While Avaux was on his way to Dublin, James hastened towards

Londonderry. He found his army concentrated a few miles south of the

city. The French generals who had sailed with him from Brest were in his

train; and two of them, Rosen and Maumont, were placed over the head of

Richard Hamilton, [193] Rosen was a native of Livonia, who had in

early youth become a soldier of fortune, who had fought his way to

distinction, and who, though utterly destitute of the graces and

accomplishments characteristic of the Court of Versailles, was

nevertheless high in favour there. His temper was savage: his manners

were coarse: his language was a strange jargon compounded of various

dialects of French and German. Even those who thought best of him, and

who maintained that his rough exterior covered some good qualities,

owned that his looks were against him, and that it would be unpleasant

to meet such a figure in the dusk at the corner of a wood, [194] The

little that is known of Maumont is to his honour.

In the camp it was generally expected that Londonderry would fall

without a blow. Rosen confidently predicted that the mere sight of

the Irish army would terrify the garrison into submission. But Richard

Hamilton, who knew the temper of the colonists better, had misgivings.

The assailants were sure of one important ally within the walls. Lundy,

the Governor, professed the Protestant religion, and had joined in

proclaiming William and Mary; but he was in secret communication with

the enemies of his Church and of the Sovereigns to whom he had sworn

lealty. Some have suspected that he was a concealed Jacobite, and that

he had affected to acquiesce in the Revolution only in order that he

might be better able to assist in bringing about a Restoration: but

it is probable that his conduct is rather to be attributed to

faintheartedness and poverty of spirit than to zeal for any public

cause. He seems to have thought resistance hopeless; and in truth, to

a military eye, the defences of Londonderry appeared contemptible.

The fortifications consisted of a simple wall overgrown with grass and

weeds: there was no ditch even before the gates: the drawbridges had

long been neglected: the chains were rusty and could scarcely be used:

the parapets and towers were built after a fashion which might well

move disciples of Vauban to laughter; and these feeble defences were on

almost every side commanded by heights. Indeed those who laid out the

city had never meant that it should be able to stand a regular siege,

and had contented themselves with throwing up works sufficient to

protect the inhabitants against a tumultuary attack of the Celtic

peasantry. Avaux assured Louvois that a single French battalion would

easily storm such defences. Even if the place should, notwithstanding

all disadvantages, be able to repel a large army directed by the science

and experience of generals who had served under Conde and Turenne,

hunger must soon bring the contest to an end. The stock of provisions

was small; and the population had been swollen to seven or eight times

the ordinary number by a multitude of colonists flying from the rage of

the natives, [195]

Lundy, therefore, from the time when the Irish army entered Ulster,

seems to have given up all thought of serious resistance, He talked so

despondingly that the citizens and his own soldiers murmured against

him. He seemed, they said, to be bent on discouraging them. Meanwhile

the enemy drew daily nearer and nearer; and it was known that James

himself was coming to take the command of his forces.

Just at this moment a glimpse of hope appeared. On the fourteenth of

April ships from England anchored in the bay. They had on board two

regiments which had been sent, under the command of a Colonel named

Cunningham, to reinforce the garrison. Cunningham and several of his

officers went on shore and conferred with Lundy. Lundy dissuaded them

from landing their men. The place, he said, could not hold out. To throw

more troops into it would therefore be worse than useless: for the more

numerous the garrison, the more prisoners would fall into the hands of

the enemy. The best thing that the two regiments could do would be to

sail back to England. He meant, he said, to withdraw himself privately:

and the inhabitants must then try to make good terms for themselves.

He went through the form of holding a council of war; but from this

council he excluded all those officers of the garrison whose sentiments

he knew to be different from his own. Some, who had ordinarily been

summoned on such occasions, and who now came uninvited, were thrust out

of the room. Whatever the Governor said was echoed by his creatures.

Cunningham and Cunningham's companions could scarcely venture to oppose

their opinion to that of a person whose local knowledge was necessarily

far superior to theirs, and whom they were by their instructions

directed to obey. One brave soldier murmured. "Understand this," he

said, "to give up Londonderry is to give up Ireland." But his objections

were contemptuously overruled, [196] The meeting broke up. Cunningham

and his officers returned to the ships, and made preparations for

departing. Meanwhile Lundy privately sent a messenger to the head

quarters of the enemy, with assurances that the city should be peaceably

surrendered on the first summons.

But as soon as what had passed in the council of war was whispered about

the streets, the spirit of the soldiers and citizens swelled up high and

fierce against the dastardly and perfidious chief who had betrayed them.

Many of his own officers declared that they no longer thought themselves

bound to obey him. Voices were heard threatening, some that his brains

should be blown out, some that he should be hanged on the walls. A

deputation was sent to Cunningham imploring him to assume the command.

He excused himself on the plausible ground that his orders were to

take directions in all things from the Governor, [197] Meanwhile it was

rumoured that the persons most in Lundy's confidence were stealing

out of the town one by one. Long after dusk on the evening of the

seventeenth it was found that the gates were open and that the keys had

disappeared. The officers who made the discovery took on themselves

to change the passwords and to double the guards. The night, however,

passed over without any assault, [198]

After some anxious hours the day broke. The Irish, with James at their

head, were now within four miles of the city. A tumultuous council of

the chief inhabitants was called. Some of them vehemently reproached the

Governor to his face with his treachery. He had sold them, they cried,

to their deadliest enemy: he had refused admission to the force which

good King William had sent to defend them. While the altercation was

at the height, the sentinels who paced the ramparts announced that the

vanguard of the hostile army was in sight. Lundy had given orders that

there should be no firing; but his authority was at an end. Two gallant

soldiers, Major Henry Baker and Captain Adam Murray, called the people

to arms. They were assisted by the eloquence of an aged clergyman,

George Walker, rector of the parish of Donaghmore, who had, with many

of his neighbours, taken refuge in Londonderry. The whole of the crowded

city was moved by one impulse. Soldiers, gentlemen, yeomen, artisans,

rushed to the walls and manned the guns. James, who, confident of

success, had approached within a hundred yards of the southern gate,

was received with a shout of "No surrender," and with a fire from the

nearest bastion. An officer of his staff fell dead by his side. The

King and his attendants made all haste to get out of reach of the cannon

balls. Lundy, who was now in imminent danger of being torn limb from

limb by those whom he had betrayed, hid himself in an inner chamber.

There he lay during the day, and at night, with the generous and politic

connivance of Murray and Walker, made his escape in the disguise of a

porter, [199] The part of the wall from which he let himself down is

still pointed out; and people still living talk of having tasted the

fruit of a pear tree which assisted him in his descent. His name is, to

this day, held in execration by the Protestants of the North of Ireland;

and his effigy was long, and perhaps still is, annually hung and burned

by them with marks of abhorrence similar to those which in England are

appropriated to Guy Faux.

And now Londonderry was left destitute of all military and of all civil

government. No man in the town had a right to command any other: the

defences were weak: the provisions were scanty: an incensed tyrant and

a great army were at the gates. But within was that which has often,

in desperate extremities, retrieved the fallen fortunes of nations.

Betrayed, deserted, disorganized, unprovided with resources, begirt with

enemies, the noble city was still no easy conquest. Whatever an

engineer might think of the strength of the ramparts, all that was most

intelligent, most courageous, most highspirited among the Englishry of

Leinster and of Northern Ulster was crowded behind them. The number of

men capable of bearing arms within the walls was seven thousand; and the

whole world could not have furnished seven thousand men better qualified

to meet a terrible emergency with clear judgment, dauntless valour,

and stubborn patience. They were all zealous Protestants; and the

Protestantism of the majority was tinged with Puritanism. They had much

in common with that sober, resolute, and Godfearing class out of which

Cromwell had formed his unconquerable army. But the peculiar situation

in which they had been placed had developed in them some qualities

which, in the mother country, might possibly have remained latent. The

English inhabitants of Ireland were an aristocratic caste, which had

been enabled, by superior civilisation, by close union, by sleepless

vigilance, by cool intrepidity, to keep in subjection a numerous and

hostile population. Almost every one of them had been in some measure

trained both to military and to political functions. Almost every one

was familiar with the use of arms, and was accustomed to bear a part in

the administration of justice. It was remarked by contemporary writers

that the colonists had something of the Castilian haughtiness of manner,

though none of the Castilian indolence, that they spoke English

with remarkable purity and correctness, and that they were, both as

militiamen and as jurymen, superior to their kindred in the mother

country, [200] In all ages, men situated as the Anglosaxons in Ireland

were situated have had peculiar vices and peculiar virtues, the vices

and virtues of masters, as opposed to the vices and virtues of slaves.

The member of a dominant race is, in his dealings with the subject race,

seldom indeed fraudulent,--for fraud is the resource of the weak,--but

imperious, insolent, and cruel. Towards his brethren, on the other hand,

his conduct is generally just, kind, and even noble. His selfrespect

leads him to respect all who belong to his own order. His interest

impels him to cultivate a good understanding with those whose prompt,

strenuous, and courageous assistance may at any moment be necessary to

preserve his property and life. It is a truth ever present to his mind

that his own wellbeing depends on the ascendency of the class to which

he belongs. His very selfishness therefore is sublimed into public

spirit: and this public spirit is stimulated to fierce enthusiasm by

sympathy, by the desire of applause, and by the dread of infamy. For the

only opinion which he values is the opinion of his fellows; and in their

opinion devotion to the common cause is the most sacred of duties. The

character, thus formed, has two aspects. Seen on one side, it must be

regarded by every well constituted mind with disapprobation. Seen on

the other, it irresistibly extorts applause. The Spartan, smiting and

spurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan,

calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what he

well knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be

contemplated without admiration. To a superficial observer it may seem

strange that so much evil and so much good should be found together.

But in truth the good and the evil, which at first sight appear almost

incompatible, are closely connected, and have a common origin. It was

because the Spartan had been taught to revere himself as one of a race

of sovereigns, and to look down on all that was not Spartan as of an

inferior species, that he had no fellow feeling for the miserable serfs

who crouched before him, and that the thought of submitting to a foreign

master, or of turning his back before an enemy, never, even in the last

extremity, crossed his mind. Something of the same character, compounded

of tyrant and hero, has been found in all nations which have domineered

over more numerous nations. But it has nowhere in modern Europe shown

itself so conspicuously as in Ireland. With what contempt, with what

antipathy, the ruling minority in that country long regarded the subject

majority may be best learned from the hateful laws which, within the

memory of men still living, disgraced the Irish statute book. Those laws

were at length annulled: but the spirit which had dictated them survived

them, and even at this day sometimes breaks out in excesses pernicious

to the commonwealth and dishonourable to the Protestant religion.

