# Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775/Ireland under James II.

IRELAND UNDER JAMES II
By PHILIP WILSON
Ireland under James II
1685-1689
With the accession of King James the Second we approach the final episode in the long struggle which extends from the invasion under Strongbow to the capitulation of Limerick. One last attempt was made to overthrow by force of arms the narrow and anti-national system on which Ireland had long been governed; and its failure secured for another century the unrestrained domination of the Protestant caste.
In accordance with the policy agreed upon before the death of the late King the Duke of Ormond was removed from the viceroyalty; but, as Rochester, who had formerly been intended for his successor, was now selected by his brother-in-law to fill the great office of Lord High Treasurer of England, the government was temporarily entrusted to Michael Boyle, Archbishop of Armagh, and to the Earl of Granard, as Lords Justices. It was, perhaps, hoped that the appointment of the Primate would prove satisfactory to the Established Church; that that of Granard would conciliate the Presbyterians; and ​that all sections of Protestants would be thus induced to acquiesce in the measures which the King was meditating on behalf of his co-religionists. A contrary result was produced. At all times fiercely hostile to the Catholic faith, the settlers were inevitably disposed to put the least favourable construction upon the actions of a Catholic king; and, while the Puritans denounced the Lord Primate as little better than a Papist, Episcopalians inveighed against Granard as a schismatic insidiously advanced for the purpose of dividing the Protestant interest.
So violent indeed was the disaffection of the colonists, and so widespread were the fears of massacre entertained by the opposite party, that the Lords Justices found themselves compelled, within a few weeks of taking office, to issue a proclamation for seizing the arms of the militia; and this order was speedily followed by others, prohibiting nocturnal meetings and the public discussion of affairs of State. It deserves notice that these proclamations, which have been the subject of much hostile comment, were similar in almost every respect to those directed against the Catholics during the panic of 1678; nor can it be denied that the rebellions of Monmouth in England and of Argyle in Scotland afforded at least as solid grounds for apprehension as the ​assassination of Godfrey or the calumnies. of Oates.
Nor does the disarming, a perfectly legal, and, under the circumstances, a very necessary measure, appear to have been effected with any extreme harshness. The language of Sir Thomas Newcomen, himself a Protestant, a member of the Privy Council, and brother-in-law to the Lord Justice Granard, must be considered conclusive on this point. "The English," he said, "had no cause to complain; they wanted no arms; and he hoped those who were disarmed should. not now have arms put into their hands again; he did not believe they were half disarmed, for he could say upon his own knowledge that there were above fifty thousand arms in the province of Ulster, and there were not brought in from thence above six hundred; so ill were the King's commands executed in that province." The accuracy of this statement was hotly disputed at the council board; but the success of the northern insurgents three years later affords the strongest evidence of its. truth. At the same time several Protestants, who were, rightly or wrongly, suspected of disloyalty to the reigning prince, were removed from the Privy Council; but no Catholic Councillors were as yet appointed.
​A little later, Colonel Richard Talbot, now created Earl of Tyrconnell, was raised to the rank of Lieutenant-General and entrusted with the important task of reorganizing the Irish army. An address from the Catholic clergy was drawn up about this time, eulogising the services which that nobleman had rendered to his co-religionists during the recent persecution, and desiring his Majesty to "establish the said Earl of Tyrconnell in such authority here as may secure us in the exercise of our function"; but with this request it was not yet thought prudent to comply.
Before the close of the same year the Earl of Clarendon took the oath of office as Lord Lieutenant; and on the 9th of January, 1686, he landed at Dublin. The new viceroy's own sympathies, like those of almost every Englishman of his time, were altogether on the side of the Protestant caste; but he brought with him instructions to remodel the government in the interests of the native Irish; and his timid and servile temper, as well as his close connection with the King, rendered it certain that those instructions would not be set aside.
Since the Restoration the judicial bench, the privy council, the municipal corporations, and the magistracy had, as we have seen, been filled exclusively with English settlers, and had been ​regarded by the Celtic population with intense aversion and distrust. Into all these bodies it was now resolved to introduce a new and popular element. To destroy the Protestant ascendancy, yet not to create a Catholic ascendancy in its place; to deprive the colonists of the power to exercise oppression, while leaving them the power necessary for self-defence, was, perhaps, a task beyond the range of human statesmanship. Still tact and moderation might have done much. But tact and moderation formed no part of the character of James Stuart. For a time, it is true, he hesitated. He was a zealous, indeed a bigoted Catholic; but he was an English King, and he could not but feel that it was upon the Protestant colonists, little as he had reason to love them, that, in the last resort, the power of England over Ireland must depend. He was surrounded with English councillors, and those councillors, Catholics no less than Protestants, regarded with undisguised hostility every measure which might tend to separate Ireland from the British crown. Tyrconnell, however, continued to urge the claims of his countrymen, and to support those claims by arguments which, to the Catholics at least, must have appeared unanswerable. The King, he insisted, could not live for ever. The next heir was a Protestant; ​and, should a demise of the crown take place before the position of the English Catholics was assured, a virtually independent Ireland might be their only refuge from a bloody retribution. The justice of these representations was self-evident; and Clarendon was ordered to make a complete change in the government of Ireland. The courts of judicature were the first object of attack. Three Protestant judges were at once dismissed, and two. Irishmen, Thomas Nugent and Denis Daly, and an English Catholic called Ingleby were selected to succeed them. Of the new judges the first mentioned seems to have been indebted for his promotion rather to the influence of his family than to his legal knowledge. Daly is admitted on all sides to have been an able lawyer and an upright judge. Ingleby declined the proferred office, which was eventually conferred on Stephen Rice, an Irish Catholic of great ability, noted for his implacable hostility to the Act of Settlement. About the same time twenty additional members, eighteen of whom were Catholics, were admitted to the Privy Council, of which body the Earl of Granard was appointed President.
A list of sheriffs was next pricked, on which, for the first time since the rebellion, some Catholics had a place. With this list Clarendon, who ​was by no means disposed to underrate his own judgment, declared himself highly satisfied; but Tyrconnell, who knew Ireland much better, was of a different opinion. "By God, my lord," he 1s said to have exclaimed, "I must needs tell you the sheriffs you made are generally rogues and old Cromwellians"; and, when Clarendon insisted "that these sheriffs, generally speaking, were as good a set of men as any had been chosen these dozen years," "By God," retorted the general, "I believe it, for there has not been an honest man sheriff in Ireland these twenty years." With the assistance of Judge Nugent Tyrconnell then prepared a list for the following year which Clarendon was very reluctantly compelled to accept. This list was ostensibly composed of Catholics and Protestants in equal numbers; "but I am sure," wrote the Lord Lieutenant, "several of them, even of those who are styled Protestants, are men no way qualified for such offices of trust."
Thus a great share in the government of the country had been transferred from the colonists to the native race. One stronghold of the Protestant ascendency, however, remained. The corporations were still wholly Protestant; but the Act of Settlement, which excluded Catholics from these bodies, empowered the government ​to dispense with this regulation at discretion. Of this power James now resolved to avail himself; and Clarendon, at the express desire of his master, addressed a letter to the most important municipalities informing them that it was the King's wish that they should admit Catholics to some share in their privileges. The corporation of Dublin, which had successfully resisted a similar attempt in the time of Lord Berkeley, refused obedience; its example was followed by other leading towns; and, in the face of their united opposition, the scheme was postponed.
While Clarendon was thus transforming the civil government, Tyrconnell was engaged in effecting a no less complete revolution in the army. Nine years earlier Ormond, then Lord Lieutenant, had been ordered to deprive of their commissions all officers who, in the troubles of the preceding reign, had borne arms against the court. The Duke was too prudent to meet this order with a direct refusal; but he easily found pretexts to defer its execution, "for he foresaw it was to make room for Papists." During the "No Popery" panic which followed a precisely opposite policy was adopted; the tests, which had sometimes been neglected, were stringently enforced; the Catholic soldiers were disbanded; and, at the accession of James, the troops were ​wholly composed of Protestants, deeply tinged with Puritanism and for the most part fiercely hostile to the House of Stuart. This policy Tyrconnell now set himself to reverse. Between two and three hundred officers, between five and six thousand privates, were dismissed, and their places filled with Irish Roman Catholics. It was easier to cashier the Cromwellians than to find competent successors. The Irish as a nation have never been wanting in military talent; but exclusion from the army at home had driven most Irishmen of martial tastes to seek service abroad. Both officers and soldiers were, with few exceptions, altogether inexperienced. Tyrconnell himself had no qualification for military command except personal courage. The colonels were generally men of good family who had never seen service; the inferior officers, butchers, shoemakers and tailors. The rank and file were composed of peasants, who, having been expelled from their homes by the confiscations, had carried on a guerilla warfare against their oppressors under the names of "tories" and "rapparees." Under proper discipline these men might have made excellent soliders. Commanded by officers as inexperienced as themselves they proved, as might have been expected, a lawless and disorderly rabble. The Protestants ​complained loudly of ill-usage; and these complaints, though probably often exaggerated, were not always destitute of foundation. James, however, continued to express his entire satisfaction with the proceedings of the general; and Clarendon, while strongly censuring the recklessness and violence of Tyrconnell's conduct, repeatedly declared that he was himself willing to carry out a similar policy in a more orderly and prudent fashion.
