A little later Downham, Bishop of Derry, preaching before the Lord Deputy, denounced toleration in still more unmeasured terms. These outbursts of episcopal intolerance aroused the sympathy of the English House of Commons, who passed a resolution: “That the Popish religion is publicly professed in every part of Ireland, and that monasteries and nunneries are there newly erected and replenished with votaries of both sexes, which will be of evil consequence unless seasonably repressed.”[62]
The opposition of the Protestant bishops in Ireland and of their English sympathisers retarded for a considerable time the progress of the negotiations between the Government and the recusants; but in the spring of 1628 the agents of the latter had a personal interview with Charles at Whitehall, when an agreement was arrived at which, it was hoped, would prove satisfactory to all parties. In one important particular the concessions which were now promised were less liberal than those which in the preceding year the Catholics had been led to expect. Charles had then been willing to consent to the repeal of the Act which imposed a fine of one shilling on persons absent from the Protestant parish churches on Sundays. Out of deference, probably, to the protest of the episcopate, this concession was now withdrawn. But, in spite of this omission, “the Graces,” as they were called, were well calculated to redress the most serious grievances of the Irish. A new oath of a purely civil character was substituted for the Oath of Supremacy, and recusants were thus enabled to sue their liveries and to practise at the bar without fear of molestation. An undisturbed occupancy of sixty years was to afford a prescriptive title against all older claims of the Crown. The deficiencies in the titles of the Connaught landowners were to be supplied by an Act of the Parliament which, it was expected, would be shortly summoned. Other grievances of a more general kind, which affected Protestants no less than Catholics, were also remedied. In return for these concessions the Irish agents undertook to raise a “voluntary contribution” of £120,000, to be paid in quarterly instalments ranging over three years.[63]