Page:Guy Fawkes, or The history of the gunpowder plot.pdf/4

4 their necessity for the preservation of the Protestant establishment from the practices of disaffccted and turbulent fanatics, at that time excited and encouraged by the mischievous interference of the Pope, it may be observed that their effect undoubtedly was to withdraw from the Catholics the common rights and liberties of Englishmen, and to place all persons, however loyal to the existing Government, who adhered, from conscience and principle, to the ancient religion, in a state of unmerited persecution and suffering. By these laws, Catholics were not only forbidden to use the rites and ceremonies of their own faith, but were required to attend upon the services of a Church, which, if conscientious and consistent, they were bound to abhor as heretical and damnable. If they refused or forbore to come to a Protestant church on the Sabbath, they were liable to a penalty of £20 for every lunar month during which they absented themselves. The public exercise of the social rites of their own Church was virtually interdicted; for it was enacted, 'that every priest saying mass was punishable by a forfeiture of two hundred marks, and every person hearing it by a forfeiture of one hundred marks, and both were to be imprisoned a year, and the priest until his fine was paid.' The ministers of their religion, without whose presence they were precluded from the exercise of the Sacraments and other rites, were in effect proscribed and banished; for, by a statute passed in 1585, (27 Eliz. c. 2,) it was enacted, 'that all Jesuits, seminary and other priests, ordained since the beginning of the Queen's reign, should depart out of the realm within forty days after the