I. Latin continued throughout Europe, even till this late day, the language of the learned, but especially of theologians, jurists, and historians. In Latin, the great tomes of O"Sullivan, Usher, Colgan, Wadding, and White, were written--volumes which remain as so many monuments of the learning and industry of that age. The chief objects of these ill.u.s.trious writers were, to restore the ancient ecclesiastical history of Ireland, to rescue the memory of her saints and doctors from oblivion, and to introduce the native annals of the kingdom to the attention of Europe. Though Usher differed in religion, and in his theory of the early connection of the Irish with the Roman Church, from all the rest, yet he stands pre-eminent among them for labour and research. The Waterford Franciscan, Wadding, can only be named with him for inexhaustible patience, various learning, and untiring zeal. Both were honoured of princes and parliaments. The Confederates would have made Wadding a cardinal; King James made Usher an archbishop; one instructed the Westminster a.s.sembly; the other was sent by the King of Spain to maintain the thesis of the Immaculate Conception at Rome, and subsequently was entrusted by the Pope to report upon the propositions of Jansenius. O"Sullivan, Conde de Berehaven, in Spain, and Peter White, have left us each two or three Latin volumes on the history of the country, highly prized by all subsequent writers. But the most indispensable of the legacies left us in this tongue, are Colgan"s "Acta Sanctorum"--from January to March--and Dr. John Lynch"s "Cambrensis Eversus." Many other works and authors might be mentioned, but these are the great Latinists to whom we are indebted for the most important services rendered to our national history.
II. In the Gaelic literature of the country we count Geoffrey Keating, Duald McFirbis, and "the Four Masters"
of Donegal. Few writers have been more rashly judged than Keating. A poet, as well as a historian, he gave a prominence in the early chapters of his history to bardic tales, which English critics have seized upon to damage his reputation for truthfulness and good sense. But these tales he gives as tales--as curious and ill.u.s.trative--rather than as credible and unquestionable. The purity of his style is greatly extolled by Gaelic critics; and the interest of his narrative, even in a translation, is undoubted. McFirbis, an annalist and genealogist by inheritance, is known to us not only for his profound native lore, and tragic death, but also for the a.s.sistance he rendered Sir James Ware, Dr. Lynch, and Roderick O"Flaherty. The master-piece, however, of our Gaelic literature of this age, is the work now called "The Annals of the Four Masters." In the reign of James I., a few Franciscan friars, living partly in Donegal Abbey and partly in St. Anthony"s College, at Louvain, undertook to collect and collate all the ma.n.u.script remains of Irish antiquity they could gather or borrow, or be allowed to copy. Father Hugh Ward was the head of this group, and by him the lay brother Michael O"Clery, one of the greatest benefactors his country ever saw, was sent from Belgium to Ireland. From 1620 to 1630, O"Clery travelled through the kingdom, buying or transcribing everything he could find relating to the lives of the Irish saints, which he sent to Louvain, where Ward and Colgan undertook to edit and ill.u.s.trate them. Father Ward died in the early part of the undertaking, but Father Colgan spent twenty years in prosecuting the original design, so far as concerned our ecclesiastical biography.
After collecting these materials, Father O"Clery waited, as he tells us, on "the n.o.ble Fergall O"Gara," one of the two knights elected to represent the county of Sligo in the Parliament of 1634, and perceiving the anxiety of O"Gara, "from the cloud which at present hangs over our ancient Milesian race," he proposed to collect the civil and military annals of Erin into one large digest. O"Gara, struck with this proposal, freely supplied the means, and O"Clery and his coadjutors set to work in the Franciscan Convent of Donegal, which still stood, not more than half in ruins.
On the 22nd of January, 1632, they commenced this digest, and on the 10th of August, 1636, it was finished--having occupied them four years, seven months and nineteen days.
The MS., dedicated to O"Gara, is authenticated by the superiors of the convent; from that original two editions have recently been printed in both languages.
