was from Douay sent upon the English mission, the 27th of August, 1628. Other particulars relating to him, I have not been able to find. Some time also during these troubles, though I have not found the precise year, died prisoner for his faith and character, Mr. Thomas Blount, another priest of the secular clergy. He was a younger son of James Blount, Esq; performed his humanity studies at St. Omer's; was sent from thence to the English seminary of Valladolid, but after six months' stay there, returned into England: then going abroad again, he entered himself a convictor in the English college of Lisbon, anno 1635, where he finished his studies, and was made priest. He was sent upon the mission, April 14, 1642, and having for some years discharged the duty of a laborious missioner in the worst of times, he was apprehended and committed to the common gaol in Shrewsbury, and died there.

And now we are speaking of priests that died prisoners for their religion, we must not omit to mention father Robert Cox, in religion called father Benedict, an eminent religious man of the venerable order of St. Bennet, who, after having received the sentence of death, and endured a long and tedious martyrdom in prison, died in the Clink, anno 1650. We are forced to pass over the sufferings of divers other priests in those evil days, for want of proper record.

1647, &c.-From the year 1646, till the year 1651, I find not any priests put to death for their character; though otherwise the persecution against catholics did not cease, and the sequestrators were every where busy in sequestering and plundering their estates, as well real as personal. That the reader may have a better idea of the sufferings of catholics in this kind, I shall here transcribe some pages out of Mr. Knaresborough's manuscript collections, concerning these sequestra

tions.

The sequestration of two parts of the catholic estates, real and personal, pursuant to several ordinances of the lords and commons, A. D. 1643, 1644, &c.

The first of these ordinances bears date April the first, 1643, appointing certain persons, there named, to be commissioners or sequestrators for the several counties of England and Wales; and empowering them forthwith to seize as well all the moneys and other personal estate, as also all the manors, lands, and other real estates of notorious delinquents, that is to say, of all persons who had then raised, or should afterwards raise arms against the parliament; or who had voluntarily contributed, or should contribute any moneys, horse, plate, arms, ammunition, or other aid or assistance, towards the maintenance of any forces raised against the parliament.

And also two parts of all the estates of every papist, or which any person had in trust, or for the use of any papist; this to be let, set, sold, and converted and applied to the uses of the parliament, towards supporting the charges of the war.

'A second ordinance passed the 19th of August the same year, con

taining an explanation and further enlargement of the fore-mentioned ordinance for sequestering the estates of delinquents and papists. In this is explained, who are to be deemed papists, and who are liable to the penalty mentioned above; that is, of having two parts of their estate seized for the use of the parliament. These are, first, all such as have willingly harboured any popish priest sinee the 29th of Nevember, 1642, or that should hereafter harbour any. 2dly, all that had been already convicted of popish recusancy: 3dly, or that have been at mass any time within one whole year, before the 26th of March 1643, or should hereafter be at mass; or whose children, or grand-children, or any of them living in the house with them, or under their tuition, shall be brought up in the popish religion. Finally, all such persons, as being of the age of twenty-one years, should refuse to take the oath of abjuration, by which they abjure and renounce transubstantiation, &c," which oath, any two of the committee-men, or any two justices of the peace; or for want of these, the mayor, bailiffs, or head officer of any city or town corporate, had power to tender to any suspected papist. All these are here declared liable to the penalty above mentioned; that is, two parts of three of their whole estates, real and personal, were to be forthwith seized, sold, and disposed for the uses of the parliament.

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And to the end that a full discovery might be had of the catholic estates, so that it should be morally impossible for them to convey away any part of their effects, or conceal or screen them from the commissioner's knowledge, by the assistance of their protestant friends, or otherwise, the said sequestrators were further empowered by this second ordinance, to examine, upon oath, any person suspected to be aiding in concealing these men or their effects, or entrusted for them, or who should owe any thing, or be indebted to any papist; and if the said persons should refuse to be examined, or to declare the whole truth, they were to be committed to safe custody till they should conform, and make the discovery insisted upon by the commissioners.

