8. Tyrconnel under these embarrassments summoned the loyal part of the nation to arm in support of the rights of their lawful sovereign, upon which their own rights also depended, against the northern rebels, and the efforts of the usurper (such was then the style of the castle). On the other hand, archbishop King has said, "And lest there should be any terms proposed or accepted by the people in the north, and so that country escape being plundered and undone, he made all the haste he could to involve the kingdom into blood." The fact is so much the reverse, that several proclamations were made requiring the associators to disperse, and promising them pardon. There was one of this nature, dated the 25th of January, 1688, which was signed by several protestants of the council, as the earl of Granard, lord chief justice Keating, &c. to which a reference is made in the proclamation mentioned by the archbishop bearing date 7th of March, 1688:† and it is notorious that Mr. Osborne was sent down to the north by the lord deputy, before any part of the army was put in motion, with instructions to use all persuasions to the associators to lay down their arms, and

niskillen by the same authority. Which two acts, Archbishop King says, was all that was done by any protestant in Ireland in opposition to the government before king James deserted England. (p. 118.) We learn from Hamilton's Actions of the Enniskillen men, p. 3, that this happened on the 16th of December, 1688. But it was on the 3d of December that a certain anonymous illiterately worded letter, announcing an intended massacre of all the protestants of Ireland on the 9th of that month, was picked up in Cumber-street, and sent to Lord Mount Alexander, and whether true or counterfeit (says his grace, p. 115), was spread over the whole kingdom, and about the same time the gates of Derry were shut against Lord Antrim's regiment; which his grace justifies, as they appeared before the town without the king's livery. On the 7th of December, 1688, (vide Mackenzie's Narrative of the Siege of Londonderry p. 3,) the gates were shut against Lord Antrim's regiment, and on that very same day Mr. Hamilton, of Tullamore, went to Dublin, deputed by these protestant associates to entreat the earl of Granard to put himself at the head of the northern army as their general; to which deputation he returned a very indignant answer: that he knew not what it was to command a rabble: that he had lived loyal all his life, and would not depart from it in his old age, and was resolved that no man should write rebel upon his grave-stone. (Lesl. 79.)

* Affairs in Ireland under the late king James, p. 129.

+ This proclamation is a notable monument of the want of good faith and candour in that trimming prelate. In justice to the actors in the scenes which his grace was then representing, this proclamation ought to have been comprised in his Appendix amongst other documents of very inferior importance to that public act of govern

ment.

give them warning of the very day on which the army would march, with a special instruction that although ten were excepted in the proclamation, yet he would insist but upon three: and if it should appear, that they took up arms merely for self-preservation (as was pretended) then he would pardon these said three persons also.*

9. An army of about 30,000 men was soon formed, and officered chiefly with catholics. James gave constant assurances that he would come over and head them in person; he was then at the court of Louis the XIVth, who, commiserating his fallen state, and envying the rising power of William, his inveterate enemy, offered rim a French army to enable him to re-assert his rights: which he with true patriotism declined, alleging, "that he would recover his dominions by the assistance of his own subjects, or perish in the attempt." James sailed from Brest with a strong armament; having on board 1,200 of his own subjects who were then in the pay of France, and 100 French officers: he landed at Kinsale, at the end of March, 1689: thence he proceeded to Dublin, where, he was received as king with great pomp and solemnity.

10. "Addressest (says Leland) were instantly poured in upon him from all orders of people. That of the protestant established clergy touched gently on the distraction of the times, and the grievances they had experienced. He assured them of protection; he promised to defend, and even to enlarge their privileges. But his fairest declarations were received with coldness and suspicion, when all the remaining protestants of the privy council were removed, and their places supplied by D'Avaux, Powis, Berwick, the bishop of Chester, and others of his zealous adherents. He now issued five several proclamations: by the first, he ordered all protestants who had lately abandoned the kingdom to return and accept his protection, under the severest penalties; and that his subjects of every persuasion should unite against the prince of Orange. The second was calculated to suppress robberies; commanding all catholics, not of his army, to lay up their arms in their several abodes: a third invited the country to carry provisions to his troops: by the fourth he raised the value of money: and the last summoned a parliament to meet at Dublin on the 7th day of May; and

* See Mr. Osborne's Letter to Lord Apology for the Protestants in Ireland.

Massarene, taken from the + 8 Lel. p. 523.

which did meet and sit from that day to the 12th of July, and then adjourned to the 12th of November following."

11. After these solemn and formal acts of sovereignty, the scene changed to open warfare. The defenders of Derry and the Enniskilleners supported the cause of the revolutionists against James's forces, till the arrival of an English army of 40,000 men under Schomberg, which was afterwards headed by William in person. Archbishop King, and after him most English authors, have represented the Irish army as a horde of undisciplined rebels, indulging in the extreme of infuriate licentiousness. His grace lays the whole war to the account of Lord Tyrconnel, who could not be prevailed on to defer sending the army to the north till king James's arrival,† but hasted to make the parties irreconcileable, by engaging them in blood, and by letting loose the army to spoil and plunder. The truth however is, that the protestants in the north were worse treated by, and suffered more from William's army in one month, than they had from the Irish army from March to the end of August, when Schomberg landed; although, during those five months, the Irish army were in possession of the whole province, except the towns of Derry and Enniskillen.

