Many were
received
into the houses of friends and kinsmen.
Macaulay
On this occasion a proclamation was
put forth announcing in boastful language to the English people that
their rightful King had now signally refuted those slanderers who had
accused him of affecting zeal for religious liberty merely in order to
serve a turn. If he were at heart inclined to persecution, would he not
have persecuted the Irish Protestants? He did not want power. He did not
want provocation. Yet at Dublin, where the members of his Church were
the majority, as at Westminister, where they were a minority, he
had firmly adhered to the principles laid down in his much maligned
Declaration of Indulgence, [221] Unfortunately for him, the same wind
which carried his fair professions to England carried thither also
evidence that his professions were insincere. A single law, worthy of
Turgot or of Franklin, seemed ludicrously out of place in the midst of a
crowd of laws which would have disgraced Gardiner or Alva.
A necessary preliminary to the vast work of spoliation and slaughter
on which the legislators of Dublin were bent, was an Act annulling the
authority which the English Parliament, both as the supreme legislature
and as the supreme Court of Appeal, had hitherto exercised over
Ireland, [222] This Act was rapidly passed; and then followed, in quick
succession, confiscations and proscriptions on a gigantic scale. The
personal estates of absentees above the age of seventeen years were
transferred to the King. When lay property was thus invaded, it was not
likely that the endowments which had been, in contravention of every
sound principle, lavished on the Church of the minority would be spared.
To reduce those endowments, without prejudice to existing interests,
would have been a reform worthy of a good prince and of a good
parliament. But no such reform would satisfy the vindictive bigots who
sate at the King's Inns. By one sweeping Act, the greater part of the
tithe was transferred from the Protestant to the Roman Catholic
clergy; and the existing incumbents were left, without one farthing
of compensation, to die of hunger, [223] A Bill repealing the Act of
Settlement and transferring many thousands of square miles from Saxon to
Celtic landlords was brought in and carried by acclamation, [224]
Of legislation such as this it is impossible to speak too severely:
but for the legislators there are excuses which it is the duty of the
historian to notice. They acted unmercifully, unjustly, unwisely. But it
would be absurd to expect mercy, justice, or wisdom from a class of men
first abased by many years of oppression, and then maddened by the
joy of a sudden deliverance, and armed with irresistible power. The
representatives of the Irish nation were, with few exceptions, rude
and ignorant. They had lived in a state of constant irritation. With
aristocratical sentiments they had been in a servile position. With the
highest pride of blood, they had been exposed to daily affronts, such as
might well have roused the choler of the humblest plebeian. In sight of
the fields and castles which they regarded as their own, they had been
glad to be invited by a peasant to partake of his whey and his potatoes.
Those violent emotions of hatred and cupidity which the situation of the
native gentleman could scarcely fail to call forth appeared to him under
the specious guise of patriotism and piety. For his enemies were the
enemies of his nation; and the same tyranny which had robbed him of his
patrimony had robbed his Church of vast wealth bestowed on her by
the devotion of an earlier age. How was power likely to be used by
an uneducated and inexperienced man, agitated by strong desires and
resentments which he mistook for sacred duties? And, when two or three
hundred such men were brought together in one assembly, what was to be
expected but that the passions which each had long nursed in silence
would be at once matured into fearful vigour by the influence of
sympathy?