The condition of the country was indeed extremely menacing. A class which had long enjoyed a monopoly of political rights found itself suddenly shorn of its exclusive privileges. A class which had been long excluded from all public trust was rapidly rising to political ascendancy. Nor was this all. The history of the past century rendered a revolution of property the almost inevitable complement of a revolution of power. Feeling on both sides ran high. The appointment of Catholic judges and sheriffs had encouraged the Irish to appeal to that law which they had formerly known only as an enemy; accusations of disloyalty were freely tendered, with some show of plausibility, against the more violent Protestants; and Clarendon at one time expressed a fear lest the latter should suffer in their turn all the wrongs which a few years ​before they had inflicted on their enemies. The new judges, however, were honourably conspicuous in discouraging these prosecutions, and a proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant and Council soon quieted apprehensions which had at first seemed by no means groundless.
The conduct of the army afforded still graver cause for dissatisfaction. Even had the attitude of the colonists been more conciliatory it would have been difficult to prevent troops levied under such circumstances from exhibiting some signs of lawless and insolent triumph. The insults which they received from the Protestant party and the outrageous brutality of the disbanded Cromwellians made it impossible to restrain them; and the murder of a Catholic gentleman named Keating by Captain Ashton, one of the officers who had been cashiered, soon roused the passions of both parties to madness. Ashton was brought to trial before the court of King's Bench in Dublin. "Great care was taken to have a good jury, and very worthy men of both religions were indifferently returned upon the panel." The prisoner "excepted against as many as the law allowed him, which were all Roman Catholics; but the rest, who were very honest men, regarded nothing but the evidence and their oath, and, being satisfied with the proofs they ​had heard, they brought in Mr. Ashton guilty of murder"; and after "some very frivolous motions in arrest of judgment," sentence of death was pronounced. Great efforts were made by his co-religionists to save him; "but in good earnest," wrote Clarendon, "the evidence was so full against him, and he had so little to say for himself, and the fact was so horridly foul, that I cannot think him a proper object of his Majesty's mercy; and it is highly necessary to make examples of such as commit such horrid outrages, not to be suffered in a good government." In order to appease the indignation of the Protestants, Judges Lyndon and Nugent recommended that the condemned man's estate, which, as the law then stood, was forfeited to the crown, should be restored to his family; and this request being supported by the Lord Lieutenant, was granted by the government.
On one point, and on one point alone, the court continued to offer an obstinate resistance to the popular demands. At the beginning of his reign James had announced his intention of preserving the Acts of Settlement and Explanation. Clarendon, on taking office, had given the colonists a similar assurance; and even Tyrconnell, while denouncing those Acts in no measured terms, had admitted that they could not safely ​be repealed. But Tyrconnell, whatever may have been his own sentiments, soon found it impossible to withstand the general voice of his countrymen. In October, 1686, Richard Nagle, an Irish lawyer of eminent professional talents, published, under the name of A Letter from Coventry, an elaborate plea for the restoration of the confiscated estates. With this proposal the government were not yet prepared to comply; but the authorship of the pamphlet, though not formally acknowledged, was sufficiently notorious; and the selection of the writer to fill the important post of Attorney-General, which almost immediately followed, could not fail to give an additional stimulus to the hopes of the deprived gentry.
In the following spring Clarendon was deprived of the Lord Lieutenancy, an office which he had held for little more than a year. From the first he had been out of sympathy with the administration of which he was the nominal head, but, although this circumstance may to some extent have contributed to his downfall, the immediate cause of his recall is to be found in the rupture which had recently taken place between James and his brother Rochester. In spite of the consternation of the Protestant settlers, in spite of the intrigues of the English Catholics, ​Tyrconnell, on whom the discontented in Ireland had long looked as their protector, was appointed to the vacant post; a man whose faults have been extravagantly magnified by historians hostile to his race and creed, but whose character had been formed in the corrupt school of Shaftesbury and Sunderland, and who carried to supreme power a mind ulcerated by a long train of inexpiable wrongs, national, religious and personal.
To frame an impartial narrative of this nobleman's administration is by no means an easy task. The most important events of Lord Clarendon's viceroyalty are known to us through the letters of the viceroy; and we are thus enabled to check the misrepresentations of partisan writers by the confidential correspondence of a very competent, though somewhat biassed, witness. We possess no documents of equal authority relating to the administration of his successor; and the historian is henceforth compelled to rely upon a mass of pamphlets written by men inflamed with national and sectarian hatred and published at a time of unparalleled political excitement, in a distant country, under the supervision of a hostile government.
One work of this class, more elaborate and pretentious than the rest, deserves, from the ​circumstances under which it was written and the frequency with which it has been quoted, particular notice. The career of the Right Reverend William King affords a singularly unedifying example of the divergence between the theory and the practice of the Anglican priesthood. Ordained in 1673, and preferred seven years later to the lucrative deanery of St. Patrick's, Dr. King had speedily made himself conspicuous, even among the profession to which he belonged, by the ardour with which he maintained the doctrines of passive obedience and divine hereditary right. Nor is there any reason to doubt that, when he first began to hold this language, he was absolutely sincere; for the prerogative which he magnified was at that time uniformly exerted for the aggrandisement of his own caste. The accession of a Catholic king and the more friendly attitude adopted by the Government towards the Celtic population may have effected some change in his sentiments, but did not at first induce him to moderate his language. Even after the Revolution, while James was personally exercising the royal authority in Dublin, King continued to hold forth upon the sin of rebellion and the duty of rendering tribute unto Cæsar. But the progress of the Williamite arms soon ​convinced him that such doctrines would no longer be the best passport to promotion; and, in. the spring of 1690, he was imprisoned on a well-grounded suspicion of holding treasonable correspondence with the northern insurgents. From this imprisonment he is said to have been liberated owing to the intervention of Chief Justice Herbert. As soon as the battle of the Boyne had made the final result of the contest no longer doubtful, King heartily and unreservedly adopted the opinions of the party which was now dominant, and henceforth devoted his literary talents, which were by no means contemptible, to slandering the government which he had so long served and to eulogising the rebellion which he had so long denounced. The State of the Protestants of Ireland under the late King James's Government, was published in London in 1691, and passed rapidly through four editions. It was, says Burnet, "not only the best book that hath been written for the service of the Government, but without any figure it is worth all the rest put together, and will do more than all our scribblings for settling the minds of the nation; and it secured for its author immediate preferment to the see of Derry and ultimate translation to the archbishopric of Dublin.
It must, I think, be acknowledged that a writer ​who had suffered imprisonment at the hands of one of two contending parties, and who was looking for professional advancement to the other was by no means qualified to judge impartially between them; and that, even if it were impossible to point to specific instances of falsehood on King's part, the fidelity of his narrative would still be open to suspicion. Historians, however, who are inclined to dispute the Archbishop's veracity, are able to base their scepticism on much more definite grounds. The letters of Clarendon clearly prove that King, either wilfully or carelessly, misrepresented many circumstances with regard to which he can scarcely fail to have been accurately informed: and within a few months after the appearance of the State of the Protestants, an Answer was published by a writer of King's own caste, profession, and creed, in which its author was very plainly accused of deliberate and systematic falsehood. "I cannot say," says this writer, "I have examined into every single matter of fact which this author relates; I could not have the opportunity; but I am sure I have the most material, and by these you will easily judge of his sincerity in the rest, which could not all come to my knowledge. But this I can say, that there is not one I have inquired into but I ​have found it false in, whole or in part, aggravated or misrepresented so as to alter the whole face of the story and give it perfectly another air and turn, insomuch that, though many things he says are true, yet he has hardly spoken a true word, that is, told it truly and nakedly without a warp." It is an extremely significant fact that, although King survived the publication of this pamphlet for thirty-seven years, he never attempted to reply to it: nor can it be pretended that it proceeded from a quarter which he was entitled to regard with contempt. Charles Lesley, who, during the reign of James the Second, filled the office of chancellor of the diocese of Connor, had in learning and abilities no equal among the Irish Protestant clergy, and is acknowledged even by hostile writers to have been by far the most subtle disputant in the nonjuring body. His controversial writings, though by no means free from the faults inherent in compositions of that nature, are distinguished by extraordinary dialectical skill; and he had lately devoted his rare powers to the defence of his Church against the attacks of the ablest Catholic divines. Nor did his hostility to Popery always show itself in a purely abstract form. He was a justice of the peace for the county of Monaghan, and when, under the government of Tyrconnell, a Catholic ​sheriff was appointed for that county, Lesley, who, although he thought it unlawful to resist the king, entertained no scruples about resisting a Popish deputy, took an active part in thwarting that functionary in the exercise of his office. After the Revolution he clung, with a consistency which it is impossible not to respect, to the now discredited doctrine of the divine right of kings, steadily refused to take the oaths to the new sovereigns, and continued during many years to be the most uncompromising opponent of the government.
My readers will, I trust, pardon a digression which may enable them to estimate at their proper value the principal works relating to the period with which I am about to deal. I shall now resume my narrative of the events which followed the recall of Lord Clarendon from Dublin. Tyrconnell bore the inferior title of Lord Deputy, but his real power greatly exceeded that of his predecessor. He was instructed to remodel the civil government as thoroughly as he had already remodelled the army; and to this task he devoted himself with a zeal and energy little tempered by discretion. Fresh changes were made in the law courts, in the magistracy, and in the privy council. Sir Charles Porter, who had succeeded ​Archbishop Boyle as Lord Chancellor, was dismissed from office, and the great seal was entrusted to Alexander Fitton, subsequently created Lord Gawsworth, who, as a papist and a pervert, was doubly obnoxious to the Protestant party. It can scarcely be considered a fortunate circumstance that this gentleman had been convicted of forgery and had passed many years in prison; but it ought in fairness to be added that we have strong reasons for supposing the conviction to have been unjust. The charges of ignorance and partiality which have been brought against the new chancellor are unsupported by any real evidence and are probably equally unfounded. Nugent and Rice were shortly afterwards promoted to be chiefs of the courts of King's Bench and Exchequer respectively; and, in a little time, of the nine judges who composed the Irish common-law bench only three were Protestants.