These annals extend to the year 1616, the time of the compilers. Originally they bore the t.i.tle of "Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland," but Colgan having quoted them as "The Annals of the Four Masters," that name remains ever since. The "Four Masters" were Brother Michael O"Clery, Conary and Peregrine O"Clery, his brothers, both laymen and natives of Donegal, and Florence Conroy of Roscommon, another hereditary antiquary.
The first edition of the New Testament, in the Gaelic tongue, so far as we are aware, appeared at Dublin, in 1603, in quarto. The translation was the work of a native scholar, O"Cionga (Anglicized King). It was made at the expense and under the supervision of Dr. William O"Donnell, one of the first fellows of Trinity, and published at the cost of the people of Connaught. Dr. O"Donnell, an amiable man, and an enemy of persecution, became subsequently Archbishop of Tuam, in which dignity he died, in 1628. A translation of the Book of Common Prayer, by O"Donnell, appeared early in the century, and towards its close (1685), a translation of the Old Testament, made for Bishop Bedell by the Gaelic scholars of Meath and Cavan, was published at the expense of the famous Robert Boyle. Bedell had also caused to be published Gaelic translations of certain homilies of Saint Leo and Saint John Chrysostom, on the importance of studying the holy Scriptures. The only other Gaelic publications of this period were issued from the Irish colleges at Louvain and Rome. Thence issued the devotional tracts of Conroy, of Gernon, and O"Molloy, and the Irish grammars of O"Clery and Stapleton. The devotional tracts, with their fanciful t.i.tles, of "Lamps," and "Mirrors," were smuggled across from Ostend and Dunkirk with other articles of contraband, and did much to keep alive the flame of faith and hope in the hearts of the Gaelic-speaking population.
The bardic order also, though shorn of much of their ancient splendour, and under the Puritan _regime_ persecuted as vagrants, still flourished as an estate of the realm.
The national tendency to poetic writing was not confined to the hereditary verse-makers, but was ill.u.s.trated by such men as the martyred Plunkett, and the Bishops of Meath and Kerry--Dr. Thomas Dease, and Dr. John O"Connell.
But the great body of Gaelic verse of the first half of this century is known under the name of "The Contentions of the Bards," the subject being the relative dignity, power, and prowess of the North and South. The gauntlet in this poetic warfare, was thrown down by McDaire, the Bard of Donogh O"Brien, fourth Earl of Th.o.m.ond, and taken up on the part of Ulster by Lewy O"Clery. Reply led to rejoinder, and one epistle to another, until all the chief bards of the four provinces had taken sides. Half a dozen writers, _pro_ and _con_, were particularly distinguished; McDaire himself, Turlogh O"Brien, and Art Oge O"Keefe on behalf of the Southerners; O"Clery, O"Donnell, the two McEgans, and Robert McArthur on the side of the North.
An immense ma.s.s of devotional Gaelic poetry may be traced to this period. The religious wars, the calamities of the church and of the people, inspired many a priest and layman to seize the harp of David, and pour forth his hopes and griefs in sacred song. The lament of Mac Ward over the Ulster princes buried at Rome, the odes of Dermod Conroy and Flan McNamee, in honour of our Blessed Lady, are of this cla.s.s. Thus it happened that the bardic order, which in ancient times was the formidable enemy of Christianity, became, through adversity and affliction, its greatest supporter.
III. Our Hiberno-English literature is almost entirely the creation of this century. Except some few remarkable state papers, we have no English writings of any reputation of an earlier period. Now, however, when the language of the empire, formed and enriched by the great minds of Elizabeth"s era, began to extend its influence at home and abroad, a school of Hiberno-English writers appeared, both numerous and distinguished. This school was as yet composed mainly of two cla.s.ses--the dramatic poets, and the pamphleteers. Of the latter were Bishop French, Sir Richard Nagle, Sir Richard Belling, Lord Orrery, Father Peter Walsh, and William Molyneux; of the former, Ludowick Barry, Sir John Denham, the Earl of Roscommon, and Richard Flecknoe,--the Mac Flecknoe of Dryden. It is true there appeared as yet no supreme name like Swift"s; but as indicating the gradual extension of the English language into Ireland, the popular pamphlets and pieces written for the stage, are ill.u.s.trations of our mental life not to be overlooked.
