succession. William's health had for some time 1701. been on the decline, but his dissolution was immediately brought on by a fall from his horse, by which his collar-bone was fractured. He died in the fifty-second year of his age, and the thirteenth of his reign.

1702.

Accession of Ann.

The Queen

open to the

CHAPTER II.

The Reign of Ann.

ANN, the daughter of James II., who had been married to the Prince of Denmark, succeeded William. She was the last of the line of Stuart, that filled the British throne. The glory of the British arms under the Duke of Marlborough has thrown a glare over the historical pages of this sovereign's reign, that has almost obliterated the melancholy effects of the spirit of party, which infected it throughout. In the meridian heat of Whiggism and Toryism, nothing was done in moderation: and few of the transactions of that day have reached us in a form unwarped by the prejudices of the narrators. Throughout every part of the British empire, except Ireland, the constitutional rights of the subject ebbed and flowed with the alternate prevalence of one of these parties. The Irish nation was doomed to suffer under every Stuart; and the conduct of this monarch to them carried the family ingratitude to its acme.

The queen was alternately led down the stream ascendancy either by the Whigs or the Tories, as their respective parties gained the ascendancy in parliament. The whole of her reign was a state of contest and violence. Parties

of each

party.

venting the

a

in Ireland kept not the same equilibrium as in England: 1703. the

great mass of the Irish people was forced or frightened out of any polítical interference with state affairs. The Queen, who held her crown against the claims of her brother by the tenure of protestantism, readily yielded to the cries of both parties to oppress the great body of her catholic subjects of Ireland:

No crimes, no new offences, no attempts against Act for pre. the

government, were laid to their charge : and a new growth of code of unparalleled rigor was imposed upon this suffering people. They had formerly been deprived of their inheritances: they were now prevented from ever again acquiring an inch of land in that kingdom, and subjected to further penalties and disabilities for professing their religion *. Nothing more strongly pourtrays the abandoned state of the Irish catholics at this period, than that no man in either house of parliament stood up in their favour to oppose the act for preventing the further growth of Popery.

popery.

1703. Some members of the commons affected to clear them

selves of responsibility, by resigning their seats to others of a more pliant disposition *. Resignations on this score became so frequent, that the house came to á resolution, “ that the excusing of members at their own request from the service of the house, and there. upon issuing out new writs to elect other members to serve in their places, was of dangerous consequence, and tended to the subversion of the constitution of parliament.” And it was afterwards resolved unanimously, “ that it might be the standing order of the house, that no new writs for electing members of parliament in place of members excusing themselves from the service of the house, do issue at the desire of such members, notwithstanding any former precedents to

the contrary.” Force of So violent was the tide of anti-catholic prejudice at lic preju- this period in Ireland, that the British cabinet feared dice.

to oppose the severity they condemned. The Queen was at this time in alliance with the Emperor, and upon the strength of it had interceded with him for certain indulgencies on behalf of his protestant subjects. It appeared therefore an ill-judged moment to encrease the persecution of her own subjects, who were

anti-catho

These members instead of opposing what they condemned, like Pilate washed their hands before the people, in proof of their innocence. This prevaricating system of debasement has been recently followed on the question of union, by the temporizing or venal secession of members, who wanted assurance to support that measure, which they left to be carried by the votes of their less punctilious substilutes.

not protestants. Her ministers feared the party, which 1703. had proposed the measure, in which were many dissenters of great political influence. They resorted in the true spirit of Stuart policy to the following expedient. They superadded to the bill, already sur-. charged with cruelty, a clause, by which all persons in Ireland were rendered incapable of any employment under the crown, or of being magistrates in any city, who should not, agreeably to the English Test Act, receive the sacrament according to the usage of the church of Ireland. To this it was presumed the dissenters would not have submitted; and so the bill would be lost. The base experiment failed, and the unintended severity fell both upon the protestant dissenters and the catholics: not because they merited punishment, but because a timid and insincere ministry preferred duplicity and deceit to candor and manliness. The bill, thus loaded with the intemperate rigor, which the British cabinet had heaped upon it for preventing its passing, went through both houses. without opposition from a single member in any stage of its progress.

of the vio

the articles

This bill was conceived by the persons comprised in Complaints the articles of Limerick, to be a direct violation of lation of them, Lord Kinsland and colonel Brown, with seve- of Limerick. ral other catholic gentlemen, petitioned to be heard by

Burnett says, "it was hoped by those who got this clause added to the bill, that those in Ireland who promoted it most would now be the less fond of it, when it had such a weight hung to it." History of his own Times, Vol. II. 214.

This was Lord Godolphin's ministry.