Falkland’s January Proclamations
On 21 January the Dublin government issued a proclamation ordering Jesuits, seminary priests and other Catholic ecclesiastics to leave Ireland within forty days. It was a familiar instrument of Jacobean policy: the crown regarded clergy trained in continental colleges, and especially those exercising authority independent of the established Church of Ireland, as both religious opponents and potential political agents. The order was therefore directed at a clerical network rather than merely at private belief.