Note XVIII.
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The first reformers were a modest race;Our peers possessed in peace their native place,And when rebellious arms o'erturned the state,They suffered only in the common fate;But now the sovereign mounts the regal chair,And mitred seats are full, yet David's bench is bare._--P. 221. This passage regards the situation of the Roman Catholic peers.Notwithstanding their religion, they had been allowed to retain theirseats and votes in the House of Lords. So jealous were they, (as wasbut natural,) of this privilege, that, in 1675, when Danby proposed atest oath upon all holding state employments and benefices, the objectof which was to acknowledge the doctrine of non-resistance, and disownall attempts at an alteration of government, the Roman Catholic peers,to the number of twenty, who had hitherto always voted with the crown,united, on this occasion, with the opposition, and occasioned the lossof the bill. This North imputes to the art of Shaftesbury, who dinnedinto their ears, "that this test (by mentioning the maintenance of theProtestant religion, though that of the royal authority was chieflyproposed) tended to deprive them of their right of voting, which wasa birth-right so sacrosanct and radically inherent in the peerage,as not to be temerated on any account whatsoever." When the earl hadheated the Catholic lords with this suggestion, he secured them to theopposition, by proposing, and carrying through, an order of the House,that no bill should be received, tending to deprive any of the peerageof their right. But when the Test-act of 1678 was moved, which had,for its direct purpose, that exclusion which that of 1675 was supposedonly to convey by implication, Shaftesbury laughed at the order whichhe himself had proposed, saying, _leges posteriores priores abrogant_.And by this test, which required the renunciation of their religionas idolatrous, the Catholic peerage were effectually, and for ever,excluded from their seats in the House of Lords. Dryden intimates, inthe following lines, that this test applied to the Papists alone, andcomplains heavily of this odious distinction, betwixt them and othernon-conformists.
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