178

HISTORY OF EKGRAHD.

CIUP.

XIX.

J 603.

men whose names indicated a Saxon origin. A single O, anapostate from the faith of his fathers, and three Macs, evidentlyemigrants from Scotland, and probably Presbyterians, had seatsin the assembly.

The Parliament, thus composed, had then less than thepowers of the Assembly of Jamaica or of the Assembly of Vir-ginia. Not merely xvas the Legislature which sate at Dublinsubject to the absolute control of the Legislature -which sate atWestminster: but a law passed in the fifteenth century, duringthe administration of the Lord Deputy Poynings, and calledby his name, had provided that too bill which had not beenconsidered and approved by the Privy Council of Englandshould be brought into either House in Ireland, and that everybill so considered and approved should be either passed withoutamendment or rejected.*

The session opened with a solemn recognition of the para-mount authority of the mother country. The Commons orderedtheir clerk to read to them the English Act which required themto take the Oath of Supremacy and to subscribe the Declarationagainst Transubstantiation. Having heard the Act read, theyimmediately proceeded to obey it. Addresses were then votedwhich expressed the warmest gratitude and attachment to theKing. Two members, who had been untrue to the Protestantand English interest during the troubles, were expelled.Supplies, liberal when compared with the resources of a countrydevastated by years of predatory war, were voted with eagerness.But the bill for confirming the Act of Settlement was thought tobe too favourable to the native gentry, and, as it could not beamended, was with little ceremony rejected. A committee ofthe whole House resolved that the unjustifiable indulgence withwhich the Irish had been treated since the battle of the Boyne

* The Poynings Act is 10 II. 7. c. 4. It was explained by another Act,