Clarendon appointed lord-lieutenant. the real governor. He removes all Protest CHAP. XIII. instructions: the first was to remember that Ireland was a conquered country; the second, that Catholics were to be admitted to all offices and privileges equally with the Protestants; and the third, that all men of dangerous principles, that is, Protestants and Whigs, were to be removed Tyrconnel from the army.* Tyrconnel, however, was the real director of Irish affairs; and before many weeks had passed, the lord-lieutenant found himself surrounded by numerous Roman Catholic officers and magistrates, who received their orders direct from London, instead of through him, as the King's representative. The English planters, now thoroughly alarmed, began to leave the island in greater numbers than before; and when Clarendon remonstrated to the King against his proceedings, and pointed to their results, James coldly replied that he regarded the majority of the colonists as his enemies (April, 1686), and he ordered that Roman Catholics should be admitted to further offices and privileges. In June, Tyrconnel returned to Dublin from London, and at once commenced the remodelling of the standing army. Every officer suspected of cherishing revolutionary ants from principles was cashiered; and, under pretence of old age or deficient stature, every fourth man among the privates was discharged. Orders were given to the new officers that no Protestant was to be enlisted; in a short time, more than 2,000 natives were introduced into the ranks; and it was confidently affirmed, that before Christmas not a man of English race would be left in the whole army. The greater number of the officers who were cashiered went over to Holland, and accepted commissions in the British regiments serving there, and they enjoyed, four years later, the pleasure of driving their successors before them, in ignominious rout, from the margin of the Boyne. He conspires Having thus remodelled the army, Tyrconnel returned to make the to London, to urge upon the King the expediency of pendent. repealing the Act of Settlement, and 'removing the lordlieutenant. His avowed object was to annihilate the English interest, and make the island entirely independent. But the English Roman Catholics, Powis, Dover, and Bellasyse, with whom James was in the habit of taking counsel, were almost unanimous in favour of the Act of Settlement, and even James himself could not altogether forget that he was an Englishman and an English King. the army. island inde 15. The Fall of the Hydes. It was now plain that the influence of Clarendon and his brother with the King was gone, and that * Lingard, XIII., 95. 1686 Clarendon dismissed. the real direction of affairs had passed to the popish cabal, of which Sunderland and Petre were the chief members. Rochester, terrified at the prospect of his removal and disgrace, consented at last to listen to the teaching of a Romish divine, and even promised to agree to any policy which the King might adopt. James demanded his entire conversion to Rome; a proposition to which the earl, base as he was, would not submit. He was, therefore, dismissed, with a pension of £4,000 a year. Clarendon Rochester fell with him; Tyrconnel was appointed lord-deputy of and Ireland; Roman Catholics speedily filled every office; while 1,500 families of the English residents deserted the island, and accompanied Clarendon to England. The new lord-deputy soon re-commenced his intrigues for rendering the country independent of England; he made secret overtures to Louis XIV.; he introduced natives into the municipal corporations, Tyrconnel and remodelled the charters of those which refused to of Ireland. submit, and having thus secured, as he thought, a majority of members who would repeal the Act of Settlement, and restore to the natives their property, he solicited the King's licence to call a parliament. But James was now thoroughly alarmed, and the parliament was not called.* lord-deputy Jesuits in After the dismissal of Rochester, the treasury was put into commission, Lord Bellasyse being made first lord; Arundel The received the privy seal, and Dover had a seat at the power. board. In order that the finances might not be ruined by these incapable and inexperienced men, Godolphin was named a commissioner of the treasury, although he continued to be chamberlain to the Queen. It was evident, from these changes, that James had resolved to exclude from office all who were not Roman Catholics, or refused to be converted. From the dismissal of Rochester, therefore, we may date the decisive measures that were taken to counteract the King's intentions to depress the national church, and restore popery and absolute power.† SECTION III.-THE EVENTS WHICH LED IMMEDIATELY TO THE REVOLUTION. 16. Relations between the Prince of Orange and the King. The question of armed resistance to all these despotic proceedings of James, had been constantly present to the minds of many * Lingard, XIII., 98-99. These projects of Tyrconnel, and the character of himself and his master, were ridiculed in Wharton's ballad, "Lilli-burlero," which expressed the gratification felt by Irishmen at the approaching triumph of Popery and the Milesian race. It was adapted to a spirited air by Purcell, published ten years before. See Percy's Reliques, II., 388. Macaulay, II., 417; Hallam, II., 230. consulta conduct of CHAP. XIII. Whigs, and they looked to the Prince of Orange for aid in any The Whigs attempt which they might make against the government. hold secret These men held their secret consultations in "The Recess" tions. in the Monastery of Lady Place, at Hurley, on the Berkshire side of the Thames. The wife of the Prince of Orange being the presumptive heir to the crown, and he himself being the King's nephew, it was clearly his interest, right, and bounden duty to watch over the internal politics of England;* and he was Prudent from the first, the legitimate and natural ally of the Whig the Prince party. Hitherto, his conduct had been merely defensive; of Orange. he avoided any direct rupture with his uncles, who treated him with little regard, and he had taken care not to implicate himself either in Shaftesbury's schemes or Monmouth's rebellion. Yet there existed many causes of dissension between the prince and his father-in-law, which it was the interest of the French monarch and the British exiles in Holland to foster and keep alive. One source of irritation lay in the maintenance British by the States of six British regiments, some of which, in Holland. when they were brought to England to resist Monmouth, were more disposed to fight for that pretender than for the legitimate sovereign. James, therefore, sought to remodel the force, by cashiering the officers and appointing others on whom he could rely. The prince objected to this proceeding; he carefully excluded all whom he suspected of attachment to the King or Popery, and readily gave commands to the Irish officers expelled by Tyrconnel. The regiments The Jesuits propose to exclude Mary from the succes sion. On the other hand, the Prince of Orange had far greater reason to complain of his uncle's policy, because it was fraught with so much danger to the rights of the Princess Mary. To preserve the religious fabric which James was labouring so hard to rear, the priests who surrounded the throne proposed to exclude Mary from the succession, and transfer it to her sister Anne, in the event of the latter conforming to the Roman church. But when this project was placed before James, he indignantly rejected it (August, 1686). The expedient by which he hoped to give stability to his plans was, to persuade the Prince of Orange to pledge himself to support a measure for the abolition of the penal laws, and he sent Penn, the celebrated Quaker, and now one of his chief advisers, to lecture the prince on the principles of toleration. But Burnet, the historian, was the Prince's then at the Hague, high in the favour of William, and his chief counsellor on English affairs. By his advice Burnet, English secretary. * Hallam, II., 231. 