exercise the right of selfdefence. A few days later war was proclaimed.1

Of the grounds of quarrel alleged by the Commons in their address, and by the King in his manifesto, the most serious was the interference of Lewis in the affairs of Ireland. In that country great events had, during several months, followed one another in rapid succession. Of those events it is now time to relate the history, a history dark with crime and sorrow, yet full of interest and instruction.

1 The declaration is dated on the 7th of May, but was not published in the London Gazette 'till the 13th.

land at the time of the

The civil

power in the

Roman

CHAPTER XII.

WILLIAM had assumed, together with the title of State of Ire- King of England, the title of King of Ireland. For all our jurists then regarded Ireland as Revolution. a mere colony, more important indeed than Massachusetts, Virginia, or Jamaica, but, like Massachusetts, Virginia, and Jamaica, dependent on the mother country, and bound to pay allegiance to the Sovereign whom the mother country had called to the throne.1 In fact, however, the Revolution found Ireland emancipated from the dominion of the Enghands of the lish colony. As early as the year 1686, Catholics. James had determined to make that island a place of arms which might overawe Great Britain, and a place of refuge where, if any disaster happened in Great Britain, the members of his Church might find refuge. With this view he had exerted all his power for the purpose of inverting the relation between the conquerors and the aboriginal population. The execution of his design he had entrusted, in spite of the remonstrances of his English counsellors, to the Lord Deputy Tyrconnel. In the autumn of 1688, the process was complete. The highest offices in the state, in the army, and in the Courts of Justice, were, with scarcely an exception, filled by Papists. A petti

1 The general opinion of the English on this subject is clearly expressed in a little tract entitled "Aphorisms relating to the Kingdom of Ireland," which appeared during the vacancy of the throne.

fogger named Alexander Fitton, who had been detected in forgery, who had been fined for misconduct by the House of Lords at Westminster, who had been many years in prison, and who was equally deficient in legal knowledge and in the natural good sense and acuteness by which the want of legal knowledge has sometimes been supplied, was Lord Chancellor. His single merit was that he had apostatised from the Protestant religion; and this merit was thought sufficient to wash out even the stain of his Saxon extraction. He soon proved himself worthy of the confidence of his patrons. On the bench of justice he declared that there was not one heretic in forty thousand who was not a villain. He often, after hearing a cause in which the interests of his Church were concerned, postponed his decision, for the purpose, as he avowed, of consulting his spiritual director, a Spanish priest, well read doubtless in Escobar. Thomas Nugent, a Roman Catholic who had never distinguished himself at the bar except by his brogue and his blunders, was Chief Justice of the King's Bench.2 Stephen Rice, a Roman Catholic, whose abilities and learning were not disputed even by the enemies of his nation and religion, but whose known hostility to the Act of Settlement excited the most painful apprehensions in the minds of all who held property under that Act, was Chief Baron of the Exchequer. Richard Nagle, an acute and well read lawyer, who had been educated in a Jesuit college, and whose prejudices were such as might have been expected from his education, was Attorney General.1

1 King's State of the Protestants of Ireland, ii. 6. and iii. 3.

2 King, iii. 3. Clarendon, in a letter to Rochester (June 1. 1686), calls Nugent "a very troublesome, impertinent creature."

8 King, iii. 3.

4 King, ii. 6., iii. 3. Clarendon, in a letter to Ormond (Sept. 28. 1686),

Keating, a highly respectable Protestant, was still Chief Justice of the Common Pleas : but two Roman Catholic Judges sate with him. It ought to be added that one of those judges, Daly, was a man of sense, moderation, and integrity. The matters however which came before the Court of Common Pleas were not of great moment. Even the King's Bench was at this time almost deserted. The Court of Exchequer overflowed with business; for it was the only court at Dublin from which no writ of error lay to England, and consequently the only court in which the English could be oppressed and pillaged without hope of redress. Rice, it was said, had declared that they should have from him exactly what the law, construed with the utmost strictness, gave them, and nothing more. What, in his opinion, the law, strictly construed, gave them, they could easily infer from a saying which, before he became a Judge, was often in his mouth. "I will drive," he used to say, "a coach and six through the Act of Settlement." now carried his threat daily into execution. The cry of all Protestants was that it mattered not what evidence they produced before him; that, when their titles were to be set aside, the rankest forgeries, the most infamous witnesses, were sure to have his countenance. To his court his countrymen came in multitudes with writs of ejectment and writs of trespass. In his court the government attacked at once the charters of all the cities and boroughs in Ireland; and he easily found pretexts for pronouncing all those charters forfeited. The municipal corporations, about a hundred in number, had been instituted to be the

He

speaks highly of Nagle's knowledge and ability, but in the Diary (Jan. 31. 168) calls him "a covetous, ambitious man."

strongholds of the reformed religion and of the English interest, and had consequently been regarded by the Irish Roman Catholics with an aversion which cannot be thought unnatural or unreasonable. Had those bodies been remodelled in a judicious and impartial manner, the irregularity of the proceedings by which so desirable a result had been attained might have been pardoned. But it soon appeared that one exclusive system had been swept away only to make room for another. The boroughs were subjected to the absolute authority of the Crown. Towns in which almost every householder was an English Protestant were placed under the government of Irish Roman Catholics. Many of the new Aldermen had never even seen the places over which they were appointed to bear rule. At the same time the Sheriffs, to whom belonged the execution of writs and the nomination of juries, were selected in almost every instance from the caste which had till very recently been excluded from all public trust. It was affirmed that some of these important functionaries had been burned in the hand for theft. Others had been servants to Protestants; and the Protestants added, with bitter scorn, that it was fortunate for the country when this was the case; for that a menial who had cleaned the plate and rubbed down the horse of an English gentleman might pass for a civilised being, when compared with many of the native aristocracy whose lives had been spent in coshering or marauding. To such Sheriffs no colonist, even if he had been so strangely fortunate as to obtain a judgment, dared to entrust an execution.1

1 King, ii. 5. 1., iii. 3. 5.; A Short View of the Methods made use of in Ireland for the Subversion and Destruction of the Protestant Religion and