Nor was this all: men were openly and publicly marked for destruction, and negotiations for their murder entered into in fairs, and markets, and houses of entertainment, without either fear or disguise.

In such a state of things, it is unnecessary to say that many lives were taken, and that great outrages were from time to time committed.

Two or three clergymen were murdered, several tithe-proctors or collectors of tithe were beaten nearly to death; and to such a pitch did the opposition rise, that at length it became impossible to find any one hardy and intrepid, or, in other words, mad enough, to collect tithe, unless under the protection either of the military or police.

Our friends, Proctor Purcel and his sons, were now obliged, not merely to travel armed, but frequently under the escort of police.

Their principal dread, however, was from an attack upon their premises at night; and, as fearful threats were held out that such an attack would be made, Purcel, who, as the reader knows, was a man of great wealth, engaged men to build a strong and high wall about his house and out-offices, which could now be got at only through a gate of immense strength, covered with thick sheet-iron, and bound together by bars of the same metal, in such a way that even the influence of fire could not destroy it, or enable an enemy to enter.
With such a condition of society before us, it is scarcely necessary to inform our readers that the privations of the Protestant clergy were not only great, but dreadful and without precedent.