“After the death of William, who was much opposed to severities on account of religion, Acts of still greater rigor were passed for preventing the growth of Popery. Any child of a Roman Catholic who should declare himself a Protestant was entitled to become the heir of his estate, the father merely holding it for his lifetime, and having no command over it. Catholics were made incapable of succeeding to Protestants, and lands, passing over them, were to go to the next Protestant heir. Catholic parents were prevented from being guardians,to their own children; no Protestant possessing property was to be permitted to marry a Catholic; and Catholics were rendered incapable of purchasing landed property or enjoying long leases. These measures naturally rendered the Catholics discontented I subjects, and led to much turbulence. The common people of that persuasion, being denied all access to justice, took it into their own hands, and acquired all those lawless habits for which they have since been remarkable. Treachery, cruelty, and all the lower passions, were called into vigorous exercise. Even the Protestants, for their own sakes, were often obliged to connive at the evasion of laws so extremely severe, and which introduced much difficulty in their dealings with Catholics; but, when any Protestant wished to be revenged upon a Catholic, or to extort money from him, he found in these laws a ready instrument for his purpose. By an additional Act, in 1726, it was ordained that a Roman Catholic priest, marrying a Protestant to a Catholic, should suffer death; and in order that legal redress might be still less accessible to the Catholics, it was enacted, in 1728, that no one should be entitled to practise as an attorney who had not been two years a Protestant.”