It was before courts thus constituted that the attack upon the corporations, which had been abandoned in the preceding year, was renewed. The government accused these bodies of having violated the terms of their charters; and pretexts were readily found for pronouncing the great majority of those charters null and void. Fresh charters were then issued, and, in the new ​corporations, it was the general rule that two thirds of the freemen should be Catholics. No exception was made even in the case of towns like Londonderry, where the population was almost exclusively Protestant. Among the sheriffs, deputy-lieutenants, and justices of the peace the Catholic majority was equally great. Of the Protestants who remained in office many were Quakers, who, having been treated with great harshness by both the Calvinistic and High Church parties, generally showed a strong disposition to make common cause with the Catholics. The rest were men of questionable character and broken fortunes, on whose subservience Tyrconnell could depend.
Nor was it in the civil government only that sweeping changes were made. It was not to be expected that the Irish people would, in the day of their emancipation, look with equanimity upon that wealthy and privileged establishment which ministered to the wants of a small minority of the nation and from which the majority had recently suffered atrocious persecution. A short time before the accession of James the Archbishop of Cashel had died, and it was now rumoured that the king intended to appoint a Catholic to the vacant see. This extreme step was not, indeed, taken, but the see was not filled, and ​its revenues, as well as those of the bishoprics of Clogher, Elphin, and Clonfert, and of numerous. livings in the gift of the Crown, were devoted to the support of the Catholic priesthood. The University of Dublin, which was then and for a long time afterwards entirely dependent upon the Established Church, shared in the misfortunes of that institution. A Catholic called Green was first selected to be professor of the Irish language; but, upon inquiry, no such professorship was found to exist. Dr. Moore, a Catholic priest, was afterwards appointed provost, to the disgust and irritation of the fellows. It should be added that the new provost was generally acknowledged, even by zealous Protestants, to be a man of learning and liberality; and it is said to have been due to his exertions that the college library was preserved, during the anarchy which followed the Revolution, from the violence of the rapparees.
But to the majority of the Irish people neither the abolition of religious disabilities nor the disestablishment of the Protestant Church were objects so interesting as the recovery of the confiscated estates. Many gentlemen had, it is true, been reinstated in their properties by the ingenuity of the Chief Baron, who had formerly boasted that he would drive a coach and six ​through the Act of Settlement, and who now proceeded to make good his words by discovering a number of technical flaws in the titles of the new owners; but a general restoration could only be effected by an Act of Parliament. Tyrconnell, who had at one time been inclined to more moderate measures, was now fully convinced of the necessity of this course; and James, though he still concealed his real sentiments from his English councillors, appears to have been at length persuaded by the representations of the Lord Deputy. Rice, who had been long notorious for his implacable hostility to the Act of Settlement, and Nagle, who had recently written in favour of repeal of that Act, were the persons most consulted; and, after prolonged deliberation, it was decided that the former should proceed to England to lay the case of his countrymen before the King. While he was still in Dublin, however, Chief Justice Nugent, who, before his elevation to the bench, had been an active agitator in the same cause, ascertained the object of his mission and insisted on accompanying him, to the intense irritation of his colleague, who entertained a well-grounded distrust of his tact and judgment.
To carry a bill for the repeal of the Act of Settlement in a Parliament in which the Irish ​people were fairly represented would be an easy task. Nor would it be impossible to obtain the assent of James to such a bill. There was, however, another party to be reckoned with. It could scarcely be expected by the most sanguine Irishman that the English people would tamely submit to see property which they had bestowed upon men of their own blood and creed, restored to a despised and detested race. The English advisers of the Crown, indeed, were opposed to the repeal of the Act of Settlement, principally because they believed that such a step must inevitably lead to a separation of the two kingdoms. Tyrconnell, contemplating the question from a precisely opposite standpoint, was no less firmly convinced that it was only by a separation of the two kingdoms that the rights of the Irish gentry could be secured. With the full assent of his master he had, in August, 1687, entered into a negociation with the court of France, with the intention of making Ireland, should James die without male issue, an independent kingdom under the protection of that power. The King, it is true, had abandoned the idea two months later, the pregnancy of the Queen affording him a hope of a Catholic heir, of which he had long despaired; but it is at least doubtful whether Tyrconnell, who hated England much more than ​he loved the House of Stuart, ever heartily acquiesced in this new policy.
The reception of the "Irish ambassadors," as the two chief judges were derisively called, must have removed any lingering doubts which he may have felt upon this point. It was only with great difficulty that Rice and Nugent obtained admission to the council board, where the former is said to have pleaded the cause of his countrymen with tact, ability, and moderation, but to have been much embarrassed by the indiscreet and intemperate utterances of his colleague. Lords Powys and Bellasyse were not restrained, even by respect for the royal presence, from expressing with less courtesy than candour, their unqualified hostility to the Irish demands; and with those demands James, who was not less capricious than he was obstinate, now declared that he was unable to comply. At the same time the common people, among whom the objects of the mission were well known, gave vent to their indignation in a manner which it was impossible to misinterpret. The judges were pursued through London by a boisterous and disorderly rabble, brandishing potatoes, the symbol of their country's degradation, and returned to Ireland even less disposed than they had previously been to appreciate the blessings of the English connection.
​The disappointment was a serious one, but it seemed as if the triumph of the Irish could not long be delayed. The settlers had never formed more than a small minority of the population, and it was only by a rigid monopoly of civil and military offices that they had been enabled to preserve their property and their political consequence in the midst of a hostile and subjugated nation. With few exceptions those offices had now been transferred to their enemies, while during the past three years their numbers had been greatly diminished. Under the viceroyalty of Clarendon a steady emigration from Ireland had commenced, and had continued on a still larger scale after the appointment of Tyrconnell. A pamphlet published in London after the Revolution describes with admirable vividness and accuracy the grievances and the temper of the refugees. "Popery," the writer tells us, "began to be triumphant; the Lord Deputy and his Privy Council, excepting a very few, the Lord Chancellor and all the Judges, except three, the Attorney-General and the King's Serjeants, the Justices of the Peace and Sheriffs in. each county, except in such places where no papists were to be had, all violent and eager promoters of the Romish religion; the Mass publicly celebrated in every town, the Fryers marching in ​their habits undisturbed." "In this posture of affairs," continues our author, "was it not high time for the Protestants to look about them, to consult their safety, and by a timely removal to avoid those imminent dangers that threatened them?" A few months later the birth of a Prince of Wales precipitated a crisis which had long been palpably impending.
Grossly as James had outraged the feelings of his English subjects, the majority of Englishmen, from whose memories the misery produced by the last civil war had not yet faded, had been reluctant, so long as it seemed probable that the crown would in a short time descend to a Protestant, to seek a remedy by force. It was now evident that, unless some active steps were taken to resist the government, the day of deliverance and of retaliation would be indefinitely postponed. It should be added that it was the erroneous but perfectly sincere belief of great numbers that the so-called Prince was supposititious, and that James, with characteristic imbecility, had done his utmost to give plausibility to that belief.
It does not he within the limits which I have marked out for myself to trace the course of the Revolution in England; a single incident, significant of the general attitude of Englishmen ​towards Ireland in that age, and probably not without its influence on the subsequent course of Irish history, must, however, be described. In the summer of 1688 James learnt that his son-in-law was contemplating a hostile descent upon his shores. Justly distrusting the fidelity of his English soldiers, and eager for the assistance of troops in whom implicit confidence could be placed, yet unwilling, even in that extremity, to look for protection to foreigners rather than to his own subjects, the King immediately caused a body of three thousand picked men to be sent from Ireland to his assistance, and even attempted to introduce some Irish soldiers into English regiments. "This," says a Williamite writer, "was the single action that conduced most to the preservation of these kingdoms, all other things were but subservient thereunto, or at most concurrent with it; for, whilst other grievances did but disoblige a certain number, or a party, the bringing in of the Irish alarmed everybody." From the moment of their arrival the popular indignation was loudly and widely expressed, and before the close of the year it was inflamed to madness by a skilful and unscrupulous agent. On the evening of the 9th of December a rumour was simultaneously started in London and in the most important provincial towns and spread with ​extraordinary rapidity throughout the country, to the effect that the Irish, whose numbers were greatly exaggerated, were engaged in massacring the Protestant population. At the same time a proclamation, purporting to be issued by the Prince of Orange, was printed and extensively circulated. In this document, which was admirably calculated to inflame the passions of the hour, both magistrates and populace were incited to acts of violence against the papists. The effect of such a publication at such a moment can be readily conceived. After a few hours of terror, and of the cruelty which terror seldom fails to produce, it became known that the proclamation was a forgery and the report groundless; but national animosities are more easily roused than appeased; and among the influences which combined to produce the penal legislation of the next century a prominent place must unquestionably be assigned to the recollection of what was called the "Irish night."
Many years afterwards, Hugh Speke, one of the most scurrilous and mendacious of the pamphleteers who, during the latter half of the seventeenth century, were the disgrace of English politics, confessed, or rather boasted, that he was the originator of this design, and received from the ministers of Queen Anne a ​pecuniary recognition of his services. Other writers have hinted that this gentleman exaggerated his own merits, and that the forgeries were the work of Marshal Schomberg, who wished "both to feel the pulse of the nation and inspire them with resentment against the Popish party." The question is not one of very great importance; but it is interesting to observe that in the whole Williamite literature of the period we look in vain for an admission that this intrigue, an intrigue which cost the lives of great numbers of innocent people, was in any sense discreditable either to its author or to the government which profited by it.
