giance of the Irish to their sovereign was pure and unalloyed. Although their natural monarch professed the same religion as the majority of the Irish nation, yet was he far from being in personal favour with them. The conduct of the Stuarts to the Irish had already weaned them from all personal affection for that family. The dastardly flight of James from England, without even attempting a stand against his rival filled with indignation a people of quick sympathy and natural bravery. James's natural character was reserved and rather austere; when he was in Ireland it was rendered morose and petulant from misfortunes; qualities ill-calculated to gain the warm and grateful hearts of a people supereminently sensible of confidence and favour. James had imbibed an unaccountable dislike to the Irish; and dislikes are generally reciprocal. As little also were the principles, judgment, and feelings of Tyrconnel in unison with those of his sovereign. The Irish, preserving their allegiance, availed themselves of the personal presence of their sovereign to attain the object of their wishes in a constitutional manner; and in these they rather insisted upon than requested the concurrence of their sovereign.* The several acts therefore of that parliament are to be considered rather as the acts of the Irish nation than the wishes of James. They are noticed to trace the prospects of national happiness and pro

* A singular illustration of this observation is to be found in Leslie, p. 104. "It is a melancholy story (if true) which Sir Theobald Butfer, solicitor-general to king James in Ireland, tells of the duke of Tyrconnel's sending him to king James with a letter about passing some lands for the said duke; he, employing Sir Theobald in his business, gave him the letter open to read, which Sir Theobald says he found worded in terms so insolent and imposing, as would be unbecoming for one gentleman to offer to another. Sir Theobald says, he could not but represent to the duke the strange surprise he was in, at his treating the king at such a rate, and desired to be excused from being the messenger to give such a letter into the king's hands. The duke smiled upon him, and told him, he knew how to deal with the king at that time; that he must have his business done; and for Theobald's scruple, he sealed the letter and told him now the king cannot suppose you know the contents, only carry it to him as from me. Sir Theobald did so, and says he observed the king narrowly as he read it, and that his majesty did shew great commotion, that he changed colours, and sighed often, yet ordered Tyrconnel's request, or demand rather, to be granted. Thus says Sir Theobald. Many particulars of the like insolence of these Irish to king James might be shewn, but I would not detain the reader; what I have said is abundantly sufficient to shew how far it was from his own inclinations either to suffer or to do such things as were thus violently put upon him by the Irish in his extremity.'

sperity, in which the catholics at that time placed their hopes.

15. The chief of these acts were the Act of Attainder, and the Act for Repeal of the Acts of Settlement.* The first of these acts, which is usually spoken of by modern historians as the act for attainting Irish protestants, bespeaks in its title its whole purport and tendency; For Attainder of divers Rebels, and for preserving the Interest of loyal Subjects. It contains not one word that relates even remotely to any religious distinction; and the preamble of the act refers wholly to those rebellious and traitorous subjects who had invited and assisted the prince of Orange, the king's unnatural enemy, to invade that kingdom. At that time it was not a conflict between protestants and catholics, nor between Whigs and Tories, nor yet between an English and an Irish party; it was a broad open contest between Jacobites and Guillamites, the former headed by the natural hereditary monarch, who had not resigned or abdicated, but

* To neither of these acts it appears king James was himself disposed. Circumstances would not permit him then to exercise the veto against the general wish of his Irish subjects. Leslie thus speaks of James's conduct in Ireland: (p. 99.) "And even as to his carriage in Ireland, I have heard not a few of the protestants confess that they owed their preservation and safety, next under God, chiefly to the clemency of king James, who restrained all he could the insolence and outrage of their enemies, of which I can give you some remarkable instances and good vouchers. I appeal to the earl of Granard, whether Duke Powis did not give him thanks from king James, for the opposition he made in the house of lords to the passing the Act of Attainder and the Act for Repeal of the Acts of Settlement; and desired that he and the other protestant lords should use their endeavours to obstruct them. To which the Lord Granard answered, that they were too few to effect that; but if the king would hot have them pass, his way was to engage all the Roman Catholic lords to stop them. To which the duke replied with an oath, that the king durst not let them know that he had a mind to have them stopt. I farther appeal to that noble lord, the earl of Granard, whether the same day that the news of the driving the protestants before the walls of Derry came to Dublin, as his lordship was going to the parliament house, he did not meet king James, who asked him where he was going? His lordship answered, to enter his protestation against the repeal of the Acts of Settlement: upon which king James told him, that he was fallen into the hands of a people who rammed that and many other things down his throat. His lordship took that occasion to tell his majesty of the driving before Derry; the king told him, that he was grieved for it; that he had sent immediate orders to discharge it; and that none but a barbarous Muscovite (for so he stiled general Rosen who commanded that driving, who thereby it seems was bred or born in Muscovy) could have thought of so cruel

a contrivance."

was defending the crown of Ireland against a foreign invader; the latter headed by a foreign prince, who, against the will of the majority of the nation, was working his way to the throne of Ireland by the sword, after having been seated upon that of England by the people, who by James's abdication had found themselves without a supreme executive magistrate. In England the change of government in 1688 was a revolution of principle rather than of violence : in Ireland it was a hard-fought contest. This may be properly termed the first real conquest of Ireland by the sword. The unsuccessful became the rebel by the fortune of the day.