Nevertheless it is impossible to deny that the English colonists have

had, with too many of the faults, all the noblest virtues of a sovereign

caste. The faults have, as was natural, been most offensively exhibited

in times of prosperity and security: the virtues have been most

resplendent in times of distress and peril; and never were those virtues

more signally displayed than by the defenders of Londonderry, when their

Governor had abandoned them, and when the camp of their mortal enemy was

pitched before their walls.

No sooner had the first burst of the rage excited by the perfidy of

Lundy spent itself than those whom he had betrayed proceeded, with a

gravity and prudence worthy of the most renowned senates, to provide for

the order and defence of the city. Two governors were elected, Baker

and Walker. Baker took the chief military command. Walker's especial

business was to preserve internal tranquillity, and to dole out supplies

from the magazines, [201] The inhabitants capable of bearing arms were

distributed into eight regiments. Colonels, captains, and subordinate

officers were appointed. In a few hours every man knew his post, and was

ready to repair to it as soon as the beat of the drum was heard. That

machinery, by which Oliver had, in the preceding generation, kept up

among his soldiers so stern and so pertinacious an enthusiasm, was again

employed with not less complete success. Preaching and praying occupied

a large part of every day. Eighteen clergymen of the Established Church

and seven or eight nonconformist ministers were within the walls. They

all exerted themselves indefatigably to rouse and sustain the spirit of

the people. Among themselves there was for the time entire harmony. All

disputes about church government, postures, ceremonies, were forgotten.

The Bishop, having found that his lectures on passive obedience were

derided even by the Episcopalians, had withdrawn himself, first to

Raphoe, and then to England, and was preaching in a chapel in London,

[202] On the other hand, a Scotch fanatic named Hewson, who had exhorted

the Presbyterians not to ally themselves with such as refused to

subscribe the Covenant, had sunk under the well merited disgust and

scorn of the whole Protestant community, [203] The aspect of the

Cathedral was remarkable. Cannon were planted on the summit of the broad

tower which has since given place to a tower of different proportions.

Ammunition was stored in the vaults. In the choir the liturgy of the

Anglican Church was read every morning. Every afternoon the Dissenters

crowded to a simpler worship, [204]

James had waited twenty-four hours, expecting, as it should seem,

the performance of Lundy's promises; and in twenty-four hours the

arrangements for the defence of Londonderry were complete. On the

evening of the nineteenth of April, a trumpeter came to the southern

gate, and asked whether the engagements into which the Governor had

entered would be fulfilled. The answer was that the men who guarded

these walls had nothing to do with the Governor's engagements, and were

determined to resist to the last.

On the following day a messenger of higher rank was sent, Claude

Hamilton, Lord Strabane, one of the few Roman Catholic peers of Ireland.

Murray, who had been appointed to the command of one of the eight

regiments into which the garrison was distributed, advanced from

the gate to meet the flag of truce; and a short conference was held.

Strabane had been authorised to make large promises. The citizens should

have a free pardon for all that was past if they would submit to their

lawful Sovereign. Murray himself should have a colonel's commission, and

a thousand pounds in money. "The men of Londonderry," answered Murray,

"have done nothing that requires a pardon, and own no Sovereign but King

William and Queen Mary. It will not be safe for your Lordship to stay

longer, or to return on the same errand. Let me have the honour of

seeing you through the lines." [205]

James had been assured, and had fully expected, that the city would

yield as soon as it was known that he was before the walls. Finding

himself mistaken, he broke loose from the control of Melfort, and

determined to return instantly to Dublin. Rosen accompanied the King.

The direction of the siege was intrusted to Maumont. Richard Hamilton

was second, and Pusignan third, in command.

The operations now commenced in earnest. The besiegers began by

battering the town. It was soon on fire in several places. Roofs and

upper stories of houses fell in, and crushed the inmates. During a short

time the garrison, many of whom had never before seen the effect of a

cannonade, seemed to be discomposed by the crash of chimneys, and by

the heaps of ruin mingled with disfigured corpses. But familiarity with

danger and horror produced in a few hours the natural effect. The spirit

of the people rose so high that their chiefs thought it safe to act on

the offensive. On the twenty-first of April a sally was made under

the command of Murray. The Irish stood their ground resolutely; and a

furious and bloody contest took place. Maumont, at the head of a body of

cavalry, flew to the place where the fight was raging. He was struck in

the head by a musket ball, and fell a corpse. The besiegers lost several

other officers, and about two hundred men, before the colonists could

be driven in. Murray escaped with difficulty. His horse was killed under

him; and he was beset by enemies: but he was able to defend himself till

some of his friends made a rush from the gate to his rescue, with old

Walker at their head, [206]

In consequence of the death of Maumont, Hamilton was once more

commander of the Irish army. His exploits in that post did not raise his

reputation. He was a fine gentleman and a brave soldier; but he had no

pretensions to the character of a great general, and had never, in his

life, seen a siege, [207] Pusignan had more science and energy. But

Pusignan survived Maumont little more than a fortnight. At four in

the morning of the sixth of May, the garrison made another sally, took

several flags, and killed many of the besiegers. Pusignan, fighting

gallantly, was shot through the body. The wound was one which a skilful

surgeon might have cured: but there was no such surgeon in the Irish

camp; and the communication with Dublin was slow and irregular. The

poor Frenchman died, complaining bitterly of the barbarous ignorance

and negligence which had shortened his days. A medical man, who had been

sent down express from the capital, arrived after the funeral. James,

in consequence, as it should seem, of this disaster, established a daily

post between Dublin Castle and Hamilton's head quarters. Even by this

conveyance letters did not travel very expeditiously: for the couriers

went on foot; and, from fear probably of the Enniskilleners, took a

circuitous route from military post to military post, [208]

May passed away: June arrived; and still Londonderry held out. There

had been many sallies and skirmishes with various success: but, on the

whole, the advantage had been with the garrison. Several officers of

note had been carried prisoners into the city; and two French banners,

torn after hard fighting from the besiegers, had been hung as trophies

in the chancel of the Cathedral. It seemed that the siege must be turned

into a blockade. But before the hope of reducing the town by main force

was relinquished, it was determined to make a great effort. The point

selected for assault was an outwork called Windmill Hill, which was

not far from the southern gate. Religious stimulants were employed

to animate the courage of the forlorn hope. Many volunteers bound

themselves by oath to make their way into the works or to perish in the

attempt. Captain Butler, son of the Lord Mountgarret, undertook to lead

the sworn men to the attack. On the walls the colonists were drawn up in

three ranks. The office of those who were behind was to load the muskets

of those who were in front. The Irish came on boldly and with a fearful

uproar, but after long and hard fighting were driven back. The women

of Londonderry were seen amidst the thickest fire serving out water and

ammunition to their husbands and brothers. In one place, where the wall

was only seven feet high, Butler and some of his sworn men succeeded in

reaching the top; but they were all killed or made prisoners. At length,

after four hundred of the Irish had fallen, their chiefs ordered a

retreat to be sounded, [209]

Nothing was left but to try the effect of hunger. It was known that the

stock of food in the city was but slender. Indeed it was thought strange

that the supplies should have held out so long. Every precaution was now

taken against the introduction of provisions. All the avenues leading to

the city by land were closely guarded. On the south were encamped, along

the left bank of the Foyle, the horsemen who had followed Lord Galmoy

from the valley of the Barrow. Their chief was of all the Irish captains

the most dreaded and the most abhorred by the Protestants. For he had

disciplined his men with rare skill and care; and many frightful stories

were told of his barbarity and perfidy. Long lines of tents, occupied by

the infantry of Butler and O'Neil, of Lord Slane and Lord Gormanstown,

by Nugent's Westmeath men, by Eustace's Kildare men, and by Cavanagh's

Kerry men, extended northward till they again approached the water side,

[210] The river was fringed with forts and batteries which no vessel

could pass without great peril. After some time it was determined to

make the security still more complete by throwing a barricade across the

stream, about a mile and a half below the city. Several boats full of

stones were sunk. A row of stakes was driven into the bottom of the

river. Large pieces of fir wood, strongly bound together, formed a boom

which was more than a quarter of a mile in length, and which was firmly

fastened to both shores, by cables a foot thick, [211] A huge stone, to

which the cable on the left bank was attached, was removed many years

later, for the purpose of being polished and shaped into a column. But

the intention was abandoned, and the rugged mass still lies, not

many yards from its original site, amidst the shades which surround a

pleasant country house named Boom Hall. Hard by is the well from which

the besiegers drank. A little further off is the burial ground where

they laid their slain, and where even in our own time the spade of the

gardener has struck upon many sculls and thighbones at a short distance

beneath the turf and flowers.

While these things were passing in the North, James was holding his

court at Dublin. On his return thither from Londonderry he received

intelligence that the French fleet, commanded by the Count of Chateau

Renaud, had anchored in Bantry Bay, and had put on shore a large

quantity of military stores and a supply of money. Herbert, who had

just been sent to those seas with an English squadron for the purpose

of intercepting the communications between Britanny and Ireland, learned

where the enemy lay, and sailed into the bay with the intention of

giving battle. But the wind was unfavourable to him: his force was

greatly inferior to that which was opposed to him; and after some

firing, which caused no serious loss to either side, he thought it

prudent to stand out to sea, while the French retired into the recesses

of the harbour. He steered for Scilly, where he expected to find

reinforcements; and Chateau Renaud, content with the credit which he had

acquired, and afraid of losing it if he staid, hastened back to Brest,

though earnestly intreated by James to come round to Dublin.

Both sides claimed the victory. The Commons at Westminster absurdly

passed a vote of thanks to Herbert. James, not less absurdly, ordered

bonfires to be lighted, and a Te Deum to be sung. But these marks of joy

by no means satisfied Avaux, whose national vanity was too strong even

for his characteristic prudence and politeness. He complained that James

was so unjust and ungrateful as to attribute the result of the late

action to the reluctance with which the English seamen fought against

their rightful King and their old commander, and that his Majesty did

not seem to be well pleased by being told that they were flying over the

ocean pursued by the triumphant French. Dover, too, was a bad Frenchman.