A few days before the perpetration of this audacious forgery in England a similar expedient was employed with even greater success to induce the Protestants of Ulster to renounce the authority of James. An anonymous letter, addressed, according to the most trustworthy account, to Lord Mount-Alexander, informed his lordship that the Irish throughout the country were meditating a massacre of the colonists not less horrible than that which was said to have accompanied the rising of 1641. It was afterwards acknowledged that this letter was composed with the object of inducing some gentlemen of rank and wealth to join an association ​which had been formed as early as September, among the lower classes of Protestants for the purpose of resisting the government, but from which their more respectable co-religionists had hitherto held aloof. But the enormous increase which Tyrconnell had recently made in the army had excited vague but widespread apprehensions, and in a little while all Ulster, except Carrickfergus, with the adjoining county of Sligo, was in arms. In the three southern provinces, where the Protestants were a small and scattered minority, it was necessary to proceed with greater caution; but here also centres of resistance were rapidly and stealthily organised, and, by the end of February a number of towns, of which Bandon was the most important, had renounced their allegiance and declared war upon their Catholic countrymen. Had Tyrconnell been free to act without regard to what was taking place outside of Ireland, the rebellion might have been suppressed in its infancy with no difficulty and with little bloodshed. But the Revolution in England had not yet run its course, and, while the chance of a reconciliation between James and the majority of his subjects remained, the Lord Deputy was unwilling to take any steps which might alienate English opinion from his master. Fresh troops were, ​indeed, raised, suspected persons were disarmed, and sometimes roughly treated, and proclamations were issued, promising an amnesty to all who would lay down their arms, and threatening with punishment any who should continue in rebellion. But no considerable military operations were attempted; and the insurgents, emboldened by impunity, became daily more numerous and more daring.
But the turn of events in England soon taught Tyrconnell that the hour for moderation had gone by. In December James fled the country; on February 6th the throne was pronounced vacant; and on the 13th of the same month the Convention offered the Crown to the Prince and Princess of Orange.
With the accomplishment of the English Revolution the first part of Lord Tyrconnell's administration may be said to end. In describing the measures adopted by that nobleman and his advisers before the abdication of James I have hitherto confined myself strictly to a narrative of facts. I shall now proceed to a brief examination of the charges which have been made against the Jacobite government and of the arguments which have, with more or less plausibility, been adduced in their behalf.
According to all modern notions the removal ​of judges for political reasons must be regarded as a flagrant abuse of the prerogative. But it should be remembered that, even in England, until some years after the Revolution, and in Ireland until a much later period, those functionaries held their offices at pleasure, so that, in this respect at least, the conduct of the government was in strict conformity with law and custom. Nor does there appear to be any real ground for the contention that, in appointing Catholics to the vacant posts, the Lord Deputy was guilty of a positive breach of the law; for the Act of Supremacy, by which the Protestant monopoly had been hitherto secured, was so worded that "it did not exclude from office any person whom the government desired to promote." A similar plea may be urged in justification of the changes made in the magistracy and in the Privy Council; but the regulation of the corporations, which has been more generally censured than any other act of Tyrconnell's administration, must be defended upon different grounds. It was by these bodies that the great majority of the members of the next parliament would be returned; and, unless important alterations were made in their constitution, the task of compensating the despoiled would devolve upon the representatives of the despoilers. Even ​had the measure, therefore, by which they were remodelled, been plainly illegal, the case was one in which considerations of equity and public policy would have justified a wise government in disregarding the letter of the law. Its illegality, however, was by no means clear. The provisions of the Act of Settlement and the more recent regulations introduced under the viceroyalty of Essex had placed the corporations almost entirely at the mercy of the castle, and the history of the preceding century afforded more than one precedent for confiscating the charter of a refractory municipality. The Irish judges unanimously supported the claims of the crown; and, although their decisions have been ascribed to servility and party spirit, it deserves notice that they merely followed the example of their most distinguished brethren in England. That these changes were harshly and violently effected, and that the minority were occasionally treated with something less than justice by the party which was now dominant, may, perhaps, be acknowledged; but, for the most part, the Protestants continued, by the admission of their own writers, to enjoy, under a Catholic government, a far greater share in the administration than they had ever conceded to their adversaries.
The attacks upon the Established Church and ​upon the educational institutions of the country were, no doubt, arbitrary and unconstitutional in the extreme. But, when we consider the absurdity and the injustice of maintaining a Protestant establishment and a Protestant educational system among a nation almost exclusively Catholic, they can scarcely be very strongly condemned. And it says much for the moderation of the Irish people that they made no attempt, now that the power was in their own hands, to retaliate the injustice which they had suffered.
The disarming of the Protestants and the reorganisation of the army may at first sight seem measures more open to censure. But a moment's reflection will show that they were an essential part of the policy of the government. If Catholic disabilities were to be removed, if forfeited estates were to be restored, if the whole system of exclusion and monopoly was to be broken up, considerations of prudence and of humanity alike rendered it impossible to leave a great military power in the hands of men who would unquestionably have resisted those changes by force.
I have left it to abler pens than mine to tell of the disastrous war that followed—of the long agony of Derry, of the vain heroism of Sarsfield, of the violated pledges of Limerick. But the history of Tyrconnell's administration would be ​incomplete without some account of that memorable assembly which sat at the King's Inns in Dublin during the summer of 1689.
On the 7th of March James sailed for Ireland and landed on the 12th at Kinsale. From Kinsale he proceeded to Dublin, and there issued a series of proclamations, one of which summoned the Irish parliament to meet on the 7th of May. The parliament which assembled in obedience to his summons differed widely from the body bearing the same name which had been dissolved twenty-three years before. Of sixty-nine temporal lords who were Protestants only five took their seats: the rest were among the Ulster insurgents or intriguing with William at Whitehall. Of eighteen spiritual lords eleven had left the kingdom; of the remaining seven the Primate and the Bishops of Waterford and Killaloe were excused attendance on the ground of age and infirmity; but the two former signed by proxy a protest against the repeal of the Act of Settlement. Twenty-seven Roman Catholic lords attended, five of whom had been lately raised to the peerage, while the attainders of more than half the remainder had been recently reversed.
The Lower House was composed of two hundred and thirty-four members, the counties of Londonderry and Fermanagh and a considerable ​number of the northern boroughs, which were in the hands of the insurgents, sending no representatives. The University of Dublin, which appears to have retained its essentially Protestant character in spite of the alleged encroachments of the government, was represented by Sir John Mead and Mr. Joseph Coghlan, both zealous partisans of the Protestant interest, who are said to have taken their seats with great reluctance, "as thinking it scandalous to be in so ill company." They carried on an active opposition to the repeal of the Act of Settlement, "but withdrew before the Act of Attainder came to be concluded, not enduring to be present at the passing of that and some other barbarous Acts, against which they found their votes signified nothing while they staid. There were four more Protestants returned, of whose behaviour (says King) I can give no account, or how they came to be returned. The generality of the Houses consisted of the sons and descendants of the forfeiting persons of 1641." Of the House of Commons thus constituted Sir Richard Nagle, Attorney-General and member for the county of Cork, was elected Speaker.
After a speech from the throne, in which James expressed his gratitude for the "exemplary loyalty" which the Irish nation had ​displayed "at a time when others of my subjects undutifully misbehaved themselves to me or so basely deserted me," and his firm adherence to those principles of religious liberty which he had so long professed, and an address from both Houses representing to his Majesty "our abhorrence and detestation of the late treasons and defections of many of your Majesty's subjects in this and your other kingdoms, and of the unnatural usurpation of the Prince of Orange," the work of legislation began. The Parliament sat for ten weeks, and in that short time no less than thirty-five Acts were passed. Of these five affected only the interests of individuals; many of the others are of slight importance and may be dismissed with a passing notice. Against the Acts for punishing persons circulating counterfeit coin, for taking off all incapacities on the natives of this kingdom, for taking away benefit of clergy in cases of felony, for preventing delays in execution, for repealing the Act for keeping and celebrating the 23rd day of October—the anniversary of the alleged massacre of 1641—for the relief and release of poor distressed prisoners for debt, for the encouragement of strangers and others to inhabit and plant in the kingdom of Ireland, for the prevention of frauds and perjuries, for ratifying ​and confirming deeds and settlements and the last wills and testaments of persons out of possession, for the speedy recovery of servants' wages, for the regulation of martial law, for the punishment of waste committed on lands restorable to old proprietors, for enabling his Majesty to regulate the duties of foreign commodities, for the better settling of intestates' estates, and for securing the water-course for the castle and city of Dublin no exception can reasonably be made. An "Act of Supply for his Majesty for the support of his Army," rendered highly necessary by the condition of the country, is chiefly remarkable for the very elaborate provisions introduced to safeguard the interests of the tenants—provisions extremely honourable to the legislature, which was composed with scarcely an exception of actual or potential landowners. An "Act prohibiting the importation of English, Scotch, or Welch coals,' and another "for the Advance and Improvement of Trade, and for encouragement and increase of shipping and navigation," may excite the contempt of modern economists of the free-trade school; but the ideas of their authors were those which at that time were universally accepted by all European nations, and the legislators were plainly actuated by a sincere if mistaken desire for the welfare ​of their country. A clause in the latter Act "for teaching and instructing the mathematics and the art of navigation" deserves, perhaps, more attention than it has commonly received. An Act "for Forfeiting and Vesting in his Majesty the goods of Absentees" has been sometimes represented as a flagrant example of legislative robbery; but its real object was to put an end to the indiscriminate seizure of absentee property by unauthorised persons which had been taking place in many parts of the country since the beginning of March. A bill for the repeal of Poynings' Act and another for establishing Inns of Court at Dublin, are said to have been rejected owing to the personal interference of James.
