David Carnegie Andrew Agnew

“ While the legal position of the Presbyterians was unsatisfactory, Lord Galway found them in the practical enjoyment of liberty. There was no sacramental test, as in England, to exclude them from government employments. And the English toleration seems to have been offered to them, upon the condition that the Anglican Test should by the same law be extended to Ireland. Such a change would have been worse than the existing- circumstances. It is true that the want of a law enacting toleration placed Presbyterians in a sort of moral pillory ”

“ Notwithstanding King William’s known desires, and the late Lord-Lieutenant, Lord Capel’s, expressed wishes, the Irish House of Lords, under the influence and with the votes of the twenty-one bishops, had thrown out a bill for the legal toleration of Protestant Dissenters. Thereafter, Lord Galway being known as a friend of toleration, and it being expected that he and the Chancellor would summon a Parliament early in 1697, the bishops had opened a fierce pamphleteering campaign, stirring up the people, and dealing out cruel insinuations against Presbyterians. ”

“ As to our old affair, it stands just as it did, my Lord Galway not being willing, as I apprehend, to meddle with a thing of that nature on his first entrance on the government. His coldness in it, and delays, at last make me believe he never spoke to the king about it; or, if he did, that his Majesty was of opinion with his Lordship, but was unwilling to give a denial to so considerable a body of his faithful friends. Therefore we are put off with courtiers’ promises, and in the meantime we lie under the lash of severe laws. . . . Our government in Ireland pleases all sorts of people extremely ”