Excerpt from Lives of Illustrious and Distinguished Irishmen, Vol. 4: From the Earliest Times to the Present Period, Arranged in Chronological Order, and Embodying a History of Ireland in the Lives of Irishmen The reigns of queen Anne and her next immediate successors, are rendered memorable in Irish history by the extreme and severe de pression of the members of the Romish communion. A deepening array of oppressive, and nearly intolerable exactments, rendered their condition such as cannot now be contemplated by humane minds of any creed without pity. The penal laws, which we shall hereafter detail, are, by the more sanguine spirits of one side, looked upon as excused by justice and expediency; by their fiery Opponents as unatonable wrongs. The truth is far within these extremes; and because it is an instructive truth, we thus place it at the commence ment of the first of those few remaining sketches, in which we propose to comprise the history of a period, marked by the obscure commencement of a state of things, which pre-eminently exacts the utmost precaution to steer clear of the prejudiced politics of two great opposite parties, to both of which, the entire history of this island appears through the dust and vapour of protracted and violent contention. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.