A few measures of greater and more lasting interest have been reserved for a more detailed discussion. After a formal Act recognising the King's title a bill was introduced in the House of Commons and rapidly passed into law, "declaring that the Parliament of England cannot bind Ireland," a doctrine which had been held by a long succession of eminent Irish jurists, which had been maintained in the preceding generation by the Confederation of Kilkenny, which was re-asserted only nine years later in the interest of the Protestant colonists by William ​Molyneux, and which was eventually recognised by England in the memorable year 1782. It is not uninteresting to observe that in the preamble it is stated, as one of the grounds for this doctrine, that "the people of this kingdom did never send members to any Parliament ever held in England." A further clause of the same Act abolished the usurped jurisdiction in virtue of which the court of King's Bench in England had arrogated to itself the right of reversing the decisions of the Irish judges.
Having thus asserted the legislative independence of their country the Irish Parliament proceeded, with a liberality rare indeed in that age, to pass "an Act for Liberty of Conscience, and repealing such Acts or clauses in any Act of Parliament which are inconsistent with the same," a measure which guaranteed "the full and free exercise of their respective religions to all that profess Christianity within the kingdom, without any molestation, loss, or penalty whatsoever." Dr. King, whose own notions on the subject of religious liberty were of the most rudimentary character, speaks very slightingly of this noble statute. It "was designed," he tells us, "only to destroy the Established Church, and not that Protestants should have the benefit of it." The evidence in support of this ​assertion is by no means conclusive, but it is no doubt true that it was easier to pass such an Act than to enforce it. It must be remembered that, when the Act was passed, five-sixths of the Protestants in Ireland were in arms against the government, and that most of those who continued outwardly submissive were suspected, not always unjustly, of sympathising with the rebellion of their co-religionists. Under these circumstances, although Tyrconnell and his colleagues vigorously exerted themselves to secure the observance of the toleration Act, they were not always able to restrain the violence of mobs actuated much less by hatred of heresy than by love of plunder.
A series of measures conceived in the same spirit effected an equitable distribution of ecclesiastical property between the rival Churches. Two Acts transferred to the Catholic priesthood all tithes payable by members of that communion, the Protestant clergy continuing, as before, to receive the tithes of their co-religionists. The tithes of Ulster, which, from the time of the plantation, had been subject to special regulations, were dealt with by a separate statute; while yet another Act put an end to a tax of one shilling in the pound which was levied on the inhabitants of corporate towns for the support of ​Protestant clergymen. To the indignation of the more violent Catholics the Protestant bishops were allowed to retain their seats in the Upper House, to which no Catholic prelates were summoned.
The general fairness of this legislation is not open to question. But it has been contended with some show of reason that, by neglecting to make provision for the life interests of the disestablished clergy, the Irish Parliament were guilty of gross and scandalous injustice. In the seventeenth century, however, the principle of such compensation was, if not wholly unknown, at least by no means generally recognised. Neither in 1644, when clergymen who continued faithful to episcopacy were expelled from their livings by the Long Parliament, nor in 1662, when -their Puritan successors were in their turn ejected by the government of Charles the Second, nor in this same year, 1689, when the Episcopal Church of Scotland was overthrown and Presbytery established upon its ruins was any adequate provision made for the support of the deprived clergy.
I have reserved to the last the consideration of the two celebrated measures with which the memory of this Parliament is in an' especial manner associated, and which have, to a greater ​extent than perhaps any other transactions in history, been made the subject of elaborate and unscrupulous misrepresentation. The reader will remember the means by which the Acts of Settlement and Explanation were passed, the widespread irritation which they had provoked, and the long agitation which had been carried on for their repeal. Under these circumstances it can scarcely be thought surprising that in a Parliament almost wholly composed of "the sons and descendants of the forfeiting persons" a bill for the repeal of those Acts should have been carried by large majorities and amidst tumultuous applause. Of the discussions in the two Houses we know very little. A contemporary writer tells us that the bill was sent up from the Commons in May, that it passed the House of Lords, but was much altered in committee, that it was the subject of more than one conference between the two Houses, and that it eventually passed with a protest from six bishops and four temporal lords. The opposition in the Upper House appears to have been carried on with great pertinacity, principally by the Earls of Granard and Longford and by the Bishop of Meath, and is said to have been secretly countenanced by James. The preamble of this bill, in the form in which it ultimately ​became law, asserts that "the Roman Catholic subjects of this kingdom have for several years, to the apparent hazard of their lives and estates, under the royal authority, defended this kingdom, until at last they were overpowered by the usurper Oliver Cromwell, in which quarrel many of them lost their lives, and divers of them, rather than take any conditions from the said usurper, did transport themselves into foreign parts, where they faithfully served under his late Majesty and his present Majesty, until his late Majesty was restored to the Crown." For this reason, it was argued, "his Majesty's said Roman Catholic subjects, not only upon account of the peace made by his late Majesty in the year 1648, but also for their eminent loyalty and firm adherence to the royal cause, might have justly expected to partake of his late Majesty's favour and bounty upon his happy restoration." Unfortunately, "the contrivances set on foot to destroy his Majesty's Catholic subjects of this realm" had resulted in the passing of the Acts of Settlement and Explanation, by which those legitimate expectations had been to a great extent disappointed. On these grounds it was enacted that the said Acts of Settlement and Explanation, certain clauses specifically mentioned alone excepted, should be totally ​repealed; that all persons who, by the operation of those Acts, had been excluded from property which they or their ancestors had possessed on the 22nd of October, 1641, should be re-instated in their inheritance; that all attainders and outlawries since that date should be null and void; that all officers having "the custody or keeping of the said attainders or outlawries" should cancel the same, or be liable, in case of neglect, to a fine of £500; that commissioners should be appointed to hear and determine the claims and title of restorable persons; and that any person who, "by reason of the oppressions, distractions, and confusions hereinbefore mentioned, and of the length of time since the ancient proprietors have been dispossessed," should have mislaid his title-deeds and so be unable to make good his claim before the commissioners, should "use and have his action and remedy in any of his Majesty's courts of law or equity for recovery of his rights." Special provisions of an extremely minute and technical character followed, dealing with the lands which had been assigned to transplanted persons in Clare and Connaught.
The landowners whom this statute deprived of their property comprised, according to the estimate of Archbishop King, about two-thirds of the Protestant proprietary of Ireland, and were ​composed of three classes. By an Act to which Charles the First had been compelled to give a reluctant assent the Long Parliament had assigned a great portion of the soil of Ireland to "adventurers" or speculators who had advanced money to carry on the war against the Irish. After the triumph of the Puritan faction eleven years later the greater part of what had escaped the clutches of these persons had been granted to Cromwell's soldiers in compensation for arrears of pay. It cannot be thought surprising that the services for which these two classes had been so lavishly rewarded should not have been regarded by the Irish Catholics as deserving much consideration, or that they and their representatives should now have been treated with something less than justice. In contending that an actual ownership of thirty-seven years and a legal ownership of twenty-four years could not establish a prescriptive title as against proprietors fraudulently despoiled after an undisturbed possession of centuries the Irish Parliament can hardly be said to have acted unjustly. But the men of the new interest had in many cases expended large sums upon the improvement of their estates, and for this expenditure they had a clear right to compensation. No such compensation was granted. Twenty-seven years ​earlier, when "it appeared that one interest or the other must suffer" the government had deemed it expedient "that the loss should fall on the Irish." The latter were now the stronger party and the rule was reversed.
There was, however, a third class of landowners who had a much stronger claim upon the consideration of the legislature. A great part of the lands held under the Act of Settlement had been acquired from the original grantees by purchasers who were in no way responsible for the policy of confiscation. When the repeal of that Act was first mooted it seems to have been generally apprehended that the rights of this class would be completely disregarded. Whether injustice so flagrant was ever really contemplated it is impossible to say. What is certain is that an elaborate memorial drawn up by Chief Justice Keating "in the behalf of purchasers who for great and valuable considerations have acquired lands and tenements in this kingdom" was presented to James, and that, if we may judge by the provisions of the Act of Repeal, the justice of his arguments was fully recognised by the parliament. In order to satisfy the claims of these persons it was accordingly enacted that all who had obtained property from the grantees "for good and valuable consideration, and not ​consideration of blood, affinity or marriage," should, in lieu of the lands restorable to their former owners, receive "other lands, tenements, hereditaments of equal value, worth, or purchase." If this clause was not to be a dead letter an extensive confiscation was imperative; and, for such a confiscation the "horrid and unnatural rebellion" which "was lately raised and still is continued in this kingdom and in other your Majesty's dominions" afforded a not unreasonable excuse. In conformity with a long series of English precedents the estates of all persons engaged in the rebellion were pronounced forfeited, and from the lands thus placed at the disposal of the crown commissioners appointed under the Great Seal were instructed to assign reprisals to purchasers. Among the persons who had lately left Ireland, however, there were many of whose guilt no reasonable doubt could be entertained, but whom, according to the ordinary rules of evidence, it would be impossible to convict of any overt act of treason. The government was fully determined that these persons should not go unpunished. When confronted, at the time of the previous settlement, with a similar difficulty, the Protestant party had had recourse to an expedient as effective as it was iniquitous. It had been then enacted that to ​have resided within the rebels' quarters, or to have corresponded with any person residing within those quarters, should in itself be considered as an act of treason; and this example the Irish Parliament was unfortunately induced to follow. Lastly, a clause very creditable to the sense and moderation of the legislators provided that "whereas some meriting persons, who are to lose considerable estates by this Act might by the foregoing rules be entitled to small or no reprisals, your Majesty may in such special cases set forth and grant reprisals to such meriting persons."