Of the ancient schools of the island, after the final suppression of the college at Galway in 1652, not one remained. A diocesan college at Kilkenny, and the Dublin University, were alone open to the youth of the country.
But the University remained exclusively in possession of the Protestant interest, nor did it give to the world during the century, except Usher, Ware and Orrery, any graduate of national, not to say, European reputation.
In the bye-ways of the South and West, in the Irish colleges on the continent of Europe--at Paris, Louvain, Lisle, Salamanca, Lisbon, or Rome--the children of the proscribed majority could alone acquire a degree in learning, human or divine. It was as impossible two centuries ago, to speak of Trinity College with respect, as it is in our time, remembering all it has since done, to speak of it without veneration.
Though the Established Church had now completed its century and a half of existence, it was as far from the hearts of the Irish as ever. Though the amiable Bedell and the learned O"Donnell had caused the sacred Scriptures to be translated into the Gaelic tongue, few converts had been made from the Catholic ranks, while the spirit of animosity was inflamed by a sense of the cruel and undeserved disabilities inflicted in the name of religion.
The manifold sects introduced under Cromwell gave a keener edge to Catholic contempt for the doctrines of the reformation; and although the restoration of the monarchy threw the extreme sectaries into the shade, it added nothing to the influence of the church, except the fatal gift of political patronage. For the first time, the high dignity of Archbishop of Armagh began to be regarded as the inheritance of the leader of the House of Lords; then Brahmall and Boyle laid the foundation of that primatial power which Boulter and Stone upheld under another dynasty, but which vanished before the first dawn of Parliamentary independence.
In the quarter of a century which elapsed from the restoration to the revolution, the condition of the Catholic clergy and laity was such as we have already described. In 1662, an historian of the Jesuit missionaries in Ireland described the sufferings of ecclesiastics as deplorable; they were forced to fly to the herds of cattle in remote places, to seek a refuge in barns and stables, or to sleep at night in the porticoes of temples, lest they should endanger the safety of the laity. In that same year, Orrery advised Ormond to purge the walled towns of Papists, who were still "three to one Protestant;"
in 1672, Sir William Petty computed them at "eight to one" of the entire population.
"So captive Israel multiplied in chains."
The martyrdom of the Archbishop of Dublin, in 1680, and of the Archbishop of Armagh in 1681, were, however, the last of a series of executions for conscience" sake, from the relation of which the historian might well have been excused, if it was not necessary to remind our emanc.i.p.ated posterity at what a price they have been purchased.
CHAPTER IV.
ACCESSION OF JAMES II.--TYRCONNELL"S ADMINISTRATION.
From the accession of King James till his final flight from Ireland, in July, 1690, there elapsed an interval of five years and five months; a period fraught with consequences of the highest interest to this history.
The new King was, on his accession, in his fifty-second year; he had served, as Duke of York, with credit both by land and sea, was an avowed Catholic, and married to a Catholic princess, the beautiful and unfortunate Mary of Modena.
Within a month from the proclamation of the King, Ormond quitted the government for the last time, leaving Primate Boyle, and Lord Granard, as Justices. In January, 1686, Lord Clarendon, son of the historian, a.s.sumed the government, in which he continued, till the 16th of March, 1687. The day following the national anniversary, Colonel Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnell, a Catholic, and the former agent for the Catholics, was installed as Lord Deputy. Other events, connecting these with each other, had filled with astonishment and apprehension the ascendancy party.
James proceeded openly with what he hoped to make a counter-reformation of England, and to accomplish which he relied on France on the one hand, and Ireland on the other. In both cases he alarmed the fears and wounded the pride of England; but when he proceeded from one illegality to another, when he began to exercise a dispensing power above the laws--to instruct the judges, to menace the parliament, and imprison the bishops--the n.o.bility, the commons, and the army gradually combined against him, and at last invited over the Prince of Orange, as the most capable vindicator of their outraged const.i.tution.
