was named as his successor. Before, however, these designs could be carried into effect, Charles died, and left the vacant throne to his brother James, who was now enabled to carry his favourite schemes into effect-with what success, will be shown in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XXII.

Accession of James II.-His despotic tendencies-Expectations of the Irish Catholics -Dismissal of Ormond-Lords-Justices Forbes and Boyle-The Monmouth Rebellion-Proceedings of the New Government-Earl of Clarendon appointed Lord Lieutenant-Favours granted to the Catholics-Alarm of the Protestant party-Recall of Clarendon-Earl of Tyrconnel appointed Lord-Deputy-His acts highly favourable to the Catholics-The Corporations and the UniversityAttempted overturn of the Act of Settlement-Affairs in England-James's despotic conduct-Excites the hostility of the Church-James grants a general Toleration-Servile conduct of the Dissenters-James's reckless acts-Trial and acquittal of the Bishops-Birth of a Prince-The Prince of Orange lands in England-Flight of James- The "Glorious Revolution."

JAMES II. ascended the throne on the death of his brother Charles. The nation was in a critical state, and required delicate management: the protestant party especially, who were still exceedingly powerful, were greatly discontented with the policy of the court, and alarmed at the favours openly shown to the catholic body. The accession of James increased their fears, for he was an avowed and zealous catholic, and did not scruple to declare that his object was to establish that religion by the law of the land. On the first Sunday after his brother's funeral, he went to mass publicly with all the ensigns of royalty, ordering the chapel doors to be thrown. wide open. Besides this open demonstration in favour of the old creed, James had also a disposition to stretch the royal prerogative in regard to points on which the nation was extremely sensitive: he ordered the levy of taxes without the sanction of parliament, and thus was guilty of the same acts of arbitrary power which had brought his father's head to the block. But James at this time calculated on the support of the French king, Louis XIV., whose degrading gold he was now receiving; for the English monarch and his courtiers were now, and for a long time had been, the pensioned slaves of a foreign prince! It was Louis' policy at this time to keep England weak, in order that he might be enabled to pursue his plans of European conquest unmolested. One of the first things that Louis did, after the accession of James, was to secure him by a bribe of 500,000 livres, which the slavish monarch accepted with tears of gratitude, assuring the French envoy that his trust, after God, was in the French king! Rochester also plainly told Barillon, that "Your master (Louis) must place mine (James) in a situation to be independent of parliaments"; and

James, shortly afterwards, renewed his applications for more

money.

The people of Ireland regarded the accession of James to the throne with feelings of great hope and expectation. Now that a monarch of their own religious persuasion was king, the Irish catholics anticipated not only tranquillity and happiness, but also the redress of wrongs and grievances, restoration to the possessions of their fathers, and many other advantages desirable from having a king of their own way of thinking. On the other hand, the protestant party looked on the accession of a catholic king with very different feelings. They feared lest their estates should be taken from them, and restored to the catholics to whom they had formerly belonged. They had been in possession of them scarcely twenty years, and the feelings which prevailed at the settlement still remained as keen on both sides as ever. It is true most of the old Cromwellian warriors had now died out, or their spirits were broken down by old age and its infirmities; but their successors retained all the hate and fear, if they had not the courage and power of endurance, which distinguished the puritan invaders of Ireland.

One of the first steps which the new king adopted with regard to Ireland was to dismiss Ormond, who was regarded as a mortal enemy by the party in power. Two lords-justices were appointed in his stead-Forbes Earl of Granard, and Boyle the primate and chancellor of Ireland. The appointment gave great dissatisfaction to the protestants, inasmuch as the lords-justices were deemed hostile to the "true" protestant church. Their government, however, went on smoothly enough; and though the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth occurred during their administration,a rebellion, the professed object of which was the maintenance of the protestant interests-there was not the slightest movement in Ireland in its favour. A general abhorrence of Monmouth's attempt was expressed, and a resolution to support the reigning prince.

