History of Ireland - 1833 Author:William Cooke Taylor Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: essential to the security of their new possessions, and they willingly exerted themselves to invest him with despotic power. Ludlow, who was a consistent republi... more »can, would have made some resistance, but found himself totally unsupported; and when Henry Cromwell came over to sound the feelings of the soldiers, he found the great majority zealously attached to his father's interests. The original Cromwellians were as much opposed to the church of England as to the church of Rome. Prelacy was, in their view, an abomination second only to papacy; and they turned the established clergy out of the churches without scruple. Many of them set up conventicles in different parts of the country, some Of which remain to this day; others became Quakers; and others adopted some nondescript form of worship, from the thousand and one sects that sprang up in England during the excitement of the civil war. The rigid and ascetic principles of these fanatics soon yielded to the influence of property, and the enlivening effects of a genial climate. Though traces of the " old covenanting leaven" may still be found in the Protestantism of Ireland, it is certain that rigid morals and severe manners soon disappeared. In the reign of Charles II. the Cromwellians found an alliance with the church necessary for their interests, and quickly laid aside their scruples, and their dread of episcopacy. As new generations arose, the alliance between the established church and the descendants of the puritans became closer, and both joined in compelling the peasantry to pay for the support of the church. But the Cromwellians, though liberal enough with the tithes of the cultivators, were by no means inclined to pay any thing out of their own pocket; and when the parsons applied for the tithe of agist- ment, which f...« less