Between James and his parliament there was little in common, except
hatred of the Protestant religion. He was an Englishman. Superstition
had not utterly extinguished all national feeling in his mind; and he
could not but be displeased by the malevolence with which his Celtic
supporters regarded the race from which he sprang. The range of his
intellectual vision was small. Yet it was impossible that, having
reigned in England, and looking constantly forward to the day when he
should reign in England once more, he should not take a wider view of
politics than was taken by men who had no objects out of Ireland. The
few Irish Protestants who still adhered to him, and the British nobles,
both Protestant and Roman Catholic, who had followed him into exile,
implored him to restrain the violence of the rapacious and vindictive
senate which he had convoked. They with peculiar earnestness implored
him not to consent to the repeal of the Act of Settlement. On what
security, they asked, could any man invest his money or give a portion
to his children, if he could not rely on positive laws and on the
uninterrupted possession of many years? The military adventurers among
whom Cromwell portioned out the soil might perhaps be regarded as
wrongdoers. But how large a part of their estates had passed, by fair
purchase, into other hands! How much money had proprietors borrowed on
mortgage, on statute merchant, on statute staple! How many capitalists
had, trusting to legislative acts and to royal promises, come over
from England, and bought land in Ulster and Leinster, without the least
misgiving as to the title! What a sum had those capitalists expended,
during a quarter of a century, in building; draining, inclosing,
planting! The terms of the compromise which Charles the Second had
sanctioned might not be in all respects just. But was one injustice to
be redressed by committing another injustice more monstrous still? And
what effect was likely to be produced in England by the cry of thousands
of innocent English families whom an English king had doomed to ruin?
The complaints of such a body of sufferers might delay, might prevent,
the Restoration to which all loyal subjects were eagerly looking
forward; and, even if his Majesty should, in spite of those complaints,
be happily restored, he would to the end of his life feel the pernicious
effects of the injustice which evil advisers were now urging him to
commit. He would find that, in trying to quiet one set of malecontents,
he had created another. As surely as he yielded to the clamour raised at
Dublin for a repeal of the Act of Settlement, he would, from the day
on which he returned to Westminster, be assailed by as loud and
pertinacious a clamour for a repeal of that repeal. He could not but be
aware that no English Parliament, however loyal, would permit such laws
as were now passing through the Irish Parliament to stand. Had he made
up his mind to take the part of Ireland against the universal sense of
England? If so, to what could he look forward but another banishment
and another deposition? Or would he, when he had recovered the greater
kingdom, revoke the boors by which, in his distress, he had purchased
the help of the smaller? It might seem an insult to him even to suggest
that he could harbour the thought of such unprincely, of such unmanly,
perfidy. Yet what other course would be left to him? And was it not
better for him to refuse unreasonable concessions now than to retract
those concessions hereafter in a manner which must bring on him
reproaches insupportable to a noble mind? His situation was doubtless
embarrassing. Yet in this case, as in other cases, it would be found
that the path of justice was the path of wisdom, [225]
Though James had, in his speech at the opening of the session, declared
against the Act of Settlement, he felt that these arguments were
unanswerable. He held several conferences with the leading members of
the House of Commons, and earnestly recommended moderation. But his
exhortations irritated the passions which he wished to allay. Many of
the native gentry held high and violent language. It was impudent, they
said, to talk about the rights of purchasers. How could right spring out
of wrong? People who chose to buy property acquired by injustice must
take the consequences of their folly and cupidity. It was clear that the
Lower House was altogether impracticable. James had, four years
before, refused to make the smallest concession to the most obsequious
parliament that has ever sat in England; and it might have been expected
that the obstinacy, which he had never wanted when it was a vice, would
not have failed him now when it would have been a virtue. During a short
time he seemed determined to act justly. He even talked of dissolving
the parliament. The chiefs of the old Celtic families, on the
other hand, said publicly that, if he did not give them back their
inheritance, they would not fight for his. His very soldiers railed on
him in the streets of Dublin. At length he determined to go down himself
to the House of Peers, not in his robes and crown, but in the garb in
which he had been used to attend debates at Westminster, and personally
to solicit the Lords to put some check on the violence of the Commons.
But just as he was getting into his coach for this purpose he was
stopped by Avaux. Avaux was as zealous as any Irishman for the bills
which the Commons were urging forward. It was enough for him that those
bills seemed likely to make the enmity between England and Ireland
irreconcileable. His remonstrances induced James to abstain from openly
opposing the repeal of the Act of Settlement. Still the unfortunate
prince continued to cherish some faint hope that the law for which the
Commons were so zealous would be rejected, or at least modified, by the
Peers. Lord Granard, one of the few Protestant noblemen who sate in that
parliament, exerted himself strenuously on the side of public faith and
sound policy. The King sent him a message of thanks. "We Protestants,"
said Granard to Powis who brought the message, "are few in number.
