Philip Wilson

“ But a moment's reflection will show that they were an essential part of the policy of the government. If Catholic disabilities were to be removed, if forfeited estates were to be restored, if the whole system of exclusion and monopoly was to be broken up, considerations of prudence and of humanity alike rendered it impossible to leave a great military power in the hands of men who would unquestionably have resisted those changes by force. ”

“ The rest were men of questionable character and broken fortunes, on whose subservience Tyrconnell could depend.
Nor was it in the civil government only that sweeping changes were made. It was not to be expected that the Irish people would, in the day of their emancipation, look with equanimity upon that wealthy and privileged establishment which ministered to the wants of a small minority of the nation and from which the majority had recently suffered atrocious persecution. ”

“ Among the persons who had lately left Ireland, however, there were many of whose guilt no reasonable doubt could be entertained, but whom, according to the ordinary rules of evidence, it would be impossible to convict of any overt act of treason. ”

“ But, when we consider the absurdity and the injustice of maintaining a Protestant establishment and a Protestant educational system among a nation almost exclusively Catholic, they can scarcely be very strongly condemned. And it says much for the moderation of the Irish people that they made no attempt, now that the power was in their own hands, to retaliate the injustice which they had suffered. ”

“ Tyrconnell, contemplating the question from a precisely opposite standpoint, was no less firmly convinced that it was only by a separation of the two kingdoms that the rights of the Irish gentry could be secured. With the full assent of his master he had, in August, 1687, entered into a negociation with the court of France, with the intention of making Ireland, should James die without male issue, an independent kingdom under the protection of that power. ”

“ It must be remembered that, when the Act was passed, five-sixths of the Protestants in Ireland were in arms against the government, and that most of those who continued outwardly submissive were suspected, not always unjustly, of sympathising with the rebellion of their co-religionists. Under these circumstances, although Tyrconnell and his colleagues vigorously exerted themselves to secure the observance of the toleration Act, they were not always able to restrain the violence of mobs actuated much less by hatred of heresy than by love of plunder. ”

“ On one point, and on one point alone, the court continued to offer an obstinate resistance to the popular demands. At the beginning of his reign James had announced his intention of preserving the Acts of Settlement and Explanation. Clarendon, on taking office, had given the colonists a similar assurance; and even Tyrconnell, while denouncing those Acts in no measured terms, had admitted that they could not safely be repealed. ”

“ The settlers had never formed more than a small minority of the population, and it was only by a rigid monopoly of civil and military offices that they had been enabled to preserve their property and their political consequence in the midst of a hostile and subjugated nation. With few exceptions those offices had now been transferred to their enemies, while during the past three years their numbers had been greatly diminished. Under the viceroyalty of Clarendon a steady emigration from Ireland had commenced, and had continued on a still larger scale after the appointment of Tyrconnell. ”

“ Tyrconnell, however, continued to urge the claims of his countrymen, and to support those claims by arguments which, to the Catholics at least, must have appeared unanswerable. The King, he insisted, could not live for ever. The next heir was a Protestant; and, should a demise of the crown take place before the position of the English Catholics was assured, a virtually independent Ireland might be their only refuge from a bloody retribution. The justice of these representations was self-evident; and Clarendon was ordered to make a complete change in the government of Ireland. ”

“ At all times fiercely hostile to the Catholic faith, the settlers were inevitably disposed to put the least favourable construction upon the actions of a Catholic king; and, while the Puritans denounced the Lord Primate as little better than a Papist, Episcopalians inveighed against Granard as a schismatic insidiously advanced for the purpose of dividing the Protestant interest. ”

“ To frame an impartial narrative of this nobleman's administration is by no means an easy task. The most important events of Lord Clarendon's viceroyalty are known to us through the letters of the viceroy; and we are thus enabled to check the misrepresentations of partisan writers by the confidential correspondence of a very competent, though somewhat biassed, witness. We possess no documents of equal authority relating to the administration of his successor ”

“ Charles Lesley, who, during the reign of James the Second, filled the office of chancellor of the diocese of Connor, had in learning and abilities no equal among the Irish Protestant clergy, and is acknowledged even by hostile writers to have been by far the most subtle disputant in the nonjuring body. ”

“ With the assistance of Judge Nugent Tyrconnell then prepared a list for the following year which Clarendon was very reluctantly compelled to accept. This list was ostensibly composed of Catholics and Protestants in equal numbers; "but I am sure," wrote the Lord Lieutenant, "several of them, even of those who are styled Protestants, are men no way qualified for such offices of trust." [14]
Thus a great share in the government of the country had been transferred from the colonists to the native race. One stronghold of the Protestant ascendency, however, remained. ”

“ Of these conditions he insisted, "not one is like to be observed in the intended reprisals." The reprisable persons would not obtain "equal value, worth, and purchase." "The parties themselves are not made the judges, but the commissioners." Lastly, "they are to be turned out immediately, and wait for a reprisal afterwards." Of these arguments the first alone is important, and it is flatly contradicted by the very words of the Act.
Within a few days after the passing of the Act of Repeal a bill was introduced into the House of Commons attainting more than two thousand persons [99] ”

“ The government accused these bodies of having violated the terms of their charters; and pretexts were readily found for pronouncing the great majority of those charters null and void. Fresh charters were then issued, and, in the new corporations, it was the general rule that two thirds of the freemen should be Catholics. [44] No exception was made even in the case of towns like Londonderry, where the population was almost exclusively Protestant. [45] Among the sheriffs, deputy-lieutenants, and justices of the peace the Catholic majority was equally great. ”