He seemed to take no pleasure in the defeat of his countrymen, and had

been heard to say that the affair in Bantry Bay did not deserve to be

called a battle, [212]

On the day after the Te Deum had been sung at Dublin for this indecisive

skirmish, the Parliament convoked by James assembled. The number of

temporal peers of Ireland, when he arrived in that kingdom, was about a

hundred. Of these only fourteen obeyed his summons. Of the fourteen,

ten were Roman Catholics. By the reversing of old attainders, and by new

creations, seventeen more Lords, all Roman Catholics, were introduced

into the Upper House. The Protestant Bishops of Meath, Ossory, Cork, and

Limerick, whether from a sincere conviction that they could not lawfully

withhold their obedience even from a tyrant, or from a vain hope that

the heart even of a tyrant might be softened by their patience, made

their appearance in the midst of their mortal enemies.

The House of Commons consisted almost exclusively of Irishmen and

Papists. With the writs the returning officers had received from

Tyrconnel letters naming the persons whom he wished to see elected. The

largest constituent bodies in the kingdom were at this time very small.

For scarcely any but Roman Catholics dared to show their faces; and the

Roman Catholic freeholders were then very few, not more, it is said,

in some counties, than ten or twelve. Even in cities so considerable

as Cork, Limerick, and Galway, the number of persons who, under the new

Charters, were entitled to vote did not exceed twenty-four. About two

hundred and fifty members took their seats. Of these only six were

Protestants, [213] The list of the names sufficiently indicates the

religious and political temper of the assembly. Alone among the Irish

parliaments of that age, this parliament was filled with Dermots

and Geohagans, O'Neils and O'Donovans, Macmahons, Macnamaras, and

Macgillicuddies. The lead was taken by a few men whose abilities had

been improved by the study of the law, or by experience acquired

in foreign countries. The Attorney General, Sir Richard Nagle, who

represented the county of Cork, was allowed, even by Protestants, to

be an acute and learned jurist. Francis Plowden, the Commissioner of

Revenue, who sate for Bannow, and acted as chief minister of finance,

was an Englishman, and, as he had been a principal agent of the Order of

Jesuits in money matters, must be supposed to have been an excellent

man of business, [214] Colonel Henry Luttrell, member for the county of

Carlow, had served long in France, and had brought back to his native

Ireland a sharpened intellect and polished manners, a flattering tongue,

some skill in war, and much more skill in intrigue. His elder brother,

Colonel Simon Luttrell, who was member for the county of Dublin, and

military governor of the capital, had also resided in France,

and, though inferior to Henry in parts and activity, made a highly

distinguished figure among the adherents of James. The other member for

the county of Dublin was Colonel Patrick Sarsfield. This gallant officer

was regarded by the natives as one of themselves: for his ancestors on

the paternal side, though originally English, were among those early

colonists who were proverbially said to have become more Irish than

Irishmen. His mother was of noble Celtic blood; and he was firmly

attached to the old religion. He had inherited an estate of about two

thousand a year, and was therefore one of the wealthiest Roman Catholics

in the kingdom. His knowledge of courts and camps was such as few of his

countrymen possessed. He had long borne a commission in the English Life

Guards, had lived much about Whitehall, and had fought bravely under

Monmouth on the Continent, and against Monmouth at Sedgemoor. He had,

Avaux wrote, more personal influence than any man in Ireland, and was

indeed a gentleman of eminent merit, brave, upright, honourable, careful

of his men in quarters, and certain to be always found at their head in

the day of battle. His intrepidity, his frankness, his boundless good

nature, his stature, which far exceeded that of ordinary men, and the

strength which he exerted in personal conflict, gained for him the

affectionate admiration of the populace. It is remarkable that the

Englishry generally respected him as a valiant, skilful, and generous

enemy, and that, even in the most ribald farces which were performed by

mountebanks in Smithfield, he was always excepted from the disgraceful

imputations which it was then the fashion to throw on the Irish nation,

[215]

But men like these were rare in the House of Commons which had met at

Dublin. It is no reproach to the Irish nation, a nation which has since

furnished its full proportion of eloquent and accomplished senators, to

say that, of all the parliaments which have met in the British islands,

Barebone's parliament not excepted, the assembly convoked by James

was the most deficient in all the qualities which a legislature should

possess. The stern domination of a hostile caste had blighted the

faculties of the Irish gentleman. If he was so fortunate as to have

lands, he had generally passed his life on them, shooting, fishing,

carousing, and making love among his vassals. If his estate had been

confiscated, he had wandered about from bawn to bawn and from cabin to

cabin, levying small contributions, and living at the expense of other

men. He had never sate in the House of Commons: he had never even taken

an active part at an election: he had never been a magistrate: scarcely

ever had he been on a grand jury. He had therefore absolutely no

experience of public affairs. The English squire of that age, though

assuredly not a very profound or enlightened politician, was a statesman

and a philosopher when compared with the Roman Catholic squire of

Munster or Connaught.

The Parliaments of Ireland had then no fixed place of assembling. Indeed

they met so seldom and broke up so speedily that it would hardly have

been worth while to build and furnish a palace for their special use. It

was not till the Hanoverian dynasty had been long on the throne, that a

senate house which sustains a comparison with the finest compositions

of Inigo Jones arose in College Green. On the spot where the portico

and dome of the Four Courts now overlook the Liffey, stood, in the

seventeenth century, an ancient building which had once been a convent

of Dominican friars, but had since the Reformation been appropriated to

the use of the legal profession, and bore the name of the King's Inns.

There accommodation had been provided for the parliament. On the seventh

of May, James, dressed in royal robes and wearing a crown, took his

seat on the throne in the House of Lords, and ordered the Commons to be

summoned to the bar, [216]

He then expressed his gratitude to the natives of Ireland for having

adhered to his cause when the people of his other kingdoms had deserted

him. His resolution to abolish all religious disabilities in all his

dominions he declared to be unalterable. He invited the houses to take

the Act of Settlement into consideration, and to redress the injuries

of which the old proprietors of the soil had reason to complain. He

concluded by acknowledging in warm terms his obligations to the King of

France, [217]

When the royal speech had been pronounced, the Chancellor directed the

Commons to repair to their chamber and to elect a Speaker. They chose

the Attorney General Nagle; and the choice was approved by the King,

[218]

The Commons next passed resolutions expressing warm gratitude both to

James and to Lewis. Indeed it was proposed to send a deputation with an

address to Avaux; but the Speaker pointed out the gross impropriety of

such a step; and, on this occasion, his interference was successful,

[219] It was seldom however that the House was disposed to listen

to reason. The debates were all rant and tumult. Judge Daly, a Roman

Catholic, but an honest and able man, could not refrain from lamenting

the indecency and folly with which the members of his Church carried

on the work of legislation. Those gentlemen, he said, were not a

Parliament: they were a mere rabble: they resembled nothing so much as

the mob of fishermen and market gardeners, who, at Naples, yelled and

threw up their caps in honour of Massaniello. It was painful to hear

member after member talking wild nonsense about his own losses, and

clamouring for an estate, when the lives of all and the independence of

their common country were in peril. These words were spoken in private;

but some talebearer repeated them to the Commons. A violent storm broke

forth. Daly was ordered to attend at the bar; and there was little doubt

that he would be severely dealt with. But, just when he was at the

door, one of the members rushed in, shouting, "Good news: Londonderry

is taken." The whole House rose. All the hats were flung into the air.

Three loud huzzas were raised. Every heart was softened by the happy

tidings. Nobody would hear of punishment at such a moment. The order

for Daly's attendance was discharged amidst cries of "No submission; no

submission; we pardon him." In a few hours it was known that

Londonderry held out as obstinately as ever. This transaction, in itself

unimportant, deserves to be recorded, as showing how destitute that

House of Commons was of the qualities which ought to be found in the

great council of a kingdom. And this assembly, without experience,

without gravity, and without temper, was now to legislate on questions

which would have tasked to the utmost the capacity of the greatest

statesmen, [220]

One Act James induced them to pass which would have been most honourable

to him and to them, if there were not abundant proofs that it was meant

to be a dead letter. It was an Act purporting to grant entire liberty of

conscience to all Christian sects. On this occasion a proclamation was

put forth announcing in boastful language to the English people that

their rightful King had now signally refuted those slanderers who had

accused him of affecting zeal for religious liberty merely in order to

serve a turn. If he were at heart inclined to persecution, would he not

have persecuted the Irish Protestants? He did not want power. He did not

want provocation. Yet at Dublin, where the members of his Church were

the majority, as at Westminister, where they were a minority, he

had firmly adhered to the principles laid down in his much maligned

Declaration of Indulgence, [221] Unfortunately for him, the same wind

which carried his fair professions to England carried thither also

evidence that his professions were insincere. A single law, worthy of

Turgot or of Franklin, seemed ludicrously out of place in the midst of a

crowd of laws which would have disgraced Gardiner or Alva.

A necessary preliminary to the vast work of spoliation and slaughter

on which the legislators of Dublin were bent, was an Act annulling the

authority which the English Parliament, both as the supreme legislature

and as the supreme Court of Appeal, had hitherto exercised over

Ireland, [222] This Act was rapidly passed; and then followed, in quick

succession, confiscations and proscriptions on a gigantic scale. The

personal estates of absentees above the age of seventeen years were

transferred to the King. When lay property was thus invaded, it was not

likely that the endowments which had been, in contravention of every

sound principle, lavished on the Church of the minority would be spared.

To reduce those endowments, without prejudice to existing interests,

would have been a reform worthy of a good prince and of a good

parliament. But no such reform would satisfy the vindictive bigots who

sate at the King's Inns. By one sweeping Act, the greater part of the

tithe was transferred from the Protestant to the Roman Catholic

clergy; and the existing incumbents were left, without one farthing

of compensation, to die of hunger, [223] A Bill repealing the Act of

Settlement and transferring many thousands of square miles from Saxon to

Celtic landlords was brought in and carried by acclamation, [224]

Of legislation such as this it is impossible to speak too severely:

but for the legislators there are excuses which it is the duty of the

historian to notice. They acted unmercifully, unjustly, unwisely. But it

would be absurd to expect mercy, justice, or wisdom from a class of men

first abased by many years of oppression, and then maddened by the

joy of a sudden deliverance, and armed with irresistible power. The

representatives of the Irish nation were, with few exceptions, rude

and ignorant. They had lived in a state of constant irritation. With

aristocratical sentiments they had been in a servile position. With the

highest pride of blood, they had been exposed to daily affronts, such as

might well have roused the choler of the humblest plebeian. In sight of

the fields and castles which they regarded as their own, they had been

glad to be invited by a peasant to partake of his whey and his potatoes.