We can do little. His Majesty should try his influence with the Roman
Catholics. " "His Majesty," answered Powis with an oath, "dares not say
what he thinks. " A few days later James met Granard riding towards the
parliament house. "Where are you going, my Lord? " said the King. "To
enter my protest, Sir," answered Granard, "against the repeal of the Act
of Settlement. " "You are right," said the King: "but I am fallen into
the hands of people who will ram that and much more down my throat. "
[226]
James yielded to the will of the Commons; but the unfavourable
impression which his short and feeble resistance had made upon them was
not to be removed by his submission. They regarded him with profound
distrust; they considered him as at heart an Englishman; and not a day
passed without some indication of this feeling. They were in no haste to
grant him a supply. One party among them planned an address urging him
to dismiss Melfort as an enemy of their nation. Another party drew up
a bill for deposing all the Protestant Bishops, even the four who were
then actually sitting in Parliament. It was not without difficulty that
Avaux and Tyrconnel, whose influence in the Lower House far exceeded the
King's, could restrain the zeal of the majority, [227]
It is remarkable that, while the King was losing the confidence and
good will of the Irish Commons by faintly defending against them, in
one quarter, the institution of property, he was himself, in another
quarter, attacking that institution with a violence, if possible,
more reckless than theirs. He soon found that no money came into his
Exchequer. The cause was sufficiently obvious. Trade was at an end.
Floating capital had been withdrawn in great masses from the island. Of
the fixed capital much had been destroyed, and the rest was lying
idle. Thousands of those Protestants who were the most industrious and
intelligent part of the population had emigrated to England. Thousands
had taken refuge in the places which still held out for William and
Mary. Of the Roman Catholic peasantry who were in the vigour of life the
majority had enlisted in the army or had joined gangs of plunderers. The
poverty of the treasury was the necessary effect of the poverty of the
country: public prosperity could be restored only by the restoration
of private prosperity; and private prosperity could be restored only
by years of peace and security. James was absurd enough to imagine that
there was a more speedy and efficacious remedy. He could, he conceived,
at once extricate himself from his financial difficulties by the simple
process of calling a farthing a shilling. The right of coining was
undoubtedly a flower of the prerogative; and, in his view, the right of
coining included the right of debasing the coin. Pots, pans, knockers of
doors, pieces of ordnance which had long been past use, were carried to
the mint. In a short time lumps of base metal, nominally worth near a
million sterling, intrinsically worth about a sixtieth part of that sum,
were in circulation. A royal edict declared these pieces to be legal
tender in all cases whatever. A mortgage for a thousand pounds was
cleared off by a bag of counters made out of old kettles. The creditors
who complained to the Court of Chancery were told by Fitton to take
their money and be gone. But of all classes the tradesmen of Dublin,
who were generally Protestants, were the greatest losers. At first, of
course, they raised their demands: but the magistrates of the city took
on themselves to meet this heretical machination by putting forth a
tariff regulating prices. Any man who belonged to the caste now
dominant might walk into a shop, lay on the counter a bit of brass worth
threepence, and carry off goods to the value of half a guinea. Legal
redress was out of the question. Indeed the sufferers thought themselves
happy if, by the sacrifice of their stock in trade, they could redeem
their limbs and their lives. There was not a baker's shop in the city
round which twenty or thirty soldiers were not constantly prowling. Some
persons who refused the base money were arrested by troopers and carried
before the Provost Marshal, who cursed them, swore at them, locked them
up in dark cells, and, by threatening to hang them at their own doors,
soon overcame their resistance. Of all the plagues of that time
none made a deeper or a more lasting impression on the minds of the
Protestants of Dublin than the plague of the brass money, [228] To the
recollection of the confusion and misery which had been produced by
James's coin must be in part ascribed the strenuous opposition which,
thirty-five years later, large classes, firmly attached to the House of
Hanover, offered to the government of George the First in the affair of
Wood's patent.