1686 the prince replied that, hostile as he was to persecution, he would never consent to the repeal of the Test Act, because it was necessary for the preservation of the Protestant faith.* William and the two motive of 17. Relations between the Prince of Orange, and the Whigs and Tories. While the Prince of Orange was thus on no very good terms with James, his relations with English parties were not entirely satisfactory. He was offended with the Whigs Differences because of their support of Monmouth's pretensions, and twen of their attempts to strip the executive of some powers English which he considered necessary to its efficiency and parties. dignity. His religious opinions, again, did not coincide with those of the Tories: they were Arminians and Prelatists; he was a Calvinist and Latitudinarian. Hence he was neither a Whig nor a Tory. Furthermore, he never became an Englishman; for although he saved England, he never loved her; all his patriotism was confined to Holland, and even this sentiment was subordinate to another feeling-hostility to France and Louis XIV. The sole This one great passion explains the whole of his policy his English towards England. He sought to form a grand coalition policy. in Europe against the common enemy; if England joined this coalition, it would be victorious; if she remained neutral, it would be powerless; if she opposed it, it would be utterly defeated. For this reason alone, England was important in his eyes; and to gain this object, he saw that it was essential there should exist in England, perfect harmony between the sovereign and the parlia ment. Which party should make concessions was to him a question of secondary importance. In the Popish Plot he advised the government to give way, though he disapproved of the proceedings of the Whigs; he advised the court to assent to the Exclusion Bill, when he saw that its refusal was likely to produce a civil war; he protected Monmouth to propitiate Charles, and he dismissed him to propitiate James, who, he at first thought, would join the coalition. But when Halifax was dismissed, and James openly announced his policy and renewed the alliance with * Burnet had enjoyed, for some years, an European reputation by his History of the Reformation, which had been received with loud applause by all Protestants, and had been felt by the Roman Catholics as a severe blow. The celebrated Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, was engaged in replying to it; parliament had, during the excitement of the Popish Plot, honoured Burnet with its thanks, and exhorted him to continue his historical researches; he had lived on terms of intimacy with the chief statesmen of the time, and had attended Lord William Russell in his last hours. When James ascended the throne, Burnet retired to the continent, and, after travelling through Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, was invited by William to take up his residence at the Hague, in the summer of 1686. He rendered signal service to the prince at this time, by bringing about a good understanding between him and the Princess Mary, and inducing the latter to make a solemn promise to her husband, that in the event of her succeeding to the throne, he should bear sway, and exercise the authority.-Macaulay, II., 437-433. The League CHAP. XIII. France, then the prince and his father-in-law were separated completely and for ever. At the same time, the causes which had produced a coolness between William and the two great English parties, and especially the pretensions of Monmouth, disappeared; the Whigs looked to him as their party leader, and the Tories as the only deliverer of the church from popery. On the continent, his prospects were equally brightening: on the 29th of July, 1686, the famous League of Augsburg was formed, by which of Augsburg. the Emperor, the King of Spain in his capacity as Duke of Burgundy, the King of Sweden as Duke of Pomerania, the Elector of Bavaria, the Suabian, Bavarian, and Franconian circles, and some German princes, bound themselves ostensibly to maintain the peace of the empire, but in reality, to oppose the pretensions of France. Thus circumstances everywhere plainly showed, that in no long time, the Prince of Orange, who had formed the League, would again be the captain of a coalition against France, in which England would be included, because he had become the head of the English opposition.* 18. The First Declaration of Indulgence. The original purpose of James, in his domestic policy, had been to obtain for the Romish church, not only complete immunity from all disabilities, but, also, an ample share of ecclesiastical and academical endowments, and at the same time to enforce the laws against the Puritans. This policy had failed, because the church and the James seeks to unite all Noncon formists against the Cavaliers refused to share ascendancy with the church of Rome. James, therefore, meditated now a general union of all Nonconformists, Catholic and Protestant, against church. the established religion, and he accordingly issued, in Scotland, by way of trial, a Declaration of Indulgence (February, 1687), granting full and free toleration to Presbyterians, Quakers, and Roman Catholics, to exercise their worship in houses and chapels, but not in field conventicles; for the Rigid Presbyterians were still to be suppressed with the utmost severity. The penal laws against Romanists were suspended at the same time. While he waited to see what effect this edict would produce in "Closetings." England, James held private conferences, called "closetings," with the chief functionaries and members of parliament, to exact from them a promise to support the repeal of the Test Act and the penal laws against Roman Catholics. The great majority of those who were thus consulted, expressed their determination to oppose the court on these measures; and Lords Derby, Thanet, Shrewsbury, Lumley, and Newport, Vice-Admiral Herbert, * Macaulay, II., 438-452. |