hope, and the reversion of expectation, were extinguished forever for the sons and daughters of the ancient gentry of the kingdom.” An attempt made by the titled Catholic laity and the prelates and priests of that faith to establish their true position in regard to their spiritual and secular allegiance was also met in a hostile manner by Ormond, who so managed as to excite a bitter controversy in regard to a document called “The Remonstrance,” which was supposed to embody the Catholic idea of the period. The viceroy succeeded to the top of his bent. Dissension prevailed at a meeting of the surviving prelates of the Church, and the superiors of regular orders, held in Dublin, and Ormond made the failure of the gathering an excuse for persecuting the prelates and priests, whom he bitterly hated as a body he could not use, with penal severities, which the selfish and sensual king, who was himself a Catholic in secret, allowed to pass without interference. In this same year (1666) the importation of Irish cattle into England was declared, by Parliamentary enactment, “a nuisance,” for the reason that when the Londoners were starving, at the time of the Great Fire, Ireland contributed for their relief 15,000 fat steers. Instead of being grateful for the generous gift, the English lawmakers pretended to believe it a scheme to preserve the trade in cattle between the two kingdoms. The Navigation Act—invented by Cromwell—which put fetters on Irish commerce, was also enforced, and these two grievances united, for a time, the Puritans and the Old Irish, as both suffered equally from the restrictions placed upon industry. Ormond showed favor to the discontented Puritans, and was recalled in consequence. His retirement lasted nine years, and during that period he became a patron of Irish manufactures, especially in the county of Kilkenny. A bogus “Popish plot”—an offshoot of that manufactured in England, during this reign, by that arch-impostor and perjurer, Titus Oates—was trumped up in Ireland for purposes of religious and political terrorism. The attempt to fasten it upon the masses of the people happily failed, but, without even the shadow of proof, the aged and venerated archbishop of Armagh, Oliver Plunkett, was accused of complicity in it, arrested and confined, without form of trial, for ten months in an Irish prison. Finally he was removed to London and placed on trial. One of his “judges” was the notorious Jeffreys—the English Norbury—a man destitute of a heart. Even one of the paid perjurers, called a crown agent, stung by remorse, offered to testify in behalf of the unfortunate archbishop. All was in vain, however. The judges charged the jury against the accused, violating every legal form, and the hapless prelate was found guilty. He was sentenced to be “hanged, drawn, and quartered” on July 1, 1681. This sentence was carried out in all its brutal details. When the Earl of Essex appealed to the king to save the illustrious martyr, Charles