The headlong King had a representative equally rash, in Tyrconnell. He was a man old enough to remember well the uprising of 1641, had lived in intimacy with James as Duke of York, was personally brave, well skilled in intrigue, but vain, loud-spoken, confident, and incapable of a high command in military affairs. The colonelcy of an Irish regiment, the earldom of Tyrconnell, and a seat in the secret council or cabinet of the King, were honours conferred on him during the year of James"s accession.
When Clarendon was named Lord-Lieutenant at the beginning of 1686, Tyrconnell was sent over with him as Lieutenant-General of the army. At his instigation, a proclamation was issued, that "all cla.s.ses" of his Majesty"s subjects might be allowed to serve in the army; and another, that all arms. .h.i.therto given out should be deposited, for greater security, at one of the King"s stores provided for the purpose in each town or county.
Thus that exclusively Protestant militia, which for twenty years had executed the Act of Settlement and the Act of Uniformity in every quarter of the kingdom, found themselves suddenly disarmed, and a new Catholic army rising on their ruins. The numbers disbanded are nowhere stated; they probably amounted to 10,000 or 15,000 men and very naturally they became warm partisans of the Williamite revolution. The recriminations which arose between the new and the old militia were not confined to the nicknames, Whig and Tory, or to the bandying of sarcasms on each others" origin; swords were not unfrequently drawn, and muskets discharged, even in the streets of Dublin, under the very walls of the Castle.
Through Tyrconnell"s influence, a similar revolution had been wrought in the exclusive character of the courts of justice, and the corporations of towns, to that which remodelled the militia. Rice, Daly, and Nugent, were elevated to the bench during Lord Clarendon"s time; the Corporation of Dublin having refused to surrender their exclusive charter, were summarily rejected by a _quo warranto_, issued in the exchequer; other towns were similarly treated, or induced to make surrender, and a new series of charters at once granted by James, ent.i.tling Catholics to the freedom of the boroughs, and the highest munic.i.p.al offices. And now, for the first time in that generation, Catholic mayors and sheriffs, escorted by Catholic troops as guards of honour, were seen marching in open day to their own places of worship, to the dismay and astonishment of the ascendancy party. Not that all Protestants were excluded either from town councils, the militia, or the bench, but those only were elected or appointed who concurred in the new arrangements, and were, therefore, pretty certain to forfeit the confidence of their co-religionists in proportion as they deserved that of the Deputy. Topham and Coghill, Masters in Chancery, were deprived of their offices, and the Protestant Chancellor was arbitrarily removed to make way for Baron Rice, a Catholic. The exclusive character of Trinity College was next a.s.sailed, and though James did not venture to revoke the charter of Elizabeth, establishing communion with the Church of England as the test of fellowship, the internal administration was in several particulars interfered with, its plate was seized in the King"s name under plea of being public property, and the annual parliamentary grant of 388 pounds was discontinued.
These arbitrary acts filled the more judicious Catholics with apprehension, but gained the loud applause of the unreasoning mult.i.tude. Dr. Macguire, the successor of the martyred Plunkett, who felt in Ulster the rising tide of resistance, was among the signers of a memorial to the King, dutifully remonstrating against the violent proceedings of his Deputy. From Rome also, disapprobation was more than once expressed, but all without avail; neither James nor Talbot could be brought to reason. The Protestants of the eastern and southern towns and counties who could contrive to quit their homes, did so; hundreds fled to Holland to return in the ranks of the Prince of Orange; thousands fled to England, bringing with them their tale of oppression, embellished with all the bitter exaggeration of exiles; ten thousand removed from Leinster into Ulster, soon to recross the Boyne, under very different auspices. Very soon a close correspondence was established between the fugitives in Holland, England, and Ulster, and a powerful lever was thus placed in the hands of the Prince of Orange, to work the downfall of his uncle and father-in-law. But the best allies of William were, after all, the folly and fatuity of James.
The importation of Irish troops, by entire battalions, gave the last and sorest wound to the national pride of England, and still further exasperated the hatred and contempt which his majesty"s English regiments had begun to feel for their royal master.