In the Lower House the Bill met with little opposition; but the speech delivered in the Lords by Anthony Dopping, Bishop of Meath, contains perhaps the ablest statement of the case for the new owners, and deserves careful study. After a violent attack upon the principle of the bill, and a scurrilous invective against the assembled nobles, which proved, if it proved nothing else, that far greater freedom of speech was tolerated at Dublin than at Westminster, the Bishop proceeded to argue that the proposed reprisals were worthless. "As for the reprisals, I hear the name of them in the bill, but I find nothing agreeable to the nature of them." He laid down three conditions as essential to a ​genuine reprisal, viz, "that it be as good at least, if not in some respects better, than the thing I am to part with; that I myself be judge whether it be better or worse; that I keep what I have till I am reprised." Of these conditions he insisted, "not one is like to be observed in the intended reprisals." The reprisable persons would not obtain "equal value, worth, and purchase." "The parties themselves are not made the judges, but the commissioners." Lastly, "they are to be turned out immediately, and wait for a reprisal afterwards." Of these arguments the first alone is important, and it is flatly contradicted by the very words of the Act.
Within a few days after the passing of the Act of Repeal a bill was introduced into the House of Commons attainting more than two thousand persons; a measure which has been described as unparalleled in its magnitude by writers who do not choose to remember that, only thirty-seven years earlier, the Long Parliament had attainted about fifty times that number of Irishmen. After a preamble, in which the "most horrid invasion made by your unnatural enemy, the Prince of Orange," was condemned in terms of the most effusive loyalty, a list was framed containing in all nearly 1,300 names of persons who were described as having ​"notoriously joined in the said rebellion and invasion," and who, unless within a stated time they should make their submission to the government, were condemned to "suffer such pains of death, penalties, and forfeitures respectively, as in cases of high treason are accustomed." If, however, they, or any of them, should offer themselves for trial before an Irish judge on or before the 10th of August, 1689, within about two months, that is to say, from the introdction of the Bill of Attainder, and should there be acquitted in due course, they were to be absolved from all further punishment, "anything in this Act to the contrary in anywise notwithstanding."
A second list of four hundred and eighty names followed, consisting of persons against whom no definite act of rebellion was charged, but who, having left Ireland after or shortly before the 5th of November, 1688—the day of William's landing in England—and taken up their residence in places subject to his authority, might be reasonably supposed to be at least sympathisers with the Revolution. These persons were allowed a somewhat longer respite. If they presented themselves for trial on or before the 1st of September, 1680, and if no overt act of treason could then be proved against them, they were absolved from further punishment; otherwise ​they, like the former class, were condemned to suffer the penalties of high treason.
A third list, comprising, according to one account, five hundred and twenty-eight names, consisted of persons who had left Ireland before the commencement of the Revolution. They, like the two classes already mentioned, had disregarded the proclamation which James had issued a few days after his arrival in the kingdom, summoning his Irish subjects to come to his assistance; and this neglect might fairly be considered as casting at least a doubt upon their loyalty. They were allowed until the 1st of October—unless the King should return to England before that date—to make their submission to the government, and answer any charges which might be brought against them. Should they fail to do so they also were to be adjudged guilty of treason.
The combined lists contained the names of two archbishops and seven bishops, of one duke, sixty-two other temporal peers and one peeress, of eighty-four knights and baronets, eighty-three clergymen, and about two thousand esquires and gentlemen. In all cases the King's pardon granted on or before the 1st of November, 1689, was to be valid; after that date such pardon would be null and void.
​A supplementary list was added containing the names of eighty-five persons, who "for some time past have been absent out of this kingdom; and, by reason of sickness, nonage, infirmities, or other disabilities, may for some time further be obliged to stay out of this kingdom, or be disabled to return thereunto." As, in the opinion of the Parliament, it was "much to the weakening and impoverishing of this realm that any of the rents or profits of the lands, tenements, or hereditaments therein should be sent into or spent in any other place beyond the seas" it was provided by the Act "that all the lands, etc., belonging or appertaining to all and every of the persons herein before last mentioned within this kingdom be and are hereby vested in your Majesty." If, however, any of the aforesaid persons "do hereafter return into this kingdom and behave him or themselves as becometh loyal subjects," they were to be restored to their estates on making formal application to the Court of Chancery or Exchequer.
The bill passed both Houses with little opposition, and James, though he is said to have regarded it with secret dislike, was compelled to give it his reluctant consent.
In passing judgment upon this celebrated measure and upon the parliament by which it ​was enacted it is important to remember that, although by the letter of the Act a great number of persons were rendered liable to capital punishment, if they should fail to fulfil the conditions imposed upon them, in no known instance was such punishment actually inflicted. Long before the introduction of the Bill of Attainder the individuals named in it had fled beyond the jurisdiction of the Irish Parliament; and the subsequent legislation must be regarded as having been directed not against their persons but against their estates. The Act was essentially one of confiscation—a single episode in an agrarian struggle which had continued for three generations—and, considered as an act of confiscation, it must be pronounced violent indeed and vindictive, but neither unprecedented nor unprovoked.
Of the specific charges which have been brought against the Act and its authors a few words must be said. The Speaker, when presenting the bill to James for his assent is said to have informed his Majesty that of the persons named in it "many were attainted upon such evidence as fully satisfied the House; the rest upon common fame"; and, although this statement rests upon the authority of one very untrustworthy witness, it is perfectly clear that ​the lists were very hastily and carelessly framed. When, however, the conditional character of the sentence is remembered the force of this objection is materially diminished. "Common fame" can scarcely be a sufficient ground for condemning a man to death or forfeiture; but it may be, and often is, a perfectly reasonable ground for ordering him to stand his trial.
It has also been repeatedly asserted that the Irish parliament were guilty of the horrible and almost unparalleled cruelty of causing the Act to be concealed until the time within which the royal pardon was valid had expired. It is, however, in the highest degree improbable, or rather impossible, that a measure which had passed three times through both Houses, many of whose members regarded it with detestation, should have remained a secret for any considerable period; and an entry in the London Gazette for July 4th, 1689—a very few days after the passing of the bill—containing a brief but accurate summary of the principal measures passed in the Irish Parliament, shows that the nature of the Act was known at that date in London, although a complete list of attainted persons may not have been obtained until some time afterwards.
Of the provisions of which the authenticity is ​indisputable that limiting the royal prerogative of pardon appears to me to be the most objectionable. It was not, however, as it has been sometimes called, unprecedented. On the contrary it was modelled only too closely upon the clause in the Adventurers' Act of 1641, which provided "that all pardons granted to any of the said [Irish] rebels before attainder shall be adjudged void and of none effect." In this as in other respects, whatever was most blameable in the legislation of the Irish parliament is to be attributed to a too faithful adherence to English precedents.
* ↑ Secret Consults. Leland. III., 490.
* ↑ There is a valuable collection of these proclamations in the British Museum. Besides those mentioned in the text for disarming the militia (Jane 20, 1685) and prohibiting the public discussion of politics (July 10), and the meeting of unlawful assemblies (July 24), there are several others occasioned by Monmouth's rebellion. For the influence of this event upon the course of affairs in Ireland, see Clarke's Life of James the Second, II., 61. For the proclamations issued by Ormond in 1678, see supra Charles II.
* ↑ Clarendon to Rochester, January 19, 1686, Judge Nugent justified the disarming by the Act 10 Hen. 7, cap, 12, which forbids keeping arms without license from the Lord Lieutenant. King Btls 3, * 12. It should be observed that Newcomen is in this matter a most unexceptionable witness. In a letter to Lady Rawdon, written in January, 1689, he says, "All the world know me to be a very zealous and firm Protestant." (Rawdon Papers, p. 299). In a pamphlet called A Short View of the Methods made use of in Ireland for subverting the Protestant Religion, he is even said to have been deprived of his command on account of his religion.
* ↑ "Most of the English, that were active, of the Privy Council, were turned out, but as yet no Irish Papists put in." Secret Consults. This step seems to have been resolved on even before the death of Charles II. See Ormond's letter to Rochester, January 3, 1685.
* ↑ The address is given in full in King, App. 3, and in Spicilegium Ossoriense, II., 270.
* ↑ Clarendon to Rochester, January 10, 1656.
* ↑ At the beginning of his reign James told Clarendon "that, though he would have the Irish see that they had a king of their own religion, and that they should enjoy all the freedom thereof, yet he would have them see, too, that he looked upon them as a conquered people." Clarendon to Rochester, October 12, 1686. See also James's letter to Clarendon, April 6, 1686.
* ↑ Macaulay and Mackintosh, on the authority of a MS. History by Thomas Sheridan.
* ↑ "A man of birth, indeed, but no lawyer, and so will do no harm upon the account of his learning."' Clarendon to Rochester, April 20, 1686. Archbishop King (IIT., 3, *5) gives Nugent a very bad character, accusing him not only of incompetience, but of corruption, but, says Lesley, "I have heard others say, who are no admirers of that Judge, that they are confident this is a rank slander and calumny, and that! no such thing can be proved against him." (Answer, p. 130.) In truth, King's testimony, never very trustworthy, is on this occasion especially liable to suspicion, as he had been imprisoned by Nugent on a charge of corresponding with the Northern rebels. (Harris's Bishops of Ireland, article King.)