And for the more speedy and effectual seizure of the personal estates of the said delinquents and papists, the commissioners had power to authorize their several collectors and agents employed under them, to break open all locks, bolts, bars, doors, or other strength, where moneys or goods were, upon probable grounds, suspected to be concealed, and seize the same into their possession; with this further engagement to to such as were assisting to the sequestrators, that for their reward, they were to have one shilling in the pound, of all moneys, lands, or goods, as they should discoverer; and for their indemnity, the protection of both houses of parliament; and to be esteemed as persons who did acceptable service to the commonwealth.

Finally, amongst the remarkable instructions given to the sequestrators, consisting of thirteen articles, that of number six ought to be carefully remembered, viz: You are to seize two parts of the estates, both real and personal, of all papists, (as they are papists,) and the whole estates of all other sorts of delinquents mentioned in the said ordinance, whether they be papists or others; and you are to understand by two

parts of papists estates, two of their whole lands, and two of their goods into three to be divided.

'Armed with these powers, the sequestrators set out towards their respective divisions, and fell to seize, sell, or let, the estates of papists wherever they could come at them. And in the south and midland counties they made quick despatch; bringing under sequestration, either as delinquents or convict recusants, the whole body of the catholics without exception. But as the progress of the parliament's victories was not so quick in the north and west, so neither could their committees execute their powers with that undisturbed freedom, nor make their seizures and commit their plunders with the same unlimited and uncontrolled tyranny, as they did in those counties which had been more early reduced, &c.

But after his majesty's affairs declined, and his forces were so weakened, as not to be able to make head against the rebels, then the sequestrators poured in upon those other provinces, and fell upon all the estates of the royalists and catholics, not hitherto sequestered, with rage and fury.

After the independents came in play, they made great changes in their commissions, and put in sequestrators of their own party: but the harvest then was in a great measure over. The catholic estates had already been under sequestration seven or eight years, and the presbyterians had plundered them to the bare walls, so that there was nothing left to these new sequestrators. However, as they were a hungry crew, they were resolved to have something from the papists, though less; and thus they made new inquests, and forced many of these oppressed people to undergo new compositions, upon pretence that they had not been sequestered according to the full extent and meaning of the late ordinances.

Of the sufferings of the catholics in general, and of the miserable state to which they were reduced by these sequestrations, take this short but faithful account from a contemporary writer, an eye-witness of their oppressures, viz., Mr. Austin, under the name of William Birchley, in his Christian Moderator, part I. p, 9, &c.

Of the papists, says he, some are sequestered for delinquency, and those of all cavaliers, (cæteris paribus) the most severely, though of all the most excusable, because wholly depending upon the pleasure of the late king, and infinitely obliged to his royal lenity; noting it as an unanswerable argument of their fidelity and gratitude toward such as deal with them in mercy, as also that their declining to receive the oaths of supremacy and allegiance, for which they have heretofore been so violently persecuted, proceeded not from any aversion to civil obedience, but because there were mingled in those oaths certain expressions of a pure spiritual nature, repugnant to their consciences, and altogether unnecssary to the common security.

Others are equally punished, that is, their whole estate sequestered, allowing only a fifth part for their wives and children, though in true reason they are altogether justifiable, having never been in any engage ment, but found only in some garrisons of the king, whither they were driven for refuge, being put out of the protection of the parliament by VOL. II.

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public proclamation, their houses every where rifled, their goods plun dered, and lives endangered by the soldiers, whose condition seems clearly to be within the equity of that article of the army's proposals, August 1647. That the king's menial servants, who never took up arms, but only attended on his person, according to their offices, be freed from composition; much more those who had both the civil reason of duty, and the unanswerable argument of necessity, to plead for their discharge and (which is yet more hard) some recusants of this class, who never bore arms, but were only found in garrisons, for their own personal security, as aforesaid, are now ranked among the highest delinquents, and their estates to be sold, such as sir Henry Bedingfield, Mr. Bodenham, Mr. Gifford, &c.

As for the single recusants, two-thirds of their estates are seized upon, only for the cause of religion, under which notion are included all such as were heretofore convicted of not resorting to common prayers, or do now refuse the oath of abjuration, a new oath made by the two houses, when the former kind of service was abolished, wherein the practice is strangely severe; for upon bare information, the estate of the suspected is secured, that is, his rents, &c., suspended, before any trial or legal proof, even in these times of peace; and being once thus half condemned, he has no other remedy to help himself, but by fors wearing his religion, and so by an oath, a thousand times harsher than that ex officio, they draw out of his own mouth his condemnation.