Those violent emotions of hatred and cupidity which the situation of the

native gentleman could scarcely fail to call forth appeared to him under

the specious guise of patriotism and piety. For his enemies were the

enemies of his nation; and the same tyranny which had robbed him of his

patrimony had robbed his Church of vast wealth bestowed on her by

the devotion of an earlier age. How was power likely to be used by

an uneducated and inexperienced man, agitated by strong desires and

resentments which he mistook for sacred duties? And, when two or three

hundred such men were brought together in one assembly, what was to be

expected but that the passions which each had long nursed in silence

would be at once matured into fearful vigour by the influence of

sympathy?

Between James and his parliament there was little in common, except

hatred of the Protestant religion. He was an Englishman. Superstition

had not utterly extinguished all national feeling in his mind; and he

could not but be displeased by the malevolence with which his Celtic

supporters regarded the race from which he sprang. The range of his

intellectual vision was small. Yet it was impossible that, having

reigned in England, and looking constantly forward to the day when he

should reign in England once more, he should not take a wider view of

politics than was taken by men who had no objects out of Ireland. The

few Irish Protestants who still adhered to him, and the British nobles,

both Protestant and Roman Catholic, who had followed him into exile,

implored him to restrain the violence of the rapacious and vindictive

senate which he had convoked. They with peculiar earnestness implored

him not to consent to the repeal of the Act of Settlement. On what

security, they asked, could any man invest his money or give a portion

to his children, if he could not rely on positive laws and on the

uninterrupted possession of many years? The military adventurers among

whom Cromwell portioned out the soil might perhaps be regarded as

wrongdoers. But how large a part of their estates had passed, by fair

purchase, into other hands! How much money had proprietors borrowed on

mortgage, on statute merchant, on statute staple! How many capitalists

had, trusting to legislative acts and to royal promises, come over

from England, and bought land in Ulster and Leinster, without the least

misgiving as to the title! What a sum had those capitalists expended,

during a quarter of a century, in building; draining, inclosing,

planting! The terms of the compromise which Charles the Second had

sanctioned might not be in all respects just. But was one injustice to

be redressed by committing another injustice more monstrous still? And

what effect was likely to be produced in England by the cry of thousands

of innocent English families whom an English king had doomed to ruin?

The complaints of such a body of sufferers might delay, might prevent,

the Restoration to which all loyal subjects were eagerly looking

forward; and, even if his Majesty should, in spite of those complaints,

be happily restored, he would to the end of his life feel the pernicious

effects of the injustice which evil advisers were now urging him to

commit. He would find that, in trying to quiet one set of malecontents,

he had created another. As surely as he yielded to the clamour raised at

Dublin for a repeal of the Act of Settlement, he would, from the day

on which he returned to Westminster, be assailed by as loud and

pertinacious a clamour for a repeal of that repeal. He could not but be

aware that no English Parliament, however loyal, would permit such laws

as were now passing through the Irish Parliament to stand. Had he made

up his mind to take the part of Ireland against the universal sense of

England? If so, to what could he look forward but another banishment

and another deposition? Or would he, when he had recovered the greater

kingdom, revoke the boors by which, in his distress, he had purchased

the help of the smaller? It might seem an insult to him even to suggest

that he could harbour the thought of such unprincely, of such unmanly,

perfidy. Yet what other course would be left to him? And was it not

better for him to refuse unreasonable concessions now than to retract

those concessions hereafter in a manner which must bring on him

reproaches insupportable to a noble mind? His situation was doubtless

embarrassing. Yet in this case, as in other cases, it would be found

that the path of justice was the path of wisdom, [225]

Though James had, in his speech at the opening of the session, declared

against the Act of Settlement, he felt that these arguments were

unanswerable. He held several conferences with the leading members of

the House of Commons, and earnestly recommended moderation. But his

exhortations irritated the passions which he wished to allay. Many of

the native gentry held high and violent language. It was impudent, they

said, to talk about the rights of purchasers. How could right spring out

of wrong? People who chose to buy property acquired by injustice must

take the consequences of their folly and cupidity. It was clear that the

Lower House was altogether impracticable. James had, four years

before, refused to make the smallest concession to the most obsequious

parliament that has ever sat in England; and it might have been expected

that the obstinacy, which he had never wanted when it was a vice, would

not have failed him now when it would have been a virtue. During a short

time he seemed determined to act justly. He even talked of dissolving

the parliament. The chiefs of the old Celtic families, on the

other hand, said publicly that, if he did not give them back their

inheritance, they would not fight for his. His very soldiers railed on

him in the streets of Dublin. At length he determined to go down himself

to the House of Peers, not in his robes and crown, but in the garb in

which he had been used to attend debates at Westminster, and personally

to solicit the Lords to put some check on the violence of the Commons.

But just as he was getting into his coach for this purpose he was

stopped by Avaux. Avaux was as zealous as any Irishman for the bills

which the Commons were urging forward. It was enough for him that those

bills seemed likely to make the enmity between England and Ireland

irreconcileable. His remonstrances induced James to abstain from openly

opposing the repeal of the Act of Settlement. Still the unfortunate

prince continued to cherish some faint hope that the law for which the

Commons were so zealous would be rejected, or at least modified, by the

Peers. Lord Granard, one of the few Protestant noblemen who sate in that

parliament, exerted himself strenuously on the side of public faith and

sound policy. The King sent him a message of thanks. "We Protestants,"

said Granard to Powis who brought the message, "are few in number.

We can do little. His Majesty should try his influence with the Roman

Catholics." "His Majesty," answered Powis with an oath, "dares not say

what he thinks." A few days later James met Granard riding towards the

parliament house. "Where are you going, my Lord?" said the King. "To

enter my protest, Sir," answered Granard, "against the repeal of the Act

of Settlement." "You are right," said the King: "but I am fallen into

the hands of people who will ram that and much more down my throat."

[226]

James yielded to the will of the Commons; but the unfavourable

impression which his short and feeble resistance had made upon them was

not to be removed by his submission. They regarded him with profound

distrust; they considered him as at heart an Englishman; and not a day

passed without some indication of this feeling. They were in no haste to

grant him a supply. One party among them planned an address urging him

to dismiss Melfort as an enemy of their nation. Another party drew up

a bill for deposing all the Protestant Bishops, even the four who were

then actually sitting in Parliament. It was not without difficulty that

Avaux and Tyrconnel, whose influence in the Lower House far exceeded the

King's, could restrain the zeal of the majority, [227]

It is remarkable that, while the King was losing the confidence and

good will of the Irish Commons by faintly defending against them, in

one quarter, the institution of property, he was himself, in another

quarter, attacking that institution with a violence, if possible,

more reckless than theirs. He soon found that no money came into his

Exchequer. The cause was sufficiently obvious. Trade was at an end.

Floating capital had been withdrawn in great masses from the island. Of

the fixed capital much had been destroyed, and the rest was lying

idle. Thousands of those Protestants who were the most industrious and

intelligent part of the population had emigrated to England. Thousands

had taken refuge in the places which still held out for William and

Mary. Of the Roman Catholic peasantry who were in the vigour of life the

majority had enlisted in the army or had joined gangs of plunderers. The

poverty of the treasury was the necessary effect of the poverty of the

country: public prosperity could be restored only by the restoration

of private prosperity; and private prosperity could be restored only

by years of peace and security. James was absurd enough to imagine that

there was a more speedy and efficacious remedy. He could, he conceived,

at once extricate himself from his financial difficulties by the simple

process of calling a farthing a shilling. The right of coining was

undoubtedly a flower of the prerogative; and, in his view, the right of

coining included the right of debasing the coin. Pots, pans, knockers of

doors, pieces of ordnance which had long been past use, were carried to

the mint. In a short time lumps of base metal, nominally worth near a

million sterling, intrinsically worth about a sixtieth part of that sum,

were in circulation. A royal edict declared these pieces to be legal

tender in all cases whatever. A mortgage for a thousand pounds was

cleared off by a bag of counters made out of old kettles. The creditors

who complained to the Court of Chancery were told by Fitton to take

their money and be gone. But of all classes the tradesmen of Dublin,

who were generally Protestants, were the greatest losers. At first, of

course, they raised their demands: but the magistrates of the city took

on themselves to meet this heretical machination by putting forth a

tariff regulating prices. Any man who belonged to the caste now

dominant might walk into a shop, lay on the counter a bit of brass worth

threepence, and carry off goods to the value of half a guinea. Legal

redress was out of the question. Indeed the sufferers thought themselves

happy if, by the sacrifice of their stock in trade, they could redeem

their limbs and their lives. There was not a baker's shop in the city

round which twenty or thirty soldiers were not constantly prowling. Some

persons who refused the base money were arrested by troopers and carried

before the Provost Marshal, who cursed them, swore at them, locked them

up in dark cells, and, by threatening to hang them at their own doors,

soon overcame their resistance. Of all the plagues of that time

none made a deeper or a more lasting impression on the minds of the

Protestants of Dublin than the plague of the brass money, [228] To the

recollection of the confusion and misery which had been produced by

James's coin must be in part ascribed the strenuous opposition which,

thirty-five years later, large classes, firmly attached to the House of

Hanover, offered to the government of George the First in the affair of

Wood's patent.

There can be no question that James, in thus altering, by his own

authority, the terms of all the contracts in the kingdom, assumed a

power which belonged only to the whole legislature. Yet the Commons did

not remonstrate. There was no power, however unconstitutional, which

they were not willing to concede to him, as long as he used it to crush

and plunder the English population. On the other hand, they respected no

prerogative, however ancient, however legitimate, however salutary, if

they apprehended that he might use it to protect the race which they

abhorred. They were not satisfied till they had extorted his reluctant

consent to a portentous law, a law without a parallel in the history of

civilised countries, the great Act of Attainder.

A list was framed containing between two and three thousand names. At

the top was half the peerage of Ireland. Then came baronets, knights,

clergymen, squires, merchants, yeomen, artisans, women, children.

No investigation was made. Any member who wished to rid himself of a

creditor, a rival, a private enemy, gave in the name to the clerk at the

table, and it was generally inserted without discussion. The only

debate of which any account has come down to us related to the Earl of

Strafford. He had friends in the House who ventured to offer something

in his favour. But a few words from Simon Luttrell settled the question.

"I have," he said, "heard the King say some hard things of that lord."

This was thought sufficient, and the name of Strafford stands fifth in

the long table of the proscribed, [229]

Days were fixed before which those whose names were on the list

were required to surrender themselves to such justice as was then

administered to English Protestants in Dublin. If a proscribed person

was in Ireland, he must surrender himself by the tenth of August. If

he had left Ireland since the fifth of November 1688, he must surrender

himself by the first of September. If he had left Ireland before the

fifth of November 1688, he must surrender himself by the first of

October. If he failed to appear by the appointed day, he was to be

hanged, drawn, and quartered without a trial, and his property was to

be confiscated. It might be physically impossible for him to deliver

himself up within the time fixed by the Act. He might be bedridden.