There can be no question that James, in thus altering, by his own
authority, the terms of all the contracts in the kingdom, assumed a
power which belonged only to the whole legislature. Yet the Commons did
not remonstrate. There was no power, however unconstitutional, which
they were not willing to concede to him, as long as he used it to crush
and plunder the English population. On the other hand, they respected no
prerogative, however ancient, however legitimate, however salutary, if
they apprehended that he might use it to protect the race which they
abhorred. They were not satisfied till they had extorted his reluctant
consent to a portentous law, a law without a parallel in the history of
civilised countries, the great Act of Attainder.
A list was framed containing between two and three thousand names. At
the top was half the peerage of Ireland. Then came baronets, knights,
clergymen, squires, merchants, yeomen, artisans, women, children.
No investigation was made. Any member who wished to rid himself of a
creditor, a rival, a private enemy, gave in the name to the clerk at the
table, and it was generally inserted without discussion. The only
debate of which any account has come down to us related to the Earl of
Strafford. He had friends in the House who ventured to offer something
in his favour. But a few words from Simon Luttrell settled the question.
"I have," he said, "heard the King say some hard things of that lord. "
This was thought sufficient, and the name of Strafford stands fifth in
the long table of the proscribed, [229]
Days were fixed before which those whose names were on the list
were required to surrender themselves to such justice as was then
administered to English Protestants in Dublin. If a proscribed person
was in Ireland, he must surrender himself by the tenth of August. If
he had left Ireland since the fifth of November 1688, he must surrender
himself by the first of September. If he had left Ireland before the
fifth of November 1688, he must surrender himself by the first of
October. If he failed to appear by the appointed day, he was to be
hanged, drawn, and quartered without a trial, and his property was to
be confiscated. It might be physically impossible for him to deliver
himself up within the time fixed by the Act. He might be bedridden.
He might be in the West Indies. He might be in prison. Indeed there
notoriously were such cases. Among the attainted Lords was Mountjoy. He
had been induced by the villany of Tyrconnel to trust himself at Saint
Germains: he had been thrown into the Bastile: he was still lying there;
and the Irish parliament was not ashamed to enact that, unless he could,
within a few weeks, make his escape from his cell, and present himself
at Dublin, he should be put to death, [230]
As it was not even pretended that there had been any inquiry into the
guilt of those who were thus proscribed, as not a single one among them
had been heard in his own defence, and as it was certain that it would
be physically impossible for many of them to surrender themselves
in time, it was clear that nothing but a large exercise of the royal
prerogative of mercy could prevent the perpetration of iniquities
so horrible that no precedent could be found for them even in the
lamentable history of the troubles of Ireland. The Commons therefore
determined that the royal prerogative of mercy should be limited.
Several regulations were devised for the purpose of making the passing
of pardons difficult and costly: and finally it was enacted that every
pardon granted by his Majesty, after the end of November 1689, to any of
the many hundreds of persons who had been sentenced to death without a
trial, should be absolutely void and of none effect. Sir Richard Nagle
came in state to the bar of the Lords and presented the bill with a
speech worthy of the occasion. "Many of the persons here attainted,"
said he, "have been proved traitors by such evidence as satisfies us. As
to the rest we have followed common fame. " [231]
With such reckless barbarity was the list framed that fanatical
royalists, who were, at that very time, hazarding their property,
their liberty, their lives, in the cause of James, were not secure from
proscription. The most learned man of whom the Jacobite party could
boast was Henry Dodwell, Camdenian Professor in the University of
Oxford. In the cause of hereditary monarchy he shrank from no sacrifice
and from no danger. It was about him that William uttered those
memorable words: "He has set his heart on being a martyr; and I have set
my mind on disappointing him. " But James was more cruel to friends
than William to foes. Dodwell was a Protestant: he had some property in
Connaught: these crimes were sufficient; and he was set down in the long
roll of those who were doomed to the gallows and the quartering block,
[232]
That James would give his assent to a bill which took from him the power
of pardoning, seemed to many persons impossible. He had, four years
before, quarrelled with the most loyal of parliaments rather than cede
a prerogative which did not belong to him. It might, therefore, well
be expected that he would now have struggled hard to retain a precious
prerogative which had been enjoyed by his predecessors ever since the
origin of the monarchy, and which had never been questioned by the
Whigs. The stern look and raised voice with which he had reprimanded the
Tory gentlemen, who, in the language of profound reverence and fervent
affection, implored him not to dispense with the laws, would now have
been in place. He might also have seen that the right course was the
wise course. Had he, on this great occasion, had the spirit to declare
that he would not shed the blood of the innocent, and that, even as
respected the guilty, he would not divest himself of the power of
tempering judgment with mercy, he would have regained more hearts in
England than he would have lost in Ireland. But it was ever his fate to
resist where he should have yielded, and to yield where he should have
resisted. The most wicked of all laws received his sanction; and it is
but a very small extenuation of his guilt that his sanction was somewhat
reluctantly given.