When the sequestrators have thus seized into their hands two-thirds of the most innocent recusants' lands and goods, then come the excisemen, tax-gatherers, and other collectors, and pinch away no small part of the poor third-penny that was left them; so that after these deductions, I have known some estates of three hundred pounds a year, reduced to less than threescore, a lean pittance to maintain them and their children, being persons for the most part of good quality, and civil education. And as for priests, it is made as great a crime to have taken orders after the rites of their church, as to have committed the most heinous treason that can be imagined, and they are far more cruelly punished than those that murder their own parents.

'Besides these extreme and fatal penalties that lie upon the recusants merely for their conscience, there are many other afflictions whereof few take notice, which though of lesser weight, yet being added to the former, quite sink them down to the bottom of sorrow and perplexity; as their continual fear of having their houses broke open and searched by pursuivants, who enter at what hours they please, and do there what they list, taking away not only all the instruments of their religion, but oftentimes money, plate, watches, and other such popish idols, especially if they be found in the same room with any pictures, and so infected with a relative superstition.

Another of their afflictions is, that they, I mean these single recusants, have no power to sell or mortgage the least part of their estates, either to pay their just debts, or defray their necessary expenses, whereby they are disabled of all commerce, and their credit being utterly lost (upon which many of them now provide even their daily bread) they must needs in a short time be brought to a desperate necessity,

if not absolute ruin; and if any, the most quiet and moderate amongst them, should desire to transplant himself into a milder climate; and endeavour to avoid the offence that is taken against him in his own country, he cannot so dispose of his estate here, as by bill of exchange, or any other way, to provide the least subsistence for himself and his family: a severity far beyond the most rigid practice of the Scotch Kirk; for there, (as I am informed,) the persons of recusants are only banished out of the kingdom, and prohibited to reside at their own homes above forty days in a year, which time is allowed them for the management of their estate, and their estates allowed them for their maintenance abroad. A proceeding which their principles would clearly justify, if they could justify their principles. But in England, where compulsion on the conscience is decried as the worst of slaveries, to punish men so sharply for matters of religion, contrary to the principles publicly received, is a course that must needs beget over all the world, a strong suspicion and prejudice against the honour and reputation of that state, which at the same time can practice such manifest contradictions.

To this deplorable condition, are the English catholics now reduced; yet they bear all, not only with patience, but even silence; for amongst the printed complaints so frequent in these times, never any thing hath been seen to proceed from them, though always, the chief, and now, the sole sufferers for their conscience, except, (not to be altogether wanting to themselves.) some modest petitions, humbly addressed to the parliament, though such hath been their unhappiness, that more weighty affairs have still disappointed their being taken into consideration; else, were they admitted to clear themselves of the mistakes and scandals unjustly imputed to them, they would not doubt, fully to satisfy all ingenuous, and dispassionate men, nay, even whomsoever, that were but moderately prejudiced against them.' So far Mr. Austin.

Who, in his second part, sets down the following passages, observed by himself, upon cases depending before the commissioners at Harberdashers-hall, which will further demonstrate the grievances the catholics endured in those evil days.

The case of Mr. Robert Knightly, a recusant only, a great part of whose mansion-house in Essex, was pulled down to repair the fort at Tilbury; for which, he petitioned, at Haberdashers-hall, in December, 1651, to have satisfaction out of the two sequestered parts of his own lands there; but in regard, it appeared to be done before January 1649, the present commissioners' answer was, they had no power to relieve him.

'On the 11th of February, 1651, was heard the case of Mr. Parker, the lord Morley's only son, about fourteen years of age: he petitioned for maintenance out of his father's sequestered estate; but because it was suspected the child might incline to his father's religion, who is a papist, it was denied him, unless he might be taken both from father and mother, and committed to the government of a mere stranger; which was ordered accordingly, and the poor pittance of one hundred pounds per annum only, allowed him out of his own and father's estate.