He might be in the West Indies. He might be in prison. Indeed there

notoriously were such cases. Among the attainted Lords was Mountjoy. He

had been induced by the villany of Tyrconnel to trust himself at Saint

Germains: he had been thrown into the Bastile: he was still lying there;

and the Irish parliament was not ashamed to enact that, unless he could,

within a few weeks, make his escape from his cell, and present himself

at Dublin, he should be put to death, [230]

As it was not even pretended that there had been any inquiry into the

guilt of those who were thus proscribed, as not a single one among them

had been heard in his own defence, and as it was certain that it would

be physically impossible for many of them to surrender themselves

in time, it was clear that nothing but a large exercise of the royal

prerogative of mercy could prevent the perpetration of iniquities

so horrible that no precedent could be found for them even in the

lamentable history of the troubles of Ireland. The Commons therefore

determined that the royal prerogative of mercy should be limited.

Several regulations were devised for the purpose of making the passing

of pardons difficult and costly: and finally it was enacted that every

pardon granted by his Majesty, after the end of November 1689, to any of

the many hundreds of persons who had been sentenced to death without a

trial, should be absolutely void and of none effect. Sir Richard Nagle

came in state to the bar of the Lords and presented the bill with a

speech worthy of the occasion. "Many of the persons here attainted,"

said he, "have been proved traitors by such evidence as satisfies us. As

to the rest we have followed common fame." [231]

With such reckless barbarity was the list framed that fanatical

royalists, who were, at that very time, hazarding their property,

their liberty, their lives, in the cause of James, were not secure from

proscription. The most learned man of whom the Jacobite party could

boast was Henry Dodwell, Camdenian Professor in the University of

Oxford. In the cause of hereditary monarchy he shrank from no sacrifice

and from no danger. It was about him that William uttered those

memorable words: "He has set his heart on being a martyr; and I have set

my mind on disappointing him." But James was more cruel to friends

than William to foes. Dodwell was a Protestant: he had some property in

Connaught: these crimes were sufficient; and he was set down in the long

roll of those who were doomed to the gallows and the quartering block,

[232]

That James would give his assent to a bill which took from him the power

of pardoning, seemed to many persons impossible. He had, four years

before, quarrelled with the most loyal of parliaments rather than cede

a prerogative which did not belong to him. It might, therefore, well

be expected that he would now have struggled hard to retain a precious

prerogative which had been enjoyed by his predecessors ever since the

origin of the monarchy, and which had never been questioned by the

Whigs. The stern look and raised voice with which he had reprimanded the

Tory gentlemen, who, in the language of profound reverence and fervent

affection, implored him not to dispense with the laws, would now have

been in place. He might also have seen that the right course was the

wise course. Had he, on this great occasion, had the spirit to declare

that he would not shed the blood of the innocent, and that, even as

respected the guilty, he would not divest himself of the power of

tempering judgment with mercy, he would have regained more hearts in

England than he would have lost in Ireland. But it was ever his fate to

resist where he should have yielded, and to yield where he should have

resisted. The most wicked of all laws received his sanction; and it is

but a very small extenuation of his guilt that his sanction was somewhat

reluctantly given.

That nothing might be wanting to the completeness of this great crime,

extreme care was taken to prevent the persons who were attainted from

knowing that they were attainted, till the day of grace fixed in the

Act was passed. The roll of names was not published, but kept carefully

locked up in Fitton's closet. Some Protestants, who still adhered to

the cause of James, but who were anxious to know whether any of their

friends or relations had been proscribed, tried hard to obtain a sight

of the list; but solicitation, remonstrance, even bribery, proved

vain. Not a single copy got abroad till it was too late for any of the

thousands who had been condemned without a trial to obtain a pardon,

[233]

Towards the close of July James prorogued the Houses. They had sate more

than ten weeks; and in that space of time they had proved most fully

that, great as have been the evils which Protestant ascendency has

produced in Ireland, the evils produced by Popish ascendancy would have

been greater still. That the colonists, when they had won the victory,

grossly abused it, that their legislation was, during many years, unjust

and tyrannical, is most true. But it is not less true that they never

quite came up to the atrocious example set by their vanquished enemy

during his short tenure of power.

Indeed, while James was loudly boasting that he had passed an Act

granting entire liberty of conscience to all sects, a persecution as

cruel as that of Languedoc was raging through all the provinces which

owned his authority. It was said by those who wished to find an excuse

for him that almost all the Protestants who still remained in Munster,

Connaught, and Leinster were his enemies, and that it was not as

schismatics, but as rebels in heart, who wanted only opportunity

to become rebels in act, that he gave them up to be oppressed and

despoiled; and to this excuse some weight might have been allowed if

he had strenuously exerted himself to protect those few colonists, who,

though firmly attached to the reformed religion, were still true to the

doctrines of nonresistance and of indefeasible hereditary right. But

even these devoted royalists found that their heresy was in his view

a crime for which no services or sacrifices would atone. Three or

four noblemen, members of the Anglican Church, who had welcomed him to

Ireland, and had sate in his Parliament, represented to him that, if the

rule which forbade any Protestant to possess any weapon were strictly

enforced, their country houses would be at the mercy of the Rapparees,

and obtained from him permission to keep arms sufficient for a few

servants. But Avaux remonstrated. The indulgence, he said, was grossly

abused: these Protestant lords were not to be trusted: they were turning

their houses into fortresses: his Majesty would soon have reason to

repent his goodness. These representations prevailed; and Roman Catholic

troops were quartered in the suspected dwellings, [234]

Still harder was the lot of those Protestant clergymen who continued to

cling, with desperate fidelity, to the cause of the Lord's Anointed. Of

all the Anglican divines the one who had the largest share of James's

good graces seems to have been Cartwright. Whether Cartwright could

long have continued to be a favourite without being an apostate may

be doubted. He died a few weeks after his arrival in Ireland; and

thenceforward his church had no one to plead her cause. Nevertheless a

few of her prelates and priests continued for a time to teach what they

had taught in the days of the Exclusion Bill. But it was at the peril

of life or limb that they exercised their functions. Every wearer of

a cassock was a mark for the insults and outrages of soldiers and

Rapparees. In the country his house was robbed, and he was fortunate if

it was not burned over his head. He was hunted through the streets of

Dublin with cries of "There goes the devil of a heretic." Sometimes he

was knocked down: sometimes he was cudgelled, [235] The rulers of

the University of Dublin, trained in the Anglican doctrine of passive

obedience, had greeted James on his first arrival at the Castle, and had

been assured by him that he would protect them in the enjoyment of their

property and their privileges. They were now, without any trial, without

any accusation, thrust out of their house. The communion plate of

the chapel, the books in the library, the very chairs and beds of the

collegians were seized. Part of the building was turned into a magazine,

part into a barrack, part into a prison. Simon Luttrell, who was

Governor of the capital, was, with great difficulty and by powerful

intercession, induced to let the ejected fellows and scholars depart

in safety. He at length permitted them to remain at large, with

this condition, that, on pain of death, no three of them should meet

together, [236] No Protestant divine suffered more hardships than Doctor

William King, Dean of Saint Patrick's. He had been long distinguished by

the fervour with which he had inculcated the duty of passively obeying

even the worst rulers. At a later period, when he had published a

defence of the Revolution, and had accepted a mitre from the new

government, he was reminded that he had invoked the divine vengeance on

the usurpers, and had declared himself willing to die a hundred deaths

rather than desert the cause of hereditary right. He had said that the

true religion had often been strengthened by persecution, but could

never be strengthened by rebellion; that it would be a glorious day for

the Church of England when a whole cartload of her ministers should go

to the gallows for the doctrine of nonresistance; and that his highest

ambition was to be one of such a company, [237] It is not improbable

that, when he spoke thus, he felt as he spoke. But his principles,

though they might perhaps have held out against the severities and the

promises of William, were not proof against the ingratitude of James.

Human nature at last asserted its rights. After King had been repeatedly

imprisoned by the government to which he was devotedly attached, after

he had been insulted and threatened in his own choir by the soldiers,

after he had been interdicted from burying in his own churchyard, and

from preaching in his own pulpit, after he had narrowly escaped with

life from a musketshot fired at him in the street, he began to think the

Whig theory of government less unreasonable and unchristian than it had

once appeared to him, and persuaded himself that the oppressed Church

might lawfully accept deliverance, if God should be pleased, by whatever

means, to send it to her.

In no long time it appeared that James would have done well to hearken

to those counsellors who had told him that the acts by which he was

trying to make himself popular in one of his three kingdoms, would make

him odious in the others. It was in some sense fortunate for England

that, after he had ceased to reign here, he continued during more than a

year to reign in Ireland. The Revolution had been followed by a reaction

of public feeling in his favour. That reaction, if it had been suffered

to proceed uninterrupted, might perhaps not have ceased till he was

again King: but it was violently interrupted by himself. He would not

suffer his people to forget: he would not suffer them to hope: while

they were trying to find excuses for his past errors, and to persuade

themselves that he would not repeat these errors, he forced upon them,

in their own despite, the conviction that he was incorrigible, that the

sharpest discipline of adversity had taught him nothing, and that, if

they were weak enough to recall him, they would soon have to depose him

again. It was in vain that the Jacobites put forth pamphlets about the

cruelty with which he had been treated by those who were nearest to him

in blood, about the imperious temper and uncourteous manners of William,

about the favour shown to the Dutch, about the heavy taxes, about the

suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, about the dangers which threatened

the Church from the enmity of Puritans and Latitudinarians. James

refuted these pamphlets far more effectually than all the ablest and

most eloquent Whig writers united could have done. Every week came

the news that he had passed some new Act for robbing or murdering

Protestants. Every colonist who succeeded in stealing across the sea

from Leinster to Holyhead or Bristol, brought fearful reports of the

tyranny under which his brethren groaned. What impression these reports

made on the Protestants of our island may be easily inferred from the

fact that they moved the indignation of Ronquillo, a Spaniard and a

bigoted member of the Church of Rome. He informed his Court that, though

the English laws against Popery might seem severe, they were so much

mitigated by the prudence and humanity of the Government, that they

caused no annoyance to quiet people; and he took upon himself to assure

the Holy See that what a Roman Catholic suffered in London was nothing

when compared with what a Protestant suffered in Ireland, [238]

The fugitive Englishry found in England warm sympathy and munificent

relief. Many were received into the houses of friends and kinsmen.