Tyrconnell, during the eventful summer months when the revolution was ripening both in Holland and England, had taken, unknown even to James, a step of the gravest importance. To him the first intelligence of the preparations of William were carried by a ship from Amsterdam, and by him they were communicated to the infatuated King, who had laughed at them as too absurd for serious consideration. But the Irish ruler, fully believing his informants, and never deficient in audacity, had at once entered into a secret treaty with Louis XIV.
to put Ireland under the protection of France, in the event of the Prince of Orange succeeding to the British throne. No proposition could more entirely suit the exigencies of Louis, of whom William was by far the ablest and most relentless enemy. The correspondence which has come to light in recent times, shows the importance which he attached to Tyrconnell"s proposition--an importance still further enhanced by the direct but unsuccessful overture made to the earl by William himself, on landing in England, and before embarking in the actual invasion of Ireland.
William Henry, Prince of Orange, now about to enter on the scene, was in 1688 in the thirty-seventh year of his age. Fearless of danger, patient, silent, impervious to his enemies, rather a soldier than a statesman, indifferent in religion, and personally adverse to persecution for conscience" sake, his great and almost his only public pa.s.sion was the humiliation of France through the instrumentality of a European coalition. As an anti-Gallican, as the representative of the most ill.u.s.trious Protestant family in Europe, as allied by blood and marriage to their kings, he was a very fit and proper chief for the English revolutionists; but for the two former of these reasons he was just as naturally antipathetic to the Catholic and Celtic majority of the Irish. His designs had been long gradually maturing, when James"s incredible imprudence hastened his movements.
Twenty-four ships of war were a.s.sembled at Helvoetsluys; 7,000 sailors were put on board; all the veterans of the Netherlands were encamped at Nimeguen, where 6,000 recruits were added to their numbers. On the 5th of November, the anniversary of the gunpowder plot, "the Deliverer," as he was fondly called in England, landed at Torbay; on the 25th of December, James, deserted by his n.o.bles, his army, and even his own unnatural children, arrived, a fugitive and a suppliant, at the court of France.
A few Irish incidents of this critical moment deserve mention. The mania against everything Irish took in England forms the most ludicrous and absurd. Wharton"s doggerel refrain of Lillibullero, was heard in every circle outside the court; all London, lighted with torches, and marshalled under arms, awaited during the memorable "Irish night" the advent of the terrible and detested regiments brought over by Tyrconnell; some companies of these troops quartered in the country were fallen upon by ten times their numbers, and cut to pieces. Others, fighting and inquiring their way, forced a pa.s.sage to Chester or Bristol, and obtained a pa.s.sage home. They pa.s.sed at sea, or encountered on the landing-places, mult.i.tudes of the Protestant Irish, men, women and children, flying in exactly the opposite direction.
Tyrconnell was known to meditate the repeal of the Act of Settlement; the general rumour of a Protestant ma.s.sacre fixed for the 9th of December, originated no one knew how, was spread about no one knew by whom. In vain the Lord Deputy tried to stay the panic--his a.s.surance of protection, and the still better evidence of their own experience, which proved the Irish Catholics incapable of such a project, could not allay their terrors. They rushed into England by every port, and inflamed still more the hostility which already prevailed against King James.
In Ulster, David Cairnes of Knockmany, the Rev. John Kelso of Enniskillen, a Presbyterian, and Rev. George Walker of Donaghmore, an Anglican minister, were active instruments of the Prince of Orange. On the 7th of December the gates of Derry were shut by "the youthhood" against the Earl of Antrim and his Highlanders. Enniskillen was seized by a similar impulse of the popular will, and an a.s.sociation was quickly formed throughout Ulster in imitation of the English a.s.sociation which had invited over William, under the auspices of Lord Blaney, Sir Arthur Rawdon, Sir Clotworthy Skeffington, and others, "for the maintenance of the Protestant religion and the dependency of Ireland upon England." By these a.s.sociates, Sligo, Coleraine, and the fort of Culmore, at the mouth of the Foyle, were seized for King William; while the Town Council of Derry, in order to gain time, despatched one amba.s.sador with one set of instructions to Tyrconnell, and another, with a very different set, to "the Committee for Irish Affairs," which sat at Whitehall, under the presidency of the Earl of Shrewsbury.
