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HISTORY OF THE COLONIES.
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examination; that wills in writing, attested by three or more credible witnesses, should be sufficient to pass lands; that there should be no fines upon alienations, or escheats and forfeitures of lands, except in cases of treason; that no person should hold any office, unless upon his appointment he would take the oaths of supremacy, and the test prescribed by the act of Parliament;[1] that no tax or talliage should be levied but by the consent of the general assembly; and that no person professing faith in Jesus Christ should be disturbed or questioned for different opinions in religion, with an exception of Roman Catholics. The act, however, was repealed by king William, in 1697.[2] Another act enabled persons, who were scrupulous of taking oaths, to make in lieu thereof a solemn promise to qualify them as witnesses, jurors, and officers. In the year 1693, an act was passed for the maintenance of ministers and churches of the Protestant religion. New-York (like Massachusetts) seemed at all times determined to suppress the Romish church. In an act passed in the beginning of the last century it was declared, that every Jesuit and Popish Priest, who should continue in the colony after a given day, should be condemned to perpetual imprisonment; and if he broke prison or escaped and was retaken, he was to be put to death. And so little were the spirit of toleration and the rights of conscience understood at a much later period, that one of her historians[3] a half century afterwards gave this exclusion the warm praise of being worthy of perpetual duration. And the constitution of New-York, of 1777[4],
