Fourthly, it was notorious that from the moment Parliament was convened it had urged the greatest severities against the English Roman Catholics. The king was compelled to revive the penalties of the worst days of Edward and Elizabeth against them. His own consort was scarce safe from the violence of those hideous wretches who concealed the vilest crimes under the garb of Puritan godliness. Readers even of such a common and one-sided book as Forster’s _Life of Sir John Eliot_ will be surprised to find the prominence and space the “Popish” resolutions and debates occupied in the sittings of Parliament. The popular leaders divided their time nearly equally between the persecution of the Catholics and assaults upon the prerogative. The same severities were now threatened against the Irish Catholics. “Both Houses,” says Castlehaven, “solicited, by several petitions out of Ireland, to have those of that kingdom treated with the like rigor, which, to a people so fond of their religion as the Irish, was no small inducement to make them, while there was an opportunity offered, to stand upon their guard.” Fifthly, the precedent of the Scotch Rebellion, and its successful results--pecuniarily, politically, and religiously--encouraged the Irish so much at that time that they offered it to Owen O’Conally as their chief motive for rising in rebellion; “which,” says he (quoted by Castlehaven), “they engaged in to be rid of the tyrannical government that was over them, and to imitate Scotland, who by that course had enlarged their privileges” (O’Conally’s _Exam._, October 22, 1641; Borlace’s _History of the Irish Rebellion_, p. 21). To the same purpose Lord Castlehaven quotes Mr. Howell in his _Mercurius Hibernicus_ in the year 1643; “whose words, because an impartial author and a known Protestant, I will here transcribe in confirmation of what I have said and for the reader’s further satisfaction”: