Anonymous

REIGN OF WILLIAM AND MARY.

Accession of William and Mary—Discontent of the Church and the Army—William's First Ministry—His Dutch Followers—The Convention becomes a Parliament—Oath of Allegiance—Settlement of the Revenue—Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act—The Mutiny Bill—Settlement of Religion—The Coronation—Declaration of War with France—Violence of the Revolution in Scotland—Parties in the Scottish Parliament—Letter from James—Secession of Dundee—Edinburgh in Arms—Settlement of the Government—Dundee in the Highlands—Battle of Killiecrankie—Mackay Concludes the War—The Revolution in Ireland—Panic among the Englishry—Londonderry and Enniskillen Garrisoned—Negotiations of Tyrconnel—His Temporary Success—Landing of James—He Enters Dublin—His Journey into Ulster—The Siege of Londonderry—It is Saved—Legislation of the Irish Parliament—Arrival of Schomberg—Factiousness of the English Whigs—State of the English Army in Ireland—Renewed Violence of the Whigs—The Corporation Act Thrown Out—William Threatens to Leave England—Dissolution of Parliament—Tory Reaction—Venality of the New Parliament—Settlement of the Revenue—Whig Propositions—The Act of Grace—Preparations for War—A Jacobite Plot—William goes to Ireland—Progress of the War under Schomberg—Gradual Improvement of his Position and Ruin of the Jacobite Army—The Battle of the Boyne—Flight of James—William Enters the Irish Capital—News from England—Siege of Limerick—Battle of Beachy Head—Landing of the French in Torbay—Courage of the English People—Settlement of Scotland—Marlborough's Successes in Ireland—Parliament Grants Liberal Supplies—Preston's Plot Thwarted—William Sets Out for Holland—Vigour of Louis—Fall of Mons—Trial of Jacobite Conspirators—Treason in High Places—Punishment of the Non-Jurors—The Continental Campaign—Condition of Ireland—Arrival of St. Ruth—Siege of Athlone—Battle of Aghrim—Second Siege and Capitulation of Limerick.

William of Orange had now fully succeeded in his enterprise. By the resolution of the two Houses of Parliament on the 13th of February, 1689, he was admitted to hold the Crown for his life in conjunction with his wife, who was not merely queen consort, but queen regnant. They were declared to be elected to that office and dignity by the free choice of the nation. They could neither of them claim the Crown by direct succession, for James was alive, and protesting against the idea of his abdication. Mary could not claim by succession, even if James had abdicated; for, although there had been much endeavour to prove the infant son of James a supposititious child, the effort had failed. There was no sufficient proof of the fact, but much evidence against it; and nobody now doubts that the infant who afterwards acquired the name of the Pretender was the real son of James and the queen. Had the right of succession been admitted, neither William nor Mary could have succeeded; but this right was now, in fact, denied. The right for the subjects to elect their own monarchs was proclaimed by the Bill of Rights; and by that right, and no other, William and Mary sat on the English throne.

But splendid as was the position which William had achieved—that of the monarch of one of the very first kingdoms of the world—his throne was no bed of roses. The Catholics and the Tories still retained their old leaning towards James. True, many of the Tories had been greatly embittered against James by his later measures, but now that he was deposed, and a monarch sat on the throne who had been notoriously brought in by the Whigs, a strong reaction took place in them. They professed surprise at William assuming the sceptre; they pretended that they had expected from his declaration that he intended only to assist them in bringing James to reason, and in putting him under proper constitutional restraints. Numbers of them were already in full correspondence with the banished prince. The clergy were equally disaffected. They had resisted the attempts of James to bring in Popery, but they had now got a Presbyterian king, and were not very sanguine of his support of the hierarchy.

KENSINGTON PALACE. (From a Photograph by F. G. O. Stuart, Southampton.)

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Similar feelings prevailed in the army. It had been powerful in numbers, but had done nothing to withstand a foreign prince at the head of foreign troops marching through the country, and placing himself on the throne. They had not been exactly defeated, because they had not come to a regular engagement; but they saw a foreign prince, supported by his foreign troops, presiding in the country; and though not beaten, they felt humbled, and were now as near to mutiny as they had been ready to revolt under James.

As for the Whig party, which had invited and supported William, they were only eager for office and emolument. It was not patriotism in the bulk of them which animated them, but the triumph of their party; and they thought that nothing could ever pay them for the favour they had conferred on William. The accounts of those writers who were present and cognisant of their proceedings represent them as clamorous for place, honour, and emolument, no one thinking that William could do enough for them, and every one ready to upbraid him for giving to others those posts to which they thought they were more entitled.

His first public measure was to announce that all Protestant subjects who were in office on the 1st of December last should retain their posts till further notice. On the 17th of February he published the list of his Privy Council, which contained men of almost all parties—Danby, Halifax, and even old Sancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in order to show the Church that its interests would be protected. This and all other endeavours, however, failed to win over the High Church prelate.

If some of the members of the Council gazed at each other in astonishment to find themselves included in one body, still more was that the case with the Ministry. Danby, though a Tory, was made President of the Council; but whilst this offended others, who remembered that he had opposed the idea of the throne being vacant, though he had resisted the appointment of a regency, he himself was woefully disappointed in not receiving the White Staff. But William neither now nor till the end of his reign entrusted the office of Lord High Treasurer to a single person, but put it in commission. On the other hand, Halifax, who had not joined William's party till the last moment, received again the Privy Seal, and was continued Speaker of the House of Lords, to the great disgust of the Whigs, who remembered how long he had deserted them, and how successfully he had opposed them on the question of the Exclusion Bill. To add to their chagrin, the Earl of Nottingham was made Secretary of State. Nottingham had been foremost amongst those who had maintained the doctrine of passive obedience; who had denied that the throne could for an instant become vacant; who had declined to give up James or to call in William, but had also led this party in submitting to the decision of the Convention in favour of William and Mary, on the ground that we are enjoined by the New Testament to be subject to the powers that be. The other Secretary, the Earl of Shrewsbury, was indeed a Whig, and in the highest favour with that party. He had been foremost in calling in William; but then he was a mere youth, only eight-and-twenty years of age. Admiral Herbert expected to be appointed Lord High Admiral, and to have the entire control of the Admiralty; but he had the mortification to see a number of others placed at the Board of Admiralty to share his authority, though he bore nominally the name of First Lord of it. Churchill expected to be made Master of the Ordnance for his treason to James; but William had too certain evidence that he was at this very moment a traitor to himself; was in correspondence with the Court of St. Germain's, and believed that he would be one of the first to run if any future success warranted a hope of James's restoration. He was therefore appointed only to a post in the household, along with Devonshire, Mordaunt, Oxford, Dorset, Lovelace, and others; whilst the gallant foreigner Schomberg was made Master of the Ordnance.

Whilst the leaders, therefore, were deeply disappointed, all aspirants to favour were extremely jealous of the three staunch Dutch adherents of William—Bentinck, Overkirk, and Zulestein—whom William kept about him with a very natural feeling, for they had been faithful to him through all his arduous struggles in his own country, and were now, indeed, almost the only men in whom he could put implicit confidence. The main thing in which Danby, Halifax, Nottingham, and Shrewsbury agreed was in complaining that William did not make them his confidants, but preferred the secret advice of Bentinck, whom he soon made Earl of Portland, and the counsel of Sidney, whom he created Lord Sidney. William had but too much cause for keeping the knowledge of his thoughts and intentions from those around him, for many amongst his privy councillors and chief ministers would have betrayed them at once to the exiled monarch. Danby had been heard to say, even after James had quitted England, that if he would only abandon his priests, he might come back again; and others besides Churchill were in regular traitorous correspondence with James's Court. With all William's caution, not a thing was discussed in his council but was immediately transmitted to St. Germain's. To his trusty countrymen already mentioned William gave profitable offices near his person. His great friend Bentinck was made Groom of the Stole, with five thousand pounds a year; Overkirk Master of the Horse; and Zulestein had charge of the robes.

These arrangements being made, on the 18th of February, William, for the first time, addressed the two Houses of Parliament. It is remarkable that the very subject which he introduced to them was a demand for liberal supplies to carry on the war on the Continent. He had, he said, no choice in the matter, as France had already begun war on England.

William reminded them, too, that their domestic affairs would demand serious attention, and especially the condition of Ireland, where a strong feeling was known to exist for the fallen dynasty, through the interests of the Catholic religion. He exhorted them, moreover, to take immediate measures for securing the despatch of business. This alluded to the settlement of the great question whether the Convention could continue to sit legally after the deposition of the monarch who had called it. The question had been debated in the Council, and now, on the king's retiring, the lords immediately laid on the table of the House a Bill declaring the Convention a valid Parliament. It was speedily carried and sent down to the Commons; but there it excited a warm debate. The Whigs were vociferous for it; the Tories, who believed that the calling of a new Parliament would be in their favour, were as vehemently against it. The depositions of Edward II. and Richard II. were referred to and strongly argued upon; but the case in point was the Convention which recalled Charles II., and continued to sit and act long after. Sir John Maynard moreover contended that, as they were like men who found themselves in a trackless desert, it was not for them to stand crying, "Where is the king's highway?" but to take the track that would lead them out of it. That track was the precedent of Charles II.'s reign. The House passed the Bill without a division, and it received the Royal assent on the tenth day after the accession.

A clause in this Bill provided that, after the 1st of March, no person could sit or vote in either House until he had taken the new oath of allegiance to their majesties. Great excitement was occasioned by this oath. It was hoped by the Tories and High Church there would be found a sufficient number of persons of influence who would refuse the oath, so as to render the seat of the new monarchs unstable, and open the way to the return of James. Care was taken to consult the prejudices of the adherents to the old notions of right divine as much as possible, and the words "rightful and lawful sovereigns," after deliberation were omitted; but this did not prevent many from refusing it. As the day approached for taking the oath, the capital was full of rumours. It was said that the Duke of Grafton had escaped to France in order to reconcile himself to his uncle; and numerous other persons were supposed to have followed his example. When the day arrived, however, Grafton was one of the first to present himself; and the number of the lords who declined it, amongst them the Earls of Clarendon, Lichfield, and Exeter, with the Archbishop of Canterbury and some of the bishops, was small. Of the bishops, five were of those who refused to obey the commands of James to publish his Indulgence, and had been sent to the Tower. Rochester, the brother of Clarendon, was expected to refuse the oath, as he had adhered to James after Clarendon had abandoned him; but Clarendon's income was secure from his estate. Rochester had a pension of four thousand pounds a year, which he would lose if he refused the oath—a strong argument, which seems to have proved convincing, for he took the oath. Four hundred of the Lower House had taken the oath on the 2nd of March, and amongst them Seymour, who had led the Tory Opposition; but when the oath was extended to the clergy and other individuals in office, above four hundred of the clergy, including some of the most distinguished dignitaries, refused it; and thus began the great schism of the non-jurors, who long continued to figure as the unswerving advocates of divine right.

The next great question was that of the revenue. The Parliaments of Charles and James had been exceedingly munificent in their grants of income. In the heat of their loyalty at the Restoration, the Commons forgot all the salutary fears of their predecessors, and gave up every point for which they had contended with Charles I. Tonnage and poundage were granted for life, and afterwards confirmed to James. They settled on these monarchs half of the excise in perpetuity, and half for life. The fixed revenue of Charles and James had been one million two hundred thousand pounds, but the actual revenue had been a great deal more. It was now found by examination of the accounts that James had been in the annual receipt of no less than two millions, of which ninety thousand pounds had been expended in secret service money. William had, since arriving at Whitehall, been in the habit of collecting and applying this magnificent revenue as chief of the State; and seemed to expect that it would be now settled on him. The first question discussed was, whether an income granted to a monarch for life could be received legally by his successor in case of his abdication so long as he lived. Many of the chief lawyers contended that the revenue was granted to the monarch in his political capacity, and not to the man, and that, therefore, the prince who came to discharge his official duties so long as he lived was rightfully in receipt of it. But the more common sense opinion prevailed, that the prince who superseded another by the call of the nation must receive all his rights as well as his call from the nation. The House therefore passed to the question of the amount of the revenue, and they did not appear very much disposed to use the same lavish folly towards William as they had done towards the late monarchs. Instead of granting him a life revenue, they granted him one million two hundred thousand pounds, the sum allowed to Charles II., but only for three years, one half of which was to be appropriated to the civil list, the other half to the public defences. William was sensibly chagrined by this caution, and complained much of want of confidence in him, and of unusual parsimony. He presented a claim of seven hundred thousand pounds from the Dutch, the cost of the expedition which had placed him on the throne. The Commons consented to pay six hundred thousand pounds, and William received the sum for his careful countrymen with a very ill grace. The Commons did not the less displease him by reducing his demand for the navy from one million one hundred thousand pounds to seven hundred thousand pounds, and by granting the supply for the army for only six months; Sir Edward Seymour all the time warning them that it was the foolish liberality of Charles II.'s Parliament which enabled him to enslave the nation as he had done.

WILLIAM III.

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One thing which did William great credit, however, was the recommendation to the Commons to abolish the abominable hearth-tax. As he had advanced from Torbay to London, the people had importuned him on all sides to set aside this detestable tax, which had been farmed out to rapacious collectors, who treated the people with every species of insult, cruelty, and violence in enforcing payment of it. It was a most unequal tax, which fell with disproportionate weight on the very poor; for as it was levied, not by the value of the property, but by the number of chimneys, the peasant in many cases paid nearly as much as a man of really great substance; and where the money was not ready when called for, the tax-gatherers forced open even bedrooms, and sold the very bed from beneath the sick, and the table at which the family sat. William was much impressed by its injustice, and, at his special desire, the Act was repealed.

MARY II.

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Whilst in the midst of the money debates, a circumstance occurred which materially hastened the decision, and no doubt increased the liberality of the Commons. William announced to them that James had sailed from Brest, with an armament, for Ireland. But the alarm of James's descent on Ireland, and the disaffection in the army, roused the Commons from their tone of caution. They passed resolutions of patriotic devotion to the Crown, and in an address assured William that their lives and fortunes were at his service in its defence. They went further. As there were great numbers of political persons in custody—persons openly disaffected to the present dynasty having been prudently secured during the progress of the revolution,—now that the revolution was completed, and authorised judges were once more on the bench, it was feared that these prisoners would demand their habeas corpus, and come forth at the very moment when all the adherents of James were on the alert to watch the effect of his reception in Ireland. The Commons, therefore, passed an Act to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act for the present.

But simultaneously the Commons were passing another Act of scarcely less significance. Hitherto there had been no military power of controlling and punishing soldiers or officers who offended against discipline or their oath. They were subject only to the civil tribunals, and must be brought there, and tried and punished as any other subjects. James had obtained from his servile judges a decision that he might punish any deserter from his standard summarily; but this was not law, and the Commons, now alarmed by an affair at Ipswich, where a regiment of Scottish soldiers had mutinied, passed an Act called the Mutiny Bill, by which any military offenders might be arrested by military authority, and tried and condemned by court-martial in perfect independence of the civil authority. This Bill, which passed without a single dissentient vote, at once converted the soldiers into a separate class, and in effect founded what all parties disclaimed and affected to dread—a standing army. Like the Act for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, it was only for a limited period; but the unsettled state of the kingdom at the moment of its expiration caused it to be renewed, and it became a permanent institution, though to this day we annually go through the ceremony of formally renewing the Mutiny Bill.

The passing these extraordinary measures excited the alarm of many even well-disposed to the revolution; but to the adherents of the Stuart dynasty they afforded the opportunity for the most vehement declamation against the new monarch. The person, the manners, the spirit, and intentions of William were severely criticised. He was undeniably of a close and gloomy temperament, and found it impossible to assume that gaiety and affability of demeanour which to Charles II. were natural. He had the manners and the accent of a foreigner, and chilled all those who approached him at Court by his cold and laconic manners. In fact, he knew that he was surrounded by traitors, and could unbend only in the company of his Dutch favourites. He became extremely unpopular, and not all the endeavours and the agreeable and cordial manners of the queen could prevent the serious effect of his own reserved temper. At the same time more was truly to be attributed to the force of circumstances than to any bias of William towards tyranny. In one direction William was anxious to extend the liberties of the nation. He was for establishing the utmost freedom of religious opinion. He would have abolished the Test Act, and granted free enjoyment of all Christian creeds and of office to members of all denominations; but though there was no fear of a leaning to Popery in him, he found himself stoutly opposed in these intentions by his subjects. The Church was split into High Church and Low Church, jurors and non-jurors; but every party in the Church, and almost every body of Dissenters, was averse from conceding any liberty of creed or capability of office to the Catholics. Again, the Church was bent against admission of any one to office who refused to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles, and to take the oaths, not only of Allegiance but of Supremacy. Under these circumstances William found it impossible to set aside the Test Act or the Corporation Act; but he brought in and passed the celebrated Toleration Act. Yet even this Act, from which we still date our enjoyment of religious liberty, was circumscribed. It did not repeal the obnoxious Act of Uniformity, the Five Mile Act, the Conventicle Act, and those other statutes which so harassed and oppressed the Dissenters; but it exempted them from their operation on certain conditions. They must subscribe thirty-four out of the Thirty-nine Articles, which most of them could do; the Baptists were excused from professing belief in the efficacy of infant baptism; and the Quakers from taking an oath if they professed a general belief in Christianity, promised fidelity to the Government, and made a declaration against transubstantiation. This Act, therefore, cautious and meagre as it appeared, gave a freedom to the Dissenting world which it had hitherto been destitute of.

COVENANTERS PREACHING.

From the Picture by Sir George Harvey, R.S.A.,
in the Corporation Art Gallery, Glasgow.

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William made a resolute effort also to heal the great schism of the Church, and admit, by a comprehensive Bill, the main body of Nonconformists. By this Bill as introduced, it was proposed to excuse all ministers of the Established Church from the necessity of subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles; they were only to make this declaration: "I do approve of the doctrine, and worship, and government of the Church of England by law established, as containing all things necessary to salvation; and I promise in the exercise of my ministry to preach and practise according thereunto." The same looseness of declaration was extended to the two universities. Presbyterian ministers could be admitted to the pulpits and livings of the Church by accepting from a bishop a simple command to preach, administer the sacraments, and perform all the ministerial offices of the Church. Except in a few churches, the clergyman might wear the surplice or not, as he wished; might omit the sign of the cross in baptism; might christen children with or without godfathers and godmothers; might administer the Sacrament to persons sitting or kneeling, as they pleased. Besides this, the Bill proposed a Commission to revise the liturgy, the canons, and the constitution of the ecclesiastical courts. But it was soon found that no such sweeping changes could be effected. There was no determined opposition to the revision of the liturgy, but the danger to the rites on which the High Church laid so much stress soon called forth powerful resistance. It was represented that all manner of anomalous and contradictory practices would soon rend to pieces the harmony and decorum of the Church. Presbyterian and Puritan would set at defiance the most honoured practices of the Establishment. The Dissenting body were as much alarmed as the High Church. This wide door of admission to the Church, it was feared, would draw away a whole host of their ministers and members; and as the Test Act was by no means to be removed, they would thus become additionally unable to contend for its future abolition. The Bill, after much discussion and many modifications, fell to the ground.

The next attempt was to modify the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, so as to accommodate the consciences of the Non-jurors; but it was finally agreed that all persons holding ecclesiastical or academical preferment who did not take the oaths before the 1st of August should be suspended, a pecuniary allowance to the deprived, in some cases to be at the option of the king, but not to exceed one-third of the income forfeited. This was followed by the passing of a new Coronation Oath, by which their majesties bound themselves to maintain the Protestant religion as established by law, and the coronation took place on the 11th of April.

These domestic matters being thus settled, war was declared against France on the 13th of May. The inhuman desolation of the Palatinate in the preceding winter, where Louis's general, Duras, had laid waste the whole country, burned down the towns, leaving all of that fertile and populous district one black and terrible desert, had roused the powers of Europe against him. Germany, Spain, Holland, and England all prepared for vengeance, and the people and Parliament of England were equally loud in denunciation of the worthless desolator.

Whilst these affairs had been progressing in England, Scotland had been equally active. The Scots had even more profound cause of hatred to James, and more hope of effectual relief from William, than the English. In England the Church had managed to maintain its ascendency, and the fierceness of persecution had been somewhat restrained. There the iron boot and thumbscrews, and the fury of Tory troopers, had not perpetrated the horrors that they had done north of the Tweed. The Scots had had the hateful yoke of Episcopacy forced on them, their Church completely put down, and their liberties in a variety of ways crushed by the authorised licence of James's delegated ministers.

