with William, prince of Orange, after having communicated his intentions to the parliament, who received the proposal with satisfaction. Thus began the connection with the family of Orange, which was afterwards attended with the most important consequences.

Charles, despoiled in England of the most considerable part of his authority, and threatened with further encroachments, arrived in Scotland with an intention of abdicating almost entirely the small share of power which there remained to him, and of giving full satisfaction if possible to his restless subjects in that kingdom.

The lords of articles were an ancient institution in the Scottish parliament. They were constituted in this manner. The temporal lords chose eight bishops, the bishops elected eight temporal lords. These sixteen named eight commissioners of the counties and eight burgesses; and without the previous consent of these thirty-two, who were denominated lords of articles, no motion could be made in parliament. As the bishops were entirely devoted to the court, the nomination of all the lords of articles completely depended on the king, who thus united to his right of negative, after the bills had passed, the still more important power of preventing their being proposed. The bench of bishops being now abolished, the parliament laid hold of the opportunity totally to set aside the lords of the articles; and from that period the nation began to enjoy a regular freedom.

The peers and commons formed only one house in the Scottish parliament, and as from the union of the two crowns many English gentlemen had been graced with Scottish titles, it was to be feared that all the determinations of parliament would in time depend upon the king by means of these votes of foreigners, who had no interest or property in Scotland; a law was passed therefore, enacting that

no man should be created a Scotch peer who did not possess ten thousand marks (above five hundred pounds) of annual rent in the kingdom.

A law for triennial parliaments was likewise passed, with this important addition, that the last act of every parliament should be to appoint the time and place for holding the ensuing parliament.

These concessions were but moderate when compared to the article importing, that no member of the privy council, in whose hands, during the king's absence, the whole administration lay, no officer of state, none of the judges, should be appointed but by the advice and approbation of parliament. Charles even agreed to deprive of their seats four judges who had adhered to his interests, and their places were conferred on others more agreeable to the ruling party. Several of the covenanters were also sworn of the privy council; and all the ministers of state, counsellors, and judges, were by law to hold their places during life or good behaviour.

But while the king was employed in pacifying Scotland by giving up some of the most important parts of his legal authority, he received intelligence of a dangerous rebellion having broken out in Ireland with circumstances of the most alarming nature. After many fruitless attempts to reconcile that turbulent people to the authority of laws, and to cure them of that sloth and barbarism to which they had ever been subject, king James had found no better. means to secure the dominion of Ireland to the English crown, than to send there great colonies of British, who by being intermixed with the Irish had gradually introduced industry, with all the civilized arts of life, among them, and completely changed the face of things in that country. This plan had been constantly adhered to under the successive administration of all the lord lieutenants, and above all of Strafford, whose energy and abilities

seemed to have bestowed at last on that savage country, the regularity of an European settle

ment.

After the execution of Strafford, the fermentation excited in Ireland by that great event, soon produced the greatest innovations in the government. The British protestants transplanted in that country, universally adopted the highest principles and practice of the puritans. Monarchy, as well as hierarchy, became odious to them. They greedily adopted and pursued every method of limiting the king's authority and freeing themselves from any submission to it. They considered not, that as they scarcely formed the sixth part of the people, and were secretly obnoxious to the ancient inhabitants, the royal power was the only protection on which they could depend, and that they were therefore the more interested to maintain it in its full extent. On the other hand the eight thousand troops which Strafford had thought necessary to add in Ireland to the usual standing army of three thousand men, had been disbanded at the earnest demand of parliament, who considered them as entirely at tached to the king; nor would the commons consent to the proposal of Charles, who thinking it dangerous that such a number of men, trained to arms, should be left in idleness, had agreed with the Spanish ambassador that they should be inlisted in his master's service, and transported into Flanders.

The old Irish, whose animosity to the English was suspended but not extinguished, remarked these false steps, and prepared to take advantage of them. Roger More, one of them, much celebrated among his countrymen for his valour and capacity, formed the project of expelling the English. He secretly went from chieftain to chieftain, and roused up every latent principle of discontent. He maintained

a close correspondence with lord Maguire, and sir Phelim O'Neale, the most powerful of the old Irish; and it was determined that the same day O'Neale and the other chiefs should begin an insurrection in the provinces, lord Maguire and More should surprise the castle of Dublin. The latter were already in Dublin with a numerous band of their partizans, when on the eve of the day appointed for the execution of the plan, the secret of it was betrayed by one of the conspirators, an Irish protestant of the name of O'Conolly. The justices and council retired immediately to the castle; Maguire was appre hended, and More with difficulty escaped.

This discovery came too late to prevent the intended insurrection; O'Neale and his confederates had already taken arms in Ulster; the houses, cattle, and goods of the English were first seized. After rapacity had fully satiated itself, cruelty, the most barbarous that ever, in any nation, was known or heard of, began its bloody scenes. An universal massacre commenced of the English, now defenceless, and passively resigned to their inhuman foes. No age, no sex, no condition was spared. In vain did flight save from the first assault; destruction was every where let loose and met the hunted victims at every turn. All the tortures which wanton cruelty could devise; all the lingering pains of body, the anguish of mind, the agonies of despair, could not satiate revenge excited without injury. Many, ingenious in their barbarity, tempted their prisoners by the fond love of life, to embrue their hands in the blood of their friends, brothers, parents; and having thus rendered them accomplices in guilt, gave them that death which they sought to shun by deserving it.

The generous nature of More was shocked at the recital of such enormities. He flew to O'Neale's camp, but found that his authority, which was suf

ficient to excite the Irish to insurrection, was far from enabling him to restrain their inhumanity, had he been disposed to try it; but he preferred to preserve the ascendant he had acquired over the northern rebels by the brutality of his nature, though without any courage or capacity, while More, abandoning a cause polluted by so many crimes, retired into Flanders. The English colonies were totally annihilated in the open country of Ulster. The Scots at first met with more favourable treatment, as the Irish intended to engage them to a passive neutrality; and by this means most of the Scottish planters escaped with their lives.

From Ulster the flames of rebellion diffused themselves in an instant over the other three provinces, and all places were marked with slaughter and destruction. The saving of Dublin alone preserved in Ireland the remains of the English name. The gates of that city, though timorously opened, received the wretched supplicants, and presented a scene of misery beyond what any eye had ever before beheld. The more vigorous of the unhappy fugitives, to the number of three thousand, were inlisted into three regiments. The unfortunate victims of this insurrection by the most moderate and reasonable accounts are supposed to amount to forty thousand.

The justices ordered to Dublin all the bodies of the army which were not surrounded by the rebels, and they assembled a force of fifteen hundred veterans. They soon enlisted and armed from the magazines above four thousand men more. The English of the pale, who pretended at first to blame the insurrection, had by their protestations engaged the justices to supply them with arms, which they promised to employ in defence of the government. But the interests of religion soon prevailing over them, they joined the Irish and rivalled them in