of her enemies, the effects of her own intrigues, and whom she at length caused to be beheaded, though conscious of her innocence and of her own duplicity, will stand to her eternal dishonour, and to the disgrace of that legislature which suffered so flagrant a violation of the laws of justice and humanity to be inflicted on the person of a sovereign prince, a fugitive whom it was bound by every principle of honour to cherish and to protect!-To gratify the injustice, the passions, or the caprice of a monarch, to what degradations, to what abject compliances, has not an English legislature descended?

CHA P. IV.

To Elizabeth succeeded, under the title of James I. James the sixth king of Scotland, a descendant of Henry VII. by the female line, a prince eminent for profound erudition and a pacific temper, though unskilled in politics and rather pedantic. Under his government, however, Ireland began to assume a quite different appearance. At the time of his accessión, the country was so reduced by famine and desolation that all thoughts of purchasing independence by a renewal of such calamities were abandoned. England, on the other hand, was unable longer to support the excessive loss of blood and treasure which was incurred by her struggles with the Irish. It was therefore unquestionably the interest of the crown to endeavour to extend its influence not by violent but

by amicable means. It was no less the interest of the

Irish to submit with patience to a yoke which they could not shake off. The new monarch consequently endeavoured to ingratiate himself with his Hibernian subjects. A report being spread, which was rather encouraged than discountenanced by James, of his being attached to the Romish church, tended further to pave the way for the peaceable reception of his administration. An act of oblivion and indemnity was passed, whereby all offences against the crown, all injuries and trepasses committed by subject upon subject, were for ever pardoned and extinguished, never afterwards to be revived. The whole of the Irish were admitted to a full participation of the rights of English subjects. The lords surrendered their lands and received fresh grants of them according to English law. By this means the estates of each chief descended by herediditary right to his next heir according to the English mode of succession, instead of being conveyed to per haps a distant branch of the sept, a cause of much dissension and hostility. The new grants were confined to the lands actually in possession of each lord; by which the landed interest of the whole island was new modelled,and the landed property became permanently ascertained and fixed, so as in future to prevent in part all disputes..

By the lands which from time to time had been escheated to the crown, particularly the forfeiture of the territories of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, who fled the kingdom in consequence of an information of high treason having been lodged against them, James found himself in possession of a vast track, consisting of near five hundred thousand acres, in the six northern counties of Tyrconnel (now called Donegal), Tyrone, Derry, Fermanagh, and Armagh, a track of country so covered with wood, that it afforded a secure re treat not only to rebels, but to great bands of Scotch and Irish banditti, who infested the open country; and which, but for the seasonable interposition of goverument, might have for ever continued a wild unprofitable waste, disfiguring the face of the country, and destroying the health of the people by the noxious vapours which incessantly exhaled from it, the pernicious effect of the moisture collected by the wood. To dispose of these lands in such a manner as might introduce to their inhabitants all the blessings of peace and cultivation, was an undertaking exactly suited to the genius and disposition of James; and, had not a planting mania, which made him extend his plans to the injury of his peaceable subjects by depriving them of their rightful possessions, taken possession of his breast,

would have redounded to his immortal honour. He caused surveys to be accurately and expeditiously taken of the several counties where the new settlements were to be established; he described particularly the state of each; he pointed out the situations most proper for the erection of towns and castles; he delineated the character of the Irish chieftains, the manner in which they should be treated, the temper and circumstances of the old inhabitants, the rights of the new purchasers, and the claims of both; together with the impediments to former plantations, and the most proper manner of removing them. At his instance it was resolved, That the persons to whom lands were assigned should be divided into three classes; new adventurers from Great Britain; servitors, as they were called, that is, natives who for some time had served in Ireland in military or civil offices; and natives without distinction. The first, persons born in Britain, and chiefly Scotch, were permitted to take tenants only from amongst their own countrymen ; the second, servitors, were allowed to choose their tenants, either British or Irish, with the exception of popish recusants; to gain the third, if possible, by lenity and indulgence, they were under no restriction with regard to the religion or birth-place of their te