conscience that the person pretended to be Prince of Wales
during the life of the late King James and since his decease
taking upon himself the style and title of King of England by
the name of James III hath not any right or title whatever to
the crown of this realm."

A modern Roman Catholic writer has thus described the oath:--

"By the Oath of Abjuration the priest was ordered to swear
that the sacrifice of the mass and the invocation of the
Blessed Virgin and the saints were damnable and idolatrous. In
other words, the priest was ordered to apostatize, or fly for
his life."

And even if Roman Catholics took the oath of allegiance, the old
difficulty arose as to the papal right to depose princes and to order
their subjects to rebel. So late as 1768, when a declaration was drawn
up which it was hoped the leaders of the Roman Catholic party would
sign, so that the penal laws might be finally done away with, the
Papal Nuncio vetoed the proposal because the declaration contained a
reprobation of the doctrines that faith need not be kept with heretics
and that if the Pope banned a sovereign his subjects might depose and
slay him. It is but fair to add, however, that a large number of Roman
Catholics did sign the declaration; and the penal laws (which had been
relaxed from time to time when it was seen that the Irish took no
part in the Stuart rebellions of 1715 and 1745) were soon afterwards
practically abolished.

Then it must be borne in mind that the Irish penal laws, although
to some extent modelled on the legislation of Louis XIV against the