No sooner, therefore, had James fled than the suppressed feeling of the people burst forth. At Edinburgh crowds assembled, took down the heads of the slaughtered Whigs from the gates, and committed them in solemn ceremony to the earth. The episcopal clergy were set upon in many parts of Scotland, especially in the West, where the Covenanters prevailed, and where they had suffered so much from the emissaries of the Church. The Covenanters now chased them away from their manses, ransacked them, turned their wives and children out, broke all the furniture, or set fire to it. They tore the gown from the back of the clergyman if they could catch him, destroyed all the prayer-books they could find, locked up the church, and warned ministers not to be found there again. Two hundred clergymen were thus forcibly ejected. Christmas Day was selected for the commencement of this summary process, to mark their abhorrence of such superstitious festivals. As amid this violence many began to plunder, the Presbyterian ministers and elders assembled, and resolved that in future every incumbent of a parish should have due notice served on him to quit his parsonage peaceably, to avoid the necessity of being driven out by force.

The bishops and dignitaries made an instant appeal to William for protection, and a proclamation was issued—for William had no military force in Scotland—ordering the people to desist from further violence towards the clergy till the Parliament should determine the form of the establishment. But so little regard was paid to it, that on the same day that it was published at Glasgow, the mob rushed to the cathedral, and drove out the congregation with sticks and stones.

On the 14th of March the Scottish Convention of Estates met. By the able management of Sir James Dalrymple of Stair—afterwards Lord Stair—and his son, Sir John Dalrymple, who was an able debater, it was so managed that chiefly Whigs were returned. Sir James was a man of great legal learning, and consummate talent, though of doubtful character, who had been deprived of his position as a privy councillor and Chief Lord of the Court of Session, and had gone over to Holland, and was William's main adviser as to Scottish affairs. His son, Sir John, longer continued to side with the Stuarts, and was made Lord Advocate; but at the Revolution he appeared in the other party, and was supposed to have been for some time in effect pledged to William's cause in secret through his father. He at once declared for William on his landing, and exerted himself zealously for his interests in Scotland.

With the Dalrymples was associated George Lord Melville, who had also been for some time with William in Holland. On the other hand, the celebrated Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, and Colin Lindsay, Earl of Balcarres, were the chief agents of James in Scotland. These two leaders had pretended to go over to William, or at least to acquiesce in the change of dynasty; had waited on him on his arrival at Whitehall, and been well received by him. William was urged to arrest these noblemen, as too deeply implicated in the tyrannies of James and the murder of the Covenanters ever to be allowed to mingle with the new order of things; but William would not listen to the advice, determining to give every one a fair trial of living peaceably. So far did they promise this, that William granted them an escort of cavalry on their return to Scotland, without which they would not have been allowed by the Covenanters to reach Edinburgh alive. The name of Claverhouse was a horror in every Scottish home in the Lowlands, where he was loathed for his terrible cruelties towards the Presbyterian population.

No sooner did they reach Edinburgh than they set to work with all possible activity to assist the interests of James in the Convention and the country. The Duke of Gordon, who held the castle for James, was on the point of surrendering it when they arrived; but they exhorted him to hold out, and called upon all the Royalists who were elected at the Convention to take their places and defend the absent king's interests. When the Estates met, the Earl of Argyll, who had been proscribed by James, took his seat amid the murmurs of the Jacobites, who declared that, as a person under legal attainder, he was incapable of performing any office in the State. This was, however, overruled by the majority. Melville, who had been living abroad too, and had reappeared with William, presented himself, but without any opposition. The Duke of Hamilton was put in nomination by the Whigs for the presidency of the Convention, and the Duke of Athol by the Jacobites. Neither of them was a man whose conduct in the late reign was entitled to respect. Hamilton had adhered to James to the last, and had acquiesced in many invasions of the laws and liberties of Scotland; Athol had not only been a violent partisan of James, but had fawned on William immediately on his arrival, and, being coldly received, had wheeled round again. Hamilton was chosen president; and the moment this was discovered twenty of the Jacobites instantly went over to the stronger side. It was a striking fact that in Scotland, while the great body of the people had stood to the death for their principles, the nobility had become so corrupt through compliance with the corrupt Court, and in eagerness for office, that public principle was at the lowest ebb amongst them.

The Convention having thus organised itself, sent a deputation to the Duke of Gordon demanding the surrender of the castle, as its cannon might at any moment knock in the roof of the Parliament House, and drive thence the Convention. Gordon requested twenty-four hours to consider the proposition; but Dundee and Balcarres again succeeded in inducing him to hold out. The Convention determined to try the force of arms. They summoned the castle to surrender in due form, and pronounced the penalties of high treason on all who dared to occupy it in defiance of the Estates. They called out a guard to stop communication with the castle, and made preparations for a regular siege of the fortress. The next day a messenger arrived from King James with a letter, which, on being read, was found to be a furious denunciation of the Convention, and of every one who had shown a willingness to receive William. At the same time it offered pardon to all traitors who should return to their duty in a fortnight, with the alternative, if they refused, of the utmost vengeance of the Crown. There was no regret for any past acts which might have tended to alienate his subjects, no promises of future redress. The very friends of the king, whom nothing could alter or improve, were astonished and dispirited, and they stole away out of the Convention, pursued through the streets by the groans and curses of the crowd. At the same time, a letter was read from William, modest and liberal, trusting to the result of the free deliberations of the Estates. James, as was always the case with him, had done incalculable service to the cause of his rival. His most bigoted adherents could not avoid seeing that, were he restored to the throne, he would only continue to pursue the blind and foolish course which had already driven him from it. What added to the disgust of all parties was, that the letter was countersigned by Melfort, James's Secretary of State—a furious Papist and apostate from Protestantism, and nearly equally abhorred by both Protestants and Catholics.

COVENANTERS EVICTING AN EPISCOPALIAN CLERGYMAN. (See p. 403.)

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The Royalists, thus hopeless of effecting anything in the Convention, and yet unwilling to yield up the cause, adopted the advice of Dundee and Balcarres, who had the authority of James to open a rival Convention at Stirling. Athol consented to go with them; but on Monday, the 18th, he showed a fear of so far committing himself, and requested the party to wait for him another day. But the case of Dundee did not admit even a day's delay. The Covenanters of the West, whom Hamilton, and the Dalrymples had summoned to Edinburgh, and who for some time had come dropping in in small parties, till all the cellars and wynds of the city were thronged with them, vowed to kill the hated persecutor; and he made haste to flee, accompanied by his dare-devil followers, all as well-known to, and as detested by, the Covenanters as himself for their atrocities in the West. Whilst the Convention was in deliberation, sentinels from the castle hurried in to say that Claverhouse had galloped up to the foot of the fortress on the road to Stirling, accompanied by a detachment of his horsemen, and that he had climbed up the precipice high enough to hold a conversation with Gordon.

At this news the Convention was thrown into a tumult of indignation. Hamilton ordered the doors to be locked, and the keys laid on the table, so that no one should go out but such persons as should be sent by the assembly to call the citizens to arms. By this means all such Royalists as were in became prisoners till such time as the citizens were ready. Lord Leven, the second son of Lord Melville, who inherited the title of old General Leslie in right of his mother, was sent to call the Covenanters to arms; and presently the streets were thronged with the men of the West in rude military array, sufficient to ensure the safety of the Estates. As the drums beat to arms, Dundee descended from the rock and, waving his cap, with the cry that he went to where the spirit of Montrose called him, rode off towards Stirling.

The Convention now proceeded with their business. They sent a letter of thanks to William, which the bishops to a man refused to sign; the Bishop of Edinburgh having, as chaplain, before prayed for the return of James. William has been said to have privately wished that Episcopacy might be established in Scotland; but, if so, such specimens of the prelatic spirit there must have gone far to extinguish that desire. Other symptoms of opposition were not wanting, even yet. The Duke of Queensberry arrived from London, and revived the spirits of the Jacobites. Again they urged the Duke of Gordon to fire on the city, but he refused; and the chances of resistance were now taken away by the arrival of General Mackay with the three regiments of Scots who had served under William in Holland. The Convention immediately appointed Mackay general of their forces; and, thus placed at their ease, they proceeded to arrange the government. They appointed a committee, after the manner of the Lords of the Articles, to draw up the plan which should be adopted. As a last means of postponing this business, a proposal was made by the Jacobites to join with the Whigs to concert a scheme of union of the kingdom with England. This was a scheme which was now growingly popular. During the Commonwealth the trade of England had been opened to Scotland. All custom-houses, and levying of duties on goods imported or exported between the countries, had been removed. The Scots had been admitted to perfect freedom of foreign trade with England, and the benefit had become too apparent to be lightly relinquished. But, on the Restoration, all this had been altered. The old and invidious restrictions had been renewed, and the great loss of wealth thus induced had wonderfully modified the spirit of national pride which opposed the abandonment of the ancient independence of the nation. The Dalrymples and Lord Tarbet were favourable to this proposition, but the Convention at large was too wise to endanger the defeat of the acknowledgment of the new sovereign by an indefinitely-prolonged debate on so vital a question. They proceeded to declare that James, by his misconduct, had "forfaulted" his right to the crown; that is, that he had forfeited it—a much more manly and correct plea than that James had "abdicated," which he continued to protest that he never had done, and he was at this moment in arms with Ireland asserting his unrelinquished claim to it. As the term "forfaulted," according to Scottish law, would have excluded all his posterity, an exception was made in favour of Mary and Anne, and their issue. This resolution was warmly defended by Sir John Dalrymple, and as warmly by Sir James Montgomery, the member for Ayrshire, who had been a determined champion of the Covenanters; and was resisted by the bishops, especially by the Archbishop of Glasgow. It was carried with only five dissentient voices, and was then read at the Market Cross, in the High Street, by Hamilton, attended by the Lord Provost and the heralds, and the Earl of Argyll, the son of James's decapitated victim. Sir John Dalrymple and Sir James Montgomery were deputed to carry it, with the second resolution that the crown should be offered to William and Mary, to London. To define on what principles this offered transfer of the crown was made, a Claim of Right, in imitation of the English Bill of Rights, was drawn up and accompanied it.

But with the acknowledgment of William as King of Scotland he was far from having acquired a state of comfort. In both his Governments his ministers and pretended friends were his continual tormentors. In England his Council and his chief ministers were at daggers drawn—every one dissatisfied with the post he occupied, jealous of the promotion of his rivals, and numbers of them in close correspondence with the Court of James. In Scotland it was precisely the same; it was impossible to satisfy the ambition and the cupidity of his principal adherents. The Covenanters were exasperated because the Episcopalians were merely dismissed from the Establishment, and were not handed over to retaliation of all the injuries they had received from them. Sir James Montgomery, who expected a much higher post, was offered that of Chief Justice Clerk, and refused it with disdain. He at once concerted plans of opposition, and made his attack amidst a whole host of similarly disappointed aspirants. Amongst these were two who had been in the insurrections of Monmouth and Argyll—Sir Patrick Hume and Fletcher of Saltoun, men of great ability, but of reckless and insubordinate character. A club was formed, in which these men, with Montgomery, the Lords Annandale and Ross, and a whole tribe of minor malcontents, did all in their power to thwart and embarrass the government of William. The chief promotion had been conferred on the Duke of Hamilton, who was made Lord High Commissioner; the Earl of Crawford, a very indigent, but very bitter Presbyterian, who before this appointment did not know where to get a dinner, was made President of Parliament; Sir James Dalrymple was appointed the Principal Lord of Session, and his son, Sir John, was restored to his office of Lord Advocate. Lord Melville became Secretary of State, and Sir William Lockhart Solicitor-General. But whilst some of these thought they ought to have had something higher or more lucrative, there were scores for whom the limited administration of Scotland afforded no situation in accordance with their own notions of their merits, and these hastened to join the opposition.

Meanwhile Dundee was exerting himself in the Highlands to rouse the clans in favour of King James. But this he found an arduous matter. The Highlanders, at a distance from the scenes and the interests which divided both England and the Lowlands of Scotland, occupied with their hunting and their own internal feuds, cared little for either King James or King William. If anything, they would probably have given the preference to William, for James had more than once sent his troops after them to chastise them for their inroads into the domains of their Saxon fellow-subjects. Dundee himself had retired to his own estate, and offered to remain at peace if he received from William's ministers a pledge that he should not be molested. But, unfortunately for him, an emissary from James in Ireland, bearing letters to Dundee and Balcarres, was intercepted, and immediately Balcarres was arrested, and Dundee made his escape into the Highlands. There, though he could not move any of the clans by motives of loyalty to declare for James, he contrived to effect this object through their own internal enmities. Most of them had an old and violent feud with the clan Campbell. The Argyll family had, through a long succession of years, extended its territories and its influence over the Western Highlands at the expense of the other clans, some of which it had nearly extirpated; and now the head of the family came back from exile in the favour of the new monarch, and all these clans, the Stuarts, the Macnaghtens, the Camerons, the Macdonalds, the Macleans, were in alarm and expectation of a severe visitation for past offences, and for unpaid feudal dues. They were, therefore, moved from this cause to unite against William, because it was to unite against MacCallum More, the chieftain of Argyll. If William was put down, Argyll was put down. Whilst Dundee was busy mustering these clans, and endeavouring to reconcile their petty jealousies and bring them to act together, he sent earnestly to James in Ireland to despatch to him a tolerable body of regular troops, for without them he despaired of keeping long together his half savage and unmanageable Highlanders. Till then he avoided a conflict with the troops sent by the Convention under Mackay against him. It was in vain that Mackay marched from one wild district to another; the enemy still eluded him amongst the intricate fastnesses and forests of the Highlands till his troops were wearied out with climbing crags, and threading rugged defiles and morasses; and he returned to quarters in Stirling, Aberdeen, and other towns at the foot of the mountain district.

It was the opinion of Lord Tarbet, who understood the statistics of the Highlands well, that, if William would send about five thousand pounds to enable the clans to discharge their debts to the Earl of Argyll, and obtain from that chieftain an assurance that he would abstain from hostilities against them, they would all submit at once, and leave Dundee to find support where he could. But his advice was attempted to be carried out in so absurd a manner, by choosing an agent from the clan Campbell as the mediator on the occasion, that the clans refused to treat with him, and became all the more devoted to the interests of James.

Things were in this position when in June a civil contention broke out in Athol. The marquis, unwilling to declare for either side, had retired to England, and his eldest son, Lord Murray, who had married a daughter of the Duke of Hamilton, and declared for King William, was opposed by the marquis's steward, who declared for King James. The steward held Blair Castle, and Lord Murray besieged him in it. This called out Dundee to repel Murray and support the steward, the adherent of James; and Mackay, hoping now to meet with him, put his forces in march for the place of strife. The two armies, in fact, at length came into contact in the stern pass of Killiecrankie, near Dunkeld. This was then one of the wildest and most terrible defiles in the Highlands; the mountain torrent of the Garry roaring through its deep and rocky strait.

The forces of Dundee consisted of about three thousand Highlanders, and a body of Irish, under an officer of the name of Cannon, amounting to about three hundred, an ill-armed and ragged rabble whom James had sent over instead of the efficient regiments for which Dundee had so earnestly prayed. On the other hand, Mackay commanded about the same number of regular troops; these were the three Scottish regiments which he had brought from Holland, a regiment of English infantry—afterwards the Thirteenth of the Line—and two regiments of Lowland Scots, newly raised, commanded by the Lords Kenmore and Leven. He had, besides, two troops of horse, one of which was led by Lord Belhaven.

On the morning of Saturday, the 17th of June, Mackay had just struggled through the pass of Killiecrankie, his twelve hundred baggage-horses—for no wheel-carriages could approach such a place—were scarcely through, when the enemy was upon them. The men had thrown themselves down on an open space on the banks of the Garry, to recover from their fatigue, when they were called to resume their arms by the appearance of Dundee leading on his troops of wild Highlanders. Cameron of Lochiel, a man of distinguished bravery and ability, was second in command, and urged Dundee to come to an engagement without the least delay. The two armies drew up, that of Mackay with the Garry on its left, that of Dundee with the stream on its right. Lord Murray and the few forces with him united with the forces of Mackay.

It was early in the afternoon when the hostile parties began to fire on each other, and the regular troops of Mackay did considerable execution on the Highlanders; yet it was seven o'clock in the evening before Dundee gave the order to charge. Then the Highlanders raised a wild shout, which was returned by the enemy with a cry so much less lively and determined, that Lochiel exclaimed, "We shall do it now; that is not the cry of men who are going to win." The Highlanders dropped their plaids and rushed forward. They were received by a steady fire of the Lowlanders; but, as these prepared to charge with the bayonet, they were so much delayed by the nature of the operation—having, according to the practice of the time, to stick the bayonets into the muzzles of their guns, instead of, as now, having them already fixed beneath them—that the Highlanders were down upon them before they were prepared, and cut through and through their lines. Having discharged their fire-arms, the Celts threw them away, and assailed the Lowland troops with dirk and claymore. The whole of the Scottish regiments broke, and were scattered like leaves before a whirlwind. Balfour was killed at the head of his regiment; Mackay's brother fell whilst gallantly endeavouring to keep together his men; and Mackay himself was compelled to give way. The English horse were yet on the ground, and Mackay spurred towards them, and called on them to charge and break the onslaught of the furious Highlanders on the foot; but he called in vain; in spite of the brave example of Belhaven, the horse fled as fast as their steeds could carry them. There was nothing for it but for Mackay to endeavour to save himself; and, followed by only one servant, he managed to cut his way through the enemy and reach a neighbouring height.

There the scene that presented itself was astounding. His whole army had vanished except the English regiment, which kept together in perfect order, and a few of the troops of Lord Leven. These had poured a murderous fire into the ranks of the Highlanders, and still shot numbers of them down as in fiery rage they pursued the flying Lowlanders down the ravine, where the confused mass of enemies were plunged in chaotic strife—one violent, horrid effort to escape or to kill. In this strange mÊlÉe were involved the twelve hundred pack-horses, which alone effected a diversion for the fugitives, the Highlanders stopping to make themselves masters of so rich a booty.

Mackay lost no time in getting the English regiment, with Lord Leven and his remnant of men, and such few others as he could collect, across the Garry. This being effected he halted, and again looked back, expecting that he should be hotly pursued, but no such thing; the Highlanders were, in fact, too agreeably detained by the plunder. But this supposition did not account to him for the easy manner in which such a general as Dundee allowed of his retreat, and he declared to his guards that he was sure Dundee must have fallen. And in this opinion he was right. Dundee had fallen in the very commencement of the general charge. He had led it on, contrary to the advice of Lochiel, who had urged on him the necessity of not exposing himself too much. Waving his hat, and calling his soldiers to follow him, he dashed forward, when a bullet struck him below the cuirass, which was raised by his action of rising in his stirrups and waving his arm, and he fell to the ground. The tradition of the Highlands is, that Dundee was believed to have made a compact with the devil, and bore a charmed life, which no ball of lead or iron could touch; that a soldier of Mackay's army, seeing him galloping unharmed amid showers of flying balls, plucked a silver button from his own coat, and fired at him with instant effect. The fall of the general was observed only by a few of his own soldiers who were near him, and one of them caught him in his arms. He asked, "How goes the day?" "Well for King James," said the man, "but I am sorry for your lordship." "If it be well for the king," replied Dundee, "it matters the less for me," and expired.

BATTLE OF KILLIECRANKIE: THE LAST CHARGE OF DUNDEE. (See p. 408.)

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Mackay made his way over the mountains by Weem Castle and Castle Drummond to Stirling. On the way he overtook the fugitives from Ramsay's regiment, who had fled at the first onset. They were completely cowed and demoralised; and it was only by threatening to shoot any man that left the track that he could prevent them from dispersing amongst the hills. Many of them, after all, managed to elude his vigilance, and were killed by the Highlanders for their clothes. It was reported that Mackay lost two thousand men in the battle, and that five hundred were made prisoners; but, on the other hand, a great number of the Highlanders fell on the field. The rest, before retreating with the booty, piled a great heap of stones on the spot where Claverhouse fell. This is still shown, and is the only monument of John Graham, Viscount Dundee, for the Church of Blair Athol in which he was buried has long since disappeared, and his tomb with it.

