Charles II
year, ordering the Papists to surrender their arms, banishing their clergy, and prohibiting them from meeting in numbers which the Protestant magistrates should be disposed to consider unreasonable.98 Nor was this all. An attempt to extend the Test Act and the English penal laws to Ireland was indeed defeated, as a similar attempt had been defeated fifteen years before, by the wisdom and firmness of the Viceroy99; but, although the Duke succeeded in preventing fresh legislation, he was not always able to preserve individuals who had incurred the hostility of the now dominant party.
To that party the titular Archbishop of Dublin, a prelate whose factious and turbulent conduct had given offence to more moderate members of his own communion,100 was of all men the most obnoxious. The earliest informations had spoken only of a conspiracy in England; but, had such a conspiracy existed, it could scarcely have failed to find supporters in a country where the Catholics were a numerous, and, in spite of their recent misfortunes, a still powerful body. Dr. Talbot was accordingly singled out by the informers; nor could Ormond, surrounded as he was by fanatics and alarmists, venture to disregard an accusation which in private he did not even affect to believe.101 The absurdity of the
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