* ↑ Daly, "though a Roman Catholic, yet understood the common law well and behaved himself impartially." (King III., 3, *7.) Even the author of the Secret Consults acknowledges that Daly "did good service in hanging of his countrymen."
* ↑ "A man of the best sense amongst them, well enough versed in the law, but most signal for his inveteracy against the Protestant interest and settlement in Ireland" (King III., 3, *6) Macaulay calls Rice "the foremost man of his race."
* ↑ A list of new privy councillors was enclosed in a letter of Sunderland to Clarendon, May 22, 1686.
* ↑ Clarendon to Rochester, June 12, 1686.
* ↑ Clarendon to the King, October 16, 1686. King (III., 4, *4) says "there was not one Protestant sheriff in all Ireland for the year 1687, except Charles Hamilton of Cavan, who was put in by mistake instead of John Hamilton of Killeneur, who is a Roman Catholic." It is impossible to reconcile this with Clarendon's statement. Another Protestant writer says that the sheriffs were Catholics "except in. such places where no papists were to be had." (Apology for the Protestants of Ireland.)
* ↑ 22 June, 1686 (Clarendon Correspondence, 1461).
* ↑ Secret Consults.
* ↑ Ibid.
* ↑ Carte II., 480.
* ↑ King III., 2, *2.
* ↑ Clarendon, in a letter to Rochester, June 8, 1686, says that Tyrconnell could not even review his regiment without making some blunder. But Clarendon was the bitter personal enemy of Tyrconnell, so this criticism is probably not quite just. Lauzun, in a letter to Seignelay (26 July, 1690) speaks highly of Tyrconnell's conduct at the Boyne under very depressing circumstances. [This despatch, with many other letters of Lauzun, is printed in the Appendix to Ranke's Englische Geschichte vornehmlich im siebzehnten Jahrhundert.]
* ↑ "La plupart de ces régiments sont levez par des gentils hommes qui n'ont jamais esté à l'armée. Ce sont des tailleurs, des bouchers, des cordonniers qui ont formé les compagnies et qui en sont les capitaines." Avaux to Louis. "Several are now made officers who never served anywhere." Clarendon to Rochester, June 22, 1686.
* ↑ By far the best account of these "stories" with which I am acquainted is to be found in Prendergast's Ireland from the Restoration to the Revolution, a work based mainly on unpublished MSS. from the Carte collection in the Bodleian Library. Clarendon writing to Rochester, November 2, 1686, encloses an amusing charge by an Irish magistrate: "I shall not need to say much concerning rogues and vagabonds, the country being pretty well cleared of them, by reason his Majesty has entertained them all in his service, clothed them with red coats and provided well for them."
* ↑ "If that [the admission of Catholics to the army] be the matter, good God! why should not the Chief Governor be trusted with it, and why should it not be orderly done!" Clarendon to Rochester, September 4, 1686
* ↑ Clarendon to Sunderland, February 26th, 1686.
* ↑ Judge Daly "enlarged much upon the unconscionableness of indicting men for words spoken so many years since. … Mr, Justice Nugent made the same declarations." Clarendon to Sunderland, July 31, 1686. A copy of the proclamation which I have mentioned is enclosed in this letter.
* ↑ "The soldiers who are put out say they will cuff their successors, … and truly they do rap them soundly at fisticuffs. … The natives are not behindhand in insolences." Clarendon to Rochester, July 4, 1686.
* ↑ Clarendon to Sunderland, May 18, 1686, "His Majesty is} pleased to forgive the forfeiture of Mr. Ashton's estate," Sunderland to Clarendon, July 13th, 1686.
* ↑ See Clarendon's speech to the Irish Council, January 9, 1686 (Clarendon Correspondence, Appendix). King (III., 12, *2) says "the Papists knew that this was only a piece of policy to lull us asleep until the army was new modelled and things fitted for repealing these Acts." Tyrconnell said "I know the Acts of Settlement must not be touched, and, by God! it would make a confusion if they should." Clarendon to Rochester, June 8, 1686.
* ↑ The Coventry Letter is printed in Gilbert's Jacobite Narrative, Appendix I. Clarendon calls Nagle "a man of the best repute for learning, as well as honesty, amongst that people" [the Catholics]. Clarendon to Rochester, February 27, 1686.
* ↑ "The King was very much pressed to make Lord Tyrconnell Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, but it was much opposed by the [English] Roman Catholic Lords and so came to no resolution." Clarendon to Rochester, November 2, 1686. "The Roman Catholic Privy Councillors Jin England], most of them do oppose Lord Tyrconnell's coming hither Lord Lieutenant and the Queen joins with them." November 17. In the Secret Consults, the rage and terror of the Englishry on hearing of Tyrconnell's appointment are described in. language which is meant to be pathetic, but which borders closely on the ludicrous.
* ↑ e.g., A full and impartial account of all. the Secret Consults, negociations and intrigues of the Romish party in Ireland: A Short View of the methods made use of in Ireland for the subversion and destruction of the Protestant religion and interest by a clergyman lately escaped from thence, 1689 [republished in the following year with the title, A True Narrative of the murders, cruelties, and oppressions perpetrated on the Protestants in Ireland|: An Apology for the Protestants of Ireland: A Second Apology for the Protestants of Ireland, by the author of the first: Mephibosheth and Ziba: Ireland's Lamentation, by an English Protestant: The Popish Champion, or a compleat history of the life and military action's of Richard, Earl of Tyrconnell. Macaulay, whose description of Ireland at the time of the Revolution is almost entirely drawn from these sources, appears to me to have made very inadequate allowance for the passions of the pamphleteers. Dr. Wright, in a work written in the main from the ascendancy standpoint, justly observes that these writers "were ready to receive any story which threw discredit on their enemies, without enquiring too scrupulously into its truth." (History of Ireland, II., 175.)
* ↑ The State of the Protestants in Ireland under the late King James's government; in which their carriage towards him is justified, and the absolute necessity of their endeavouring to be freed from his government and of submitting to their present Majesties is demonstrated.
* ↑ Harris's Bishops of Ireland, article King.
* ↑ Lesley's Answer to King, p. 113.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 106, Harris,
* ↑ Letter to Sir Robert Southwell, quoted by Harris.
* ↑ Compare (e.g.) King's account of the trial of Ashton (III., 2, *4), and of the Catholic sheriffs (III., 4, *4), with the statements on the same subjects in Clarendon's letters quoted above.
* ↑ Lesley's Answer, p. 73.
* ↑ Johnson, who had a very low opinion of the non-jurors as a body, called Lesley "a reasoner, and a reasoner not to be reasoned against." Boswell, VIII., 287. [Edition of 1882,]
* ↑ Harris's Writers of Ireland, article Lesley.
* ↑ Porter had lately "begun to startle at the commands from England," and "publicly declared that he came not over to serve a turn, nor would act anything against his conscience." Secret Consults.
* ↑ It is impossible for me in the space at my disposal to enter into a minute examination of the evidence in this very complicated case. The reader should compare A True Narrative of the proceedings in the several suits in law that have been between Lord Gerard of Brandon and Alexander Fitton, Esq.—by far the best and fullest account: A True Account of the unreasonableness of Mr. Fitton's pretences against the Earl of Macclesfield: A Reply to a Paper entitled a True Account, etc.: Ormerod's History of Cheshire: O'Flanagan's Lives of the Chancellors of Ireland.
* ↑ King, III., 3: Secret Consults.
* ↑ "'Twas their rule to have in the great cities, who were most English, one-third Protestants and two-thirds Papists." Secret Consults. "The persons everywhere named for aldermen and burgesses of the new charters being above two-thirds Papists." King, III., 5, *6.
* ↑ Macaulay says that in the corporation of Londonderry "there was but one person of Saxon extraction, and he had turned papist." His sole authority for this statement is a mock-heroic poem called Londeriados, in which we are teld that there was "In all the corporation not a man Of British parents except Buchanan," and that Buchanan was "a knave all o'er, For he had learnt to tell his beads before." This curious poem is printed in Hempton's Siege and History of Londonderry. There is a list of the aldermen and burgesses of Londonderry in King's Appendix. In this list nothing is said as to the religion of the parties, but it is evident from the names that the corporation contained a considerable number of Englishmen.
* ↑ "At this time also, viz., under King James, the Government having made choice of some Friends to serve in corporations and as magistrates, and some few having accepted thereof, though it was not of their own seeking, a paper of tender advice was drawn up, by order of a general meeting, to Friends who were so concerned." History of the Rise and Progress of the People called Quakers in Ireland, from the year 1653 to 1700, by Thomas Wight, p. 155. See also a letter of George Fox in the same place. "A remarkable thing never to be forgotten was that they that were in government then seemed to favour us and endeavour to preserve Friends." Ibid., p. 156. A detailed account of the sufferings of this unfortunate sect during the reign of
* ↑ King, III., 15, *5. Short View.
* ↑ Harris's Life of William III., p. 234, and Writers of Ireland, p. 289, Leland III., pp, 503, 552, on the authority of a MS. in the library of Trinity College.
* ↑ King, III., 3, *6. "It is easy," says Harris, with unconscious irony, "to conjecture what success Protestants had in their suits before a judge who declared that they should have no favour, but summum jus, i.e., the utmost rigour of the law." Life of William III., p. 112.
* ↑ Secret Consults.
