmed that the English nation has never been given to persecution for religion, although individuals, ecclesiastics, and laymen, individually may not have been guiltless. The elements of intolerance latent in every breast have been headed off on politics, in which region the party temporarily in power has not always been over scrupulous in exacting vengeance on its opponents.

It may also be asserted that the Church of England has never been a persecuting church, although it must be admitted that its policy in excluding Nonconformists from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge was as illiberal as it was shortsighted. As a recent writer has appositely pointed out, the national church as established under the Reformation Settlement "suited the genius of the English people, expressed their good sense and distaste for extremes, and remains still the most tolerant ecclesiastical system in the world."*

If James II had listened to the wise counsels of Pope Innocent the Eleventh-who recommended him to exercise prudence and moderationf-the penal laws then in force would, almost certainly, have been repealed, and the Statutes imposing civil incapacities would have been suspended if not repealed. The self-will of that

* Bishop Henson, in Edinburgh Review for January, 1918. † Macaulay, History of England, vol. i, pp. 463-466.

monarch led him to insult the Church of England and to attempt, by an unlawful extension of the prerogative, not only to redress the admitted inequalities of his co-religionists, but to attempt to place them in a dominating position to which neither political experience, learning, nor numbers entitled them. The Spanish Court was perfectly informed by its ambassador in London to the effect that "the English laws against Popery might seem severe, [but] they were so much mitigated by the prudence and humanity of the government that they caused no annoyance to quiet people."*

In the Church of England there has always been an influential section which has regarded the Latin Church with admiration and affection, although it was not until the nineteenth century had run the greater part of its course that that party was emboldened, hat in hand, to supplicate the Papacy to "recognise " the orders of the church for which they took upon themselves to speak. A study of the Royalist Composition Papers and of the Roman Catholic Registers-which may be regarded as their sequel-will suggest that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the relations between Roman Catholics and Protestants were always amicable and often cordial. Intermarriage was not infrequent, and such events could not have taken place without social intercourse, nor were Roman Catholic landowners disqualified from taking leases of tithes from ecclesiastical corporations. Bearing well-known and honoured names, and very generally entitled to bear coat-armour, they lived in peace and amity with their Protestant neighbours, who never failed them in accepting-when requested to do sothe burdensome office of a trustee or executor; and at the end they were buried with their fathers, not infrequently in the chancel of the parish church, attended by the deference never withheld from men of established position of well-conducted life.

If this reading of the history of the seventeenth century be correct, and the conclusions be accepted, then it follows that the irksome restraint under which Roman Catholic landowners laboured was imposed on them not for their religion but for their devotion to the banished House of Stuart, and it raises the inference that the recorded prosecutions were not for ecclesiastical but for political reasons. This view is supported by the preamble of the Act of Parliament, I George I, cap lv, which Act ordered the setting * Macaulay, History of England, vol. iii, p. 224. The Spanish ambassador personally had little reason to love the English, for the London mob had insulted and injured him,

up of the register of the estates of Roman Catholics. In so many words it states that the re-enactment of the penal laws was directly due to the Rebellion of 1715:

Whereas the Papists within this Kingdom, notwithstanding the tender regard that hath been shown them for many years last past, by omitting to put into execution the many penal laws which (on occasion of the many just provocations they have given, and horrid designs they have framed for the destruction of this Kingdom and the extirpation of the Protestant Religion), have been made against them, and notwithstanding they have enjoyed and do still enjoy the protection and benefit of the Government, as well as the rest of His Majesty's subjects, have not only all or the greatest part of them been concerned in stirring up and supporting the late unnatural Rebellion for the dethroning and murthering his most Sacred Majesty, for destroying our present happy Establishment, for setting a Popish Pretender upon the Throne of this Kingdom, for the destruction of the Protestant Religion, and the cruel murthering and massacring its professors, by which they have brought a vast expense upon this nation: and whereas it manifestly appears by their behaviour that they take themselves to be obliged by the principles they profess to be enemies to his Majesty, and to the present happy establishment, and watch for all opportunities of fomenting and stirring up new rebellions and disturbances within the Kingdom, and of inviting foreigners to invade it: and forasmuch as it is highly reasonable that they should contribute a large share to all such extraordinary expenses as are, or shall be brought upon this Kingdom by their treachery and instigation: and to the end that by paying largely to the late great expenses by them brought upon this nation they may be deterred, if possible, from the like offences for the future, and that this nation may have the benefit of his Majesty's gracious condescension in giving his interest in the two third parts of all his Papists' estates which are already forfeited to him by law, for the use of the public, either by seizing the said two third parts of their estates for the public service, or by laying some tax or charge upon their estates in lieu thereof, in such proportion and in such manner as shall be determined to be reasonable in Parliament."

The Act provides that all Roman Catholic landowners, in Quarter Sessions of the county in which their lands are situated (or in certain other Courts), shall register their names, lands, and

tenements, the names of the tenants, or those in possession of the said lands, the yearly rents thereof, particulars of leases, fines paid on renewal of such leases, etc. The certificates were to be brought to the Clerk of the Peace either by the landowner in person, or by others to whom he had given a Power of Attorney, and enrolled in Court in parchment books to be subscribed by him or them, and laid up with the records of the county or shire.

In the custody of the Clerk of the Peace of Northumberland, two sets of registers are preserved, viz., (1) the original paper certificates, signed by the landowners, accompanied by a Power of Attorney to other persons to appear in Court, and (2) the enrolment or fair copy written on parchment signed by one of the persons to whom the Power of Attorney had been given, and numbered in the order in which they were enrolled.

Neither of these sets is quite perfect, but the gaps can be made good from the contemporary copies sent up from time to time to the Commissioners in London, which copies are now deposited in the Public Record Office.

The series at the Moot Hall in Newcastle do not comprise the registers enrolled by landowners within the boroughs of Newcastleupon-Tyne and Berwick-upon-Tweed, nor yet for Bedlingtonshire, Islandshire, or Norhamshire, which, until 1844, were within the county palatine of Durham. The original certificates from these places have disappeared, and the abstracts are made from the Public Record Office copies.