Under such circumstances, the Catholics found
themselves exposed to insult and persecution wherever the influence of the
parliament extended: for protection they were compelled to flee to the
quarters of the royalists, and to fight under their banners; and this
again confirmed the prejudice against them, and exposed them to additional
obloquy and punishment.
But the chiefs of the patriots, while for political purposes they pointed
the hatred of their followers against the Catholics, appear not to have
delighted unnecessarily in blood. They ordered, indeed, searches to be
made for Catholic clergymen; they offered and paid rewards for their
apprehension, and they occasionally gratified the zealots with the
spectacle of an execution. The priests who suffered death in the course of
the war amounted on an average to three for each year, a small number, if
we consider the agitated state of the public mind during that period.[1]
But it was the property of the lay Catholics which they chiefly sought,
pretending that, as the war had been caused by their intrigues, its
expenses ought to be defrayed by their forfeitures. It was ordained that
two-thirds of the whole estate, both real and personal, of every papist,
should be seized and sold for
[Footnote 1: Journals, vi.
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