A single law, worthy of Turgot or of Franklin, seemed ludicrously out of place in the midst of a crowd of laws which would have disgraced Gardiner or Alva.
A necessary preliminary to the vast work of spoliation and slaughter on which the legislators of Dublin were bent, was an Act annulling the authority which the English Parliament, both as the supreme legislature and as the supreme Court of Appeal, had hitherto exercised over Ireland, [222] This Act was rapidly passed; and then followed, in quick succession, confiscations and proscriptions on a gigantic scale.

The personal estates of absentees above the age of seventeen years were transferred to the King.

When lay property was thus invaded, it was not likely that the endowments which had been, in contravention of every sound principle, lavished on the Church of the minority would be spared.
To reduce those endowments, without prejudice to existing interests, would have been a reform worthy of a good prince and of a good parliament.

But no such reform would satisfy the vindictive bigots who sate at the King's Inns.

By one sweeping Act, the greater part of the tithe was transferred from the Protestant to the Roman Catholic clergy; and the existing incumbents were left, without one farthing of compensation, to die of hunger, [223] A Bill repealing the Act of Settlement and transferring many thousands of square miles from Saxon to Celtic landlords was brought in and carried by acclamation, [224] Of legislation such as this it is impossible to speak too severely: but for the legislators there are excuses which it is the duty of the historian to notice.