That nothing might be wanting to the completeness of this great crime,
extreme care was taken to prevent the persons who were attainted from
knowing that they were attainted, till the day of grace fixed in the
Act was passed. The roll of names was not published, but kept carefully
locked up in Fitton's closet. Some Protestants, who still adhered to
the cause of James, but who were anxious to know whether any of their
friends or relations had been proscribed, tried hard to obtain a sight
of the list; but solicitation, remonstrance, even bribery, proved
vain. Not a single copy got abroad till it was too late for any of the
thousands who had been condemned without a trial to obtain a pardon,
[233]
Towards the close of July James prorogued the Houses. They had sate more
than ten weeks; and in that space of time they had proved most fully
that, great as have been the evils which Protestant ascendency has
produced in Ireland, the evils produced by Popish ascendancy would have
been greater still. That the colonists, when they had won the victory,
grossly abused it, that their legislation was, during many years, unjust
and tyrannical, is most true. But it is not less true that they never
quite came up to the atrocious example set by their vanquished enemy
during his short tenure of power.
Indeed, while James was loudly boasting that he had passed an Act
granting entire liberty of conscience to all sects, a persecution as
cruel as that of Languedoc was raging through all the provinces which
owned his authority. It was said by those who wished to find an excuse
for him that almost all the Protestants who still remained in Munster,
Connaught, and Leinster were his enemies, and that it was not as
schismatics, but as rebels in heart, who wanted only opportunity
to become rebels in act, that he gave them up to be oppressed and
despoiled; and to this excuse some weight might have been allowed if
he had strenuously exerted himself to protect those few colonists, who,
though firmly attached to the reformed religion, were still true to the
doctrines of nonresistance and of indefeasible hereditary right. But
even these devoted royalists found that their heresy was in his view
a crime for which no services or sacrifices would atone. Three or
four noblemen, members of the Anglican Church, who had welcomed him to
Ireland, and had sate in his Parliament, represented to him that, if the
rule which forbade any Protestant to possess any weapon were strictly
enforced, their country houses would be at the mercy of the Rapparees,
and obtained from him permission to keep arms sufficient for a few
servants. But Avaux remonstrated. The indulgence, he said, was grossly
abused: these Protestant lords were not to be trusted: they were turning
their houses into fortresses: his Majesty would soon have reason to
repent his goodness. These representations prevailed; and Roman Catholic
troops were quartered in the suspected dwellings, [234]
Still harder was the lot of those Protestant clergymen who continued to
cling, with desperate fidelity, to the cause of the Lord's Anointed. Of
all the Anglican divines the one who had the largest share of James's
good graces seems to have been Cartwright. Whether Cartwright could
long have continued to be a favourite without being an apostate may
be doubted. He died a few weeks after his arrival in Ireland; and
thenceforward his church had no one to plead her cause. Nevertheless a
few of her prelates and priests continued for a time to teach what they
had taught in the days of the Exclusion Bill. But it was at the peril
of life or limb that they exercised their functions. Every wearer of
a cassock was a mark for the insults and outrages of soldiers and
Rapparees. In the country his house was robbed, and he was fortunate if
it was not burned over his head. He was hunted through the streets of
Dublin with cries of "There goes the devil of a heretic. " Sometimes he
was knocked down: sometimes he was cudgelled, [235] The rulers of
the University of Dublin, trained in the Anglican doctrine of passive
obedience, had greeted James on his first arrival at the Castle, and had
been assured by him that he would protect them in the enjoyment of their
