Page:Guy Fawkes, or The history of the gunpowder plot.pdf/5

Rh end of that session of Parliament; and that all such priests, or other religious persons, ordained since the same time, should not come into England, or remain there, under the pain of suffering death as in case of treason.' It was also enacted by the same statute, 'that all persons receiving or assisting such priests should be guilty of a capital felony.' When a person professing the Popish religion was convicted in a court of law of absenting himself from the Established Church, he was termed a 'Popish recusant convict;' such a person was liable, by the 35 Eliz. c. 1, to be committed to prison without bail until he conformed and made submission; and if he did not, within three months after conviction, submit and repair to the Established Church, he must abjure the realm; and if he refused to swear, or did not depart upon his abjuration, or if he returned without licence, he was guilty of felony, and might suffer death as a felon, without benefit of clergy. No doubt, these rigorous laws were not at all times enforced to their utmost extent; but they placed the whole body of the Catholics at the mercy of the Protestant Government, who were enabled to crush or spare them at their discretion or caprice; for them, therefore, there was no liberty, personal or religious, but such as the Privy Council thought proper to allow: and with reference to their religion, the law gave them no rights, and afforded them no protection. When we remember that the victims of the laws above enumerated considered themselves to be the majority of the gross population of the country; that the chief sufferers were the principal nobility and gentry of the land, whose ancestors