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James II Protestant clergymen. To the indignation of the more violent Catholics the Protestant bishops were allowed to retain their seats in the Upper House, to which no Catholic prelates were summoned.

The general fairness of this legislation is not open to question. But it has been contended with some show of reason that, by neglecting to make provision for the life interests of the disestablished clergy, the Irish Parliament were guilty of gross and scandalous injustice. In the seventeenth century, however, the principle of such compensation was, if not wholly unknown, at least by no means generally recognised. Neither in 1644, when clergymen who continued faithful to episcopacy were expelled from their livings by the Long Parliament, nor in 1662, when -their Puritan successors were in their turn ejected by the government of Charles the Second, nor in this same year, 1689, when the Episcopal Church of Scotland was overthrown and Presbytery established upon its ruins was any adequate provision made for the support of the deprived clergy.

I have reserved to the last the consideration of the two celebrated measures with which the memory of this Parliament is in an' especial manner associated, and which have, to a greater 169