“ Lesley maintains with much plausiblity that the Protestant episcopal clergy in Ireland were far better treated by the Catholic supporters of James than were their brethren in Scotland by the Presbyterian supporters of William. ”

“ This policy Tyrconnell now set himself to reverse. Between two and three hundred officers, between five and six thousand privates, were dismissed, and their places filled with Irish Roman Catholics. [19] It was easier to cashier the Cromwellians than to find competent successors. The Irish as a nation have never been wanting in military talent; but exclusion from the army at home had driven most Irishmen of martial tastes to seek service abroad. ”

“ In accordance with the policy agreed upon before the death of the late King the Duke of Ormond was removed from the viceroyalty; but, as Rochester, who had formerly been intended for his successor, was now selected by his brother-in-law to fill the great office of Lord High Treasurer of England, the government was temporarily entrusted to Michael Boyle, Archbishop of Armagh, and to the Earl of Granard, as Lords Justices. It was, perhaps, hoped that the appointment of the Primate would prove satisfactory to the Established Church; that that of Granard would conciliate the Presbyterians ”

“ If this clause was not to be a dead letter an extensive confiscation was imperative; and, for such a confiscation the "horrid and unnatural rebellion" which "was lately raised and still is continued in this kingdom and in other your Majesty's dominions" afforded a not unreasonable excuse. In conformity with a long series of English precedents the estates of all persons engaged in the rebellion were pronounced forfeited, and from the lands thus placed at the disposal of the crown commissioners appointed under the Great Seal were instructed to assign reprisals to purchasers. ”

“ An Act "for Forfeiting and Vesting in his Majesty the goods of Absentees" has been sometimes represented as a flagrant example of legislative robbery; but its real object was to put an end to the indiscriminate seizure of absentee property by unauthorised persons which had been taking place in many parts of the country since the beginning of March. [80] A bill for the repeal of Poynings' Act and another for establishing Inns of Court at Dublin, are said to have been rejected owing to the personal interference of James. ”

“ Three Protestant judges were at once dismissed, and two. Irishmen, Thomas Nugent and Denis Daly, and an English Catholic called Ingleby were selected to succeed them. Of the new judges the first mentioned seems to have been indebted for his promotion rather to the influence of his family than to his legal knowledge. [9] Daly is admitted on all sides to have been an able lawyer and an upright judge. [10] Ingleby declined the proferred office, which was eventually conferred on Stephen Rice, an Irish Catholic of great ability, noted for his implacable hostility to the Act of Settlement. ”

“ The landowners whom this statute deprived of their property comprised, according to the estimate of Archbishop King, about two-thirds of the Protestant proprietary of Ireland, [92] and were composed of three classes. By an Act to which Charles the First had been compelled to give a reluctant assent the Long Parliament had assigned a great portion of the soil of Ireland to "adventurers" or speculators who had advanced money to carry on the war against the Irish. ”

“ The new judges, however, were honourably conspicuous in discouraging these prosecutions, and a proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant and Council soon quieted apprehensions which had at first seemed by no means groundless. [25]
The conduct of the army afforded still graver cause for dissatisfaction. Even had the attitude of the colonists been more conciliatory it would have been difficult to prevent troops levied under such circumstances from exhibiting some signs of lawless and insolent triumph. ”

“ An "Act of Supply for his Majesty for the support of his Army," rendered highly necessary by the condition of the country, is chiefly remarkable for the very elaborate provisions introduced to safeguard the interests of the tenants—provisions extremely honourable to the legislature, which was composed with scarcely an exception of actual or potential landowners. ”

“ Fresh troops were, indeed, raised, suspected persons were disarmed, and sometimes roughly treated, and proclamations were issued, promising an amnesty to all who would lay down their arms, and threatening with punishment any who should continue in rebellion. [65] But no considerable military operations were attempted; and the insurgents, emboldened by impunity, became daily more numerous and more daring.
But the turn of events in England soon taught Tyrconnell that the hour for moderation had gone by. In December James fled the country ”

“ It was afterwards acknowledged that this letter was composed with the object of inducing some gentlemen of rank and wealth to join an association which had been formed as early as September, among the lower classes of Protestants for the purpose of resisting the government, but from which their more respectable co-religionists had hitherto held aloof. [63] But the enormous increase which Tyrconnell had recently made in the army had excited vague but widespread apprehensions, and in a little while all Ulster, except Carrickfergus, with the adjoining county of Sligo, was in arms. ”

“ In order to satisfy the claims of these persons it was accordingly enacted that all who had obtained property from the grantees "for good and valuable consideration, and not consideration of blood, affinity or marriage," should, in lieu of the lands restorable to their former owners, receive "other lands, tenements, hereditaments of equal value, worth, or purchase." ”

“ After a violent attack upon the principle of the bill, and a scurrilous invective against the assembled nobles, which proved, if it proved nothing else, that far greater freedom of speech was tolerated at Dublin than at Westminster, the Bishop proceeded to argue that the proposed reprisals were worthless. ”

“ In 1787, the English Government restored the estates confiscated in Scotland in 1745. (Parliamentary History, vol. xxiv., 1316-1322.) I am not aware that this measure has been censured by any of the writers who have denounced the repeal of the Act of Settlement. ↑ Clarendon, in a letter to James (August 14th, 1686) probably over-rates the number of purchasers. "There are very few of the original soldiers and adventurers now left, or of their descendants: of the latter not twenty families and no great number of the former. ”