The news of the defeat of Mackay caused consternation throughout the Lowlands, and even in London, whither it was carried by couriers charged with earnest appeals to the king to hasten forces on to Scotland, to protect the people from the torrents of victorious barbarians from the mountains, who were with terror expected to devastate the whole country. The Scottish Convention urged Hamilton to dismiss them, that they might provide for their safety; but fast on the heels of the first news came that of the certain death of Dundee, which at once reassured the country; for, without him, the Highlanders were regarded as comparatively innocuous, as a body without a head. And this was very near the truth; for the command had now fallen on the Irish officer Cannon, who, with his ragamuffin brigade, was not likely to remain long very formidable. In fact, he very soon managed to disgust the proud Highland chieftains. Lochiel returned home, and many of the Celts, satisfied with their plunder, followed his example. Others, however, stimulated by the hope of similar good fortune, came rushing from their hills, adding, by their conflicting prejudices and wild insubordination, only to the weakness of the force. Cannon dispatched a party of the Robertsons into the Lowlands to collect cattle and provisions for his army; but Mackay came upon them at St. Johnstone's, and killed one hundred and twenty of them, and took thirty prisoners. This revived the spirit of his troops, and infused new confidence through the country. In fact, Mackay was an excellent general, and was unremitting in his exertions to renew the courage and discipline of his troops. He had seen the fatal effect of the clumsy use of the bayonets at Killiecrankie, and he lost no time in having them made to screw upon the muskets, so that these could be fired with them ready fixed.

And very soon he had need of all his generalship. The ministers at Edinburgh had ordered him to garrison Dunkeld with the Cameronian regiment newly raised. The town was unfortified; and in vain Mackay protested against exposing his men thus to the attack of the whole body of the Highlanders encamped at Blair Castle. But the Highland army, led on by Cannon, were received with a spirit worthy of the old race of Covenanters, were repulsed, and driven back with great slaughter. The young commander Lieutenant-Colonel Cleland, and after him Captain Monro, fell at the head of the besieged; but the victory was decisive. The Highlanders dispersed with their booty to their homes; Cannon, with his disorderly Irish, escaped to the Isle of Mull; the fame of Mackay and his troops was higher than ever, and the war in Scotland was at an end.

We have continued to this point the affairs of Scotland, that we might not interrupt the still more important transactions which at the same time took place in Ireland. On the 12th of March, two days before the opening of the Scottish Convention, James had landed in Ireland. That island was peculiarly open to the influence of James, for the bulk of the population were Catholics, and they were thrown into a state of great excitement by the hope of being able to drive the Protestants from their estates by his appearance there with a French army, of wreaking vengeance on them for all their past oppressions, and of regaining their ancient patrimony.

From the moment almost that James had mounted the throne of England, he began his preparations for putting down Protestantism in Ireland, and raising a military power there which should enable him to crush it also in England. The Protestant judges had been removed one after another from the bench, so that little justice could be obtained in Irish tribunals by Protestant suitors. The Protestants were diligently weeded out of the army, and lying Dick Talbot, the Earl of Tyrconnel, James's most obsequious tool, was his Lord-Lieutenant, and bent on carrying out his plans to the fullest extent. There arose a terrible panic amongst the Protestants that a general massacre was contemplated, and the Englishry began to collect whatever of value they could carry with them, and escape across the Channel into England or Wales. Tyrconnel sent for the leading Protestants to Dublin, and protested with many oaths that the whole rumour was a malicious and groundless lie. Nobody, however, put any faith in his assurances, and the exodus rapidly increased, whilst such Protestants as possessed any means of defence in towns, armed themselves, threw up fortifications, and determined to sell their lives dear. Such was the case at Kenmare, in Kerry; at Bandon, Mallow, Sligo, Charleville, Enniskillen, and Londonderry.

Such was the state of Ireland at the time of the landing of William at Torbay. Tyrconnel despatched a body of Popish infantry in December, 1688, to take possession of Enniskillen. The inhabitants summoned the Protestants of the surrounding country to their aid, rushed out on the soldiers as they approached the gates of the town, and defeated them. They then appointed Gustavus Hamilton, a captain in the army, their governor, and determined to hold their own against the lieutenant-governor. Londonderry likewise shut its gates in the face of the Earl of Antrim, who armed a Popish regiment to garrison their town. This exploit was the work of thirteen apprentices, whose bold and decisive deed was quickly imitated by the rest of the inhabitants. The town was put into a posture of thorough defence, the country round was alarmed, the Protestant gentry flocked in with armed followers, horse and foot, and Antrim thought it prudent to retire to Coleraine.

At another time Tyrconnel would have taken a bloody vengeance on the courageous Protestants of Ulster, but matters in England appeared too critical to permit him such indulgence. He had recourse, therefore, to artifice. He despatched Lord Mountjoy, the Master of the Ordnance, with his regiment, which included many Protestants, to Londonderry. Mountjoy was a Protestant himself, though an adherent of King James; had much property in Ulster, and was highly respected there. The citizens of Londonderry willingly admitted him within their walls, and suffered him to leave a garrison there, consisting solely of Protestant soldiers, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Lundy as governor. To the people of Enniskillen Mountjoy was less courteous; he somewhat curtly treated a deputation thence, and advised them to submit unconditionally to James. Tyrconnel even affected to enter into negotiation with William, and General Richard Hamilton was not very wisely despatched by William to Ireland to treat with him. Hamilton had been in command under Tyrconnel till a recent period, and had been sent by him with reinforcements to James in England. There, finding James had fled, he coolly went over to William, and, strangely enough, was deemed sufficiently trustworthy to be returned to his old master as negotiator. He no sooner arrived than he once more declared for King James. Tyrconnel, however, did not himself so soon throw off the mask of duplicity. He protested to the Prince of Orange that he was quite disposed to treat for the surrender of Ireland, and to the alarmed Catholics of Ireland—who got some wind of his proceedings—that he had not the most distant idea of submitting. On the other hand, he prevailed on Lord Mountjoy, who had so well served him at Londonderry, to go on a mission to James at St. Germains, professedly to procure a concession from James that his Irish subjects should submit to William for the present, and not rush into a contest to which they were unequal, but wait for better times. The real truth was, that James had already despatched Captain Rush from St. Germains to Tyrconnel to assure him that he was coming himself with all haste with a powerful fleet and army. Tyrconnel was, therefore, desirous to get Mountjoy secured, as he was capable of uniting the Protestants and heading them against the bloody butchery that James and Tyrconnel destined for them. Mountjoy somewhat reluctantly fell into the snare. He proceeded to France, accompanied by Chief Baron Rice, a fanatical Papist, who had boasted that he would drive a coach and six through the Act of Settlement. Rice had secret instructions to denounce Mountjoy as a traitor, and to recommend James to make him fast. No sooner, therefore, did he present himself at St. Germains than he was clapped into the Bastille.

This act of diabolical treachery being completed, Tyrconnel now abandoned further disguise, and prepared to hand over the whole Protestant population of Ireland to the exterminating fury of the Catholic natives. "Now or never! now and for ever!" was the watchword of blood and death to all the Englishry. It was embroidered on the viceregal banner, and floated over the castle of Dublin. The Catholics were called on to arm and secure Ireland for the Irish. The call was obeyed with the avidity of savages. Those who had not arms manufactured them out of scythes, forks, and other rural implements. Every smithy was aglow, every hammer resounding in preparation of pike and skean, the Irish long knife. By February, 1689, the army of Ireland was swelled with regulars and irregulars to a hundred thousand men. There was one universal shout of Bacchanalian acclaim, and rush to secure the plunder of the Protestants. The houses of the wealthy were ransacked, the cattle driven off, the buildings, and even the heaths set fire to. The wild marauders roasted the slaughtered cattle and sheep at huge fires often made of timbers of the buildings, emptied the cellars, and sang songs of triumph over the heretic Englishry, and of Ireland restored to its legitimate owners. What an Ireland it was likely to become under them was soon evident. They were not content to kill enough to satisfy their hunger; these children of oppression and ignorance, like wolves, destroyed for the mere pleasure of destroying; and D'Avaux, the French ambassador, who accompanied James over the country from Kinsale to Dublin, describes it as one black, wasted desert, for scores of miles without a single inhabitant, and calculates that in six weeks these infuriate savages had slaughtered fifty thousand cattle and three or four hundred thousand sheep.

Before such an inundation of fury and murder, the few Protestant inhabitants were swept away like chaff before the wind. All the fortified towns and houses in the south were forced by the ruthless mob and soldiery, or were abandoned, and the people fled for their lives to seek an asylum in Ulster. Those of Kenmare managed to get across in a small vessel to Bristol.

In all this fearful scene of devastation Hamilton, who had come over as the emissary of William, was one of the most active and unpitying agents. Enniskillen and Londonderry were the only Protestant places which now held out, and Hamilton commenced his march northward to reduce them. This march was only another wild blast of desolation, like that which had swept the south, and left the country a howling wilderness. In addition to Hamilton's regular troops, hosts of the self-armed and merciless Irish collected on his track, and burnt, plundered, and murdered without mercy. The people fled before the rout, themselves burning their own dwellings, and laying waste with fire the whole district, so that it should afford no shelter or sustenance to the enemy. The whole of the Protestant population retreated northwards, leaving even Lisburn and Antrim deserted. Thirty thousand fugitives soon found themselves cooped up within the walls of Londonderry, and many thousands were shut up in Enniskillen.

At this crisis James landed at Kinsale, and marched to Cork. He had brought no army, but a number of officers to command the Irish troops. His General-in-Chief was Count Rosen, a man of much military experience. Next to him were Lieutenant-General Maumont, Brigadier-General Pusignan, and four hundred other officers of different ranks. He was accompanied by Count D'Avaux, who had been ambassador in England, a man clever, shrewd, keenly observant, and with little mercy or principle. His object was to secure Ireland rather for Louis than for James, and he served his master with cunning and zeal. James brought with him arms for ten thousand men, abundance of ammunition, and a military chest of about a hundred and twenty thousand pounds sterling. Before quitting St. Germains Louis XIV. himself had paid James a parting visit, displayed towards him the most marked friendship, embraced him at parting, and told him, in his epigrammatic way, that the greatest good that he could desire for him was that they might never meet again.

James landed on the 12th of March, and two days after was in Cork. The Irish received him with enthusiastic acclamations as a saviour; but the effects of his anticipated arrival, and the measures concerted by himself and carried out by the brutal Tyrconnel, met him on the instant. He was anxious to push on to Dublin; but the whole country was a desert, and horses could not be procured in sufficient numbers to convey his baggage, nor food to sustain them on the way. During the detention consequent on this, Tyrconnel arrived to welcome His Majesty to Ireland. On the 24th of March he entered Dublin amid the hurrahs and the festive demonstrations of flowers, garlands of evergreens, of tapestry and carpets hung from the windows, of processions of young girls in white, and friars and priests with their crosses, and with the host itself. At sight of that, James alighted, and, falling on his knees in the mud, bared his head in humble devotion. The next morning James proceeded to form his Privy Council. This was composed of his natural son, the Duke of Berwick, the Duke of Powis; the Earls of Abercorn, Melfort, Dover, Carlingford, and Clanricarde; the Lords Thomas Howard, Kilmallock, Merrion, Kenmare; Lord Chief Justice Herbert, the Bishop of Chester, General Sarsfield, Colonel Dorrington, and, strangely enough, D'Avaux, who should have retained the independent position of ambassador; the Marquis D'Abbeville, and two other foreigners. The Protestant Bishop of Meath, at the head of his clergy, appeared before him, imploring his protection, and permission to lay before him the account of the injuries they and their flocks had received. James affected to declare that he was just as much as ever desirous to afford full liberty of conscience, and to protect all his subjects in their rights and opinions; but he said it was impossible to alter what had already taken place, and he gave an immediate proof of the impartiality which Protestants were likely to receive at his hands by dismissing Keating, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, the only Protestant judge still remaining on the bench.

These measures dispatched, it became the question whether, in the interval before the meeting of Parliament, James should continue in Dublin, or should proceed to the army besieging Londonderry, and encourage it by his presence. This called forth the conflicting views and interests of his adherents, and his whole court became rent by struggling factions. The English exiles warmly urged the king to proceed to Ulster. They cared little for the fate of Ireland, their views and wishes were fixed on England. In the north, as soon as Londonderry was put down, it was easy for James to go across to Scotland, there to commence the campaign for the recovery of the English crown. But this was the very thing which his Irish partisans dreaded. They felt certain that if James recovered the English throne, they should be left to contend with the colonists of Ulster themselves; and the victorious ascendency of that small but sturdy body of people was too vividly burnt into their minds by ages of their domination. They therefore counselled James to remain as a king at Dublin, and leave his generals to put down the opposition in the north; and in this they were zealously seconded by D'Avaux and the French. James on the throne of England would be a very different person to James on the throne of Ireland only. In the one case, if he succeeded, he might ere long become independent of Louis; if he failed, the English Protestant king would soon subdue Ireland to his sway. But if James continued only monarch of Ireland, he must continue wholly dependent on Louis. He could only maintain himself there by his aid in men and money, and then Ireland would become gradually a French colony—a dependence most flattering to the pride and power of France—a perpetual thorn in the side of England.

The contention between the two parties was fierce, and Tyrconnel joined with the French and Irish in advising James to remain at Dublin. On the other hand, Melfort and the English pointed out to him the immense advantage to his prospects to settle the last remains of disaffection in the north, and to appear again in arms in his chief kingdom, where they persuaded him that the Highlanders and all the Catholic and Royalist English would now flock to his standard. William, they assured him, was to the highest degree unpopular; a powerful party in Scotland were opposed to him, and in the ascendant. These views prevailed. James, attended by D'Avaux and the French officers, set out for Ulster. The journey was again through a country blasted by the horrors of war and robbery. There was no fodder for their horses, scarcely a roof to shelter the heads of the travellers; and, after a long and terrible journey, plunging and struggling through deep roads, and bogs where there was no road at all, famished and worn out by fatigue, they reached Charlemont on the 13th of April. When James at length arrived before Londonderry, the fall of that place did not appear likely to be quite so early an event as he had been led to believe. Rosen, however, treated lightly the resistance which the inhabitants could make. The walls of the town were old, the ditches could scarcely be discerned, the gates and drawbridges were in disorder, and the town was commanded at various points by heights from which artillery might play upon it. What was still more favourable to James, it was well known that Lundy, the governor, was a traitor. Rosen was placed in the chief command, and Maumont next to him over the head of Hamilton. Lundy meanwhile depressed the spirits of the people within by telling them that it was useless to attempt to defend such a place, and kept up a secret correspondence with the enemy without, informing them of all that passed there, and of its weak points and condition. He did more—he contrived to send away succours which arrived from England. Colonel Cunningham appeared in the bay with a fleet having on board two regiments for the defence of the place. Cunningham and his chief officers went on shore and waited on the governor. Lundy called a council, taking care to exclude all but his own creatures; and these informed Cunningham that it was mere waste of men and money to land them; the town was perfectly indefensible; and that, in fact, he was going to surrender it. His supporters confirmed this view of the case, and Cunningham and his officers withdrew, and soon after made sail homeward, to the despair of the inhabitants; Lundy, as he saw them depart, sending word into the enemy's camp that he was ready to surrender.

But the spirit of the inhabitants was now roused. They openly declared Lundy a traitor, and, if they could have found him, would have killed him on the spot. He had, however, concealed himself, and at night was enabled, by connivance of his friends, to escape over the walls in disguise. As night approached, the people, to their astonishment, found the gates set open, and the keys were not to be found. People said they had seen the confederates of Lundy stealing out, and the alarm flew through the place. The townsmen came together, and called all to arms by beat of drum. A message was despatched to Cunningham to bring in his forces; but he was already on the move, and declared that his orders permitted him only to follow the commands of the governor.

Thus deserted, the inhabitants courageously resolved to depend on their own energies. They placed Major Baker and Captain Murray at the head of the armed citizens, who amounted to seven thousand, many of them Ulster gentlemen of family, and endowed with all the dauntless spirit which had made them so long masters of the north of Ireland. At this moment, too, the Rev. George Walker, the Rector of Donaghmore, who had been driven in along with the rest of the fugitives, displayed that spirit, eloquence, and ability which inspired the whole place with a wonderful enthusiasm, and which have made his name famous amongst the Protestant patriots of Ireland. Walker was appointed joint governor with Major Baker, and they set themselves to work to organise their armed people into military bodies with their proper officers, to place cannon on all the most effective points, and post sentinels on the walls and at the gates. The forces of James were already drawn up before the place, expecting the promised surrender of Lundy. Presently a trumpeter appeared at the southern gate, and demanded the fulfilment of the governor's engagement. He was answered that the governor had no longer any command there. The next day, the 20th of April, James sent Lord Strabane, a Catholic peer of Ireland, offering a free pardon for all past offences on condition of an immediate surrender, and a bribe to Captain Murray, who was sent to hold a parley with him, of a thousand pounds and a colonelcy in the royal army. Murray repelled the offer with contempt, and advised Strabane, if he valued his safety, to make the best of his way out of gunshot.

At this unexpected answer, James displayed the same pusillanimity which marked his conduct when he fled from England. Instead of ordering the place to be stormed, he lost heart, and, though he had been only eleven days before the town, set off back to Dublin, taking Count Rosen with him, and leaving Maumont in command, with Hamilton and Pusignan under him. Then the siege was pushed on with spirit. The batteries were opened on the town, to which the townsmen replied vigorously; and, on the 21st of April, made a desperate sally under Captain Murray, killed General Maumont and two hundred of the Irish, and, under cover of a strong fire kept up by a party headed by Walker, regained the town. The siege under Hamilton, who succeeded to the command, then languished. On the 4th of May the townspeople made another sally, and killed Pusignan. After this sallies became frequent, the bold men of Londonderry carried off several officers prisoners into the town, and two flags of the French, which they hung up in the cathedral. It was at length resolved by the besiegers to carry the place by storm, but they were repelled with great loss, the very women joining in the mÊlÉe, and carrying ammunition and refreshments to the defenders on the walls. As the storming of the town was found to be impracticable, Hamilton commenced a blockade. The troops were drawn round the place, and a strong boom thrown across the river, and the besiegers awaited the progress of famine.

All this time the people of Enniskillen had been making a noble diversion. They had marched out into the surrounding country, levied contributions of provisions from the native Irish, and given battle to and defeated several considerable bodies of troops sent against them. They took and sacked Belturbet, and carried off a great quantity of provisions; they made skirmishing parties, and scoured the country in the rear of the army besieging Londonderry, cutting off straggling foragers, and impeding supplies. The news of the continued siege of Londonderry, and the heroic conduct of the people of both these places, raised a wonderful enthusiasm in England on their behalf. Lundy, who had reached London, and Cunningham, who had brought back his regiments, were arrested, and Lundy was thrown into the Tower and Cunningham into the Gatehouse. Kirke was also dispatched with a body of troops from Liverpool to relieve the besieged in Londonderry. On the 15th of June his squadron was discerned approaching, and wonderful was the exultation when it was ascertained that Kirke had arrived with troops, arms, ammunition, and supplies of food.

It was high time that relief should have come, for they were reduced to the most direful extremities, and were out of cannon-ball, and nearly out of powder. But they were doomed to a horrible disappointment. Kirke, who could be bold enough in perpetrating barbarities on defenceless people, was too faint-hearted to attempt forcing the boom in the river, and relieving the place. He drew off his fleet to the entrance of Lough Foyle, and lay there in tantalising inactivity. His presence, instead of benefiting them, brought fresh horrors upon them; for no sooner did James in Dublin learn that there was a chance of Kirke's throwing in fresh forces and provisions, than he dispatched Rosen to resume the command, with orders to take the place at all costs.

This Rosen, who was a Russian, from Livonia, was a brutal savage, and vowed that he would take the place, or roast the inhabitants alive. He first began by endeavouring to undermine the walls; but the besieged so briskly attacked the sappers, that they soon killed a hundred of them, and compelled them to retire. Filled with fury, Rosen swore that he would raze the walls to the ground, and massacre every creature in the town,—men, women, and children. He flung a shell into the place, to which was attached a threat that, if they did not at once surrender, he would collect from the whole country round all the people, their friends and relatives, the women, the children, the aged, drive them under the walls, and keep them there till they perished. He knew that the besieged could give them no support, for they were perishing fast themselves from famine, and its attendant fevers and diseases. The fighting men were so weak that they often fell down in endeavouring to strike a blow at the enemy. They were living on dogs, rats, any vile thing they could seize. They had eaten up all the horses to three, which were mere skin and bone. They had salted the hides and chewed them to keep down their ravening hunger. There were some amongst them who began to talk of eating the bodies of those who fell in the action. Numbers perished daily in their houses of exhaustion, and the stench arising from the unburied dead was terrible and pestilential. Many of their best men had died from fever, amongst them Major Baker, their military governor, and Colonel Mitchelbourne had been elected in his place. They were reduced to fire brickbats instead of cannon-balls; and their walls were so battered, that it was not they but their own spirit which kept out the enemy. Yet, amid these horrors, they treated the menace with silent contempt, and sent out an order that any one even uttering the word "Surrender," should be instantly put to death.

The savage Rosen put his menace into force. He drove the wretched people from the country, at the point of the pike, under the walls. On the 2nd of July this melancholy crowd of many hundreds was seen by the besieged from the walls, hemmed in between the town and the army—old men incapable of bearing arms, miserable women, and lamenting children, where, without food or shelter, they were cooped up between their enemies and their friends, who could not help them. Many of these unhappy people had protections under James's own hand, but Rosen cared not for that. For two days and nights this woful throng of human beings was kept there, in spite of the strong remonstrances of Hamilton and other English officers, who were not accustomed to such devilish modes of war. The indignant men in Londonderry erected gallows on the walls, and sent Rosen word that, unless he let the perishing people go, they would hang up the principal of their prisoners. But it was not till many of the victims had died, and a storm of indignation at this unheard-of barbarity assailed him in his own camp, that Rosen opened his ranks and allowed the poor wretches to depart.

James, who was himself by no means of the melting mood, was shocked when he heard of this diabolical barbarity, and the comments upon it amongst those around him. He recalled Rosen and restored the command to Hamilton. Then the siege again went on with redoubled fury, and all the last expiring strength of the besieged was required to sustain it. Hamilton also terrified them by continual ruses and false rumours. He ordered his soldiers to raise a loud shout, and the besieged to be informed that Enniskillen had fallen, and that now there was no hope whatever for them. The besieged were so depressed by this news, for they had no means of testing it, that they offered to capitulate, but could obtain no terms that they could accept. And all this time the imbecile or base Kirke was lying within a few miles of them with abundance of provisions, and a force capable with ease of forcing its way to them. He had even the cruelty to send in a secret message to Walker that he was coming in full force, and then to lie still again for more than a fortnight. At length, however, he received a peremptory order from William to force the boom and relieve the town. No sooner did this order reach him than he showed with what ease he could have accomplished this at first, six weeks ago. The boom was burst asunder by two vessels—the Mountjoy and Phoenix—dashing themselves against it, while they were covered by a third, the Dartmouth, and the place was open (July 30) to the conveyance of the troops and the provisions. Kirke was invited to take the command, and the Irish camp, despairing of any success, drew off on the 1st of August, and raised this most memorable siege, in which four out of the seven thousand defenders perished, besides a multitude of other inhabitants, amounting, according to some calculations, to eight or nine thousand souls. On the side of the Irish as many are said to have fallen; and of the thirty-six French gunners who directed the cannonade, all had been killed but five. Besides the miseries endured in the town, those of the poor people who survived being driven under the walls found, on their return to what had been their homes, that they were their homes no longer. Their villages, crops, ricks, buildings, all had been burnt down, and the whole country laid waste.

THE "MOUNTJOY" AND "PHŒNIX" BREAKING THE BOOM AT LONDONDERRY. (See p. 416.)

The Enniskilleners had meanwhile been actively engaged against other detachments of James's army, but had bravely beaten them off, and on the same day that Londonderry was relieved had won a signal victory over them at Newton Butler, attacking five thousand Irish under General Macarthy, though they themselves numbered only about three hundred, and killing, it is said, two thousand, and driving five hundred more into Lough Erne, where they were drowned. This decisive defeat of the Irish hastened the retreat of the army retiring from Londonderry. They fled towards Dublin in haste and terror, leaving behind their baggage. Sarsfield abandoned Sligo, and James was on the very point of abandoning Dublin in the midst of the panic that seized it. At the same time came from Scotland the news of the death of Dundee at Killiecrankie; and on the 13th of August Marshal Schomberg landed at Carrickfergus with an army of sixteen thousand, composed of English, Scots, Dutch, Danes, and French Huguenots. Matters were fast assuming a serious aspect for James; his affairs not only in the field, but his civil government, falling every day into a more ominous condition.

One reason for James quitting the siege of Londonderry in person was that the time for the assembling of his Irish Parliament drew near. No sooner did he reach Dublin than he was met by the news that the English fleet under Admiral Herbert had been beaten by the French at Bantry Bay. Herbert had been ordered to intercept the French fleet between Brest and Ireland; but he had missed it, and James had safely landed. Whilst he was still beating about, a second squadron, under Chateau Renard, had also made its way over, and anchored with the first in Bantry Bay. On Herbert discovering them there, confident in their superior numbers, they came out, and there was a sharp fight. In the evening Herbert sheered off towards the Scilly Isles, and the French with great exultation, as in a victory, returned into the bay. James found the French at Dublin in high spirits at the unusual circumstance of beating English sailors; but his English adherents were by no means pleased with this triumphing over their countrymen, hostile though they were; and James, who had always prided himself on the English navy, is said, when D'Avaux boasted how the French had beaten the English, to have replied gloomily, "It is the first time." Even the English exiles in France showed a similar mortification, though the French victory, such as it was, was in their cause. Both sides, however, claimed the victory. In England Parliament voted thanks to Herbert; in Dublin James ordered bonfires and a Te Deum.

On the 7th of May, the day after the Te Deum, James met his Parliament. What sort of a Parliament it was, and what it was likely to do in Ireland may be surmised from the fact that there were only six Protestants in the whole House of Commons, consisting of two hundred and fifty members. Only fourteen lords appeared to his summons, and of these only four were Protestants. By new creations, and by reversal of attainders against Catholic peers, he managed to add seventeen more members to the Upper House, all Catholics, so that in the whole Parliament there were only ten Protestants, and four of these were the Bishops of Meath, Ossory, Cork, and Limerick. The majority of these members were not only Catholic, eager to visit upon the Protestants all the miseries and spoliations which the latter had inflicted on them, but they were men totally unaccustomed to the business of legislation or government, from having been long excluded from such functions, and condemned to pass their time on their estates in that half savage condition which qualified them rather for bandits than for lawgivers and magistrates.

James's first act was that of complete toleration of liberty of conscience to all Christian denominations. This sounded well, and was in perfect keeping with his declarations and endeavours in England for which he had been driven out, and England had now an opportunity of observing with what justice; of judging whether or not his real object had been wrongfully suspected. In his speech from the throne, he reverted with great pride to these endeavours, and to his determination still to be the liberator of conscience. This was language worthy of the noblest lawgiver that ever existed; but, unfortunately, James's English subjects never could be persuaded of his sincerity, and did not believe that this happiness would arrive as the result of his indulgence. The very next Act which he now passed decided that they had not mistrusted him without cause. Scarcely had he passed the Act of Toleration, when he followed it up by the repeal of the Act of Settlement, by which the Protestants held their estates, and their rights and liberties in Ireland. This just and tolerant monarch thus, at one stroke, handed over the whole Protestant body to the mercy of the Irish Catholics, and to one universal doom of confiscation. The Bill was received with exultation by this Parliament, which portended all the horrors which were to follow.

But there were other parties whose estates were not derived from the Act of Settlement, but from purchase, and another Act was passed to include them. It was a Bill confiscating the property of all who had aided or abetted the Prince of Orange in his attempt on the Crown, or who were absent and did not return to their homes before the 5th of October. The number of persons included in this great Act of Attainder, as it was called, amounted to between two and three thousand, including men of all ranks from the highest noble to the simplest freeholder. All the property of absentees above seventeen years of age was transferred to the king. The most unbounded lust of robbery and revenge was thus kindled in the public mind. Every one who wanted his neighbour's property, or had a grudge against him, hurried to give in his name to the Clerk of the House of Commons, and, without any or much inquiry, it was inserted in the Bill.

To make the separation of England and Ireland complete, and to set up the most effectual barrier against his own authority, should he again regain the throne of England, James permitted his Parliament to pass an Act declaring that the Parliament of England had no power or authority over Ireland, and this contrary to the provisions of Poynings' Act, which gave the initiative power to the English Council, and made every Irish Act invalid unless first submitted to the King and Council of England.

Having transferred the property of the laity back to the Irish, another Act made as sweeping a conveyance of that of the Church from the Protestant to the Catholic clergy. Little regard had been had to Catholic rights in piling property on the Protestant hierarchy, and as little was shown in taking it back again. The Anglican clergy were left in a condition of utter destitution, and more than this, they were not safe if they appeared in public. They were hooted, pelted, and sometimes fired at. All colleges and schools from which the Protestants had excluded the Catholics were now seized and employed as Popish seminaries or monasteries. The College of Dublin was turned into a barrack and a prison. No Protestants were allowed to appear together in numbers more than three, on pain of death. This was James's notion of the liberty of conscience, and a tender regard for "every man's rights and liberties." It was a fine lesson, too, for the clergy and gentry who had welcomed him to Ireland as the friends of passive obedience. They had now enough of that doctrine, and went over pretty rapidly to a different notion. The Protestants everywhere were overrun by soldiers and rapparees. Their estates were seized, their houses plundered, their persons insulted and abused, and a more fearful condition of things never existed in any country at any time. The officers of the army sold the Protestants protections, which were no longer regarded when fresh marauders wanted more money.

This model Parliament voted twenty thousand pounds a year to Tyrconnel for bringing this state of things about, and twenty thousand pounds a month to the king. But the country was so completely desolated, and its trade so completely destroyed by this reign of terror and of licence, that James did not find the taxes come in very copiously; and he resorted to a means of making money plentiful worthy of himself. He collected all the old pots, pans, brass knockers, old cannon, and metal in almost any shape, and coined clumsy money out of them, on which he put about a hundred times their intrinsic value. The consequence was that shopkeepers refused to receive this base coin. All men to whom debts were due, or who had mortgages on other men's property, were opposed to having them discharged by a heap of metal which in a few weeks might be worth only a few pence a pound. Those who refused such payment were arrested, and menaced with being hanged at their own doors. Many were thrown into prison, and trade and intercourse were plunged into a condition of the wildest anarchy. The whole country was a scene of violence, confusion, and distress. Such was the state of Ireland and of James's Court when, as we have seen, Schomberg landed with his army at Carrickfergus on the 23rd of August, and roused James, his Court, and the whole country to a sense of their danger, and of the necessity for one great and universal effort. A spirit of new life seemed to animate them, and James, receiving fresh hope from the sight, marched from Dublin at the head of his troops to encounter Schomberg.

During the summer the Court of William had not been an enviable place. In the spring the Parliament had proceeded to reverse the judgments which had been passed in the last reign against Lord William Russell, Algernon Sidney, the Earl of Devonshire, Cornish, Alice Lisle, and Samuel Johnson. Some of the Whigs who had suffered obtained pecuniary compensation, but Johnson obtained none. He was deemed by the Whigs to be too violent—in fact, he was a Radical of that day. The scoundrel Titus Oates crawled again from his obscurity, and, by help of his old friends the Whigs, managed to obtain a pension of three hundred pounds a year. This done, there was an attempt to convert the Declaration of Rights into a Bill of Rights—thus giving it all the authority of Parliamentary law; and in this Bill it was proposed, in case of William, Mary, and Anne all dying without issue, to settle the succession on the Duchess Sophia of Brunswick LÜneburg, the daughter of the Queen of Bohemia, and granddaughter of James I.; but it failed for the time. A Bill of Indemnity was also brought in as an Act of oblivion of all past offences; but this too was rejected. The triumphant Whigs, so far from being willing to forgive the Tories who had supported James, and had been their successful opponents during the attempts through Titus Oates and his fellow-plotters to exclude James from the succession, were now clamorous for their blood and ruin. William refused to comply with their truculent desires, and became, in consequence, the object of their undisguised hatred. They particularly directed their combined efforts against Danby, now Earl of Caermarthen, and Halifax. They demanded that Caermarthen should be dismissed from the office of President of the Council, and Halifax from holding the Privy Seal, and being Speaker of the House of Lords. But William steadfastly resisted their demands, and declared that he had done enough for them and their friends, and would do no more especially in the direction of vengeance against such as were disposed to live quietly and serve the State faithfully.

On the 19th of October the second session of William's first Parliament met. The Commons were liberal in voting supplies; they granted at once two million pounds, and declared that they would support the king to the utmost of their ability in reducing Ireland to his authority, and in prosecuting the war with France. The required sum was to be levied partly by a poll-tax, partly by new duties on tea, coffee, and chocolate, partly by an assessment of one hundred thousand pounds on the Jews, but chiefly by a tax on real property. The Jews, however, protested that they would sooner quit the kingdom than submit to the imposition, and that source was abandoned. The Commons next took up the Bill of Rights, and passed it, omitting the clause respecting the succession of the House of Brunswick, which measure was not brought forward again for eleven years. They, however, took care, at the suggestion of Burnet to insert a clause that no person who should marry a Papist should be capable of ascending the throne; and if any one on the throne so married, the subjects should be absolved from their allegiance.

After thus demonstrating their zeal for maintaining the throne in affluence and power, the Commons next proceeded to display it in a careful scrutiny of the mode in which the last supplies had been spent. The conduct of both army and navy had not been such as to satisfy the public. The Commons had, indeed, not only excused the defeat of Herbert at Bantry Bay, but even thanked him for it as though it had been a victory. But neither had Schomberg effected anything in Ireland; and he loudly complained that it was impossible to fight with an army that was not supplied with the necessary food, clothing, or ammunition. This led to a searching scrutiny into the commissariat department, William himself being the foremost in the inquiry, and the most frightful peculation and abuses were brought to light. The muskets and other arms fell to pieces in the soldiers' hands; and, when fever and pestilence were decimating the camp there was not a drug to be found, though one thousand seven hundred pounds had been charged Government for medicines. What baggage and supplies there were could not be got to the army for want of horses to draw the waggons; and the very cavalry went afoot, because Shales, the Commissary-General, had let out the horses destined for this service to the farmers of Cheshire to do their work. The meat for the men stank, the brandy was so foully adulterated that it produced sickness and severe pains. In the navy the case was the same; and Herbert, now Lord Torrington, was severely blamed for not being personally at the fleet to see into the condition of his sailors, but was screened from deserved punishment by his connections. The king was empowered by Parliament at length to appoint a Commission of Inquiry to discover the whole extent of the evil, and to take remedies against its recurrence.

Then the Commons reverted again to their fierce party warfare. Whigs and Tories manifested an equal desire to crush their opponents if they had the power, and they kept William in a constant state of uneasiness by their mutual ferocity, and their alternate eagerness to force him into persecution and blood. Edmund Ludlow, one of the regicides, who had managed to escape the murderous vengeance of Charles and James, but whose companion, John Lisle, had fallen by the hands of Charles's assassins at Lausanne, had been persuaded that he might now return to England unmolested. But he soon found that he was mistaken. The Tories vehemently demanded his arrest of the king, and William was obliged to promise compliance; but he appeared in no haste in issuing the warrant; and probably a hint was given to Ludlow, for he escaped again to the Continent, and there remained till his death.

On the other hand, the Whigs were as unrelaxing in their desire of persecuting the Tories. They refused to proceed with the Indemnity Bill, which William was anxious to get passed as a final preventive of their deadly intentions. They arrested and sent to the Tower the Earls of Peterborough and Salisbury for going over from their party to that of James in the last reign, in order to impeach them of high treason. The same was done to Sir Edward Hales and Obadiah Walker. They appointed a committee to inquire into the share of various individuals in the deaths of Lord William Russell, Sidney, and others of the Whig party. The committee was termed "the Committee of Murder," and they summoned such of the judges, law officers of the Crown, and others as had taken part in these prosecutions. Sir Dudley North and Halifax were called before them, and underwent a severe examination; but they did not succeed in establishing a charge sufficient to commit them upon. Halifax had already resigned the Speakership of the House of Lords, and they sought to bring William to deprive him of the Privy Seal. In these proceedings of the Commons, John Hampden, the grandson of the great patriot, and John Howe, were the most violent. Hampden went the length of saying that William ought to dismiss every man who had gone over to him from the late king, and ought not to employ any one who entertained Republican principles. This declaration, from a man who had himself been a full-length Republican and the friend of Sidney, threw the House into a roar of laughter; but that did not abash Hampden. On behalf of a committee of the Commons, he drew up an address so violent that it was altogether dropped, calling on the king to dismiss the authors of the late malversations and the consequent failures of the army and navy.

The Whigs next brought in a Bill to restore to the corporations their charters, which had been taken away by Charles II.; but, not content with the legitimate fact of the restoration of these ancient rights, they again seized on this as an opportunity for inflicting a blow on the Tories. They introduced at the instigation of William Sacheverell, a clause disqualifying for seven years every mayor, recorder, common councilman, or other officer who had been in any way a party to the surrender of these charters. They added a penalty of five hundred pounds and perpetual disqualification for every person who, in violation of this clause, should presume to hold office in any corporation. They declared that if the Lords should hesitate to pass this Bill, they would withhold the supplies till it was acquiesced in.

But William did not hesitate to express his displeasure with the Bill, and with the indecent hurry with which it was pushed forward. A short delay was interposed, and meanwhile the news of the intended passing of the Bill was carried into every quarter of the kingdom, and the Tories, Peers and Commons, who had gone down to their estates for Christmas, hastened up to town to oppose it. The battle was furious. The Whigs flattered themselves that, if they carried this Bill, the returns to the next Parliament would be such that they should be able to exclude their opponents from all power and place. After a fierce and prolonged debate, the Bill was thrown out, and the Tories, elated by their victory, again brought forward the Indemnity Bill; but this time they were defeated in turn, and the Whigs immediately proceeded with their design of converting this Bill into one of pains and penalties; and to show that they were in earnest, they summoned Sir Robert Sawyer before the House for his part in the prosecution of the Whigs in the last reign. He had been Attorney-General, and conducted some of the worst cases which were decided under Jeffreys and his unprincipled colleagues, with a spirit which had made him peculiarly odious. The case of Sir Thomas Armstrong was in particular brought forward—a very flagrant one. Sir Thomas had been charged with being engaged in the Rye House plot. He had escaped to the Netherlands, but the authorities having been bribed to give him up, he was brought back, and hanged, without a hearing, as an outlaw. It was a barbarous case, and deserved the severest condemnation. But it was pleaded, on the other hand, that Sawyer had rendered great services to the Whig cause; that he had stoutly resisted the attempts of James to introduce Popery and despotism; that he had resigned his office rather than advocate the Dispensing Power, and had undertaken the defence of the seven bishops. No matter; he was excepted from indemnity and expelled the House. A committee of the whole House proceeded to make out a complete list of all the offenders to be excluded from the benefit of the Bill.

This brought William to a resolve which, if carried into effect, would have given a death-blow to the Whig party, and have neutralised the glory of their accomplishment of the Revolution. He sent for his chief ministers, and announced to them his determination to relinquish the fruitless task of endeavouring to govern a country thus torn to pieces by faction; that he was weary of the whole concern, and would return to Holland, never more to meddle with English affairs, but abandon them to the queen; that for ten months he had been vainly endeavouring to make peace between the factions of Whig and Tory, and to prevent them from rushing at each other's throats; that they clearly regarded nothing but their mutual animosities, for in their indulgence they utterly neglected the urgent affairs of the nation. Their enemy was in Ireland, yet it had no effect in bringing them to their senses. Still worse, every department of the Government was overrun with corruption, peculation, and neglect. The public service was paralysed; the public peace was entirely destroyed; and as for himself, with far from robust health and with the duty of settling the Government upon him, it was useless further to contend; he could contend no longer. A squadron was ready to bear him away, and he could only hope that they would show more regard to the wishes of the queen than they had to his.

Whether William was in earnest, or whether he only had recourse to a ruse to bring the combatants to their senses, the result was the same. The ministers stood confounded. To drive the king from the country by their quarrels, and that at a time when the old and implacable enemy of Protestantism and liberty was at their doors, would be a blow to freedom and to their own credit from which the most disastrous consequences must flow. They entreated him on their knees and with tears to forego this design, promising all that he could desire. William at length consented to make one more trial; but it was only on condition that the Bill of Indemnity should pass, and that he should himself proceed to Ireland, and endeavour, by his own personal and determined effort, to drive James thence.