* ↑ Clarendon to Rochester, Jan. 12 and 29, 1686, to Sunderland, Feb. 8.
* ↑ Secret Consults.
* ↑ "Milford Sunderland m'a dit que le roi son maitre est résolu de renverser l'établissement fait des bien des Irlandois catholiques aux Anglois protestans aprés le retour du Roy d'Angleterre: que cela est encore tenu fort secret: mais qu'on y travaillera bientot, et que les mesures sont prises pour en venir 4 bout. Le renversement de cet établissement fait en faveur des rebelles et des officiers de Cromwell est regardé ici comme ce qu'il y a de plus important: et, s'il peut étre executé sans opposition, ce sera une entiére séparation de l'Irlande d'avec |' Angleterre pour l'avenir. C'est le sentiment général de tous les Anglois." Barillon to Louis, October 16, 1687, quoted by O'Callaghan, Macariae Excidium, n. 47.
* ↑ "Je sais bien certainement que l'intention du roi d'A. est de faire perdre ce royaume à son successeur, et de le fortifier en sorte que tous ses sujets catholiques y puissent avoir un azile assuré, Son projet est de mettre les choses en cet état dans le cours de cinq a nées. Mais Myl, Tyrconnel le presse incessament pour que cela se fasse en moins, de temps." Bonrepaus to Seignelay, September 4, 1687. This despatch, with Seignelay's reply, is printed in a note to Lingard's History of England. It deserves careful attention, but is too long to quote in full here. A passage in the Secret Consults shows that this intrigue was suspected at the time; but it cannot be said to have become generally known until the publication of Mazure's Histoire de la Revolution de 1688 in 1825. Seignelay seems rather to have thrown cold water on the scheme.
* ↑ Secret Consults.
* ↑ Clarendon Correspondence, passim; Secret Consults, Apology for the Protestants of Ireland, and other tracts.
* ↑ Apology for the Protestants of Ireland.
* ↑ Cox, Hibernia Anglicana.
* ↑ The pretended proclamation is printed in Hugh Speke's Secret History of the Revolution. The panic produced is well described by Harris, Life of William III., pp, 154, 155.
* ↑ Article on Speke in the Dictionary of National Biography. [Seventh Report of the Hist. MSS. Commission.]
* ↑ Harris, Life of William III., p. 155.
* ↑ This letter is in Mackenzie's Narrative of the Siege of Londonderry, and in King, Appendix 12.
* ↑ Faithful History of the Northern Affairs of Ireland.
* ↑ Ireland's Lamentation.
* ↑ Collection of proclamations by Tyrconnell in the British Museum: Short View; Ireland's Lamentation.
* ↑ In England the independence of the judges was secured by the Act of Settlement. In 1692 William "gave an unfortunate instance of his very injudicious tenacity of bad prerogatives in refusing his assent to a bill that had passed both Houses for establishing the independence of the judges by law and confirming their salaries." Hallam, chap. 15.
* ↑ Macaulay, chap. 6. See supra, Charles II, note 58.
* ↑ 14 and 15 Charles II., cap 2; Memorandum sent by the Earl of Essex to Lord Ranelagh in 1675. [Letters, p. 149.] Secret Consults.
* ↑ See Hallam, Constitutional History, chap. 12, where the legality of these decisions is very fully discussed.
* ↑ King, III., 5, *6. Secret Consults,
* ↑ A full and true account of the Landing of the late King James at Kinsale: Avaux to Louis, March 12, 1689.
* ↑ Avaux to Louis, April 3, 1689; Proclamation for calling a Parliament in Ireland.
* ↑ The Irish episcopate consisted of four archbishops and eighteen bishops; but at this time four sees were vacant. King, III., 15, *5: Short View.
* ↑ A list of the Lords, Spiritual and Temporal, who sat in the pretended Parliament. Also a list of the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses of the House of Common's. With a catalogue of the titles of all Acts passed in the said pretended session. According to this pamphlet the House of Lords consisted of 7 earls, 9 viscounts, 4 bishops, and 16 barons. Lists of both Houses will also be found in King, Appendix 20. In a tract called A True Account of the Present State of Ireland, by a person who with great difficulty left Dublin, there is a catalogue of the nobility of Ireland for 1689, those who sat in this Parliament being marked with an asterisk. Both King and this writer represent many peers as having taken their seats whose names do not appear in the List above quoted.
* ↑ ""Those wanting are for Londonderry, Enniskilling, and such places as were in the Protestants' hands." List of the Lords, etc. King (III., 12, *14) appears to have exaggerated the number of the unrepresented boroughs. For a careful examination of his statements see Davis, Patriot Parliament, chapter 3.
* ↑ King, III., 12, 14. According to the True Account the House of Commons contained "only two Protestants, Sir John Mead and Mr. Coghlan; two others that have passed in former days, but now are looked upon to be of the Popish interest." The Journal says there were five Protestants.
* ↑ Journal of the Proceedings of the Parliament in Ireland.
* ↑ Both James's speech and the address of the Houses are in Lesley's Answer to King, Appendix I.
* ↑ The titles of these Acts are appended to the List of the Lords, etc., already quoted. The full text of many of them is printed with a List of such of the Names of the Nobility, Gentry and Commonalty, who are all by an Act of a pretended Parliament attainted of high treason.
* ↑ See King, Appendix 24.
* ↑ King, III., 12, *15.
* ↑ An Act declaring that the Parliament of England cannot bind Ireland: [and] against Writs of Error and Appeals.
* ↑ King, III., 18, *12. But King himself admits in another passage that the Act was not a dead letter, and makes the toleration granted to Protestant dissenters a charge against the government whom he accuses of "encouraging the most obstinate and perverse secretaries." III., 17, *4, King's own ideas about religious liberty are shown by a curious letter written by him to Archbishop Wake in 1719. "To be allowed to profess what religion. one pleases is a fair step, in my opinion, to bring people to confess none." Mant, II., 340.
* ↑ An Act concerning Tythes and other Ecclestastical Duties. An Act concerning Appropriate Tythes.
* ↑ An Act regulating Tythes in the province of Ulster. King, III. 16, *8,
* ↑ An Act for repealing a statute entituled An Act for provision of Mmisters in Cities and Corporate Towns.
* ↑ Macariae Excidium, p. 36; Light to the Blind, p. 69,
* ↑ Hallam, chapters X. and XI, In 1644 the ejected clergy were allowed pensions amounting to one-fifth of the value of their former livings. But a provision so small can scarcely be considered as a compensation for vested interests. In 1662 and 1689 no provision was made. Lesley maintains with much plausiblity that the Protestant episcopal clergy in Ireland were far better treated by the Catholic supporters of James than were their brethren in Scotland by the Presbyterian supporters of William.
* ↑ An Act for Repealing the Acts of Settlement and Explanation. This Act and the Act of Attainder De Burgo, Bishop of Ossory, has very justly described as "Decreta de quibus, etsi aequissimis, dum murumarent Acatholici aptissime potuerunt Orthodoxi deponere Neque alienam terram sumpsimus neque aliena detinemus, sed haereditatem patrum nostrorum quae injuste ab inimicis nostris aliquo tempore possessa est. Nos vero, tempus habentes, vindicamus haereditatem patrum nostrorum." Hibernia Dominicana, cap. vii.
* ↑ Journal of the Proceedings of the Parliament in Ireland.
* ↑ The preamble sent up by the Commons, attributing the rebellion of 1641 to "the ambition and avarice of the Lords Justices" was not adopted. It is printed with the Act.
* ↑ King, III, 12, *1.
* ↑ 17 and 18 Charles I., cap. 33.
* ↑ In England 60 years undisturbed possession was necessary to establish a prescriptive right. In the 'time of Charles I. the Irish had petitioned in vain to have a similar statute of limitation extended to their own country. See a letter of Wentworth to Secretary Coke, August 18, 1634. In 1787, the English Government restored the estates confiscated in Scotland in 1745. (Parliamentary History, vol. xxiv., 1316-1322.) I am not aware that this measure has been censured by any of the writers who have denounced the repeal of the Act of Settlement.
* ↑ Clarendon, in a letter to James (August 14th, 1686) probably over-rates the number of purchasers. "There are very few of the original soldiers and adventurers now left, or of their descendants: of the latter not twenty families and no great number of the former. But the generality of those two great interests sold their lots."
* ↑ King, Appendix 22.
* ↑ 14 and 15 Charles II., c. 2, The first Earl of Clarendon, who was to a great extent responsible for the Act of Settlement, admits that this clause in several instances worked gross injustice. (Continuation.)
* ↑ King, Appendix 23.
* ↑ List of the Nobility, Gentry and Commonalty attainted of high treason. An Act for the Attainder of divers Rebels and for preserving the interest of Loyal Subjects: King, Appendix I. Account of the Transactions of the late King James in Ireland.
* ↑ Scobell's Acts of the Long Parliament, Act for the settling of Ireland. Gardiner (History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, III., 299) estimates the persons condemned to death by this Act at more than 100,000, and says: "No such deed of cruelty was ever contemplated in cold blood by any State with pretence to civilisation."
* ↑ Lesley, Answer to King.
* ↑ King, III., 13, *6.
* ↑ Ibid., III., 13, *7.
* ↑ The writer of this notice, who professed to have derived his information from two gentlemen who left Dublin on June 29th and reached Chester on July 1st, makes special mention of the toleration Act, the Act declaring the legislative independence of Ireland, the Acts relating to ecclesiastical property, the repeal of the Act of Settlement, and the Act of Attainder.
* ↑ 17 and 18 Charles I., c. 33.