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XXX.

was disgracefully rejected; and they were immedi-CHA P. ately deprived of their charter by a judgment hastily pronounced on a writ of quo warranto. Many other corporations were by the same procedure dissolved in the course of two terms; others were intimidated into a surrendry: in some the possession was given by a catholic sheriff to persons chosen for the purpose, in virtue of a new charter, and the former possessors were left to bring a fruitless action before catholic judges against the intruders; or were imprisoned for disobedience. The new corporations, in cities where the English interest had been predominant, were permitted to consist of one-third protestants, while the other two-thirds were catholics; but these nominal protestants were chosen from sectaries and the most contemptible classes. The most barbarous Irish were admitted among the catholics; and so little attention was paid to decorum, that, in a northern city, a man, who had been condemned to the gallows for his crimes, was appointed chief magistrate.

on the uni

Before the removal of Clarendon, a royal man- Attempts date had been presented to the governors of the versity university of Dublin, directing them to admit a catholic, named Greene, to the professorship of the Irish language, with all its emoluments and arrears of salary. As no such professorship existed, Greene was disappointed; but the members, dreading every violence, resolved to convert most of their plate into money, for the erection of new buildings, or whatever purpose might be supposed safest. The plate, embarked for the purpose of being sold in VOL. II, England,

G

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CHAP. England, with the licence of Clarendon, was seized in the port of Dublin by Tyrconnel, on his arrival, and lodged in the king's stores. Persuaded by the more moderate of his advisers to return it to the university, Tyrconnel, when the plate was sold, repenting of his lenity, ordered the purchaser to come before him. Nugent, the lord chief justice, accused him of having purchased stolen goods, and obliged him to give security to prosecute the governors of the college; but the good sense of Nagle interposed to protect them, for the present, from farther outrage. By another mandate from the king, one Doyle, wretchedly insufficient for the office, and scandalously profligate, but meritorious with the ruling party as a convert to Romanism, was ordered to be admitted to a fellowship, without being obliged to take any other oath than that of a fellow. This oath was found to include that of supremacy, which Doyle refused to take; and, when the judges directed him to procure a second mandate, his character appeared so infamous, that his patrons were ashamed to make any farther efforts in his favour. Tyrconnel took revenge for this disappointment by stopping the annual pension from the exchequer to the college, at that time the principal part of its support.

State of

By an ignorant, bigoted, and lawless government, the Country consternation and terror were every where diffused. The sheriffs were mean and brutal; the courts of justice infamously partial; the military officers barbarous and insolent; robberies unrestrained and un

punished;

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punished; murders wantonly committed with im CHAP punity; outlawries daily reversed; the sons of rebels and murderers raised highest in the favour of government: clowns and menial servants promoted to offices of trust, and insulting their former masters; indigent men, suddenly advanced, and supporting their new stations by rapine; the credit of traders destroyed, and artificers reduced to beggary, or forced to emigration. Though the ministry of Ireland regarded the public calamity with indifference, as if it were only the calamity of protestants, the ministers in England, alarmed at the prodigious decrease of Irish revenue, inveighed against the ruinous violence of Tyrconnel. Lord Bellasis, who was himself a catholic, declared with particular warmth, that his madness was sufficient to ruin ten kingdoms. But Tyrconnel, leaving his government in the hands of chancellor Fitton and lord Clanricarde, went, accompanied by Rice, chief baron of the exchequer, to wait on the king at Chester, to whom he easily justified his conduct.

At his departure from Dublin on this occasion, he reminded the Romish ministers of the power which. their party had acquired in Ireland, and prayed God to damn them if ever they should part with it. Their power seemed indeed so incontestably established that they began to quarrel among themselves. One Sheridan, secretary of state and commissioner of the customs, restrained by the lord-deputy in his lucrative trade of selling employments, framed, in revenge, an accusation against him, with the assistance

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CHAP. of the Romish primate. Tyrconnel in this contest, not without suffering much disgrace, was victorious; and Sheridan was deprived of his employments. To punish the primate, the king solicited the pope to appoint him a co-adjutor, which the pontiff contemptuously refused. On the other hand the friends of Sheridan, particularly father Peters, the king's confessor, painted in proper colours the destructive administration of Tyrconnel, and recommended the earl of Castlemain for the government of Ireland, in which recommendation the pope is said to have concurred. But the ministers of France were warmly in Tyrconnel's interest, and sent him intelligence of the intrigues against him. Effectually to overthrow all such cabals, the lord-deputy, with the advice of his friends, resolved, by a brilliant stroke, to convince his sovereign both of his abilities and

Attempt

acts of set

zeal.

Proposing to convene an Irish parliament, which against the from previous arrangements would be entirely in tlement. the Romish interest, he caused heads of a bill to be framed, which, under pretence of relieving the injured Irish, would overthrow the whole settlement of Ireland. Rice was commissioned to lay the scheme before the English council, and Nugent ob truded himself as his colleague. The king, who coincided with Tyrconnel in his views, fearing an opposition in the cabinet, introduced the business immediately to the privy council, and declaimed with warmth against the iniquity of the acts of settlement. The affair was of so alarming and dan

gerous

XXXI.

generous a nature, that the members, however pliant C HAB. in general to the royal pleasure, were here aroused to a freedom of sentiment. The agents were with difficulty admitted to be heard; and the futility of Nugent's pleading, notwithstanding the plausible arguments of Rice, countenanced so well the prejudices of the auditors, that the pleaders were insulted even in the royal presence, and dismissed with disgrace. Even the arbitrary and bigoted monarch feared to press the matter in the face of so universal a disapprobation. Sunderland afterwards declared that he had refused a bribe of forty thousand pounds for the forwarding of Tyrconnel's plan. The mob attended the agents on their return from the council with potatoes elevated on poles, vehemently vociferating," room for the Irish ambassadors."

Rejoicings

the ca

tholics.

The mortification of this diappointment was in some degree alleviated by the birth of a male heir to of the crown. As before this event, the princess Mary, wife to the prince of Orange, a protestant, stood next in the line of succession, the joy of the catholics of both Britain and Ireland was unbounded, when Providence had furnished them with an undisputed successor of their own religion. The fondest objects of men's wishes are often the causes of their grief or calamity. The protestants of England, who had comforted themselves with a distant prospect of relief by the succession of the princess of Orange, were on the total deprivation of that prospect, aroused to a sense of their situation, and to exertions which drove James from the throne, and the catholics

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1688.

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