The cruel and brutal manner in which this futile rebellion was suppressed, tended in no small degree to alienate the affections of the English people from King James, and to pave the way for the accession of a protestant prince. The wholesale hangings of Judge Jefferies, and the inhuman butcheries of Kirke, struck the nation with horror. They saw the hand of government, and of the king, who was the government, in the bloody transaction, and their hearts drew back in allegiance from the author of this cruelty. There is little doubt that the execution of Monmouth made the protestants of England and Scotland turn their eyes henceforward to the Prince of Orange, as the only hope of their cause. James, however, was blind and reckless as he was bigotted and narrow-minded. He rushed on regardless of consequences, and with the confidence derived from his successful suppression of the rebellion, he proceeded

to act with the most self-willed obstinacy and despotism. In direct violation of the laws, he asserted a dispensing, suspending, and repealing power over all laws and acts of parliament whatsoever; and making the Test Act a mere dead letter, he forthwith suspended protestants from the highest civil and military offices, substituting catholics in their place. By means of quo warranto writs, the corporations throughout the kingdom were remodelled, in order that catholics might be admitted to them; and gentlemen of the same persuasion were made lieutenants of counties, sheriffs, and justices of the peace. In Scotland, the same course was pursued, and a fierce and bloody persecution was waged against the covenanters, because they dared to differ from his majesty in their notions on religious subjects.

In Ireland, the proceedings of James were of an equally reckless character, though they had in them a far greater show of justice. His first object was to disarm the militia, which consisted entirely of protestants, and had been embodied, armed, and disciplined, by the Duke of Ormond. It was with the greatest difficulty that they could be prevailed upon to yield up their arms in obedience to the king's proclamation; though at last they did so, at the urgent solicitation of the justices. The appointment of the Earl of Clarendon to the lord-lieutenancy, and of Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel, to the command of the army, immediately followed this step. The catholics were now introduced to all high civil and military offices, while protestants were excluded, though not nearly to the same extent as catholics had been under former governments. Catholics were now promoted to the bench, and admitted to the privy council, in preference to protestants, who were discouraged. In all this there was nothing but what was fair and just, in a nation ninetenths of which professed the catholic religion. The protestants, however, did not fail to denounce it as a monstrous grievance, because they had grown so accustomed to monopolize all places of power and profit, that they looked upon their privation of them as an act of public robbery and rank injustice.

The great fear, however, of the protestants was for their estates. They lived in constant dread of some change being made in the acts of settlement and explanation; though James had commanded Clarendon to declare, on his taking office, that his majesty had no intention of altering those acts of parliament. Petitions were, nevertheless, presented, desiring a general revisal of the outlawries occasioned by the "rebellion" of 1641. But Clarendon saw that these petitions, if entertained and granted, would only be regarded as the first step towards the subversion of the entire landed property of Ireland. They were accordingly refused; but the petitioners sent over deputations to the court at London, where they were received with great favour. This gave great alarm to the protestants in Ireland, many of whom sold off all their effects, and precipitately quitted the country. This terror was augmented

by the increasing hopes and confidence of the Irish in an entire reversal of the present system of things. Tyrconnel's changes in the army added to the protestant alarm on the one hand, and the catholic expectations on the other. The old officers, who were mostly zealous protestants, and many of them inheritors of the spirit of the commonwealth, were summarily dismissed, and catholic officers appointed in their place. Many of the old soldiers were also driven out of the ranks, as many as four thousand of them being stript of their uniforms and abandoned to misery and want. The officers flocked to the standard of the Prince of Orange, who was now organizing his army of invasion in the Low countries; while the dismissed privates waited their opportunity for joining the ranks of the same prince.