Accordingly, on January 27, 1690, he called together the two Houses, and, announcing his intention to proceed to Ireland, declared the Parliament dissolved, amid the utmost signs of consternation in the Whigs, and shouts of exultation from the Tories. This act of William's to defeat the malice of the Whigs, and his continued firm resistance to their endeavours to fine and disqualify the Tories, had a wonderful effect on that party. A numerous body of them deputed Sir John Lowther to carry their thanks to the king, and assure him that they would serve him with all their hearts and influence. Numbers of them who had hitherto stood aloof began to appear at Court, and attended the levee to kiss the king's hand. William gave orders to liberate those whom the Whigs had sent to prison on charges of treason.

On the 1st of February the hour arrived in which all ecclesiastics who had neglected to take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy would be deposed. A considerable number of them came in in time; but Sancroft, the Primate, and five of his bishops, stood out, and were deprived of their bishoprics, but were treated with particular lenity.

It was soon found that the conduct of the Whigs had alienated a great mass of the people. Their endeavours, by Sacheverell's clause, to disqualify all who had consented to the surrender of the corporation charters, had made mortal enemies of those persons, many of whom were at the moment the leading members of the corporations, and therefore possessing the highest influence on the return of members to the new Parliament. The same was the case in the country, amongst those who had been sheriffs or other officers at that period. The consequence was that the Tories returned a decided majority to the new House, and amongst them came up Sir Robert Sawyer from Cambridge, whilst the violence of Hampden had caused his exclusion.

The revival of the Tory influence introduced great changes in the ministry. Halifax resigned the Privy Seal. Mordaunt—now Earl of Monmouth—Delamere, Sidney Godolphin, and Admiral Herbert—now Earl of Torrington—were dismissed. Caermarthen was continued Lord President of the Council, and Prime Minister. Sir John Lowther was appointed First Lord of the Treasury, in place of Monmouth. Nottingham retained his post as Secretary of State; and Thomas Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, was placed at the head of the Admiralty, Torrington having, to his great discontent, to yield that position, but retaining that of High Admiral, and being satisfied by a splendid grant of ten thousand acres of Crown land in the Peterborough fens. Delamere, too, was soothed on his dismissal by being created Earl of Warrington. Richard Hampden became Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Parliament met on the 20th of March, and the Commons, under the new Tory influence, elected Sir John Trevor Speaker, who was besides made First Commissioner of the Great Seal. In this man is said to have commenced that system of Government corruption of Parliament—the buying up, or buying off of members, which grew to such a height, and attained its climax under Sir Robert Walpole. Trevor was an unscrupulous Tory, and Burnet says he was "furnished with such sums of money as might purchase some votes." He undertook, accordingly, to manage the party in the House. The Whigs were in the worst of humours, but they had now learnt that it was not wise to push matters with the Crown too far, and as a body they watched their opportunity for recovering by degrees their ascendency. Some of the more violent, however, as the Earl of Shrewsbury and the notorious Ferguson, entered into immediate correspondence with James.

William, in his opening speech, dwelt chiefly on the necessity of settling the revenue, to enable him to proceed to Ireland, and on passing the Bill of Indemnity; and he was very plain in expressing his sense of the truculent spirit of party, which, in endeavouring to wound one another, injured and embarrassed his Government still more. He informed them that he had drawn up an Act of Grace, constituting the Bill of Indemnity, and should send it to them for their acceptance; for it is the practice for all such Acts to proceed from the Crown, and then to be voted by the Peers, and finally by the Commons. He then informed them that he left the administration during his absence in Ireland in the hands of the Queen; and he desired that if any Act was necessary for the confirmation of that authority, they should pass it. The Commons at once passed a vote of thanks, and engaged to support the Government of their Majesties by every means in their power. On the 27th of March they passed unanimously the four following resolutions—namely, that all the hereditary revenues of King James, except the hearth-tax, were vested now in their present Majesties; that a Bill should be brought in to declare and perpetuate this investment; that the moiety of the excise granted to Charles and James should be secured by Bill to their present Majesties for life; and finally, that the customs which had been granted to Charles and James for their lives should be granted for four years from the next Christmas. William was much dissatisfied with the last proviso, and complained that the Commons should show less confidence in him, who had restored their liberties, than in Charles and James, who destroyed them. Sir John Lowther pressed this point on the Commons strongly, but in vain; and Burnet told King William that there was no disrespect meant towards him, but that the Commons wished to establish this as a general principle, protective of future subjects from the evils which the ill-judged liberality of past Parliaments had produced.

The next measure on which the Whigs and Tories tried their strength was a Bill brought in by the Whigs to do what was already sufficiently done in the Bill of Rights—to pronounce William and Mary the rightful and lawful sovereigns of this realm, and next to declare that all the acts of the late Convention should be held as valid as laws. The first part, already sufficiently recognised, was quietly passed over; but the Tories made a stout opposition to extending the Act beyond the year 1689, on the plea that nothing could convert the self-constituted Convention into a legal Parliament. But the distinction was a mere party distinction; for, if the Convention was not a legal body, nothing could render its acts so. The Earl of Nottingham, who headed this movement, entered a strong protest on the journal of the Lords against it, and this protest was signed by many peers, and amongst them the Whig peers, Bolton, Macclesfield, Stamford, Bedford, Newport, Monmouth, Herbert, Suffolk, Warrington, and Oxford. The Bill, however, was carried, and with still more ease in the Commons.

The Tories, mortified at the triumph of the Whigs, now brought in a Bill to change the military government of the City of London as the lieutenancy of the counties had been changed. They thanked the king for having by his measures brought in so many Churchmen and thrown out so many Nonconformists. This Bill the Whigs managed to impede till the session closed; but not so with another from the Tory party, ordering payment of the five hundred pounds fines incurred by all who had taken office or served as magistrates without taking the necessary Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy. This was carried, and the money ordered to be paid into the Exchequer, and a separate account of it to be kept.

The defeat of the Whigs only infused more fierceness in the party warfare. They hastened to bring in a Bill compelling every person in office, civil, ecclesiastical, or military, to take an oath to abjure King James and his right to the Crown, thence called the Abjuration Oath. This oath might, moreover, be tendered by any magistrate to any subject of their Majesties whatever, and whoever refused it was to be committed to prison, and kept there till he complied. It was hoped by the Whigs that this Bill would greatly embarrass the Tories who had taken office under the present monarchy, and accordingly it met with a decided opposition in the Commons, and was thrown out by a majority of one hundred and ninety-two to one hundred and seventy-eight. It was then, with some alteration, introduced as a fresh Bill into the Lords. William went down to the Lords to listen personally to the debate; and several of the peers made very free and pertinent remarks on the uselessness of so many oaths to bind any disloyal or unconscientious person.

The Bill was defeated in the Lords by being committed, but never reported, for on the 20th of May, after King William had given his consent to the Bill, which he had recommended, for conferring on the queen full powers to administer the government during his absence in Ireland, and also to that revising the quo warranto judgment against the City of London, the Marquis of Caermarthen appeared in the House with an Act of Grace ready drawn and signed by the king.

William had tried in vain to curb the deadly animosities of the contending parties by Bills of Indemnity. These could be discussed and rejected, not so an Act of Grace: it issued from the sovereign, and came already signed to Parliament. It must be at once accepted or rejected by each House, and in such a case as the present, where it was meant as a healing and pacifying act, it could not be rejected without a disloyal and ungracious air. Accordingly it was received with the deference which it deserved, and both Houses gave their sanction to it, standing bareheaded, and without one dissenting voice. From the benefit of this Act of Grace, pardoning all past offences, were, it is true, excepted thirty names, prominent amongst whom were the Marquis of Powis, the Lords Sunderland, Huntingdon, Dover, Melfort, and Castlemaine; the Bishops of Durham and St. Davids; the Judges Herbert, Jenner, Withers, and Holloway; Roger Lestrange; Lundy, the traitor governor of Londonderry; Father Petre; and Judge Jeffreys. This last monster of infamy was already deceased in the Tower, but it was well understood that if the others named only kept themselves at peace they would never be inquired after. Neither party, however, thanked William for the constrained peace. The Whigs were disappointed of the vengeance they burned to enjoy; the Tories, and even those who had the most narrowly escaped the intended mischief, ungenerously said that if William had really anything to avenge, he would not have pardoned it.

The day after the passing of this important Act he prorogued Parliament. The Convocation which had been summoned, and met in Henry VII.'s Chapel—St. Paul's, its usual meeting-place, having been burnt down in the Great Fire, was not yet rebuilt—had been prorogued some time before. Its great topic had been the scheme of comprehension, which was warmly advocated by Burnet and the more liberal members, but the High Church was as high and immovable as ever. Nothing could be accomplished, and from this time the Nonconformists gave up all hope of any reunion with the Church.

William now made preparations for the Irish campaign. It was time, for Schomberg had effected little, and the English fleet had done worse than nothing at sea. It was not only in Ireland that the danger of William lay, or whence came his troubles. He had to maintain the contest on the Continent against Louis XIV., against James in Ireland, against corruption and imbecility in his fleet, against the most wholesale mismanagement and peculation in every department of the English Government, and against the feuds and disaffection of his own courtiers and servants. Whilst the contests which we have just related were agitating Parliament, William was vigorously at work inquiring into the malversation all around him. Shales, the Commissary-General, was dismissed, and a new spirit was introduced into the commissariat under the vigilant eye of William himself. Instead of the vile poisons and putrid meats, excellent provisions were supplied to the army. The villainies by which the poor soldiers had been robbed of their clothing, and bedding, and tents, terminated, and they were soon well clothed, lodged, and equipped. The road to Chester swarmed with waggons conveying wholesome supplies, and a fleet lay there ready to convey the king over, with additional troops and stores. Before he set out himself, the army in Ireland amounted to thirty thousand effective men.

But the affairs of the Channel fleet were in the worst possible condition. William there committed the error of continuing Torrington, better known as Admiral Herbert—who had been suspected of a leaning towards James, and who had been already beaten at Bantry Bay—in the chief command, when he removed him from his post of First Lord of the Admiralty. Herbert was a debauched, effeminate fellow, indulging in all sorts of license and luxury, whilst his sailors were suffering the most atrocious treatment. They had such meat served out to them that neither they nor even dogs could touch it. They were ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-paid; the contractors and the officers were enriching themselves at their expense; and, what was worse, they were compelled to bear the disgrace of having our commerce interrupted in all directions by the French cruisers. Whilst they lay inactive in Portsmouth, the French scoured the English coast, and captured trading vessels with their cargoes to the value of six hundred thousand pounds.

William had, however, difficulties at home to surmount before he could depart for Ireland. Just as he was prepared to set out, the discovery was made of an extensive traitorous correspondence between a number of concealed Jacobites and the Court of St. Germains. Some of his own ministers and courtiers were deep in it. Two messengers had been despatched from James's queen from St. Germains, with letters to the conspiring Jacobites. One of these, of the name of Fuller, was induced by some means to betray the secret. He went boldly to Whitehall, and delivered his despatches to William. Crone, the other, was arrested, and soon after another messenger of the name of Tempest. The disclosures made through this means revealed an extensive ramification of treason that was enough to appal the stoutest heart and coolest brain. The queen's own relative, Clarendon, was one of the most zealous plotters; Ailesbury and Dartmouth, who had both taken the oaths to the new monarchs, were among the most guilty; and the latter, though an admiral, was prepared, in connection with other officers, to betray the coast defences, and to carry over their ships to the enemy. William Penn was arrested on account of an intercepted letter to James, and charged with treason; but he denied any treasonable intentions, and said he only corresponded with James as an old friend. Nothing of a criminal nature could be proved against him, and he was soon liberated. Viscount Preston, who had been raised to that dignity by James, but was not admitted by the peers to possess a valid patent of nobility, was another; and what was far more mortifying, the Earl of Shrewsbury, who had so recently resigned the seals as Secretary of State, was discovered to be deeply implicated. It was found that the conspiracy was spread far and wide throughout the country, and that the Jacobites in Worcestershire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, and other northern counties, were laying in arms and ammunition, and gentlemen who had received commissions from James were actually mustering and drilling troops on the solitary moorlands. The correspondence was as active between England and Ireland, as between England and France.

Amid dangers of such magnitude it may seem strange that William should venture to leave England, and burthen his wife with the cares and responsibilities of such a crisis, amid the machinations of so many determined enemies; but his affairs as imperiously demanded his presence in Ireland, and he therefore took the best measures that he could for the assistance and security of the queen. He appointed a council of nine of the most efficient and trusty persons he could think of, some Whigs, some Tories. They were Devonshire, Dorset, Monmouth, Edward Russell, Caermarthen, Pembroke, Nottingham, Marlborough, and Lowther. In making this selection William must have put aside many personal prejudices. Marlborough was appointed as most likely to advise the queen as to military affairs, though he was the known partisan and adviser of Anne. Russell, who was an admiral and Treasurer of the Navy, was the person to advise her in naval matters, and Caermarthen was, from his experience, and as having a great regard for the queen, the man on whom she could most rely for the management of the main business of the State. William solemnly laid upon them the great trust which he reposed in them, and called upon them as men and statesmen, to afford the queen every assistance which her being left under such trying circumstances demanded for her. He likewise informed Rochester that he was well acquainted with the treasonable practices of his brother Clarendon, and bade him warn him from him to tempt him no further to a painful severity.

Having arranged this matter, William set out on the 4th of June for Chester, where he embarked on the 11th, and landed at Carrickfergus on the 14th. He proceeded immediately towards Belfast, and was met by Schomberg on the way. William was attended by Prince George of Denmark, the Duke of Ormond, the Earls of Oxford, Scarborough, and Manchester, Mr. Boyle, and many other persons of distinction. He appointed the whole of his army to rendezvous at Loughbrickland, and immediately set about organising his plans, and preparing his stores for an active campaign. Before we enter upon that, however, we must take a hasty glance at what Schomberg had done during the autumn, winter, and spring.

This was little for so numerous an army, commanded by so experienced a general. Schomberg was, it is true, eighty years of age, and many complained that time had diminished his fire, and that much more ought to have been effected. But William, who may be supposed a most competent judge, cast no blame upon him; on the contrary, he thanked him for having preserved his army at all, his troops having had to contend with the horrors of a deficient and most villainous commissariat, as we have already shown.

Schomberg on landing had taken Carrickfergus, Newry, and Dundalk, where he entrenched himself. He had found the country through which he passed a perfect waste. It could afford him no provisions, and, if he were compelled to fall back, no shelter. James, on his landing, had advanced from Dublin to Drogheda, where he was with twenty thousand men, besides vast numbers of wild Irish, armed with scythes, pikes, and skeans. But Schomberg found himself in no condition for fighting. His baggage could not reach him for want of waggons, and from the state of the roads. His arms were many of them good for nothing, being the vile rubbish furnished by the contractors under the management of the fraudulent Ministry and the infamous Commissary-General Shales. His soldiers were suffering from want of proper clothing, shoes, beds, and tents. Worse still, the soldiers were fast perishing with fever. Bad food, bad clothing, bad lodging, and drenching and continual rains without proper shelter, were fast doing their work on the English army. Schomberg did his best. He stimulated his soldiers to make roofs to their huts of turf and fern, and to make their beds of heather and fern, raised on dry mounds above the soaking rains. But all was in vain. The soldiers were become spiritless and demoralised. They were either too listless to move or too excited by whisky, which they managed to get, to follow his recommendations. Scenes like those which appeared in London during the Plague now horrified his camp. The soldiers gave way to wild license, drank, swore, sang bacchanalian songs, drank the Devil's health, and made seats of the corpses of their dead comrades at their revels, which they declared were the only ones they had to keep them out of the wet.

The sickness appeared at the same time in the English fleet which lay off the coast at Carrickfergus, and swept away almost every man from some of the vessels. By the commencement of November, Schomberg's army could not number more than five thousand effective men. The Irish in James's army did not suffer so much, and they rejoiced in the pestilence which was thus annihilating their heretic enemies. But the weather at length compelled James to draw off, first to Ardee, and then into winter quarters in different towns. Schomberg, thus set at liberty, quickly followed his example, and quartered his troops for the winter in the different towns of Ulster, fixing his headquarters at Lisburn. His army had, however, lost above six thousand men by disease.

In February, 1690, the campaign was begun by the Duke of Berwick, James's natural son, who attacked William's advanced post at Belturbet; but he met with such a reception that he nearly lost his life, being severely wounded and having his horse killed under him. In fact, the condition of the two armies had been completely changed during the winter by the different management of the two commanders. Schomberg had been diligently exerting himself to restore the health and to perfect the discipline of his troops. As spring advanced he received the benefit of William's exertions and stern reforms in England. Good, healthy food, good clothing, bedding, tents, and arms arrived. Fresh troops were from time to time landing, amongst them regiments of German and Scandinavian mercenaries. By the time of William's arrival the army was in a fine and vigorous condition, and amounted to thirty thousand men.

Not so the army of James: it had grown more and more disorderly. James and his Court had returned to Dublin, where they spent the winter in the grossest dissoluteness and neglect of all discipline or law. Gambling, riot, and debauchery scandalised the sober Catholics, who had hoped for a saviour in James. Of all the army, the cavalry alone had been maintained by its officers in discipline. The foot soldiers roamed over the country at pleasure, plundering their own compatriots. James's own kitchen and larder were supplied by his foragers from the substance of his subjects, without regard to law or any prospect of payment. It was in vain that remonstrances were made; James paid no attention to them. His bad money was gone; he had used up all the old pots, pans, and cracked cannon, and applied to Louis for fresh remittances, which did not arrive. To complete the ruin of his affairs, he requested the withdrawal of Rosen and D'Avaux, who, heartless as they were, saw the ruinous course things were taking, and remonstrated against it. Lauzun, an incompetent commander, was sent over to take their place, accompanied by about seven thousand French infantry. When Lauzun arrived in Ireland, the desolation of the country, the rude savagery of the people, and the disorders of the Court and capital, were such as to strike him and his officers with astonishment and horror. He declared in his letters to the French minister, Louvois, that the country was in so frightful a state that no person who had lived in any other could conceive it; that James's chief functionaries pulled each his different way, instead of assisting the king; and that "such were the wants, disunions, and dejection, that the king's affairs looked like the primitive chaos."

Unfortunately, Lauzun was not the man to reduce chaos to order. He had accompanied Mary, the queen of James, in her flight from London to Paris, and had there too won the good graces of Madame Maintenon; and by the influence of these ladies, who imagined him a great general, he obtained this important command. He had to fill the place of both D'Avaux and Rosen, of ambassador and general, without the sagacity and skill which would have fitted him for either. He conceived the greatest contempt and hatred of the Irish, and was not likely to work well with them. Such was the condition in which James was found on the landing of King William.

William, we have said, pushed on immediately to Belfast, and thence, without permitting himself to be delayed by the congratulatory multitudes that surrounded him, he hastened forward to his main army at Loughbrickland. The soldiers of his army consisted of a variety of nations, many of whom had won fame under great leaders. There were Dutch, who had fought under William and his great generals against those of Louis of France; Germans, Danes, Finlanders, French Huguenots, now purged of their false countrymen; English and Scottish troops, who had fought also in Holland, in Tangier, at Killiecrankie; and Anglo-Irish, who had won such laurels at Londonderry, Enniskillen, and Newton Butler. All were animated by the presence of the king, and of his assembled generals of wide renown, and with the confidence of putting down the Popish king, and his French supporters and Irish adherents, who had robbed and expelled them and their families. The Germans and Dutch burned to meet again the French invaders of their country, the desolators of the Palatinate; and the French Protestants were as much on fire to avenge themselves on their Catholic countrymen, who had been their oppressors. It was not merely English troops acting on ordinary grounds of hostility against Irish ones, but representatives of almost all Protestant Europe collected to avenge the wrongs of Protestants and of their own countries.

William was confident in his army, and declared that he was not come to Ireland to let the grass grow under his feet. Schomberg still recommended caution when it was no longer needed, and thus gave a colour to the words of those who accused him of having shown too much caution already, which they insinuated was but the result of old age. On the 24th of June, only ten days after landing, William was in full march southwards. James did not wait for his coming, but abandoned Dundalk and retreated into Drogheda. His generals, indeed, represented to him that caution and delay were his best policy against so powerful a force, and even recommended that he should retreat beyond Dublin and entrench himself at Athlone, as a more central and defensible position; but James would not listen to this, and Tyrconnel strengthened him in the resolution.

JAMES ENTERING DUBLIN AFTER THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE. (See p. 431.)

The morning of the 1st of July, destined to become a great epoch in Ireland, rose brilliantly, and the opposing armies were in motion by four o'clock. William overnight had given the word "Westminster" as the recognition sign, and ordered his men to wear each a green sprig in his hat, to distinguish them from the enemy, who, out of compliment to France, wore a white cockade, generally of paper. According to William's disposition of battle, Meinhart Schomberg, the son of the old general, supported by Portland and Douglas with the Scottish guards, was to take the right and secure the bridge of Slane. He himself headed the left wing near Drogheda with a strong force of cavalry, and Schomberg the centre, which was opposite Oldbridge, where he was supported by the Blues of Solmes, and the brave Londonderries and Enniskilleners, and on his left the French Huguenots under Caillemot, and between them and William the Danes. Meinhart Schomberg found the bridge of Slane already occupied by Sir Neil O'Neil, with a regiment of Irish Dragoons; but the English charged them briskly, killed O'Neil, and made themselves masters of the bridge. This was a grand advantage at the outset. It enabled the English to attack the right wing of James, and endangered their seizure of the pass of Duleek, a very narrow defile in the hills, about four miles in their rear, by which they would cut off altogether their retreat. Lauzun, who had posted the main strength of the Irish infantry at the foot of Oldbridge, and supported them by Sarsfield's horse, was compelled to despatch the horse towards Slane Bridge, to guard against this danger, thus weakening his centre.

Nearly at the same moment that this movement took place, William put himself at the head of his cavalry, and with his sword in his left hand, for his right arm was too sore and stiff from a gunshot received on the previous day to hold it, he dashed into the river and led his wing across. At the same moment Schomberg gave the word, and the centre was in motion. Solmes' Dutch Blues led the way, and their example was instantly followed by the men of Londonderry and Enniskillen, and at their left the Huguenots. The men waded through the stream, holding aloft their muskets and ammunition. The brunt of the encounter was there, for there the enemy had expected the main attack, and had not only concentrated their forces there, horse and foot, but had defended the bank with a breastwork and batteries. The English had to advance against the deadly fire from these defences, and from the thronging Irish, who raised the wildest hurrahs, whilst they could return no fire till they were nearly across and sufficiently raised from the water. Then they saw the breastwork and the batteries lined with one mass of foes. They, however, pushed resolutely forward, fired, charged the foe, and in an instant the whole demoralised Irish broke and fled. Never was there so complete and ignominious a rout. These men, on whom so much depended, but who, despite all warnings to James, had been suffered to plunder and riot without restraint or discipline, now dispersed with so dastardly a rapidity that it was more like a dream than a reality.

The engagement was now general, from the left where William commanded, almost under the walls of Drogheda, to the bridge of Slane. The English and their allies had forced their way across the river, and were engaged in fierce contest with the Irish horse and the French cavalry and foot. When Schomberg saw the cavalry of Tyrconnel and Hamilton bear down upon his centre, and that they had actually driven back Solmes' Blues into the river, he dashed into the river himself, to rally and encourage them. Probably stung by a generous sense of shame, for he had discouraged the attempt to attack the Irish army in that position, the old man now exhibited an opposite degree of incaution, for without defensive armour he rushed into the mÊlÉe, disregarding the advice of his officers to put on his cuirass. As he rode through the river, Caillemot was borne past him to the north bank mortally wounded, but still crying to his brave Huguenots, "On! on! my lads! To glory! to glory!" Schomberg took up the cry of encouragement to the men, appalled by the loss of their general, and said, "Allons, messieurs, voilÀ vos persÉcuteurs!" But scarcely had he uttered the words when he, too, received a mortal wound and fell. When he was found he was dead, with a bullet wound through his neck, and a couple of sword gashes on his head.

For half an hour the battle raged with a fury such as the oldest soldiers of the Netherlands now declared they had never seen surpassed. Hamilton and Tyrconnel led on their cavalry against Schomberg's forces with a steadiness and bravery that were as much to their credit as their conduct in civil life had been disgraceful. William, on his part, had found a warm reception on the left. The Irish horse withstood him stoutly, and drove back his guards and the Enniskilleners repeatedly. On his first coming up to the Enniskilleners, he was mistaken for one of the enemy, and was near being shot by a trooper. The mistake being rectified, the Enniskilleners followed him with enthusiasm. William threw away all thought of danger, and led them into the thickest of the fight. At one moment a ball carried away the cock of his pistol, at another the heel of his boot, but he still led on. The Enniskilleners fought desperately, and the horse of Ginkell charged brilliantly.

They were thus fighting their way towards the centre, and had advanced as far as Plottin Castle, about a mile and a half from Oldbridge, when the Irish horse made a last furious effort, drove back the Enniskilleners, and killed a number of them. William rallied them, and again led them to the charge, broke the Irish cavalry, and took prisoner Hamilton, who had been heading this gallant charge. When William saw, wounded and a prisoner, the man who had proved so traitorous to him when sent to Ireland, he said, "Is this business over, or will your horse make more fight?" "On my honour, sir," replied Hamilton, "I believe they will." "Your honour, indeed!" muttered William; but ordering the wounded man to be properly attended to, he rode forward to join the main body and end the fight.

That was now soon over. The centre and the right wing had done dreadful execution. They had nearly annihilated whole regiments. One of them had only thirty men left without a wound. They had fought in a manner worthy of a better cause and a better leader, for James had early abandoned the field, and left his deluded followers to the mercy of the enemy. No sooner did he see the Irish fly before the enemy at Oldbridge than, from his safe position on the hill of Donore, he gave orders for all the baggage and the artillery, except six pieces, already in full employ in the engagement, to be conveyed with all speed on the road to Dublin, so as to effect their passage through the defile of Duleek; and, escorted by Sarsfield's horse, he made all haste after them.

If James was one of the worst and most infatuated monarchs that ever reigned in time of peace, in war he was the most dastardly. In England he fled disgracefully on the approach of William, without a blow, and here again he showed the same utter want of spirit and energy. He had taken no care to keep his soldiers disciplined and in proper tone for the coming war, and he deserted them at the first symptoms of reverse. If the English had pushed on briskly from the bridge of Slane, they might still have intercepted him, and brought him prisoner to William; but, the conflict over, they relaxed their efforts, and William gave orders to spare the flying troops as much as possible. When Lauzun and Tyrconnel approached the pass of Duleek with their retreating cavalry, they found it choked with a confused mass of waggons, artillery, and terrified fugitives. They therefore faced about, and repelled the pursuers till the rout had got through. The cavalry of William still followed the flying throng as far as the Neale, a second pass, and till it grew dark, when they returned to the main army. James continued his panic flight, however, never stopping till he reached Dublin. The city had all day been in a state of intense excitement. First had come the news that William was wounded, then that he was dead; amid the rejoicing of the Jacobites came the horrid news of the defeat, followed about sunset by James himself, attended by about two hundred cavalry, haggard, wayworn, and covered with dust. All that night kept pouring in the defeated troops, and early in the morning James, not deeming himself safe, took leave of the mayor, aldermen, and officers of his army, upbraiding the Irish with their cowardice in having deserted him almost without a blow, and vowing that he would never trust to an Irish army again. The Irish returned the compliment, and declared that, if the English would exchange kings, they were ready to fight again, and to conquer too. If any man had ever caused his own misfortune and defeat, it was James; but he never took the means to avoid discomfiture, and he never saw, or at least, never seemed to see, that the blame lay with himself. Without, therefore, making another effort, though he had a large army still on foot, and all the south of Ireland to employ it in, he continued his flight towards Waterford, in terror all the way lest he should be overtaken by William's cavalry, and, reaching Waterford on the third day, he got away by water, without loss of time, to Kinsale, whence he sailed for France, quitting Ireland at the spot where he had entered it.

It might have been expected that Tyrconnel and Lauzun would yet rally their forces at Dublin, and make a resolute stand there. But the decisive defeat of the Boyne, the untrustworthiness of the Irish infantry, the loss on the field amounting to upwards of one thousand five hundred, and those chiefly cavalry, the desertion of vast numbers of infantry on the road southward, and the precipitate flight of James, discouraged them. Towards evening of the same day that James left, Tyrconnel and Lauzun mustered their forces and marched out of the city, determining to make their stand on the Shannon, within the strong defences of Athlone and Limerick. No sooner had they evacuated the city than the Protestants issued from their retreats, liberated all the prisoners, and sent off messengers to invite William to enter his new capital in triumph. This he did on the 6th of July, and then made for Waterford.

William's object in reaching Waterford was to take ship for England—not, like James, to abandon his army out of mere cowardice—but in order to protect England too. He had received news that the French, under Tourville, were hovering on the southern coast of England; that they had again defeated the British fleet under the wretched Torrington, and were meditating invasion of the country. He hastened on; the Irish troops at his approach abandoned Clonmel and Kilkenny. Waterford was similarly evacuated, and William, nominating Count Solmes commander-in-chief during his absence, was about to embark, when he received further intelligence. Tourville had made a partial descent at Teignmouth in Devonshire, sacked it, and then drawn off in consequence of the menacing attitude of the inhabitants of the western counties. He therefore hastened to rejoin his army, which was on the way towards Limerick, where Douglas had found such resistance that he had been compelled to raise the siege. On the 9th of August he sat down before that town, and found the Irish determined to make a resolute defence of it.

The Irish, ashamed of their conduct at the battle of the Boyne, and seeing their Saxon masters once more rapidly recovering their ascendency in the island, one and all, men and officers, determined on here making a stand to the death. They did not owe their spirit to their French allies, for Lauzun and his officers ridiculed the idea of defending the place, which they regarded as most miserably fortified. Tyrconnel joined them in that opinion; but Sarsfield encouraged his countrymen, and exhorted them to cast up breastworks of earth, which, in our times—as at Sebastopol—have convinced military men that they are far more impervious to cannon than stone or brick walls. He could not convince the French, who had lost all faith in Irish prowess, and who pined to return to France from the miseries and privations of Ireland; nor Tyrconnel, who was old, and completely dispirited by the action of the Boyne. He and the French drew off with the French forces into Galway; and Boisseleau, a Frenchman, who did sympathise with the Irish, and Sarsfield, were left to defend the place. They had yet twenty thousand men, who were animated by a new spirit, and were destined to make the defence of Limerick as famous as that of Londonderry.

Limerick stood partly on an island in the Shannon; and to take that part it was necessary to have boats, for only a single bridge connected the two parts of the town, or the two towns, as they were called—the English and the Irish. William had a quantity of tin boats on the way for this service, and his cannon and ammunition were also following him. Sarsfield seized immediately on this circumstance when it came to his knowledge. He got out of the city in the night, surprised the escort of the guns, and destroyed the guns, blew up the powder, and made good his return to the town. This exploit raised Sarsfield wonderfully in the opinion of his countrymen, and at the same time raised their own spirits.

William sent for fresh guns from Waterford, and pressed on the siege; but the autumnal rains began to deluge the low, marshy banks of the Shannon, and to sweep away his men with fever. The Irish, on the other hand, had received a fresh stimulus to exertion in the arrival of Baldearg O'Donnel, the chief of one of the most famous old races of Ulster, who had been in the service of Spain, and had returned to assist his countrymen in this last effort to throw off the yoke of the Saxon. The high veneration for the name of the O'Donnel, and the character of the man, placed him at the head of a large class of the Irish in Limerick. There was a prophecy that an O'Donnel was to conquer the English, and the enthusiastic Celts believed that this was the time. And, in truth, the prediction appeared beginning to verify itself, for, after a desperate attempt to take the town by storm on the 27th of August, William resolved to raise the siege, and place his troops in healthy quarters for the winter. During this attempt, William had another narrow escape from a cannon-ball. His men, too, after breaching the walls in several places, and carrying the counterscarp, or covered way, suffered great loss. On the 30th the siege was raised, and William hastened to Waterford, and thence to England. He left the government of the island in the care of three Lords Justices, namely, Viscount Sidney, Lord Coningsby, and Sir Charles Porter. About the same time Tyrconnel and Lauzun quitted Ireland for France, leaving the affairs of James in a council of civilians, and the army under a commission, at the head of which stood the Duke of Berwick as commander-in-chief, and in the very lowest place the brave Sarsfield, of whom the aged Tyrconnel entertained a jealousy worthy of himself and of his master.

We must now take notice of what had been passing in England and Scotland during William's campaign in Ireland. Immediately after his departure the traitor Crone was brought to the bar, and, after a full and fair trial, convicted and condemned to death. Pardon, however, was offered him on condition of his revealing what he knew of the Jacobite machinations. After a violent struggle with himself, and after two respites, he complied, and gave important information to the Privy Council. The evidences of an active conspiracy of the Jacobites were too prominent to be overlooked. Tourville, the French admiral, was hovering on the coasts of Devon and Dorsetshire, and the Jacobites, as expecting a descent of a French force, were all in a state of the greatest excitement. It was deemed necessary to arrest a number of the most dangerous conspirators, amongst whom was Clarendon, the queen's uncle; and he and the rest were committed to the Tower. Torrington was ordered to join the fleet in the Downs, and chase the French admiral from the coast. At St. Helens he was joined by a powerful Dutch squadron, under the command of Admiral Evertsen, and they lay off Ventnor, whilst Tourville with his fleet lay off the Needles. An engagement was expected every hour, when Torrington was seen to draw off from the coast of the Isle of Wight, and retreat before the French admiral towards the Strait of Dover. The alarm in London became excessive. The scheme of the Jacobites, as it was revealed to the Council, was to enter the Thames; the Jacobites in London had agreed to rise and seize the queen, and proclaim James. James himself had engaged to leave Ireland to Lauzun and Tyrconnel, and throw himself once more amongst his adherents in England. Another squadron of the French was to land at Torbay; and the country once in their possession, the united French fleet was to cut off the return of William from Ireland. With a knowledge of these plans, and the doubtful conduct of Torrington, the Privy Council was in a state of great agitation. Caermarthen was for the most decisive measures, in which he was energetically supported by Monmouth. They proposed that Russell, who was not only a first-rate officer, but a determined one, should be sent over to the fleet, and Monmouth, at his own request, as a military officer, was sent with him. A dispatch, however, was sent before them, ordering Torrington to come to an engagement at all hazards, and this compelled him to act before Russell and Monmouth could get on board. On the 30th of June, the day before the battle of the Boyne, he felt himself compelled to come to an engagement with Tourville off Beachy Head. Tourville had eighty-two men-of-war; the united fleet of England and Holland did not exceed sixty; but a Blake or Russell would have thought little of the difference. Torrington, as had been too plainly evident in the affair of Bantry Bay, was a man of very different stuff. When compelled to fight, he determined that the Dutch should bear the brunt of it. He therefore placed the Dutch vessels in the van, and gave the signal to engage. The Dutch fought with their usual bravery, and for many hours sustained almost the whole fury of the battle, little supported by the English. Torrington showed no inclination to engage, but appeared rather disposed to see the Dutch, whom he hated, annihilated. A few of the English captains did their duty gallantly; but, so far as Torrington was concerned, had it not been for the Dutch, the French might have ascended the Thames, as Van Tromp formerly did, and insulted the whole seaboard of the country at their pleasure. When the Dutch had lost two admirals and many other officers they drew off, their ships being in a terribly shattered condition. One of their dismantled ships fell into the hands of the French, the others Torrington ordered to be either burnt or towed away; and, ignominiously retiring into the Thames, he pulled up the buoys, to prevent the French from following. Tourville, however, had suffered so much from the Dutch, that he drew off towards his own coast, and left the Londoners to suffer all the alarms without the danger of invasion. London, indeed, was in the same state of terror as in the time of the Dutch invasion of the Thames. The wildest rumours were every hour arriving. The confidence in Torrington was gone, and he was generally denounced as being a traitor to the Government. Either he was a most incompetent commander or his heart was not in the cause: and the latter was no doubt the fact; for, though his treason was not patent at this time, it afterwards became certain enough that he maintained a close correspondence with the Courts of both St. Germains and Versailles. But, whether traitor or imbecile, London was in no degree confident of his being able to repel the French. It was believed by numbers that the dockyards at Chatham would be destroyed, the ships in the Thames under protection of the Tower be set fire to, and the Tower itself be cannonaded. To add to the gloom and affright, the news of the defeat of Count Waldeck at Fleurus, in the Netherlands, by Luxemburg, Louis's general, just then arrived. Paris was ablaze with fireworks and rejoicings; London was all gloom and panic.

And truly there were menacing circumstances. Tourville was bearding the English on their own coasts; Torrington dared not or would not go to encounter him; and Marshal HumiÈres lay with a strong force on the opposite shores, not far from Dunkirk, in readiness, it was believed, to go on board Tourville's fleet and make a descent on England, where the Jacobites were prepared to join the invaders. But on the fourth day after the battle of Beachy Head arrived the news of William's splendid victory on the Boyne, and the spirit of the nation rose at once. It was felt that the ascendency of James was over, and the news of his ignominious flight, which soon followed, completely extinguished the hopes of his partisans, and gave stability to the throne of William and Mary.

And this was soon strikingly demonstrated. Tourville triumphantly ranged along the English coasts, after his victory at Beachy Head, without opposition, and he now imagined that nothing was necessary to the restoration of James but a descent on England with a tolerable force, which was certain to be welcomed by the expectant Jacobites. Accordingly Tourville took on board a considerable body of soldiers, and made for the coast of Devon. His fleet numbered a hundred and eleven sail, but of these a large number were mere Mediterranean galleys, rowed by slaves, and sent as transports to carry over the troops. On the 22nd of July he landed at Torbay, where William himself had landed; but, instead of finding the gentry or the people ready to join him in support of King James, the whole west rose as one man at the glare of the beacon signals which blazed on the hill-tops. Messengers were spurring from place to place all night to carry the exact intelligence to the authorities; and the next morning all Devonshire appeared to be marching for Torbay. Tourville speedily beheld numbers of armed horsemen, the gentry and yeomanry of the neighbourhood, assembled on the hills, and everything warned him to embark again as quickly as possible. But he would not retire without leaving some trace of his visit. He despatched a number of his galleys to Teignmouth, where the French landed, set fire to the town, burned down a hundred houses, destroyed the fishing-boats in the harbour, killed or drove away all the live stock they could find, and demolished the interior of the churches, the pulpits, the communion-tables, and the Bibles and Prayer-books, which they tore up and trampled under foot in their hatred of Protestantism. This specimen of what England was to expect if she received back James at the point of French bayonets produced the most salutary effects on the whole nation.

Mary showed herself equal to the emergency in the absence of her husband. She applied to the Lord Mayor to know what state of defence the City was in, and received the most prompt and satisfactory answer. His lordship assured her that the City would stand by her to a man; that it had ten thousand men, well armed and disciplined, prepared to march, if necessary, at an hour's notice; that it would raise six regiments of foot and two regiments of horse at its own cost, and pay besides into the royal treasury a hundred thousand pounds. The country everywhere displayed the same loyalty. The yeoman cavalry of the different counties assembled in arms; those of Suffolk, Essex, Hertford, and Buckingham, marched to Hounslow Heath, where Mary received them amid acclamations of loyalty; she received the cavalry troops of Kent and Surrey on Blackheath. The militia was called out; noblemen hurried to their counties to take command of the forces there; and others, amongst whom was the lately recreant Shrewsbury, flocked to Whitehall to offer their lives and fortunes for the defence of the throne. The miners of Cornwall appeared, ten thousand in number, armed as best they might be, ready to expel the invaders. Those of the Jacobites who stubbornly retained their faith in James, who still designated him as the "stone which the builders had foolishly rejected," and who by their secret press urged the people to the assassination of William, and to vengeance on his Protestant supporters, slunk into hiding-places and remained prudently quiet. Even the non-juring clergy and bishops excited the indignation of the masses as men who encouraged by their conduct the hopes of the Papists; and the Bishop of Norwich was attacked in his palace, and was only rescued by the prompt measures of the authorities. The non-jurors were suspected of leaning not only to James, but to Popery; and a new liturgy, which had been printed and industriously circulated, praying, in no ambiguous words, for the restoration of James by a foreign invasion, and for the murder of William, was widely believed to proceed from them, although they strenuously denied it.

