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The open and firm administration of Ormond made him obnoxious to a party in England, called the Cabal, rendered memorable by their secret endeavours to subvert the prevailing order of things; and the agitated state of the Catholics afforded a convenient opportunity to make their complaints a pretext to question the propriety of his public conduct, whilst the great increase of his private fortune from 7000l. per annum before the war to nearly 80,000l. after its termination, afforded strong grounds to work his removal.

In his defence before the privy council, in England, he proved the charges of his enemies false and frivolous. His dignified behaviour, and the cool scorn with which he treated his accusers in the royal presence, so far provoked the favourite, Buckingham, that he asked the king, "Sir, I wish to know whether it be the duke of Ormond that is out of favour with your majesty, or your majesty with the duke of Ormond; for of the two, you seem most out of countenance." His elevated integrity awed even his majesty, as was shown by an observation made by the king on seeing the duke approaching to take his seat in the council as usual: "Yonder comes Ormond; I have done all in my power to disoblige him, and to make him AS DISCONTENTED AS OTHERS, but he will be loyal in spite of me; I must even employ him again; he is the fittest person to govern Ireland."

By the superior management of Ormond, the protestant clergy got possession of the church-establishment, in exclusion both of the Catholics, who had retained many of the benefices up to that period, and of the Presbyterians, whose power had become very considerable, during the short triumph of Cromwell's party. The following account of this remarkable occurrence, taken from Gordon's History of Ireland, may serve to show how fortuitously was obtained

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that revenue which has since accumulated so prodigiously, and which carries in its train such boundless influence.

"The king had assented to a request of the convention, that all impropriate and forfeited tithes and glebes, in his majesty's disposal, should be granted to the clergy; and that all escheated lands, now exempt from the payment of ecclesiastical dues, should be rendered liable to the same. Ministers of the presbyterian worship, some of whom, beside the Scottish clergy of Ulster, had gained possession of churches in Dublin and its neighbourhood, had petitioned the king for the establishment of their own system; and a petition to the same purpose was promoted in the army. But Charles, by the advice of Ormond, the steady friend of the episcopal clergy, instead of trusting to the sense of a new parliament, composed in a great measure of puritans, filled immediately the four archbishoprics and twelve bishoprics with the most eminent of the clergy of Ireland. As their patents and conscecration were delayed for some months, till a new great seal should be prepared, and as the delay was imputed by the enemies of episcopacy to an irresolution or reluctance of the king, a second petition in favour of the Presbyterians was drawn by the military officers, and signed by great numbers in various departments, civil and military. Coote and Major Bury, who then administered the kingdom, with the title of Commissioners of Government, agreed to suppress this petition, at the instance of Coote, who discovered in the style of the officers an aversion to monarchy; and in the administration of the new lords-justices the consecration was performed with triumphal pomp to the great mortification of the many puritans, who had laboured with all their might against the episcopal establishment."

The intrigues of factious persons in England, and of their

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interested partisans in Ireland, rendered the latter years of Ormond's administration agitated and unhappy, from the numerous and unproved assertions of dangerous and hostile combinations of the Catholics to regain their lost possessions and influence in public affairs. Although the prudent measures of the Lord-Lieutenant maintained tranquillity, it could not guard against the proceedings which were secretly in progress, encouraged and supported by the duke of York, more out of hatred to his personal enemies than from a sense of duty to promote the prosperity of any class of the population. It was such narrow selfishness and headlong bigotry that led to the Revolution, and subsequently caused his expulsion from the realm.

CHAPTER IV.

EVENTS ATTENDING THE ACCESSION OF JAMES II.

THE circumstances which attended the accession of James II. were not likely to ensure to the subject those beneficial consequences flowing from the government of a prince respected by the people; but James was even more than not respected: he had the misfortune to incur the hatred of a powerful party in England, on account of his open avowal of being a Catholic; and while he came strongly recommended to the majority of the Irish by the profession of their religion, he was equally dreaded by the wealthy and powerful minority, who were determined to risk any thing rather than support his goverment. There was therefore no hope of unanimity between the monarch and the subject. England was decidedly Protestant, and could not be expected to submit easily to a Catholic king; for where torture and death had been recently inflicted for the crime of popery, and the flame of fanaticism had not been quite extinguished, the king who upheld a religion contrary to that of the state could not be long the ruler of that nation. The case was far different in Ireland; the dislike to James rested on grounds much more solid than that of religious prejudice, for property was almost at stake.

Ireland, like England, had its Protestant aristocracy, possessed of nearly all the territorial value of the island; with them were associated in power, the consequence of property, the dissenters, who had reaped the benefit of the

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plantation schemes: both kept the original proprietors of the soil in a state of degradation and disability favourable to their mutual security. This they effected by means of their own parliament, and they took care to make that assembly consist only of themselves.

Where property is wanting, efficiency is obviously precluded. Intention is useless, destitute of the energy of means. The mass of the people Ireland, Catholic invariably, from the first impression of Christian belief, was neutralized in effort, being rendered powerless from the loss of estate. The convulsions of protracted and petty warfare had thrown individual interest to the surface, and rendered them "the scum of earth :" they merely vegetated. Deprived of the influence arising from a participation in framing laws, their existence as a component part of the body politic was next to imaginary, it was all but deniable; -more, they bore the characteristic of ob noxiousness, being a monument of the injustice long exercised against them.

Had James the good sense to know and understand all this, and a sense of honour becoming his situation, he would not, on his abdication of the English crown, have disturbed the melancholy repose of the fallen, the helpless, the vainly loyal; he would not have dared to shelter his incapacity in the remains of ruined honesty, nor fling himself for support into the arms of those who, by the miserable tampering and chicanery of his predecessors, had been rendered incapable of supporting themselves. The fate of James was sealed when he started in his flight*

When King James fled from the Boyne, he was received with compassionate attention by the duchess of Tyrconnell, at the castle of Dublin. His Majesty peevishly complained of his Irish troops, charging them with cowardice, and running away. The reply of her Grace was

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