Clarendon was alarmed at the injudicious proceedings of Tyrconnel, and repeatedly remonstrated with him. But the latter had been invested with a power independent of the lord lieutenant, and accordingly he was enabled to proceed on his course unopposed. Clarendon's remonstrances with James himself produced no effect, unless that of hostility to Clarendon, who was soon after recalled from the Irish government. His departure from Dublin caused great alarm among the protestant party, and hundreds of families left the city on the same day, believing their lives and properties no longer safe under Irish administrations. Their alarm was not lessened when they heard that the Earl of Tyrconnel had been invested with the chief governorship of Ireland, with the title of lord-deputy. The new judicial appointments also were all catholics; only three protestants being left on the Irish bench. All this has been severely censured by protestant writers, who wilfully blind their eyes to the fact, that when the protestants had the power, they did not leave a single catholic in any position of influence, but excluded them in all cases with the utmost rigour.

The

Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel, the new governor of Ireland, was a man of warm impulses, of ardent likings, and of as violent hates. He was a most decided character: impetuous and incautious, as the policy above noticed sufficiently shows; but devoted and determined in his support of the master he served. He was a native of Ireland, though descended from the old English of the pale, as his name bespeaks. He was but a child, living at Drogheda, when Cromwell took that town by assault; and he had been a witness to many of the horrors of the subsequent massacre. event made a deep impression on his mind, which was never afterwards effaced: it gave him a horror of puritanism, with which he confounded protestantism of all kinds. After Ireland had been subdued by the Cromwellians, he followed the royal family to the continent, and entered into the service of Charles, who became much attached to him. His sprightly and vivacious manners, his passion for amour and intrigue, peculiarly recommended him to the exile monarch; and on Charles's restoration, he was one of the very

few who were held in remembrance, and rewarded by power and honours for their fidelity in adversity. Although regarded as the champion of the catholics, there is little reason to believe that his catholicism amounted to more than a mere profession of the faith. He was on the side of the catholics, because he was an Irishman, and because he detested puritanism: his profligate and immoral life, his profane and often indecent conversation, his seeming relish for court profligacy and intrigue, point him out as a man of the true cavalier breed-a zealous devotee of royalty, and as zealous a hater of the "crop-eared" fanaticism of that age of extremes both in politics and religion.

One of the first acts of Tyrconnel was, to remodel the corporations of the kingdom: they were forced to surrender their charters, and a new arrangement was made, by which it was provided that those bodies should consist, for the future, of two-thirds catholics and one-third protestants; an improvement certainly upon the preceding arrangement, by which protestants claimed the exclusive power, though still an arbitrary and illegal act, indefensible on the sound principles of civil and religious liberty. The attempt was next made to introduce catholics into the University of Dublin, causing great alarm within the walls of that venerable seminary of protestant exclusiveness. A quarrel took place between Tyrconnel and the heads of colleges, on account of the latter attempting to sell the college plate to prevent its being seized by the government. In this struggle Tyrconnel was baffled, and punished the university by immediately stopping the pension annually paid to it by the state.

The revenue was now falling off rapidly, in consequence of the disturbed state of society and the suspension of most industrial pursuits. Complaints were forwarded to the English government on the subject; and Tyrconnel was censured by many as the cause of the retrograde condition of affairs. The tone of complaint was taken up by some of the English ministers themselves,-Lord Bellasis, a catholic peer and leading member of James's ministry, declaring that Tyrconnel was "madman enough to ruin ten kingdoms." In consequence of these complaints, the lord-deputy obtained permission to wait upon his royal master, then on his progress at the city of Chester. Judge Rice accompanied him, and so represented the state of affairs in Ireland, that Tyrconnel was at once recommitted to his government, with new honours.

The next effort of Tyrconnel was the most alarming of all to the protestants. It was neither more nor less than a bill whose tendency was to overturn the act of settlement and explanation, and thus to alter the proprietorship of almost all the land in Ireland. The declared object of the measure was "to indemnify those catholics who had been declared innocent by the court of claims, and to provide that a new commission should issue for the hearing of such claims as had not been hitherto heard, for want of time or other