CHAPTER V.
KING JAMES IN IRELAND--IRISH PARLIAMENT OF 1689.
A few days after his arrival in France, James despatched a messenger to Tyrconnell, with instructions expressing great anxiety as to the state of affairs in Ireland. "I am sure," wrote the fugitive monarch, "you will hold out to the utmost of your power, and I hope this king will so press the Hollanders, that the Prince of Orange will not have men to spare to attack you." All the aid he could obtain from Louis at the moment was 7,000 or 8,000 muskets, which were sent accordingly.
Events succeeded each other during the first half of the year 1689 with revolutionary rapidity. The conventions of England and Scotland, though far from being unanimous, declared by immense majorities, that James had abdicated, and that William and Mary should be offered the crowns of both kingdoms. In February, they were proclaimed as king and queen of "England, France, and Ireland," and in May, the Scottish commissioners brought them the tender of the crown of Scotland. The double heritage of the Stuart kings was thus, after nearly a century of possession, transferred by election to a kindred prince, to the exclusion of the direct descendants of the great champion of "the right divine," who first united under his sceptre the three kingdoms.
James, at the Court of France, was duly informed of all that pa.s.sed at London and Edinburgh. He knew that he had powerful partizans in both conventions. The first fever of popular excitement once allayed, he marked with exultation the symptoms of reaction. There was much in the circ.u.mstances attending his flight to awaken popular sympathy, and to cast a veil over his errors. The pathetic picture drawn of parental suffering by the great dramatist in the character of King _Lear_, seemed realized to the life in the person of King James. Message followed message from the three kingdoms, urging him to return and place himself at the head of his faithful subjects in a war against the usurper. The French king approved of these recommendations, for in fighting James"s battle he was fighting his own, and a squadron was prepared at Brest to carry the fugitive back to his dominions. Accompanied by his natural sons, the Duke of Berwick and the Grand Prior Fitzjames, by Lieutenant-Generals de Rosen and de Maumont, Majors-General de Pusignan and de Lery (or Geraldine), about a hundred officers of all ranks, and 1,200 veterans, James sailed from Brest, with a fleet of 33 vessels, and landed at Kinsale on the 12th day of March (_old style_). His reception by the Southern population was enthusiastic in the extreme. From Kinsale to Cork, from Cork to Dublin, his progress was accompanied by Gaelic songs and dances, by Latin orations, loyal addresses, and all the decorations with which a popular favourite can be welcomed. Nothing was remembered by that easily pacified people but his great misfortunes and his steady fidelity to his and their religion. Fifteen chaplains, nearly all Irish, accompanied him, and added to the delight of the populace; while many a long-absent soldier, now came back in the following of the king, to bless the sight of some aged parent or faithful lover.
The royal entry into Dublin was the crowning pageant of this delusive restoration. With the tact and taste for such demonstrations hereditary in the citizens, the trades and arts were marshalled before him. Two venerable harpers played on their national instruments near the gate by which he entered; a number of religious in their robes, with a huge cross at their head, chanted as they went; forty young girls, dressed in white, danced the ancient _Rinka_, scattering flowers as they danced. The Earl of Tyrconnell, lately raised to a dukedom, the judges, the mayor and corporation, completed the procession, which marched over newly sanded streets, beneath arches of evergreens and windows hung with "tapestry and cloth of Arras." Arrived at the castle the sword of state was presented to him by the deputy, and the keys of the city by the recorder. At the inner entrance, the primate, Dr.
Dominick Macguire, waited in his robes to conduct him to the chapel, lately erected by Tyrconnell, where _Te Deum_ was solemnly sung. But of all the incidents of that striking ceremonial, nothing more powerfully impressed the popular imagination than the green flag floating from the main tower of the castle, bearing the significant inscription--"_Now or Never--Now and Forever_."