Such was the position of things in England when William returned from Ireland. In Scotland great changes had taken place. The remains of the Jacobite force in the Highlands had been effectually put down. In the spring of 1690 James had sent over an officer with the commission of General-in-Chief of the Jacobite forces in Scotland. General Buchan, therefore, took precedence of the drunken and incompetent Cannon; but all the troops that he could muster were not more than one thousand four hundred, and these were surprised and crushed by William's general, Sir Thomas Livingstone, who occupied Inverness. General Mackay completed the subjugation of the Highlands by building a fort at Inverlochy, called, after the king, Fort William, which effectually held the Camerons and Macdonalds in check. The last chance of James was over in that quarter.

At Edinburgh the battle with the disaffected politicians came very soon to a similar end. The most prominent of them, Montgomery, Ross, and Annandale, offered to yield their opposition if William would admit them to favour and office; but William disdained to purchase their adhesion, and they then, in resentment, flung themselves into the arms of James. The treaty was carried on through the medium of James's agent in London, one Neville Payne; and Mary, James's queen, sent over dispatches, creating Montgomery for his treason Earl of Ayr and Secretary of State, with a pension of ten thousand pounds to relieve his immediate necessities, for he was miserably poor and harassed by creditors. Ross was to be made an earl, and have the command of the Guards; and Annandale was to be a marquis, Lord High Commissioner, and Governor of Edinburgh Castle. But this measure, which the Court of St. Germains fondly fancied was going to give them the ascendency in the Scottish Parliament, produced an exactly contrary effect. The old Tory Jacobites were so much incensed at this favour shown to these renegade Whigs, whilst they themselves were passed over, that the whole plot went to pieces in an explosion of jealousy, and on the meeting of the nobles the new proselytes of Jacobinism, who were to have turned the scale in favour of the Stuart dynasty, were found to be utterly helpless and abandoned.

This turbulent and factious party being thus broken up, and some of them going over to the new Government voluntarily as the means of safety, and others being brought over by timely offers of place or money, the settlement of the affairs of Scotland became tolerably easy. The Presbyterian religion was declared the established religion of Scotland. Contrary to the will of William, a Toleration Act for that kingdom had been rejected. The confession of faith of the Westminster Assembly was adopted; the remaining Presbyterian ministers who had been rejected at the Restoration, now reduced from three hundred and fifty to sixty, were restored, and the Episcopalian ministers were forcibly ejected in turn, and Presbyterians installed. The old synodal polity was restored, and the sixty old restored ministers, and such as they should appoint, were ordered to visit all the different parishes, and see that none but godly ministers, sound in the Presbyterian faith, were occupying the manses and the pulpits. This, however, did not satisfy a section of the old Cameronian school. They complained that the Parliament had betrayed the Solemn League and Covenant, and had sworn, and had caused others to swear, to a non-Covenanting monarch, and they refused to bow the knee to this Baal. Thus a non-juring party sprang up also in Scotland. In William's opinion, however, too much had been done in the way of conformity; and on his return from Ireland he selected as Lord High Commissioner to Scotland Lord Carmichael, a nobleman of liberal mind, and accompanied this appointment by a letter to the General Assembly, declaring that he would never consent to any violent or persecuting measures, and that he expected the same from them. "We never," he nobly observed, "could be of the mind that violence was suited to the advancing of true religion; nor do we intend that our authority shall ever be a tool to the irregular passions of any party. Moderation is what religion enjoins, what neighbouring churches expect from you, and what we recommend to you." And the determination of the monarch put a strong and beneficial restraint on the spirit of the religious zealots of the North.

William had returned from Ireland with a great accession of power and Éclat. He had shown that the imbecile and bigoted James could not stand for a moment before him; he had reduced Ireland to such general subjection that the remaining insurgents in the south could not long hold out. To hasten this result, and to cut off the access of fresh reinforcements from France, he now sent out an expedition, which had been some time preparing under Marlborough, to reduce Cork and Kinsale, and garrison them for himself. That strange but able man, Marlborough, though he was at this very moment in full correspondence with the Court of St. Germains so as to meet all chances, and even the now remote one of James ever regaining the throne, though he was disliked and suspected by William and Mary, yet himself proposed this expedition, anxious to grasp some of the glory of re-conquering Ireland, and perhaps not inattentive to the equally attractive prospect of winning booty. Marlborough was already lying at Portsmouth with his squadron when William reached London; and sailing thence on the 18th, he landed at Cork on the 21st of September, with five thousand men. The Duke of WÜrtemberg there joined him with his four thousand Danes, together making a strong force, but which was in danger of becoming paralysed by the German duke insisting on taking the chief command on account of his superior rank. Marlborough was not a man willingly to resign any position likely to do him honour; but he consented to share the command, taking it on alternate days. With him he had also the Duke of Grafton, one of Charles II.'s illegitimate sons, who had fallen under suspicion of leaning to his uncle James, but, to prove his loyalty to William, came out as a volunteer. Cork was vigorously attacked, and in forty-eight hours it capitulated. The garrison, between four and five thousand men, surrendered as prisoners, and Marlborough promised to use his endeavours to obtain the favour of William for both them and the citizens. He forbade his troops to plunder, but was obliged to use force to repel the hordes of wild people who rushed in and began ransacking the Catholics. The Duke of Grafton fell in the attack.

Without losing a day, Marlborough sent forward his cavalry to Kinsale to demand its surrender, and followed with his infantry. The Irish set fire to the town, and retired into two forts, the Old Fort and the New Fort. The English, however, managed to put out the fire, and Marlborough arriving, invested the forts, and took the Old Fort by storm, killing nearly five hundred men, who refused to surrender. The garrison of the New Fort, after seeing Marlborough prepared to storm that too, yielded on condition that they might go to Limerick. They were twelve hundred strong. In this fort was found abundance of provisions, a thousand barrels of wheat, and eighty pipes of claret.

Having executed this mission, and secured the two forts for the king, Marlborough re-embarked, and reached London again in little more than a month from the day that he sailed from Portsmouth. William, astonished at the rapidity of this success, declared that there was no officer living who had seen so little service, who was so qualified for a general as Marlborough. The English people went still further, and declared their countryman had achieved more in a single month than the king's Dutch favourites in two campaigns.

On the 2nd of October William opened the new session of Parliament. He was received with the warmest demonstrations of attachment. He had shown himself strong, and James had shown himself weak. The country had been alarmed by the menace of invasion, and all parties were disposed to rally round the monarch who gave them every promise of security and pre-eminence. In his speech he paid the highest tribute to the bravery of the army, and declared that, had his affairs allowed him to have begun the campaign earlier, he should have been able to clear the whole country of the enemy. In order to do that in the ensuing campaign, and to put a check on the too conspicuous designs of the French, it would be essential to grant liberal supplies. He reminded them of the dishonour which had befallen the English flag, and of the necessity of promptness in Parliament to enable him to wipe away the stain, and to secure the reputation of England by crushing the efforts of the king of France.

His speech was received with loud acclamations. Thanks were voted for his achievements in Ireland, and to the queen for her able administration during his absence; and the Commons proceeded to vote supplies on a scale which had yet had no example. The army was fixed at sixty-nine thousand men, of whom twelve thousand were to consist of cavalry. The navy was to consist of twenty-eight thousand men; and the cost of the whole, including ordnance, was estimated at four million pounds. In return for this unprecedented force and unprecedented allowance for it, the Commons demanded that they should appoint a commission of nine to examine and bring forward the accounts: the commissioners to be all members of their own House. The proposition was acceded to without opposition by both the peers and the king, and a Bill, including the appointment of the commissioners, was prepared and passed. On the 15th of November a Bill received the royal assent for doubling the excise on beer, ale, and other liquors; and on the 20th of December another Bill passed for granting certain duties upon East India goods, wrought silks, and other merchandise; and a second Bill for increasing the duties on wine, vinegar, and tobacco.

In considering ways and means, the Commons proposed, as they had laid so many burdens on themselves, that the persons of all those who had been engaged in the rebellion in Ireland should be attainted, and their estates confiscated, and the proceeds be applied to the discharge of the expenses of the war; and they brought in and passed a Bill for that purpose. But the Lords did not appear inclined to sanction so wholesale a confiscation of the estates of all the Catholics of Ireland, as this would have amounted to; nor could it be very acceptable to the king, though they proposed to place a considerable portion of the forfeitures at his disposal. The Lords allowed the Bill to lie on their table, notwithstanding several urgent reminders from the Commons, and so at last it dropped. This must have been what William particularly desired, for it was contrary to his natural clemency to let loose the fiends of party fury after the sufficiently deadly evils of war, and it was contrary to his promises to many who had submitted on assurances of impunity; and having got the chief supplies which he wanted, he sought to shorten the Session as much as possible, by telling Parliament that, by a certain day, it was necessary for him to leave for Holland on important affairs. Yet, after the liberal votes of the Commons, still keeping in memory the disgrace of the navy, he added that, if some annual provision could be made for augmenting the navy, and building some new men-of-war, "it would be a very necessary care for that time, both for the honour and safety of the nation." The Commons thought so much the same that they voted an additional five hundred thousand pounds expressly for building new ships of war.

The last proceeding which marked this Session was the discovery of a fresh Jacobite plot. The Tory minister Caermarthen had long been the object of the particular enmity of the Whigs, and they were doing everything possible to undermine his influence. At last their efforts appeared to be growing perceptible. The king had introduced into the ministry, one after another, men to whom Caermarthen had a particular aversion, or who were particularly hostile to his power. Godolphin was made First Lord of the Treasury; Marlborough was rising fast in the military department; and Sidney was sent for by William from Ireland, without consulting Caermarthen, and appointed Secretary of State. His enemies were eagerly watching for the favourable moment to come down on the declining minister and complete his ruin, when he suddenly, at the very close of the year and the Session, laid before William all the particulars of a desperate plot of the Jacobites, which showed plainly enough that a minister of such vigilance was not to be lightly dispensed with. Fortune, however, rather than his own sagacity, had favoured the Prime Minister.

The anticipated absence of William from England in the spring appeared to offer a favourable conjuncture for James making another attempt for the recovery of the throne. The Jacobites, therefore, had met and concluded to send three of their number to St. Germains to consult with the Court there on the best means of effecting this object. It was proposed that James should make great protestations of his determination to allow of and secure the political and religious rights of all his subjects, and that he should come attended only by so moderate a force that it should not look like a French invasion. The opinions of the leading Jacobites were to be conveyed by these messengers in a packet of letters to be carefully concealed; and amongst the writers of these letters were the Earl of Dartmouth, Viscount Preston—so-called—and the Earl of Clarendon. This weak man, whom William had warned through Rochester of his knowledge of his practices, and who had declared that he would never again meddle with treason, was again as busy as ever. A vessel was engaged, called the James and Elizabeth, to carry over the three agents, namely, Preston, Ashton, and Elliott, who were to come on board on the last night of the year. The skipper of the James and Elizabeth, though offered extraordinary pay for the trip, suspecting what was the nature of his passengers, gave notice of the fact to Caermarthen, who sent and boarded the vessel at midnight, when the traitors were secured along with their papers, which were conveyed to the Secretary of State's office at Whitehall, where Caermarthen and Nottingham passed the night in examining the contents of the fatal packet, and the next morning laid them before the king.

This great discovery, which fell like a thunderbolt on the Jacobites, was scarcely less disconcerting to the Whigs. It was hopeless after this to attempt anything against so alert and trusty a minister. William, relieved from all apprehensions of danger by this timely discovery, left the three traitors in the custody of his Government, and the leaders yet at large under their eye, and hastened to get over to Holland. On the 5th of January he prorogued Parliament till the 31st of March; and in his farewell speech he said that he thought it proper to assure them that he should make no grants of the forfeited lands in England or Ireland; that those matters could be settled in Parliament in such a manner as should be thought most expedient. Unfortunately, this was a promise which William failed to keep, and which brought upon him no lack of trouble in the future. On the 6th, whilst his English subjects were indulging in all the festivities of the season, William set out, attended by a splendid train of courtiers, for the Hague, where a great Congress was appointed to consider the best means of resisting the aggressions of Louis of France. He was received by his subjects, after a dangerous voyage, with shouts of joy.

William's spirit and sound sense seemed to reanimate the drooping energies of the Allies. The quota of troops to be furnished by every prince was determined; it was agreed to bring two hundred and twenty thousand men into the field in spring, and never to rest till they had not only driven Louis from the territories of his neighbours, but had compelled him to give toleration to his Protestant subjects. These matters arranged, William made use of the influence which the new alliance with the Duke of Savoy gave him, to procure a cessation of the persecutions of the duke's Protestant subjects, the Waldenses. To him these simple mountain shepherds—Christians of a Church remaining independent of Rome from the earliest times—owed it that they could once more live in peace; that numbers of them were released from dungeons, and their children, who had been torn from them to be educated in Popery, were restored.

All being thus favourably settled, the princes dispersed to their several States, and William retired to obtain a short period of relaxation at Loo. But he was speedily roused from his repose. The proceedings of the Congress had been closely and anxiously watched by Louis of France. He saw that its deliberations were certain to produce a profound impression on Europe, and he resolved to neutralise this by one of his sudden and telling blows. At once all his available means and forces were put in motion. A hundred thousand soldiers were in rapid march on Mons, one of the most important fortresses of the Spanish Netherlands. Louis did not even trust the operations of this assault to his famous general, Luxemburg, and the greatest military genius of the age, Vauban; but he hurried to the scene of action himself, early as the season was—in March. Five days after the siege commenced Louis was there, accompanied by the Dauphin, the Dukes of Orleans and of Chartres. He pushed on the attack with vigour, to have it over before any assistance could arrive. Though suffering from the gout, he went about amongst the soldiers, encouraging them by the blandest and most familiar addresses; helped personally to bind up their wounds in the hospitals, and partook of the broth prepared for them. With his quick perception of the dangers from his adversaries, he had noticed the diversion which it was intended that the Duke of Savoy should make, by taking the field on that side; and he had suddenly thrown an army into Savoy, captured Nice, and provided the duke with enough to do to hold his own. By this means he had been able to bring from the Maritime Alps a large body of troops to this siege.

William was sensible of the disastrous effect which the fall of Mons would have on the spirits of his Allies, and on the Courts of Sweden and Denmark which had been brought to the point of joining the confederation; he therefore rushed from his place of temporary retirement, mustered the forces of the States-General, sent dispatches after the German princes, urging them to bring up all the troops they could collect to the rescue of Mons, and to the generals of the Spanish troops in Flanders. By forced marches he advanced towards the devoted city; but all the vices of confederations were now glaringly apparent in contrast to the single and prompt action of a despot. The German princes, naturally slow, were already far off; the Spanish generals were utterly unprepared for such an emergency; and William found it almost impossible to procure even horses to drag his artillery and stores. He sent on, however, hasty messengers to apprise the people of Mons of his approach; but the vigilance of the French prevented them from reaching the city. An immense quantity of artillery was thundering against the walls of Mons; breaches were made in them; a redoubt was carried, sword in hand; shells fell in showers on the roofs and streets of the town, which was burning in ten places. The inhabitants, appalled by the terrible destruction awaiting them, threatened to murder the garrison if they did not surrender; and the garrison, ignorant of the relief which William was bringing, surrendered on the 20th of April. William, deeply chagrined, returned to the Hague, and thence hastened back to London; whilst Louis, in proud triumph, returned to Versailles to receive the congratulations of his courtiers on his splendid coup-de-main.

On William's return to London, he found his Government had tried the traitors, Preston, Ashton, and Elliott. Preston and Ashton were found guilty, and sentenced to death; Elliott was not brought to trial. By some it has been asserted that the evidence of his being admitted into the real interior of the plot was not clear; by others, that he purchased his escape by disclosures. Ashton was hanged on the 18th of January—the very day on which William had embarked at Gravesend for Holland. Preston, after much vacillation between the desire to accept a proffered pardon and repugnance to the conditions attached to it—that of making a full disclosure of his accomplices—at length chose life and dishonour, and made charges against Clarendon, Dartmouth, Turner Bishop of Ely, and William Penn. Clarendon was sent for a time to the Tower; Dartmouth, who was accused, as an admiral, of the heinous crime of intending to betray Portsmouth to the French, indignantly repelled the accusation, and died in the Tower without having been brought to trial. Turner escaped to France. Penn was accused of writing to James to assure him that, with thirty thousand men, he might command England. But this message to James rested on the evidence of the lying and infamous Melfort, who was totally unworthy of all belief; and Penn, so far from shrinking from the charge, went straight to Sidney, the Secretary of State, and denied the whole allegation. That he had a friendly feeling for and commiseration of James, he did not deny; but he declared himself a faithful subject of William and Mary, and, so far from being willing to aid any design against them, if he became aware of any such he would at once disclose it. Instead of clapping Penn in the Tower—which the Government would have done, had they any such letters inviting James to come over with thirty thousand men,—he was suffered to depart in full freedom. He afterwards made a religious journey on the Continent as a minister of the Society of Friends, and then he returned to England; but without any attempt on the part of Government to molest him.

But there were deeper and more real traitors than any of these around William—namely, Admiral Russell, Sidney Godolphin, and Marlborough. These men, encouraged by the fall of Mons and the triumphant aspect of Louis's affairs, renewed with fresh activity their intrigues with the Court of James. It was in vain that William heaped riches, honours, and places of confidence upon them; they were ready to receive any amount of favours, but still kept an eye open to the possible return of James, and made themselves secure of pardon from him, and kept him duly informed of all the intended movements of William both at home and on the Continent. Russell was made High Admiral in place of Torrington. He was Treasurer of the Navy, enjoyed a pension of three thousand pounds a year, and a grant from the Crown of property of great and increasing value near Charing Cross. But, with an insatiable greediness, he still complained of unrequited services; and, having a shoal of poor and hungry relatives badgering him for places and pensions, he complained that their incessant demands could not be gratified; and he cherished the hope that he could sell his treason at a favourable crisis to King James at no mean price. Godolphin was First Commissioner of the Treasury, sat in the Privy Council, and enjoyed the confidence of the sovereign; his former conduct in being one of the most pliant tools of James, ready to vote for his Act of Indulgence, being overlooked. Yet he was sworn, through the agency of a Mr. Bulkeley, to serve the interests of James. Hand in hand with him went Marlborough, who—though he was now fast overcoming the long-retained prejudices of William, and had been honoured by his commission in the expedition to Ireland, and by his warm approbation on his return, and had the prospect of a brilliant command of the army in Flanders, where he could indulge his highest ambition—was yet a most thorough traitor, making a hypocritical pretence of great sorrow to James for his desertion of him, and, through Colonel Sackville, and Lloyd, the non-juring Bishop of Norwich, offering, on a good opportunity, to carry over the whole army to James.

Amid these lurking treasons, the exultation of the Jacobites over the fall of Mons was open and insolent. They came by swarms out of their hiding-places, and thronged the Park and the neighbourhood of the Palace, even insulting the queen in her drives before William's return.

William's indignation on hearing these facts roused him to put the laws in force against the non-juring bishops. The most extraordinary lenity had been shown them. They had been suffered to reside in their sees and occupy their palaces; they had been offered to be excused taking the oaths on condition that they would live quietly, and discharge their ecclesiastical functions of ordaining ministers, confirming their young flocks, and other such duties, but without avail. Now that Turner was discovered in treasonable correspondence with St. Germains, and the rest refused to disavow what he had attributed to them in his letters, it was resolved to eject them. Sancroft was ejected from Lambeth, and Tillotson was nominated Archbishop of Canterbury in his place; Ken was removed from Bath and Wells, and Kidder instituted in his stead. In place of Turner, succeeded Dr. Patrick; Fowler was appointed to Gloucester, and Cumberland to Peterborough. Soon after Lamplugh, Archbishop of York, died and Dr. Sharp took his place. Sancroft continued to maintain all his old pugnacity, and nominated other bishops in opposition to William's Government as sees fell vacant. But perhaps the most savage outcry was raised on the appointment of Dr. Sherlock to the deanery of St. Paul's, vacated by the election of Tillotson to Canterbury. Tillotson himself was furiously assailed by the Jacobites as a thief and a false shepherd, who had stolen into the fold of the rightful pastor. Sherlock had been a zealous non-juror himself, but had been seriously convinced of the Scriptural ordinance to submit to any Government, whatever its origin, which was firmly established. He was, therefore, violently and scurrilously assailed as a perjured apostate. Amongst the ejected non-juring clergy, Henry Dodwell was so insolent, that William remarked, "That Dodwell wants me to put him in prison, but I will disappoint him." The magnanimous forbearance of William, and the audacious impertinence of the non-jurors in consequence, form a wonderful contrast.

THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH. (After the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller.)

Scarcely had William time to settle these affairs, and arrange the plan of campaign in Ireland, when he was compelled to return to Holland. Unaware as yet of the more recent treason of Marlborough, he took him with him. He had conceived the highest opinion of his military talents, and he was confirmed in this opinion, on his arrival at the Hague, by the Prince of Vaudemont, a distinguished commander in the Dutch service. He praised highly the Generals Talmash and Mackay; as to Marlborough, he declared that he had every quality of a general; that his very look showed it, and that he was certainly destined to do something great. William replied that he was of the same conviction.

William found himself at the head of seventy thousand men of various nations, the different contingents of the Allies, and the beginning of the campaign was very promising. He sent Marlborough on to Flanders to collect the forces there, and form a camp to cover Brussels against the advance of Luxemburg and the French. His convenient position no doubt suggested to James the idea of his immediate execution of his promised treason. James, therefore, sent him word that he expected his fulfilment of his engagement; but to this startling demand Marlborough replied that the time was not come. It was necessary to have first obtained a complete ascendency over the troops, or, instead of following him, they would abandon him, and the only consequence would be making things worse. William's immediate arrival put an end to the temptation, and he marched against Luxemburg, who retired before him. He next sent a detachment against Marshal Boufflers, who was besieging LiÉge, and, having succeeded in this, he crossed the Sambre, to endeavour to bring Luxemburg to an engagement. But this crafty general, who had an inferior though well-appointed army, took care to avoid a general action, calculating that William's army, made up of so many nonentities, would, if let alone, ere long go to pieces. Thus the summer was spent in marches and counter-marches without any result, except of wearying out the patience of William, who in September surrendered the command to the Prince of Waldeck, and retired to his favourite hunting-seat at Loo, and soon after returned to England.

The summer campaign was carried on by the Allies in other quarters with more or less success. In Spain the French made some barbarous inroads, but were vigorously repelled. They were more successful in their combat with the Duke of Savoy. Marshal Catinat took several of their towns, besieged Coni, and advanced within three leagues of Turin, the duke's capital. Just, however, as they were hoping for a signal triumph, they were arrested by the appearance of a new hero, destined, in co-operation with Marlborough, to shake to the foundations the power of Louis XIV. This was Eugene, Prince of Savoy. Eugene, being joined by young Schomberg with a few troops, and some money from William, at the suggestion of Schomberg made a sudden march across the mountains, raised the siege of Coni, and then, issuing on the plains, drove back Catinat, and regained Carmagnola. On the Rhine, where the Elector of Saxony commanded, nothing of moment was effected; but the French allies, the Turks, who were harassing Austria, received a severe defeat at Salankeman, on the Danube, which placed the Emperor of Germany at his ease.

The campaign in Ireland did not begin till June. The condition of that island during the winter was miserable in the extreme. The ravages which the Irish—mad with oppression, ignorance, and revenge, let loose by the frightful policy of James—had inflicted on the country from the north to the south, such as we have described them, must necessarily have left it a prey to famine, chaos, and crime. In the north, where the Protestants had regained the power, there was the commencement of restoration. Those who had fled to England with their movable property came swarming back. It was, indeed, to towns burnt down and fields laid waste; but they brought with them money, and, still more, indomitable energies, which impelled them instantly to begin rebuilding their dwellings, at least in such a manner as to shelter them from the elements, and to cultivate and sow their fields. Commerce came back with them; and the estuaries of the Foyle, the Lagan, the Bann, the Carlingford, and the Boyne were busy with ships and boats pouring in food, seed, and live-stock. So soon as Nature had time to do her part and to ripen her crops, there would be once more comparative plenty, and there was an animating prospect of a secure permanence of peace and order. But in the south, and still more the south-west, where the troops of James still held their ground, the condition of things was as appalling as can be conceived. In the north the Protestants kept a tight hand on the native Irish; they refused them the possession of arms; they forbade them to proceed more than three miles from their own dwellings, except to attend market; and not more than five Papists were to meet together on any occasion or pretence. They forbade them to approach the frontier within ten miles, to prevent them from communicating with the enemy. If outrages were committed, they were visited with unsparing severity. But if the north was strict and yet struggling, the south was in a fearful state of calamity. The soldiers traversed the country, levying contributions of cattle and provisions wherever they could find them. They were no better than so many bandits and rapparees, who swarmed over the desolated region, carrying violence, terror, and spoliation wherever they came. There was no money but James's copper trash, bearing high nominal values. Provisions and clothes, where they were to be had, fetched incredible prices; and merchants feared to approach the ports, because they were in as much danger of wholesale robbery as the shopkeepers and farmers on land.

In the Irish camp the utmost license, disorder, and destitution prevailed. The Duke of Berwick was elected to command during the absence of Tyrconnel in France; but his power was a mere fiction, and he let things take their course. Sarsfield was the only officer who had any real influence with the soldiers. But early in the spring Tyrconnel returned, bringing some supplies of money and clothing; and in April a fleet also arrived, bringing arms, ammunition, flour, and provisions. With these came what was much needed—two general officers—St. Ruth and D'Usson. St. Ruth was a general of considerable experience. He had lately served in Savoy, and had the prestige of victory; but he was vain and cruel, was mortally hated by the Huguenots for his persecutions of them, and was called by them "the hangman." His very name, therefore, was a guarantee for the Huguenot troops in the English service fighting to the utmost. He was astonished and disgusted at the dirty, ragged, and disorderly crew that bore the name of the Irish army; but he began actively to repress their license, and to drill them into some discipline.

On the 6th of June Ginkell took the field against him with a body of efficient troops, reinforced by some excellent regiments from Scotland, and having now under his command Talmash and Mackay, two brave officers. At the head of the French refugees was the Marquis Ruvigny, the brother-in-law of General Caillemot, who fell at the Boyne. On the 7th Ginkell reached Ballymore, and compelled the fortress there, containing a garrison of one thousand men, to surrender, and sent all the prisoners to Dublin. Having placed the fortress, which stood on an island in the lake, in good defence, he marched forward, and, on the 18th, sat down before the very strongly-fortified town of Athlone. On his march he had been joined by the Duke of WÜrtemberg and his Danish division.

Athlone stood on the Shannon, the river cutting it in two. The stream there was deep and rapid, and was spanned by a bridge on which stood two mills, worked by the current below, and on the Connaught side was a strong fort, called King John's Fort, with a tower seventy feet high, and flanking the river for a distance of two hundred feet. The town on the Leinster side, where Ginkell was, was defended by bold earthen ramparts, the most indestructible of any kind by cannon. Ginkell, however, lost no time in attacking it. On the 20th his cannon were all in order for bombarding, and he opened a terrible fire on the town. Under cover of his fire the troops rushed to the walls, and the French refugees were the first to mount a breach, and one of them, flinging his grenade, fell with a shout of triumph. His example was quickly followed. The assailants sprang over the walls in hundreds, clearing the way with hand grenades; and the Irish giving way, there was a hot pursuit along the bridge, by which they sought to escape into the other half of the town. The crash and confusion there were such, that many of the flying Irish were trodden under foot, and others were forced over the parapets of the bridge, and perished in the Shannon. The near side of the town was in Ginkell's possession, with the loss of only twenty men killed and forty wounded.

The cannonade was continued on the bridge and on the town across the river, and the next day it was repeated with increased effect from batteries thrown up along the river bank. The next morning it was discovered that the mills were greatly damaged; one, indeed, had taken fire, and its little garrison of sixty men had perished in it. A great part of the fort had also been beaten down. The French officers had constructed a tÊte-de-pont at the end of the bridge to assist the fort, had broken down some of the arches, and made the conquest of a passage by the bridge next to impossible. To add to the difficulty of the enterprise, St. Ruth had hastened from Limerick with an army superior in numbers to that of Ginkell. But this force was more imposing in appearance than formidable in reality. St. Ruth, calculating on the difficulty of the passage, imagined that he could hold the place with little loss till the autumnal rains drove the English from the field through sickness. He therefore ordered D'Usson to attend to the defence of the passage, and fixed his camp about three miles from the town.

There was a weak spot, however, which was pointed out to Ginkell—a ford at some little distance from the bridge. It is true that a force was posted to guard this ford, commanded by Maxwell, an officer who had recently been to St. Germains with dispatches from the Duke of Berwick, and was put into command at this ford by Tyrconnel in defiance of St. Ruth—the interference of Tyrconnel in military affairs, much to the disgust of St. Ruth, being as constant as if he were commander-in-chief as well as lord-lieutenant. Sarsfield soon became aware of the design of Ginkell to attempt this ford, and warned St. Ruth of it. But the vanity of that officer made him treat the warning with scorn. "What!" said he, "attempt the ford; they dare not do it, and I so near." Warned again, he exclaimed, "Monsieur! Ginkell's master ought to hang him for attempting to take Athlone, and mine ought to hang me if I let him." Sarsfield, who knew better what the enemy dared do, said as he withdrew, "He does not know the English."

Ginkell himself, after reconnoitring the ford and the breastwork opposite, had no great desire for the attempt. He continued the cannonade on the fort and town till the end of June, and it became necessary, from the want of forage, to advance or retreat. A council of war was called. Mackay was against the attempt, but WÜrtemberg, Talmash, and Ruvigny were for it, and Ginkell, though hesitatingly, consented. There was observed a degree of carelessness in the Irish soldiers guarding the ford; there had been a rumour in their camp that the English were about to retreat in despair, and the light-hearted Hibernians had begun to relax their vigilance, and to gamble and idle about. It was resolved to seize the opportunity and dash over at once. Fifteen hundred grenadiers were selected for the service, and a handsome present was distributed to each man. The Duke of WÜrtemberg, Talmash, and a number of other officers volunteered to accompany them as privates, and the spirits of the men rose to enthusiasm. In memory of the auspicious day at the Boyne they stuck each a green twig in their hats, and, locking their arms twenty abreast, they plunged into the stream. In their ardour they lifted up the Duke of WÜrtemberg and bore him on their shoulders. Six battalions were drawn up ready to support them, under the command of Mackay. The stream, even at the ford, was deep enough to reach their chins, and very strong; but the resolute men pressed on, and soon got firm footing, and, with a stunning shout, reached the other bank. The Irish, suddenly aroused to the danger, hurried to the bank, fired a single volley, and broke. The grenadiers the next moment were over the breastwork, and in full pursuit of the enemy. In a few minutes they had chased the guards from the head of the bridge; planks were thrown over the broken arches, and the troops, rushing over, enabled others to cross in rude pontoons; and in less than an hour the English were masters of the town, with the loss of only twelve men killed and about thirty wounded.

D'Usson made a vain attempt to regain the town; he was repelled with ruinous loss, and was himself thrown down by the flying rout and nearly trampled to death. St. Ruth, when he heard that the town was taken, exclaimed, "Taken! that is impossible, and I close at hand." But he found it no longer safe to be so close at hand. In the night, covered with shame at his folly and absurd confidence, he struck his tents, and made a hasty retreat towards Aghrim, where, encouraged by the natural strength of bogs and hills, he halted and entrenched himself. There was the fiercest bickering in the camp; the French party and the Irish charging each other with the misfortune. St. Ruth, to excuse himself, laid the blame on Maxwell, whose duty it was to guard the ford. Maxwell was not there to defend himself, for his soldiers fled faster than he, and he was made prisoner. But Tyrconnel, who had always supported Maxwell, protested that he had done his duty like a brave man, and had, along with himself, repeatedly warned St. Ruth of his temerity. The dispute rose so high that Tyrconnel quitted the camp, and retired to Limerick in high dudgeon.

Being relieved from the presence and interference of Tyrconnel, St. Ruth again resolved to fight. He was stung by the loss of reputation which he had sustained at Athlone, and by the reflection of its injurious impression at the Court of France. Sarsfield, one of those Cassandra-like counsellors who give the most prudent advice but are never listened to, attempted to dissuade him. He pointed out how far superior in discipline and bottom were the troops of Ginkell to those which he now commanded, and recommended a system of excursive warfare, which should harass and, by seizing favourable crises, defeat the English piecemeal. His words were lost on St. Ruth, who prepared for the approach of Ginkell by going amongst his soldiers personally to rouse their desire to reconquer their good name, and by sending the priests amongst them to stimulate them by religious motives. Ginkell did not let him wait long. As soon as he had settled the defences of Athlone, he pursued his march towards Aghrim.

On the 12th of July he came up with the army of St. Ruth, and found it very strongly posted. Before him was a morass of half a mile across; beyond the morass rose the hills round the old ruined castle of Aghrim, and at their feet, between them and the bog, the infantry were strongly entrenched, and supported by the cavalry posted commandingly on the slopes of the hills. Difficult as was the approach, it was recommended by Mackay to make an instant attack, whilst the spirits of the troops were high from the first sight of the enemy they had so lately beaten. The battle was determined on, though it was getting late in the afternoon. The infantry struck boldly into the red bog, and plunged on courageously, though often up to their waists in mud and water. Mackay led his horse against their right, and Eppinger's dragoons and Portland's horse advanced against their left. The cavalry found their way through the bogs very difficult; the Dutch and English dragoons met with a repulse in the pass of Urachree, and the infantry were in front of the enemy long before the cavalry could operate on the wings. The Irish infantry that day fought bravely. They poured a fierce fire into the English, and were well supported by the horse. The battle became desperate; the English fought their way into the entrenchments, and drove the Irish up one of the hills; but there they found two old Danish forts, the old castle of Aghrim, and every hedge and thicket lined with muskets. The contest was unequal, and the infantry found themselves at length driven back to the margin of the bog. Elated at the sight, St. Ruth exclaimed, "The day is ours! Now will we drive these English back to the gates of Dublin!"

But he was deceived. Talmash rallied the foot, and led them again to the conflict; and whilst the struggle was renewed and the day fast closing, St. Ruth perceived the horse of Mackay and Ruvigny, the English and Huguenot cavalry, approaching on the right. They came over but a few soldiers abreast, through a narrow track between the bogs; but they soon formed in a dense body, and St. Ruth rode off to encounter them and stop them from out-flanking his force. As he galloped up towards them, a cannon-shot carried off his head. The officers threw a cloak over his body to prevent his fall from disheartening his men. But the absence of command was soon felt. The English fought with fresh fury; and Sarsfield, who was in the rear with the reserve, waiting orders, did not advance till the Irish ranks were broken and all was over. The flight became general. The English horse pursued and hewed down the fugitives as long as they could see; and had not Sarsfield covered the miserable fugitives with his horse, scarcely a man of the infantry would have been left.

The English army camped for the night on the ground which had been occupied by the enemy. Nearly twenty thousand English and their allies entered the battle against something more than the same number of Irish and French. On the side of the English six hundred were killed and one thousand wounded. On the part of the Irish four thousand fell on the field, and nearly as many are said to have perished in the flight. The panic-stricken multitude, flinging their arms away, continued their flight, some of them to Limerick, and others to Galway, where D'Usson was now in command. Whole waggon-loads of muskets and other arms were picked up and purchased by Ginkell at a few pence apiece.

The English spent the next day in burying their own dead; but left the corpses of the Irish on the field, and marched forward to attack Galway. D'Usson, who had about two thousand five hundred men in Galway, made at first a show of resistance, calculating on the assistance of Baldearg O'Donnell. But O'Donnell, after endeavouring in vain to bargain for an earldom, consented to accept five hundred pounds a year and a commission in William's army. This unexpected event compelled D'Usson to surrender, on condition that he might march out and join the Irish army in its last place of retreat, Limerick.

Ginkell soon followed and invested the town. The last struggle for a monarch little worthy the cause of so much bloodshed was now to be fought out. At Limerick the Irish were to make their last stand for the possession of their native country. If they failed here, the Saxon remained absolute lord of their soil.

On the 14th of August the advanced guard of Ginkell's army appeared in sight of Limerick. On the same day Tyrconnel, who was in authority in this city, died of apoplexy, and D'Usson and Sarsfield were left in full command of the troops. A commission was produced, which appointed three lords-justices—Plowden, Fitton, and Nagle; but the city was in reality a military garrison, and the military ruled. There were fifteen thousand infantry in the town, and three or four thousand cavalry posted on the Clare side of the Shannon, communicating with the town on the island by the Thomond bridge. By this means communication was kept up with the country on that side, so that provisions might be brought in; and several cargoes of biscuits and other dry stores were imported from France. The country all around, however, had been so swept by successive forages, that it was difficult to collect any cattle or corn, and the stoutest hearts were little confident of being able to maintain a long defence.

Ginkell took possession of the Limerick side of the town, and reoccupied the ground before held by the besiegers. He commenced by erecting fresh batteries of far heavier cannon than William brought to bear on the city, and soon poured a fiery storm of balls and shells into it, which crashed in the roofs and laid whole streets desolate. At the same time a squadron of English men-of-war sailed up the Shannon, and closed access to the city or escape from it by water. The town, however, held out till the 22nd of September, when Ginkell, beginning to fear the rains and fevers of autumn, and that they might compel him to draw off, and thus continue the war to another year, determined to obtain possession of the bridge, and attack the cavalry on the other side. He therefore passed the river by a bridge of William's tin boats, and, assaulting the cavalry, put them to utter rout. They left their camp with many arms and much store of provisions, and fled with as much precipitation as they had done from Aghrim, scattering again the whole country with their arms. Ginkell next attacked the fort which defended the bridge, carried it and the bridge, and thus was able to invest the whole town. In the haste to draw up the movable part of the bridge nearest to the city, the soldiers retreating from the fort were shut out, and a terrible massacre was made of them on the bridge. Out of eight hundred men only one hundred and twenty escaped into Limerick.

This disaster broke the spirit of the Irish entirely. Even the stout-hearted Sarsfield was convinced that all was over, and it was resolved to capitulate. An armistice was agreed to. The Irish demanded that they should retain their property and their rights; that there should be perfect freedom for the Catholic worship, a Catholic priest for every parish, full enjoyment of all municipal privileges, and full capability to hold all civil and military offices. Ginkell refused these terms, but offered others so liberal that they were loudly condemned by the English, who were hungering after the estates of the Irish. He consented that all such soldiers as desired to continue in the service of James should be not only allowed to do so, but should be shipped to France in English vessels; that French vessels should be permitted to come up and return in safety; that all soldiers who were willing to enter William's service should be received, and that on taking the oath of allegiance all past offences should be overlooked, and they and all Irish subjects taking the oaths should retain their property, should not be sued for any damages or spoliation committed during the war, nor prosecuted for any treason, felony, or misdemeanour, but should, moreover, be capable of holding any office or practising any profession which they were capable of before the war. They were to be allowed to exercise their religion in peace as fully as in the reign of Charles II. It is to the disgrace of England that this part of the treaty should not have been kept.

These terms were accepted, and the treaty was signed on the 3rd of October, and thus terminated this war, which, in the vain endeavour to restore a worthless monarch, had turned Ireland into a desert and a charnel-house. When it came to the choice of the soldiers to which banner they would ally themselves, out of the fifteen thousand men, about ten thousand chose to follow the fortunes of James, and were shipped off with all speed, as they began to desert in great numbers. Many of those who actually embarked did it under a solemn assurance from Sarsfield that their wives and children should go with them; but, once having the men on board, this pledge was most cruelly broken, and the greatest part of the women and children were left in frantic misery on the shore. The scenes which took place on this occasion at Cork are described as amongst the most heartrending in history. But this agony once over, the country sank down into a condition of passive but gloomy quiet, which it required more than a century to dissipate. Whilst Scotland again and again was agitated by the endeavours to reinstate the expelled dynasty, Ireland remained passive; and it was not till the French Revolution scattered its volcanic fires through Europe that she once more began to shake the yoke on her galled neck. Yet during all this time a burning sense of her subjection glowed in her blood, and the name of the Luttrel who went over to the Saxon at the dividing day at Limerick, and received for his apostacy the estates of his absent brother, remained a term of execration amongst the Irish. Meanwhile the Irish regiments which went to France won a brilliant reputation in the wars of the Continent, and many of the officers rose to high position in France, in Spain, in Austria, and Prussia. Their descendants still rank with the nobility of those countries.