12. Dr. Gorge, who was then secretary to General Schomberg, in writing to Colonel Hamilton, whose estate lay in that country, gives the most pointed refutation of the untruth of the archbishop. In this letter he informs us, that "it was resolved to treat the Irish protestants of Ulster rather as enemies than friends. That the goods and stocks of the protestant inhabitants once seized by the enemy were forfeited, and ought not to be restored, but given as an encouragement to the soldiers; that their (the protestants') oaths and complaints were neither to be believed or redressed; that so an easier and safer approach might be made to invade the little left them by the Irish: that free quartering was the least retaliation that protestants could give for being restored to their former estates. If you add to these the pressing of horses at pleasure, denying the peo

* As by turn of events all acts done by James in Ireland after his abdication of the crown of England are now considered as acts of rebellion or usurpation upon the royal powers and prerogatives of king William, it would not be decent to refer to them for any other purpose than that of proving the sincerity with which the Irish nation then submitted to James as their lawful sovereign.

+ Affairs of Ireland, p. 129.

ple bread, or seed of their own corn, though the general by his public proclamation requires both, and some openly and publicly contemning and scorning the said proclamation, whereby multitudes of families are already reduced for want of bread, and left only to beg, and steal, or starve; these being the practices, and these the principles, and both as well known to you as to me, it cannot be wondered that the oppressed protestants here should report us worse than the Irish. To me it seems most strange, but yet it is true, that notwithstanding all the violence, oppression and wrong done by these (the Enniskillen and Derry forces), and other of our army, on the impoverished, oppressed, and plundered protestant inhabitants of this province, and the little encouragement and great discouragement they have had from us, yet you know, what I esteem as a great presage of future good, they continue and remain as firm and faithful to us as the Irish papists against us. How frequently do we hear them tell us, that though we continue to injure them, rob and destroy them, yet they must trust in us, and be true and faithful to us.' Thus did Schomberg's own secretary, an eye-witness of the fact, commend the discipline and good government of king James's army, as decidedly superior to that of king William.

13. Of all periods of Irish history the year 1689 is perhaps the most critically important, and requires the chastest colouring. The various acts by which James abdicated the crown of England, viz. by surrendering the executive power, disbanding the army, burning the writs for convening a parliament, casting the great seal into the river, abandoning his post, flying the kingdom, and leaving the invader in possession of the throne, as well as the affections of the mnajority of the people, formed no precedent for Ireland, which then was an absolutely independent kingdom. Every thing was here in the reverse. The presence of the sovereign, or his deputy, summoning all his liege subjects to their allegiance, bad defiance to all speculative grounds for dispensation or cessation of their former oaths: the resistance made against the attempts of an invader with an army of foreigners left it no longer dubious on which side the duty of loyalty called forth every subject of the king of Ireland. In order to appreciate the civil duty of the Irish of that day, we must divest ourselves of the impression which must have been produced by the then uncertain success of the revolution of 1688. No man, admitting Ireland to enjoy the same constitution as England, formed upon the Whig principles upon

which the revolution in England was effected, can aver that an Irishman who had sworn allegiance to king James, summoned by him to defend his person, crown, and country from the invasion of the prince of Orange, and a foreign army under marshal Schomberg, willing, like the majority of his countrymen, that the crown of Ireland should be worn by its hereditary monarch, should, in thus obeying its natural sovereign, become guilty of rebellion and treason, whilst that natural sovereign continued to wear his hereditary crown within his own kingdom. Such historically is the case of the Irish, who were* legislatively declared rebels, and punished as traitors for obeying their sovereign, whilst he continued the functions of the executive within the realm of Ireland.

14. On this severe trial of the subject's duty, the alle

The parliaments both of England and Ireland have declared the acts of the Irish parliament, that sat under James, to be acts of rebellion and treason. The substance of the Irish act of 7 Wm. III. c. iii. declaring all Attainders and all other Acts made in the late pretended parliament to be void, is both historical and legislative. The preamble sets forth, that Forasmuch as since the happy accession of his majesty, king William, and the late queen Mary of blessed memory, to the imperial crown of England, whereunto this kingdom of Ireland is inseparably annexed, united, and belonging, no parliament could or ought to be holden within this kingdom, unless by their majesties authority; yet, nevertheless, divers persons, during the late war and rebellion in this kingdom, did, on or about the seventh day of May, one thousand six hundred and eighty-nine, assemble themselves at or near the city of Dublin, without authority derived from their majesties, and in opposition thereto; and being so assembled, did pretend to be, and did call themselves by the name of, a parliament, and, acting in concurrence with the late king James, did make and pass several pretended acts or statutes, and did cause the same to be placed and recorded amongst the records and proceedings of parliaments; all which pretended acts were formed and designed in manifest opposition to the sovereignty of the crown of England, and for the utter destruction of the protestants and the whole protestant interest in this kingdom, and are and were null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever; and whereas their said majesties, out of their pious and princely care of and for their dutiful and loyal protestant subjects of this kingdom, and for their better security and relief, by an act of their parliament of England, made at Westminster, in the first year of their said majesties' reign, were graciously pleased to enact and declare, "That the said pretended parliament, so as aforesaid assembled at Dublin, was not a parliament, but au nnlawful and rebellious assembly; and that all acts and proceedings whatsoever, had, made, done, or passed, or to be had, made, done, or passed in the said pretended parliament, should be taken, deemed, adjudged, and declared to be null and void to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever." For which the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, in that parliament assembled, did return their most hearty and unfeigned thanks to his most sacred majesty.