Many were indebted for the means of subsistence to the liberality of

strangers. Among those who bore a part in this work of mercy, none

contributed more largely or less ostentatiously than the Queen. The

House of Commons placed at the King's disposal fifteen thousand pounds

for the relief of those refugees whose wants were most pressing,

and requested him to give commissions in the army to those who were

qualified for military employment, [239] An Act was also passed enabling

beneficed clergymen who had fled from Ireland to hold preferment

in England, [240] Yet the interest which the nation felt in these

unfortunate guests was languid when compared with the interest excited

by that portion of the Saxon colony which still maintained in Ulster a

desperate conflict against overwhelming odds. On this subject scarcely

one dissentient voice was to be heard in our island. Whigs, Tories,

nay even those Jacobites in whom Jacobitism had not extinguished

every patriotic sentiment, gloried in the glory of Enniskillen and

Londonderry. The House of Commons was all of one mind. "This is no time

to be counting cost," said honest Birch, who well remembered the way

in which Oliver had made war on the Irish. "Are those brave fellows in

Londonderry to be deserted? If we lose them will not all the world cry

shame upon us? A boom across the river! Why have we not cut the boom in

pieces? Are our brethren to perish almost in sight of England, within a

few hours' voyage of our shores?" [241] Howe, the most vehement man of

one party, declared that the hearts of the people were set on Ireland.

Seymour, the leader of the other party, declared that, though he had not

taken part in setting up the new government, he should cordially support

it in all that might be necessary for the preservation of Ireland,

[242] The Commons appointed a committee to enquire into the cause of the

delays and miscarriages which had been all but fatal to the Englishry of

Ulster. The officers to whose treachery or cowardice the public ascribed

the calamities of Londonderry were put under arrest. Lundy was sent to

the Tower, Cunningham to the Gate House. The agitation of the public

mind was in some degree calmed by the announcement that, before the

end of the summer, an army powerful enough to reestablish the English

ascendency in Ireland would be sent across Saint George's Channel, and

that Schomberg would be the General. In the meantime an expedition

which was thought to be sufficient for the relief of Londonderry

was despatched from Liverpool under the command of Kirke. The dogged

obstinacy with which this man had, in spite of royal solicitations,

adhered to his religion, and the part which he had taken in the

Revolution, had perhaps entitled him to an amnesty for past crimes. But

it is difficult to understand why the Government should have selected

for a post of the highest importance an officer who was generally and

justly hated, who had never shown eminent talents for war, and who, both

in Africa and in England, had notoriously tolerated among his soldiers

a licentiousness, not only shocking to humanity, but also incompatible

with discipline.

On the sixteenth of May, Kirke's troops embarked: on the twenty-second

they sailed: but contrary winds made the passage slow, and forced the

armament to stop long at the Isle of Man. Meanwhile the Protestants of

Ulster were defending themselves with stubborn courage against a great

superiority of force. The Enniskilleners had never ceased to wage a

vigorous partisan war against the native population. Early in May they

marched to encounter a large body of troops from Connaught, who had

made an inroad into Donegal. The Irish were speedily routed, and fled to

Sligo with the loss of a hundred and twenty men killed and sixty taken.

Two small pieces of artillery and several horses fell into the hands of

the conquerors. Elated by this success, the Enniskilleners soon invaded

the county of Cavan, drove before them fifteen hundred of James's

troops, took and destroyed the castle of Ballincarrig, reputed the

strongest in that part of the kingdom, and carried off the pikes and

muskets of the garrison. The next incursion was into Meath. Three

thousand oxen and two thousand sheep were swept away and brought safe

to the little island in Lough Erne. These daring exploits spread terror

even to the gates of Dublin. Colonel Hugh Sutherland was ordered to

march against Enniskillen with a regiment of dragoons and two regiments

of foot. He carried with him arms for the native peasantry; and many

repaired to his standard. The Enniskilleners did not wait till he came

into their neighbourhood, but advanced to encounter him. He declined an

action, and retreated, leaving his stores at Belturbet under the care

of a detachment of three hundred soldiers. The Protestants attacked

Belturbet with vigour, made their way into a lofty house which

overlooked the town, and thence opened such a fire that in two hours the

garrison surrendered. Seven hundred muskets, a great quantity of powder,

many horses, many sacks of biscuits, many barrels of meal, were taken,

and were sent to Enniskillen. The boats which brought these precious

spoils were joyfully welcomed. The fear of hunger was removed. While the

aboriginal population had, in many counties, altogether neglected the

cultivation of the earth, in the expectation, it should seem, that

marauding would prove an inexhaustible resource, the colonists, true to

the provident and industrious character of their race, had, in the midst

of war, not omitted carefully to till the soil in the neighbourhood of

their strongholds. The harvest was now not far remote; and, till the

harvest, the food taken from the enemy would be amply sufficient, [243]

Yet, in the midst of success and plenty, the Enniskilleners were

tortured by a cruel anxiety for Londonderry. They were bound to the

defenders of that city, not only by religious and national sympathy,

but by common interest. For there could be no doubt that, if Londonderry

fell, the whole Irish army would instantly march in irresistible force

upon Lough Erne. Yet what could be done? Some brave men were for making

a desperate attempt to relieve the besieged city; but the odds were

too great. Detachments however were sent which infested the rear of the

blockading army, cut off supplies, and, on one occasion, carried away

the horses of three entire troops of cavalry, [244] Still the line of

posts which surrounded Londonderry by land remained unbroken. The river

was still strictly closed and guarded. Within the walls the distress had

become extreme. So early as the eighth of June horseflesh was almost

the only meat which could be purchased; and of horseflesh the supply was

scanty. It was necessary to make up the deficiency with tallow; and even

tallow was doled out with a parsimonious hand.

On the fifteenth of June a gleam of hope appeared. The sentinels on the

top of the Cathedral saw sails nine miles off in the bay of Lough Foyle.

Thirty vessels of different sizes were counted. Signals were made from

the steeples and returned from the mast heads, but were imperfectly

understood on both sides. At last a messenger from the fleet eluded the

Irish sentinels, dived under the boom, and informed the garrison that

Kirke had arrived from England with troops, arms, ammunition, and

provisions, to relieve the city, [245]

In Londonderry expectation was at the height: but a few hours of

feverish joy were followed by weeks of misery. Kirke thought it unsafe

to make any attempt, either by land or by water, on the lines of the

besiegers, and retired to the entrance of Lough Foyle, where, during

several weeks, he lay inactive.

And now the pressure of famine became every day more severe. A strict

search was made in all the recesses of all the houses of the city; and

some provisions, which had been concealed in cellars by people who had

since died or made their escape, were discovered and carried to the

magazines. The stock of cannon balls was almost exhausted; and their

place was supplied by brickbats coated with lead. Pestilence began, as

usual, to make its appearance in the train of hunger. Fifteen officers

died of fever in one day. The Governor Baker was among those who sank

under the disease. His place was supplied by Colonel John Mitchelburne,

[246]

Meanwhile it was known at Dublin that Kirke and his squadron were on

the coast of Ulster. The alarm was great at the Castle. Even before this

news arrived, Avaux had given it as his opinion that Richard Hamilton

was unequal to the difficulties of the situation. It had therefore been

resolved that Rosen should take the chief command. He was now sent down

with all speed, [247]

On the nineteenth of June he arrived at the head quarter of the

besieging army. At first he attempted to undermine the walls; but his

plan was discovered; and he was compelled to abandon it after a sharp

fight, in which more than a hundred of his men were slain. Then his

fury rose to a strange pitch. He, an old soldier, a Marshal of France in

expectancy, trained in the school of the greatest generals, accustomed,

during many years, to scientific war, to be baffled by a mob of country

gentlemen, farmers, shopkeepers, who were protected only by a wall which

any good engineer would at once have pronounced untenable! He raved, he

blasphemed, in a language of his own, made up of all the dialects spoken

from the Baltic to the Atlantic. He would raze the city to the ground:

he would spare no living thing; no, not the young girls; not the babies

at the breast. As to the leaders, death was too light a punishment for

them: he would rack them: he would roast them alive. In his rage he

ordered a shell to be flung into the town with a letter containing

a horrible menace. He would, he said, gather into one body all the

Protestants who had remained at their homes between Charlemont and the

sea, old men, women, children, many of them near in blood and affection

to the defenders of Londonderry. No protection, whatever might be the

authority by which it had been given, should be respected. The multitude

thus brought together should be driven under the walls of Londonderry,

and should there be starved to death in the sight of their countrymen,

their friends, their kinsmen. This was no idle threat. Parties were

instantly sent out in all directions to collect victims. At dawn, on the

morning of the second of July, hundreds of Protestants, who were charged

with no crime, who were incapable of bearing arms, and many of whom had

protections granted by James, were dragged to the gates of the city.

It was imagined that the piteous sight would quell the spirit of the

colonists. But the only effect was to rouse that spirit to still greater

energy. An order was immediately put forth that no man should utter the

word Surrender on pain of death; and no man uttered that word. Several

prisoners of high rank were in the town. Hitherto they had been well

treated, and had received as good rations as were measured out to the

garrison. They were now, closely confined. A gallows was erected on one

of the bastion; and a message was conveyed to Rosen, requesting him

to send a confessor instantly to prepare his friends for death. The

prisoners in great dismay wrote to the savage Livonian, but received

no answer. They then addressed themselves to their countryman, Richard

Hamilton. They were willing, they said, to shed their blood for their

King; but they thought it hard to die the ignominious death of thieves

in consequence of the barbarity of their own companions in arms.

