But grantees of the crown, unanimously consented to augment the fund for reprisals by the surrender of one-third 1665. of their acquisitions. The king by this measure was Aug. placed in a situation, not indeed to do justice, but to silence the most importunate or most deserving among the petitioners; and, by an explanatory act, he gave to the forty-nine protestant officers the security which they sought, and added twenty catholics to a former list of thirty-four nominees, or persons to be restored to their mansion-houses, and two thousand acres of land. when compensation had thus been made to a few of the sufferers, what, it may be asked, became of the officers who had followed the royal fortune abroad, or of the three thousand catholics who had entered their claims of innocence? To all these, the promises which had been made by the act of settlement were broken; the unfortunate claimants were deprived of their rights, and debarred from all hope of future relief. A measure of such sweeping and appalling oppression is perhaps, without a parallel in the history of civilized nations. Its injustice could not be denied; and the only apology offered in its behalf, was the stern necessity of quieting the fears and jealousies of the Cromwellian settlers, and of establishing on a permanent basis the protestant ascendency in Ireland*. Though, to facilitate the execution of the act, it was provided that any doubt on its construction should be interpreted in favour of the protestant party, yet so many difficulties occurred, that several years elapsed before the settlement was completely accomplished. The following is the general result. The protestants were previously in rossession of about one moiety of all the profitable lands in the island: of the second moiety, which had been forfeited under the commonwealth, something less than two-thirds was by the act confirmed to the protestants; and of the remainder, a portion Clar. 112. 134. Carte, 310-6. Irish St. vol. iii. 2--137. A.D. 1661.] ITS CONSEQUENCES. 243 almost equal in quantity, but not in quality, to onethird, was appropriated to the catholics *. From a valuable MS. paper belonging to Sheffield Grace, Esq., and published by him in his interesting Memoirs of the Family of Grace, it appears that the profitable lands forfeited in Ireland under the commonwealth, amounted to 7,708,237 statute acres, leaving undisturbed about 8,500,000 acres belonging to the protestants, the constant good affection men of the Irish, the church, and the crown, besides some lands never seized or surveyed. In 1675, the forfeited lands had been disposed of as follows: The forty-nine officers are those who claimed arrears for service under the king before 1649. The duke of York received a grant of all the lands held by the regicides who had been attainted. Provisors were persons in whose favour provisoes had been made in the acts, Nominees were the catholics named by the king to be restored to their mansion-houses and two thousand acres contiguous. Transplantation refers to the catholics whom Cromwell forced from their own lands, and settled in Connaught. There remained 824,391 acres still unappropriated, which were parts of towns, or possessed by English or Irish without title, or, on account of some doubts, had never been set out. Mem. 37-39. 244 CHAPTER V. CHARLES II. Marriage of the duke of York with Anne Hyde-Of the king with the prindess of Portugal-Sale of Dunkirk to the French-Declaration of indul gence to tender consciences-Disapproved by both houses-Great naval victory-The plague in London-Five-mile-act-Obstinate actions at sea. AMONG the immediate consequences of the restoration, nothing appeared to the intelligent observer more extraordinary than the almost instantaneous revolution which it wrought in the moral habits of the people. Under the government of men making profession of godliness, vice had been compelled to wear the exterior garb of virtue; but the moment the restraint was removed, it stalked forth without disguise, and was everywhere received with welcome. The cavaliers, to celebrate their triumph, abandoned themselves to ebriety and debauchery; and the new loyalists, that they might prove the sincerity of their conversion, strove to excel the cavaliers in licentiousness. Charles, who had not forgotten his former reception in Scotland, gladly availed himself of the opportunity to indulge his favourite propensities. That affectation of piety and decorum which had marked the palace of the protector Oliver, was soon exchanged for a perpetual round of pleasure and revelry; and the court of the English king, if inferior in splendour, did not yield in refinement and voluptuousness. to CHAP. V.] PRIVATE MARRIAGE OF JAMES. 245 that of his French contemporary, Louis XIV. Among the females who sought to win his attentions, (and this, we are told, was the ambition of several *,) the first place, both for beauty and influence, must be allotted to Barbara Villiers, daughter of viscount Grandison, and wife to a gentleman of the name of Palmert. On the very day of the king's arrival in the capital, she established her dominion over his heart, and contrived to retain it for years, in defiance of the inconstancy of his disposition, and the intrigues of her rivals. With her Charles generally spent several hours of the day; and, even when the council had assembled to deliberate in his presence, the truant monarch occasionally preferred to while away his time in the bewitching company and conversation of his mistress . 13 James and Henry, the dukes of York and Gloucester, religiously copied the example set by their sovereign and elder brother. But before the lapse of six months, 1660. Henry was borne to the grave §; and soon afterwards it Sept. began to be whispered at court, that James was married to a woman of far inferior rank, Anne, the daughter of the chancellor Hyde. The duke had become acquainted with her at the court of his sister, the princess of Orange, to whom she was maid of honour. Anne possessed few pretensions to beauty; but wit and manner supplied the place of personal charms || she attracted the notice of the young prince, and had the address to 1659. draw from her lover a promise, and afterwards a private Nov. contract, of marriage. From the Hague, she followed 24. * Reresby, 7. +Roger Palmer was son of sir James Palmer, chancellor of the garter, by Catherine, eldest daughter of sir William Herbert, afterwards earl of Powis. Roger Palmer was created by Charles II., earl of Castlemaine and baron Limerick. He died in 1705. "He delighted in a bewitching kind of pleasure called sauntering." Sheffield, ii. 78. 6 The king mourned in purple. Pep. i. 139. La duchesse de York est fort laide; la bouche extraordinairement fendue, et les yeux fort eraillez, mais trés courtoise. Journal de Monconis, p. 22. Lyons, 1666. Hamilton says, that she had l'air grand, la taille assez belle, et beaucoup d'esprit, (Mém. de Grainmont, i. 149, Edition de Cazin.) Pepys, that she was a plain woman, like her mother, i. 188. 3. the royal family to England; and, in a few months her situation induced James to marry her clandestinely, 1660. according to the rite of the church of England *, and to Sept. reveal the important secret to the king, whose objections (for he heard it with pain) were soon subdued by the passionate importunity of his brother. To most fathers this alliance would have proved a subject of joy; but Hyde, with expressions of anger, the extravagance of which might have provoked a doubt of their sincerity, affected to deplore the disgrace of the royal family, and advised Charles, after the precedents of former reigns, to send the presumptuous female to the Tower. Unable to persuade the king, who, perhaps, laughed at his officiousness in secret, he confined, in virtue of his parental authority, the undutiful daughter to a room in his own house; while, by the connivance of one of the family, probably the mother, James had free access to the cell of the captive, and sought by his assiduity to console her for the displeasure, whether it were real or pretended, of her father. Neither had the father much reason to Nov. complain. The king made him a present of 20,000%, 3. and raised him, by the title of baron Hyde of Hindon, to the peerage. 23. The choice of James was severely condemned by his mother, by his eldest sister, and by the political enemies Sept. of the chancellor. The princess of Orange, who had recently arrived in England, declared to the king, that she would never yield the precedence to a woman who had stood as a servant behind her chair. The queenmother indulged in terms of the bitterest reproach; and hastened her promised visit to her children, that she might prevent so foul a disgrace to the royal houses of England and France. Charles Berkeley, whether he Kennet's Register, from the Council book, 381. + Clarendon, 31, 32. She previously intended to come, that she might meet all her children together, and look after her dower. Clar. 32-36. It would appear, that the lands settled on her as her dower had been in a great measure shared among persons who had a hand in her husband's death. On inquiry, the |