ere expelled, and their
flocks in many cases elected to follow them into exile.

This persecution was the more monstrous that no hint or pretext of
disloyalty was urged against them. They had been planted in the country
as a defence and breakwater against the Roman Catholics, and now the
same intolerance which had, in a great measure forced the latter to
rebel, was in its turn being brought to bear upon them.

The Roman Catholics, on the other hand, now found themselves indulged to
a degree that they had not experienced for nearly a century. The penal
laws at the special instance of the king were suspended in their favour.
Many of the priests returned, and were allowed to establish themselves
in their old churches. They could not do so, however, without violent
alarm being awakened upon the other side. The Irish Protestants
remonstrated angrily, and their indignation found a vehement echo in
England. The '41 massacre was still as fresh in every Protestant's mind
as if it had happened only the year before, and suspicion of Rome was a
passion ready at any moment to rise to frenzy.

The heir to the Crown was a Papist, and Charles was himself strongly,
and not unreasonably suspected of being secretly one also. His alliance
with Louis XIV" was justifiably regarded with the utmost suspicion and
dislike by all his Protestant subjects. It only wanted a spark to set
this mass of smouldering irritation and suspicion into a flame.

That spark was afforded by the murder of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, under
circumstances which were at first believed to point to its having been
committed by Papists. A crowd of perjured witnesses, with Titus Gates at
their head, sprang like evil birds of the night into existence, ready to
swear away the lives of any number of innocent men. The panic flew
across the Channel. Irish Roman Catholics of all classes and ages were
arrested and flung into prison. Priests who had ventured to return were
ordered to quit the country at once. Men of stainless honour, whose only
crime was their faith, were on no provocation seized and subjected to
the most ignominious treatment, and in several instances put to death.

The case of Dr. Plunkett, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, a man
whom even Protestants regarded with the utmost reverence, is the most
notorious of these. Upon a ridiculous charge of being implicated in a
wholly mythical French descent, he was dragged over to London, summarily
sentenced, conv