Hamilton, though a man of lax principles, was not cruel. He had been

disgusted by the inhumanity of Rosen, but, being only second in command,

could not venture to express publicly all that he thought. He however

remonstrated strongly. Some Irish officers felt on this occasion as it

was natural that brave men should feel, and declared, weeping with pity

and indignation, that they should never cease to have in their ears the

cries of the poor women and children who had been driven at the point of

the pike to die of famine between the camp and the city. Rosen persisted

during forty-eight hours. In that time many unhappy creatures perished:

but Londonderry held out as resolutely as ever; and he saw that his

crime was likely to produce nothing but hatred and obloquy. He at length

gave way, and suffered the survivors to withdraw. The garrison then took

down the gallows which had been erected on the bastion, [248]

When the tidings of these events reached Dublin, James, though by no

means prone to compassion, was startled by an atrocity of which the

civil wars of England had furnished no example, and was displeased by

learning that protections, given by his authority, and guaranteed by his

honour, had been publicly declared to be nullities. He complained to

the French ambassador, and said, with a warmth which the occasion fully

justified, that Rosen was a barbarous Muscovite. Melfort could not

refrain from adding that, if Rosen had been an Englishman, he would

have been hanged. Avaux was utterly unable to understand this effeminate

sensibility. In his opinion, nothing had been done that was at all

reprehensible; and he had some difficulty in commanding himself when he

heard the King and the secretary blame, in strong language, an act of

wholesome severity, [249] In truth the French ambassador and the French

general were well paired. There was a great difference doubtless, in

appearance and manner, between the handsome, graceful, and refined

diplomatist, whose dexterity and suavity had been renowned at the most

polite courts of Europe, and the military adventurer, whose look and

voice reminded all who came near him that he had been born in a half

savage country, that he had risen from the ranks, and that he had once

been sentenced to death for marauding. But the heart of the courtier was

really even more callous than that of the soldier.

Rosen was recalled to Dublin; and Richard Hamilton was again left in the

chief command. He tried gentler means than those which had brought so

much reproach on his predecessor. No trick, no lie, which was thought

likely to discourage the starving garrison was spared. One day a great

shout was raised by the whole Irish camp. The defenders of Londonderry

were soon informed that the army of James was rejoicing on account of

the fall of Enniskillen. They were told that they had now no chance of

being relieved, and were exhorted to save their lives by capitulating.

They consented to negotiate. But what they asked was, that they should

be permitted to depart armed and in military array, by land or by water

at their choice. They demanded hostages for the exact fulfilment of

these conditions, and insisted that the hostages should be sent on board

of the fleet which lay in Lough Foyle. Such terms Hamilton durst not

grant: the Governors would abate nothing: the treaty was broken off; and

the conflict recommenced, [250]

By this time July was far advanced; and the state of the city was, hour

by hour, becoming more frightful. The number of the inhabitants had been

thinned more by famine and disease than by the fire of the enemy. Yet

that fire was sharper and more constant than ever. One of the gates was

beaten in: one of the bastions was laid in ruins; but the breaches made

by day were repaired by night with indefatigable activity. Every attack

was still repelled. But the fighting men of the garrison were so much

exhausted that they could scarcely keep their legs. Several of them, in

the act of striking at the enemy, fell down from mere weakness. A very

small quantity of grain remained, and was doled out by mouthfuls. The

stock of salted hides was considerable, and by gnawing them the garrison

appeased the rage of hunger. Dogs, fattened on the blood of the slain

who lay unburied round the town, were luxuries which few could afford

to purchase. The price of a whelp's paw was five shillings and sixpence.

Nine horses were still alive, and but barely alive. They were so lean

that little meat was likely to be found upon them. It was, however,

determined to slaughter them for food. The people perished so fast that

it was impossible for the survivors to perform the rites of sepulture.

There was scarcely a cellar in which some corpse was not decaying. Such

was the extremity of distress, that the rats who came to feast in those

hideous dens were eagerly hunted and greedily devoured. A small fish,

caught in the river, was not to be purchased with money. The only

price for which such a treasure could be obtained was some handfuls of

oatmeal. Leprosies, such as strange and unwholesome diet engenders, made

existence a constant torment. The whole city was poisoned by the stench

exhaled from the bodies of the dead and of the half dead. That there

should be fits of discontent and insubordination among men enduring such

misery was inevitable. At one moment it was suspected that Walker had

laid up somewhere a secret store of food, and was revelling in private,

while he exhorted others to suffer resolutely for the good cause. His

house was strictly examined: his innocence was fully proved: he regained

his popularity; and the garrison, with death in near prospect, thronged

to the cathedral to hear him preach, drank in his earnest eloquence with

delight, and went forth from the house of God with haggard faces and

tottering steps, but with spirit still unsubdued. There were, indeed,

some secret plottings. A very few obscure traitors opened communications

with the enemy. But it was necessary that all such dealings should be

carefully concealed. None dared to utter publicly any words save words

of defiance and stubborn resolution. Even in that extremity the general

cry was "No surrender." And there were not wanting voices which, in low

tones, added, "First the horses and hides; and then the prisoners;

and then each other." It was afterwards related, half in jest, yet not

without a horrible mixture of earnest, that a corpulent citizen, whose

bulk presented a strange contrast to the skeletons which surrounded him,

thought it expedient to conceal himself from the numerous eyes which

followed him with cannibal looks whenever he appeared in the streets,

[251]

It was no slight aggravation of the sufferings of the garrison that

all this time the English ships were seen far off in Lough Foyle.

Communication between the fleet and the city was almost impossible.

One diver who had attempted to pass the boom was drowned. Another

was hanged. The language of signals was hardly intelligible. On the

thirteenth of July, however, a piece of paper sewed up in a cloth

button came to Walker's hands. It was a letter from Kirke, and contained

assurances of speedy relief. But more than a fortnight of intense misery

had since elapsed; and the hearts of the most sanguine were sick with

deferred hope. By no art could the provisions which were left be made to

hold out two days more, [252]

Just at this time Kirke received a despatch from England, which

contained positive orders that Londonderry should be relieved. He

accordingly determined to make an attempt which, as far as appears, he

might have made, with at least an equally fair prospect of success, six

weeks earlier, [253]

Among the merchant ships which had come to Lough Foyle under his convoy

was one called the Mountjoy. The master, Micaiah Browning, a native of

Londonderry, had brought from England a large cargo of provisions. He

had, it is said, repeatedly remonstrated against the inaction of

the armament. He now eagerly volunteered to take the first risk of

succouring his fellow citizens; and his offer was accepted. Andrew

Douglas, master of the Phoenix, who had on board a great quantity of

meal from Scotland, was willing to share the danger and the honour.

The two merchantmen were to be escorted by the Dartmouth frigate of

thirty-six guns, commanded by Captain John Leake, afterwards an admiral

of great fame.

It was the thirtieth of July. The sun had just set: the evening

sermon in the cathedral was over; and the heartbroken congregation

had separated, when the sentinels on the tower saw the sails of three

vessels coming up the Foyle. Soon there was a stir in the Irish camp.

The besiegers were on the alert for miles along both shores. The ships

were in extreme peril: for the river was low; and the only navigable

channel Tan very near to the left bank, where the head quarters of the

enemy had been fixed, and where the batteries were most numerous.

Leake performed his duty with a skill and spirit worthy of his noble

profession, exposed his frigate to cover the merchantmen, and used his

guns with great effect. At length the little squadron came to the place

of peril. Then the Mountjoy took the lead, and went right at the bottom.

The huge barricade cracked and gave way: but the shock was such that the

Mountjoy rebounded, and stuck in the mud. A yell of triumph rose from

the banks: the Irish rushed to their boats, and were preparing to board;

but the Dartmouth poured on them a well directed broadside, which threw

them into disorder. Just then the Phoenix dashed at the breach which the

Mountjoy had made, and was in a moment within the fence. Meantime the

tide was rising fast. The Mountjoy began to move, and soon passed safe

through the broken stakes and floating spars. But her brave master was

no more. A shot from one of the batteries had struck him; and he died

by the most enviable of all deaths, in sight of the city which was his

birthplace, which was his home, and which had just been saved by his

courage and self-devotion from the most frightful form of destruction.

The night had closed in before the conflict at the boom began; but the

flash of the guns was seen, and the noise heard, by the lean and

ghastly multitude which covered the walls of the city. When the Mountjoy

grounded, and when the shout of triumph rose from the Irish on both

sides of the river, the hearts of the besieged died within them. One who

endured the unutterable anguish of that moment has told that they looked

fearfully livid in each other's eyes. Even after the barricade had been

passed, there was a terrible half hour of suspense. It was ten o'clock

before the ships arrived at the quay. The whole population was there

to welcome them. A screen made of casks filled with earth was hastily

thrown up to protect the landing place from the batteries on the other

side of the river; and then the work of unloading began. First were

rolled on shore barrels containing six thousand bushels of meal. Then

came great cheeses, casks of beef, flitches of bacon, kegs of butter,

sacks of Pease and biscuit, ankers of brandy. Not many hours before,

half a pound of tallow and three quarters of a pound of salted hide had

been weighed out with niggardly care to every fighting man. The ration

which each now received was three pounds of flour, two pounds of beef,

and a pint of Pease. It is easy to imagine with what tears grace was

said over the suppers of that evening. There was little sleep on either

side of the wall. The bonfires shone bright along the whole circuit of

the ramparts. The Irish guns continued to roar all night; and all night

the bells of the rescued city made answer to the Irish guns with a peal

of joyous defiance. Through the whole of the thirty-first of July the

batteries of the enemy continued to play. But, soon after the sun had

again gone down, flames were seen arising from the camp; and, when the

first of August dawned, a line of smoking ruins marked the site lately

occupied by the huts of the besiegers; and the citizens saw far off the

long column of pikes and standards retreating up the left bank of the

Foyle towards Strabane, [254]

So ended this great siege, the most memorable in the annals of the

British isles. It had lasted a hundred and five days. The garrison had

been reduced from about seven thousand effective men to about three

thousand. The loss of the besiegers cannot be precisely ascertained.

Walker estimated it at eight thousand men. It is certain from the

despatches of Avaux that the regiments which returned from the blockade

had been so much thinned that many of them were not more than two

hundred strong. Of thirty-six French gunners who had superintended the

cannonading, thirty-one had been killed or disabled, [255] The means

both of attack and of defence had undoubtedly been such as would have

moved the great warriors of the Continent to laughter; and this is the

very circumstance which gives so peculiar an interest to the history

of the contest. It was a contest, not between engineers, but between

nations; and the victory remained with the nation which, though inferior

in number, was superior in civilisation, in capacity for selfgovernment,

and in stubbornness of resolution, [256]

As soon as it was known that the Irish army had retired, a deputation

from the city hastened to Lough Foyle, and invited Kirk to take the

command. He came accompanied by a long train of officers, and was

received in state by the two Governors, who delivered up to him the

authority which, under the pressure of necessity, they had assumed.

He remained only a few days; but he had time to show enough of the

incurable vices of his character to disgust a population distinguished

by austere morals and ardent public spirit. There was, however, no

outbreak. The city was in the highest good humour. Such quantities of

provisions had been landed from the fleet, that there was in every house

a plenty never before known. A few days earlier a man had been glad to

obtain for twenty pence a mouthful of carrion scraped from the bones of

a starved horse. A pound of good beef was now sold for three halfpence.