16. Although James were averse from passing the acts I have already mentioned, he probably encouraged another which passed, for the advance and improvement of trade, and for encouragement and increase of shipping and navigation, which purported to throw open to Ireland a free and immediate trade with all our plantations and colonies; to promote ship building, by remitting to the owners of Irish built vessels large proportions of the duties of custom and excise, encou rage seamen by exempting them for ten years from taxes, and allowing them the freedom of any city or sea-port they should choose to reside in, and improve the Irish navy by establishing free schools for teaching and instructing the mathematics and the art of navigation, in Dublin, Belfast, Waterford, Cork, Limerick, and Galway. If James looked up to any probability of maintaining his ground in Ireland, he must have been sensible of the necessity of an Irish navy. No man was better qualified to judge of the utility of such institutions than this prince. He was an able seaman, fond of his profession; and to his industry and talent does the British navy owe many of its best signals and regulations. The firmness, resolution, and enterprise, which had distinguished him, whilst duke of York, as a sea officer, abandoned him when king, both in the cabinet and the field.

17. Although William, with his consort Mary, had for some time been seated on the throne of England, yet was he not sufficiently secured upon it to absent himself from the central point of government. He had to reconcile the minds of many persons of note and influence in England, who, though dissatisfied with the conduct of James, could not altogether bend their principles to the introduction of a foreigner against the then prevailing doctrine of the jure divino and indefeasible hereditary right to the throne. He had also to subdue a rising in Scotland under Lord Dundee, who had gained a signal advantage over the Eng

lish general Mackay at Killicrankey. He was at war with France; and the French fleet, conveying a large supply of arms, ammunition, and money to James, had obtained a very important victory over admiral Herbert, who commanded twelve sail of the line in Bantry Bay. William was also kept in constant agitation by the reports of imaginary or dread of real plots. His domestic distresses were moreover increased by the open and secret manœuvres of whigs and tories, who had several and opposite views in deterring the king from going to Ireland. His majesty wavered between the two parties. However natural it was for him to side with the former, upon whose principles he had been placed on the throne of England, yet was he so dissatisfied at this time with them, or pleased with the tories, that he threw the whole court influence into the tory interest, which secured to them a constant majority in parliament.

18. A project was in the mean time formed for an address against William going to Ireland. The real motives of the address were insidiously kept out of sight. The whigs wished to embarrass him, and the tories or Jacobites sought secretly to keep alive the party in Ireland, which in England most of them were ashamed or afraid openly to espouse. They both, therefore, concurred in the resolution that his majesty ought not to expose his sacred person, so essential to the happiness of the kingdom, to the dangers of the climate and circumstances, which had last year proved so fatal to his army under Schomberg. The king who had with such unexpected facility been established upon the throne of England, was too much of the statesman not to forsee the failure of his general designs, if James were not effectually crushed in Ireland, where he still preserved his regal authority; and had therefore, with great political wisdom, resolved to attend in person to this last and conclusive effort of the falling dynasty to keep its power alive. In order to prevent any objection or difficulty from the English parliament, with the firmness of which he was severely tra melled, in the very midst of a warm debate in the English house of commons on the incorporated bill of indemnity and pains, the king summoned them to the house of lords on the 27th of January, 1689, (O. S.) prorogued, and soon after dissolved the parliament.* The tories considered this a

* In the speech from the throne, on this occasion, the king said: "It is a very sensible affliction to me to see my good people burthened with heavy taxes; but since the speedy recovery of Ireland is, in my opinion, the only means to ease them, and to preserve the

triumph they celebrated it at a grand dinner of the party, whence they deputed Sir John Lowther with a verbal message to the king, expressive of their unshaken attachment to him, with an assurance of a speedy and effectual grant of the supplies. The consequence of this message was the removal of many of the leading whigs, and the appointment of tories to their places. Thus did William, within a year from his possession of the throne of England, dismiss the parliament, and break with the party which had placed him upon it.

19. Whether the English assassination plot were fictitious or real, William affected to disregard or disbelieve it. He was bent on the Irish expedition; and about the middle of June he sailed from England with three hundred transports, and six ships of war to guard them. They were joined by several other vessels with stores, ammunition, and provisions; so that, after they had landed at Carrickfergus and joined the relicks of Schomberg's wasted army, his force amounted to thirty-six thousand men; the greater part of which were foreigners: he had a corps of ten thousand Danes, seven thousand Brandenburghers, and two thousand French Huguenots, and the proportion of foreigners on the staff was still greater. The object of James was to protract the war, that of William to determine it at a blow. James kept nearly thirty thousand men about him, and the rest of his force, which in all did not exceed forty-five thousand, he distributed into garrisons. The eyes of Europe were anxiously bent upon this singular contest between two rival kings. William and the prince of Denmark, who had married the princesses Mary and Ann, were fighting against their father-in-law.

20. Each king in this critical juncture relied upon his own judgment in taking his station, and directing the order of battle, to the contempt and even disgust of their most experienced generals. James had the advantage of situation;

peace and honour of the nation, I am resolved to go thither in person, and will, with the blessing of God Almighty, endeavour to reduce the kingdom, that it may no longer be a charge to them. And as I have already ventured my life for the preservation of the religion, laws, and liberties of this nation, so I am now willing to expose it to secure you the quiet enjoyment of them. The spring draws on, and it being requisite I should be early in the field, I must immediately apply my thoughts to the giving orders for the necessary preparations, which, that I may have the more leisure to do, I have thought convenient now to put an end to the session."