The plan adopted for degrading the Catholics, and reducing all to one plebeian level, was most ingenious.  The ingenuity indeed may be said to be Satanic, for it debased its victims morally as well as socially and physically.  It worked by means of treachery, covetousness, perfidy, and the perversion of all natural affections.  The trail of the serpent was over the whole system.  For example, when the last Duke of Ormond arrived as lord lieutenant in 1703, the Commons waited on him with a bill ‘for discouraging the further growth of Popery,’ which became law, having met his decided approval.  This act provided that if the son of a Catholic became a Protestant, the father should be incapable of selling or mortgaging his estate, or disposing of any portion of it by will.  If a child ever so young professed to be a Protestant, it was to be taken from its parents, and placed under the guardianship of the nearest Protestant relation.

The sixth clause renders Papists incapable of purchasing any manors, tenements, hereditaments, or any rents or profits arising out of the same, or of holding any lease of lives, or other lease whatever, for any term exceeding thirty-one years.  And with respect even to such limited leases, it further enacts, that if a Papist should hold a farm producing a profit greater than one-third of the amount of the rent, his right to such should immediately cease, and pass over entirely to the first Protestant who should discover the rate of profit.  The seventh clause prohibits Papists from succeeding to the properties or estates of their Protestant relations.  By the tenth clause, the estate of a Papist, not having a Protestant heir, is ordered to be gavelled, or divided in equal shares between all his children.  The sixteenth and twenty-fourth clauses impose the oath of abjuration, and the sacramental test, as a qualification for office, and for voting at elections.  The twenty-third clause deprives the Catholics of Limerick and Galway of the protection secured to them by the articles of the treaty of Limerick.  The twenty-fifth clause vests in the crown all advowsons possessed by Papists.

A further act was passed, in 1709, imposing additional penalties.  The first clause declares that no Papist shall be capable of holding an annuity for life.  The third provides, that the child of a Papist, on conforming, shall at once receive an annuity from his father; and that the chancellor shall compel the father to discover, upon oath, the full value of his estate, real and personal, and thereupon make an order for the support of such conforming child or children, and for securing such a share of the property, after the father’s death, as the court shall think fit.  The fourteenth and fifteenth clauses secure jointures to Popish wives who shall conform.  The sixteenth prohibits a Papist from teaching, even as assistant to a Protestant master.  The eighteenth gives a salary of 30 l. per annum to Popish priests who shall conform.  The twentieth provides rewards for the discovery of Popish prelates, priests, and teachers, according to the following whimsical scale:—­For discovering an archbishop, bishop, vicar-general, or other person, exercising any foreign ecclesiastical jurisdiction, 50 l.; for discovering each regular clergyman, and each secular clergyman, not registered, 20 l.; and for discovering each Popish schoolmaster or usher, 10 l.