Meanwhile all hands were busied in removing corpses which had been

thinly covered with earth, in filling up the holes which the shells

had ploughed in the ground, and in repairing the battered roofs of

the houses. The recollection of past dangers and privations, and the

consciousness of having deserved well of the English nation and of all

Protestant Churches, swelled the hearts of the townspeople with honest

pride. That pride grew stronger when they received from William a letter

acknowledging, in the most affectionate language, the debt which he owed

to the brave and trusty citizens of his good city. The whole population

crowded to the Diamond to hear the royal epistle read. At the close all

the guns on the ramparts sent forth a voice of joy: all the ships in

the river made answer: barrels of ale were broken up; and the health of

their Majesties was drunk with shouts and volleys of musketry.

Five generations have since passed away; and still the wall of

Londonderry is to the Protestants of Ulster what the trophy of Marathon

was to the Athenians. A lofty pillar, rising from a bastion which bore

during many weeks the heaviest fire of the enemy, is seen far up and far

down the Foyle. On the summit is the statue of Walker, such as when, in

the last and most terrible emergency, his eloquence roused the fainting

courage of his brethren. In one hand he grasps a Bible. The other,

pointing down the river, seems to direct the eyes of his famished

audience to the English topmasts in the distant bay. Such a monument was

well deserved: yet it was scarcely needed: for in truth the whole

city is to this day a monument of the great deliverance. The wall is

carefully preserved; nor would any plea of health or convenience be held

by the inhabitants sufficient to justify the demolition of that sacred

enclosure which, in the evil time, gave shelter to their race and their

religion, [257] The summit of the ramparts forms a pleasant walk. The

bastions have been turned into little gardens. Here and there, among

the shrubs and flowers, may be seen the old culverins which scattered

bricks, cased with lead, among the Irish ranks. One antique gun, the

gift of the Fishmongers of London, was distinguished, during the hundred

and five memorable days, by the loudness of its report, and still

bears the name of Roaring Meg. The cathedral is filled with relics and

trophies. In the vestibule is a huge shell, one of many hundreds of

shells which were thrown into the city. Over the altar are still seen

the French flagstaves, taken by the garrison in a desperate sally. The

white ensigns of the House of Bourbon have long been dust: but their

place has been supplied by new banners, the work of the fairest hands of

Ulster. The anniversary of the day on which the gates were closed, and

the anniversary of the day on which the siege was raised, have been

down to our own time celebrated by salutes, processions, banquets,

and sermons: Lundy has been executed in effigy; and the sword, said by

tradition to be that of Maumont, has, on great occasions, been carried

in triumph. There is still a Walker Club and a Murray Club. The humble

tombs of the Protestant captains have been carefully sought out,

repaired, and embellished. It is impossible not to respect the sentiment

which indicates itself by these tokens. It is a sentiment which belongs

to the higher and purer part of human nature, and which adds not a

little to the strength of states. A people which takes no pride in the

noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve any thing

worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants. Yet it is

impossible for the moralist or the statesman to look with unmixed

complacency on the solemnities with which Londonderry commemorates her

deliverance, and on the honours which she pays to those who saved her.

Unhappily the animosities of her brave champions have descended with

their glory. The faults which are ordinarily found in dominant castes

and dominant sects have not seldom shown themselves without disguise at

her festivities; and even with the expressions of pious gratitude which

have resounded from her pulpits have too often been mingled words of

wrath and defiance.

The Irish army which had retreated to Strabane remained there but a very

short time. The spirit of the troops had been depressed by their recent

failure, and was soon completely cowed by the news of a great disaster

in another quarter.

Three weeks before this time the Duke of Berwick had gained an

advantage over a detachment of the Enniskilleners, and had, by their own

confession, killed or taken more than fifty of them. They were in

hopes of obtaining some assistance from Kirke, to whom they had sent a

deputation; and they still persisted in rejecting all terms offered by

the enemy. It was therefore determined at Dublin that an attack should

be made upon them from several quarters at once. Macarthy, who had

been rewarded for his services in Munster with the title of Viscount

Mountcashel, marched towards Lough Erne from the east with three

regiments of foot, two regiments of dragoons, and some troops of

cavalry. A considerable force, which lay encamped near the mouth of the

river Drowes, was at the same time to advance from the west. The Duke

of Berwick was to come from the north, with such horse and dragoons

as could be spared from the army which was besieging Londonderry. The

Enniskilleners were not fully apprised of the whole plan which had been

laid for their destruction; but they knew that Macarthy was on the road

with a force exceeding any which they could bring into the field. Their

anxiety was in some degree relieved by the return of the deputation

which they had sent to Kirke. Kirke could spare no soldiers; but he had

sent some arms, some ammunition, and some experienced officers, of whom

the chief were Colonel Wolseley and Lieutenant Colonel Berry. These

officers had come by sea round the coast of Donegal, and had run up the

Line. On Sunday, the twenty-ninth of July, it was known that their boat

was approaching the island of Enniskillen. The whole population, male

and female, came to the shore to greet them. It was with difficulty,

that they made their way to the Castle through the crowds which hung

on them, blessing God that dear old England had not quite forgotten

the Englishmen who upheld her cause against great odds in the heart of

Ireland.

Wolseley seems to have been in every respect well qualified for his

post. He was a stanch Protestant, had distinguished himself among the

Yorkshiremen who rose up for the Prince of Orange and a free Parliament,

and had, if he is not belied, proved his zeal for liberty and pure

religion, by causing the Mayor of Scarborough, who had made a speech

in favour of King James, to be brought into the market place and well

tossed there in a blanket, [258] This vehement hatred of Popery was,

in the estimation of the men of Enniskillen, the first of all

qualifications for command: and Wolseley had other and more important

qualifications. Though himself regularly bred to war, he seems to have

had a peculiar aptitude for the management of irregular troops. He had

scarcely taken on himself the chief command when he received notice that

Mountcashel had laid siege to the Castle of Crum. Crum was the

frontier garrison of the Protestants of Fermanagh. The ruins of the

old fortifications are now among the attractions of a beautiful

pleasureground, situated on a woody promontory which overlooks Lough

Erne. Wolseley determined to raise the siege. He sent Berry forward with

such troops as could be instantly put in motion, and promised to follow

speedily with a larger force.

Berry, after marching some miles, encountered thirteen companies

of Macarthy's dragoons commanded by Anthony, the most brilliant and

accomplished of all who bore the name of Hamilton, but much less

successful as a soldier than as a courtier, a lover, and a writer.

Hamilton's dragoons ran at the first fire: he was severely wounded; and

his second in command was shot dead. Macarthy soon came up to support

Hamilton; and at the same time Wolseley came up to support Berry. The

hostile armies were now in presence of each other. Macarthy had above

five thousand men and several pieces of artillery. The Enniskilleners

were under three thousand; and they had marched in such haste that

they had brought only one day's provisions. It was therefore absolutely

necessary for them either to fight instantly or to retreat. Wolseley

determined to consult the men; and this determination, which, in

ordinary circumstances, would have been most unworthy of a general, was

fully justified by the peculiar composition and temper of the little

army, an army made up of gentlemen and yeomen fighting, not for pay, but

for their lands, their wives, their children, and their God. The

ranks were drawn up under arms; and the question was put, "Advance or

Retreat?" The answer was an universal shout of "Advance." Wolseley

gave out the word, "No Popery." It was received with loud applause. He

instantly made his dispositions for an attack. As he approached, the

enemy, to his great surprise, began to retire. The Enniskilleners were

eager to pursue with all speed: but their commander, suspecting a snare,

restrained their ardour, and positively forbade them to break their

ranks. Thus one army retreated and the other followed, in good order,

through the little town of Newton Butler. About a mile from that town

the Irish faced about, and made a stand. Their position was well chosen.

They were drawn up on a hill at the foot of which lay a deep bog. A

narrow paved causeway which ran across the bog was the only road by

which the cavalry of the Enniskilleners could advance; for on the right

and left were pools, turf pits, and quagmires, which afforded no footing

to horses. Macarthy placed his cannon in such a manner as to sweep this

causeway.

Wolseley ordered his infantry to the attack. They struggled through the

bog, made their way to firm ground, and rushed on the guns. There was

then a short and desperate fight. The Irish cannoneers stood gallantly

to their pieces till they were cut down to a man. The Enniskillen horse,

no longer in danger of being mowed down by the fire of the artillery,

came fast up the causeway. The Irish dragoons who had run away in the

morning were smitten with another panic, and, without striking a blow,

galloped from the field. The horse followed the example. Such was the

terror of the fugitives that many of them spurred hard till their beasts

fell down, and then continued to fly on foot, throwing away carbines,

swords, and even coats as incumbrances. The infantry, seeing themselves

deserted, flung down their pikes and muskets and ran for their lives.

The conquerors now gave loose to that ferocity which has seldom failed

to disgrace the civil wars of Ireland. The butchery was terrible. Near

fifteen hundred of the vanquished were put to the sword. About five

hundred more, in ignorance of the country, took a road which led to

Lough Erne. The lake was before them: the enemy behind: they plunged

into the waters and perished there. Macarthy, abandoned by his troops,

rushed into the midst of the pursuers and very nearly found the death

which he sought. He was wounded in several places: he was struck to the

ground; and in another moment his brains would have been knocked out

with the butt end of a musket, when he was recognised and saved. The

colonists lost only twenty men killed and fifty wounded. They took four

hundred prisoners, seven pieces of cannon, fourteen barrels of powder,

all the drums and all the colours of the vanquished enemy, [259]

The battle of Newton Butler was won on the same afternoon on which the

boom thrown over the Foyle was broken. At Strabane the news met the

Celtic army which was retreating from Londonderry. All was terror and

confusion: the tents were struck: the military stores were flung by

waggon loads into the waters of the Mourne; and the dismayed

Irish, leaving many sick and wounded to the mercy of the victorious

Protestants, fled to Omagh, and thence to Charlemont. Sarsfield, who

commanded at Sligo, found it necessary to abandon that town, which was

instantly occupied by a detachment of Kirke's troops, [260] Dublin was

in consternation. James dropped words which indicated an intention of

flying to the Continent. Evil tidings indeed came fast upon him. Almost

at the same time at which he learned that one of his armies had raised

the siege of Londonderry, and that another had been routed at Newton

Butler, he received intelligence scarcely less disheartening from

Scotland.

It is now necessary to trace the progress of those events to which

Scotland owes her political and her religious liberty, her prosperity

and her civilisation.