Maitland Club > Miscellany of the Maitland Club > Volume 3, Parts 1 and 2

Popish Parents and their Children, etc. 1701-1705.
Among the means of restraining the growth of Popery, employed after
the Revolution in 1688, under the authority both of the Church and the
State, one which was expected to be most effectual, was an annual sur-
vey of the several parishes of Scotland, either by Commissioners named
by the General Assembly, or by the ministers of such parishes as were
actually planted, who were instructed to report to the Assembly or the
Commission, or to the Provincial Synods, the names of all Papists
within their bounds, particularly Seminary Priests, Popish School-
masters, mistresses, and other pedagogues, and of those who sent their
children to Popish Colleges in foreign countries ; that all such particulars
might be transmitted to the Privy Council by the General Assembly,
with an earnest application for the vigorous execution of the laws against
the enemies of the Reformation. As a specimen of the orders of the
Government on this subject, a Proclamation, dated the 17th of March
1704, is here inserted. The General Assembly, in the course of the same
month, (March 30, 1704,) passed an "Act against Popery and Papists, and
" for sending in their names to the Privy Council," in which Presby-