A fortnight was devoted by James in Dublin to daily and nightly councils and receptions. The chief advisers who formed his court were the Count d"Avaux, Amba.s.sador of France, the Earl of Melfort, princ.i.p.al Secretary of State, the Duke of Tyrconnell, Lieutenant-General Lord Mountcashel, Chief Justice Nugent, and the superior officers of the army, French and Irish. One of the first things resolved upon at Dublin was the appointment of the gallant Viscount Dundee as Lieutenant-General in Scotland--and the despatch to his a.s.sistance of an Irish auxiliary force, which served under that renowned chief with as much honour as their predecessors had served under Montrose.
Communications were also opened through the Bishop of Chester with the west of England Jacobites, always numerous in Cheshire, Shropshire, and other counties nearest to Ireland. Certain changes were then made in the Privy Council; Chief Justice Keating"s attendance was dispensed with as one opposed to the new policy, but his judicial functions were left untouched. Dr. Cartwright, Bishop of Chester, and the French Amba.s.sador were sworn in, and writs were issued convoking the Irish Parliament for the 7th day of May following.
Intermitting, for the present, the military events which marked the early months of the year, we will follow the acts and deliberations of King James"s Parliament of 1689. The Houses met, according to summons, at the appointed time, in the building known as "the Inns of Court," within a stone"s throw of the castle. There were present 228 Commoners, and 46 members of the Upper House.
In the Lords several Protestant n.o.blemen and prelates took their seats, and some Catholic peers of ancient date, whose attainders had been reversed, were seen for the first time in that generation in the front rank of their order. In the Lower House the University and a few other const.i.tuencies were represented by Protestants, but the overwhelming majority were Catholics, either of Norman or Milesian origin. The King made a judicious opening speech, declaring his intention to uphold the rights of property, and to establish liberty of conscience alike for Protestant and Catholic. He referred to the distressed state of trade and manufactures, and recommended to the attention of the Houses, those who had been unjustly deprived of their estates under the "Act of Settlement."
Three measures pa.s.sed by this Parliament ent.i.tle its members to be enrolled among the chief a.s.sertors of civil and religious liberty. One was the "Act for establishing Liberty of Conscience," followed by the supplemental act that all persons should pay t.i.thes only to the clergy of their own communion. An act abolishing writs of error and appeal into England, established the judicial independence of Ireland; but a still more necessary measure repealing Poyning"s Law, was defeated through the personal hostility of the King. An act repealing the Act of Settlement was also pa.s.sed, under protest from the Protestant Lords, and received the royal sanction.
A bill to establish Inns of Court, for the education of Irish law students, was, however, rejected by the King, and lost; an "Act of Attainder," against persons in arms against the Sovereign, whose estates lay in Ireland, was adopted. Whatever may be the bias of historians, it cannot be denied that this Parliament showed a spirit worthy of the representatives of a free people. "Though Papists,"
says Mr. Grattan, our highest parliamentary authority, "they were not slaves; they wrung a const.i.tution from King James before they accompanied him to the field."
The King, unfortunately, had not abandoned the arbitrary principles of his family, even in his worst adversity.
His interference with the discussions on Poyning"s Law, and the Inns of Court bill, had shocked some of his most devoted adherents. But he proceeded from obstructive to active despotism. He doubled, by his mere proclamation, the enormous subsidy of 20,000 pounds monthly voted him by the Houses. He established, by the same authority, a bank, and decreed in his own name a bank restriction act.
He debased the coinage, and established a fixed scale of prices to be observed by all merchants and traders. In one respect--but in one only--he grossly violated his own professed purpose of establishing liberty of conscience, by endeavouring to force fellows and scholars on the University of Dublin contrary to its statutes. He even went so far as to appoint a provost and librarian without consent of the senate. However we may condemn the exclusiveness of the College, this was not the way to correct it; bigotry on the one hand, will not justify despotism on the other.
More justifiable was the interference of the King for the restoration of rural schools and churches, and the decent maintenance of the clergy and bishops. His appointments to the bench were also, with one or two exceptions, men of the very highest character. "The administration of justice during this brief period," says Dr. Cooke Taylor, "deserves the highest praise. With the exception of Nugent and Fritton, the Irish judges would have been an honour to any bench."