espoused the cause of loyalty, and waited with impatience for the declaration of Breda. This was readily accepted; and king Charles II, was proclaimed with every manifestation of joy in all the great towns of Ireland.

The situation of Ireland at the restoration [1660] is more easily described than credited. A people who had continued in arms staunch to the royal cause nearly three years longer than any other part of the British empire, reduced to two thirds of their population by their contests with the regicides, by massacres, famine, and pestilence, stripped of any armed force for defence or attack, expatriated at home, and divested of the remnants of their ancient inheritances. Thus were these unfortunate wrecks of the native Irish, the devoted victims to their loyalty, penned up like hunted beasts in the devastated wilds of Connaught, hardly existing in the gregarian and promiscuous possession and cultivation of the soil, without the means of acquiring live or dead stock, and wanting even the necessary utensils of husbandry. Surely, if ever Ireland had a call of gratitude on the crown of England, it was at the restoration of Charles II.; yet the first legislators after the restoration was established, confirmed the rebellious regicides in the wages of their sanguinary rebellion. Broghill, who was created earl of Orrery, and sir Charles Coote, created earl of Montrath, were nominated lords justices of Ireland; and sir Maurice Eustace, an old and particular friend of Ormond, appointed lord high chancellor. By the advice and management of these persons with Ormond was the whole settlement of the kingdom conducted. These persons were all known and determined enemies to the Irish catholics, and their measures were such as might from that circumstance naturally be expected. They contrived to call a new parliament, in which it was enacted no member should be qualified to sit in the house of commons but such as had taken the oaths of allegiance and supremacy; while the speaker of the house of lords (the archbishop of Armagh) proposed that all the members thereof should receive the sacrament of the Lord's supper from his grace's own hands. With the like view of preventing the Irish catholics from sending over agents to England to counteract the state commissioners who were soliciting the English parliament to except the Irish

catholics out of the act of oblivion and general pardon, the convention at Dublin put in execution all the severe laws and ordinances made by the usurpers, by which the catholics were prevented from going from one province to another to transact their business, such as had the more considerable estates were imprisoned, and all their letters to and from the capital were intercepted: the gentry were forbidden to meet, and were thereby deprived of the means of agreeing upon agents to take care of their interests, and of an opportunity to represent their grievances at the foot of the throne. The reports of popish plots and conspiracies were resorted to for the purpose of alarming the English parliament into the measure of excluding the Irish catholics from the general pardon, and quieting possessions in Ireland. Charles published a proclamation for apprehending and prosecuting all Irish rebels (a term then used as synonymous with Irish catholics,) and commanding that adventurers, soldiers, and others, who were possessed of any lands, should not be disturbed in their possessions until legally evicted, or his majesty by advice of parliament should take further order therein.

All historians agree, that the most extravagant, and unfounded reports against the Irish were brought to England, and there received with avidity, and circulated with every accumulation of inventive malice by incredible numbers of projectors, suitors, sufferers, claimants, solicitors, pretenders, and petitioners, who thronged the court, and looked to the Irish forfeitures as the sure fund for realising their various speculations. Such, however, was the effect of these manœuvres and other means, that when the state commissioners from Ireland petitioned the parliament of England to exclude the Irish catholics from the general indemnity, the duke of Ormond opposed it, alleging "that his majesty reserved the cognizance of that matter to "himself;" though it was notorious that the king had some days before in his speech informed the parliament, that he expected in relation to the Irish, that they would have a care of his honour, and of the promise he had made them. This promise, received from Breda through the marquis of Ormond, stated explicitly, that he would perform all grants and concessions, which he had either made them or promised them by

that peace; and which, as he had new instances of their loyalty and affection to him, he should study rather to enlarge than diminish or infringe in the least degree. Nevertheless the Irish catholics were excluded from the general indemnity, to their ruin, the exultation and triumph of their enemies, and the astonishment of all impartial men.

Ormond was now reinstated in the government of Ireland, and by him were framed and settled the king's declaration, the acts of settlement and explanation: by him were made out the lists of persons excepted by name, amounting to about five hundred, after the ruinous effects of the act of settlement. By him was recommended the court of claims, and under his influence were appointed the first members of it, whose interested partiality and corruption became too rank even for their patron to countenance. He then substituted men of real respectability to fill their places, but so stinted them in their time for investigating the claims of the dispossessed proprietors, that they were compelled to apply for further time to go through several thousand unheard claims, which Ormond opposed, and rejected a clause in the bill for the relief of these unheard claimants.

When the sympathy and justice of his royal master balanced between the claims of the English protestants and the Irish catholics, Ormond's efforts to bias the king in favour of the former could not fail to be successful. Conscious as he was of that monarch's disposition and secret wishes to favour the catholics, he did all he could to raise divisions amongst them, by dividing the clergy upon a punctilious form of oath, by which it was then in contemplation to allow the catholics to express their allegiance to their sovereign. Not contented with the indignant rejection of the clergy's remonstrances, he ordered them to disperse, and soon after banished them out of the nation and so rigorously was this effected, that when Ormond quitted the government there were only three catholic bishops remaining in the kingdom: two of them were bed ridden, and the third kept himself in concealment.

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So far, was Ormond from having suffered by these rebellious insurrections or civil wars in Ireland, that we learn from a letter written by his intimate and particular friend, the earl of Anglesey, and published during the life of the duke, " that his

"grace and his family, by the forfeitures and punishment of "the Irish, were the greatest gainers of the kingdom; and "had added to their inheritance vast scopes of land, and a

revenue three times greater than what his paternal estate "was before the rebellion, and that most of his increase was "out of their estates who adhered to the peaces of sixteen "hundred and forty-six and sixteen hundred and forty-eight, "er served under his majesty's ensign abroad." During the remainder of the reign of Charles II. many malicious attempts were made to stigmatize the Irish with fresh rebellions, which always served as a pretext of enforcing the execution of the penal laws against the catholics. The duke of Ormond, of whose conduct both to the king and his countrymen such opposite opinions have been formed, and whose government we have traced to the present period, was now daily declining in power and influence, through the intrigues of the duke of Buckingham and the earl of Orrery: he was first succeeded in the government of Ireland by lord Robarts, and afterwards by the carl of Essex. He was again however taken into favour and restored to the situation of lord lieutenant, which he retained till the death of Charles II., though that king, a very short time before that event, had intimated to the duke of Ormond his intention of sending over the earl of Rochester to assume the government in his stead: his grace's removal was however so far determined upon by the ruling interest of the empire at that period, that it constituted one of the earliest acts of James II.

CHAPTER VII.

THE short reign of the unfortunate James II. who succeeded his brother Charles in the dominion of the British empire, was pregnant with events of the deepest importance to the Irish nation. That the joy of the Irish catholics at the accession of a prince to the throne who was universally known to be a catholic, should be excessive, and even intemperate, is by no means surprising. The turn of the state of politics in this kingdom was rapid and complete.

The earl of Clarendon succeeded Ormond, but he was probably too firmly attached to the protestant interests to give as largely into James's measures as the court wished. His instructions clearly bespoke the king's intention of introducing catholics into corporations, and investing them with magistracies and judicial offices; and being called upon by his instructions to give his opinion on the legality of the measure, he expressed his readiness to comply with his majesty's commands, although contrary to the act of Elizabeth. The army was however soon filled with catholic officers, the bench with catholic Judges, except three who retained their seats; the corporations with catholic members and the counties with catholic sheriffs and magistrates. The earl of Tyrconnel was appointed commander in chief of the army, and made independent of the lord lieutenant. On the very rumour of these proceedings alarm and consternation seized the protestant part of the kingdom: and most of

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