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This act, and a letter from Lord Essex, the Parliamentarian Commander-in-Chief, recommending the transportation of captured recusants to the West Indian Colonies, effectually put a stop to these negotiations. In Ulster, by the end of April, there were 19,000 troops, regulars and volunteers, in the garrison or in the field.
They would doubtless remonstrate with the recusants and show them the wickedness of their course, but then the recusants would be no more moved by this than Wade Hampton and his people by Mr. Chamberlain's eloquent and affecting inaugural address.
A reprimand from the King somewhat stayed the fury of the Justices, whose supreme power ended with Stafford's appointment in 1633. The advent of Stafford was characteristic of his whole course. The King sent over another letter concerning recusants, declaring that the laws against them, at the suggestion of the Lords Justices, should be put strictly in force.
The catechism subsequently put to the porters elicited the reply, from the spokesman of the recusants, that they were tired of being afraid of the wild Indians; that they objected to marching into the dens of tigers; that, perceiving their rations diminished from day to day, they had imagined the time not far distant when the same would be withdrawn altogether.
The writer of this letter recommended that the fine of twelve pence should be exacted off the poor every time they absented themselves from religious services, that so much should be levied off the rich as would suffice to repair all the churches and build free schools in every county, and he himself undertook to pay £4,000 a year for the right to collect the fines of the "Recusants" in Munster, Leinster, and Connaught, provided only that he could count on the support of the ecclesiastical and civil authorities.
Argyll refused to be a member, but acted on a commission of fire and sword "to root out of the country" the northern recusants against the Covenant. It was now that Argyll burned Lord Ogilvy's Bonny House of Airlie and Forthes; the cattle were driven into his own country; all this against, and perhaps in consequence of, the intercession of Ogilvy's friend and neighbour, Montrose.
There was, for instance, a motion made in the House of Commons on March 30th for leave to bring in a Bill "to repeal so much of an Act passed in the 25th of King Charles the Second, entitled An Act for preventing Dangers which may happen from Popish Recusants, as obligeth all persons who are admitted to any office, civil or military, to receive the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper within a time limited by the said Act; and for explaining and amending so much of the said Act as relates to the declaration against trans-substantiation."
Having launched thunderbolts against schismatics of this sort, Berkeley, himself active and powerful, with the Council almost wholly of his party and the House of Burgesses dominantly so, turned his attention to "popish recusants." Of these there were few or none dwelling in Virginia. Let them then not attempt to come from Maryland!
And both houses, after hearing Oates's evidence, voted, "That the lords and commons are of opinion, that there hath been, and still is, a damnable and hellish plot, contrived and carried on by the Popish recusants, for assassinating the king, for subverting the government, and for rooting out and destroying the Protestant religion."
The king was required to attaint and except from a general pardon forty of the most considerable of his English subjects, and nineteen of his Scottish, together with all Popish recusants in both kingdoms who had borne arms for him.
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