Charles II
commission of the peace; and an attempt was made, to the rage and consternation of the Cromwellians, to introduce some Catholics into the Corporation of Dublin.87 Nor was this all. The persistent attempts of the Talbots and their party to procure a modification of the Acts of Settlement and Explanation proved so far successful that a commission of enquiry was appointed, which aroused to the highest pitch the fears of the actual and the hopes of the former owners.88 The commission, however, came to nothing. A strong and by no means unfounded suspicion that the King had been secretly reconciled to the Roman Catholic Church, and that an agrarian revolution in Ireland was designed as a prelude to an attack upon the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the sister kingdom, produced a furious outburst of anti-Catholic fanaticism in England. Charles bent before the storm. He recalled Lord Berkeley and entrusted the government of Ireland to the Earl of Essex, a nobleman who was understood to enjoy the confidence and to share the prejudices of the ultra-Protestant party.89
But the opposition was not yet content. In the session of 1673 the House of Commons voted an address to the King, requiring him, in the most peremptory terms, to maintain the Act of
101