property and their privileges. They were now, without any trial, without
any accusation, thrust out of their house. The communion plate of
the chapel, the books in the library, the very chairs and beds of the
collegians were seized. Part of the building was turned into a magazine,
part into a barrack, part into a prison. Simon Luttrell, who was
Governor of the capital, was, with great difficulty and by powerful
intercession, induced to let the ejected fellows and scholars depart
in safety. He at length permitted them to remain at large, with
this condition, that, on pain of death, no three of them should meet
together, [236] No Protestant divine suffered more hardships than Doctor
William King, Dean of Saint Patrick's. He had been long distinguished by
the fervour with which he had inculcated the duty of passively obeying
even the worst rulers. At a later period, when he had published a
defence of the Revolution, and had accepted a mitre from the new
government, he was reminded that he had invoked the divine vengeance on
the usurpers, and had declared himself willing to die a hundred deaths
rather than desert the cause of hereditary right. He had said that the
true religion had often been strengthened by persecution, but could
never be strengthened by rebellion; that it would be a glorious day for
the Church of England when a whole cartload of her ministers should go
to the gallows for the doctrine of nonresistance; and that his highest
ambition was to be one of such a company, [237] It is not improbable
that, when he spoke thus, he felt as he spoke. But his principles,
though they might perhaps have held out against the severities and the
promises of William, were not proof against the ingratitude of James.
Human nature at last asserted its rights. After King had been repeatedly
imprisoned by the government to which he was devotedly attached, after
he had been insulted and threatened in his own choir by the soldiers,
after he had been interdicted from burying in his own churchyard, and
from preaching in his own pulpit, after he had narrowly escaped with
life from a musketshot fired at him in the street, he began to think the
Whig theory of government less unreasonable and unchristian than it had
once appeared to him, and persuaded himself that the oppressed Church
might lawfully accept deliverance, if God should be pleased, by whatever
means, to send it to her.
In no long time it appeared that James would have done well to hearken
to those counsellors who had told him that the acts by which he was
trying to make himself popular in one of his three kingdoms, would make
him odious in the others. It was in some sense fortunate for England
that, after he had ceased to reign here, he continued during more than a
year to reign in Ireland. The Revolution had been followed by a reaction
of public feeling in his favour. That reaction, if it had been suffered
to proceed uninterrupted, might perhaps not have ceased till he was
again King: but it was violently interrupted by himself. He would not
suffer his people to forget: he would not suffer them to hope: while
they were trying to find excuses for his past errors, and to persuade
themselves that he would not repeat these errors, he forced upon them,
in their own despite, the conviction that he was incorrigible, that the
sharpest discipline of adversity had taught him nothing, and that, if
they were weak enough to recall him, they would soon have to depose him
again. It was in vain that the Jacobites put forth pamphlets about the
cruelty with which he had been treated by those who were nearest to him
in blood, about the imperious temper and uncourteous manners of William,
about the favour shown to the Dutch, about the heavy taxes, about the
suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, about the dangers which threatened
the Church from the enmity of Puritans and Latitudinarians. James
refuted these pamphlets far more effectually than all the ablest and
most eloquent Whig writers united could have done. Every week came
the news that he had passed some new Act for robbing or murdering
Protestants. Every colonist who succeeded in stealing across the sea
from Leinster to Holyhead or Bristol, brought fearful reports of the
tyranny under which his brethren groaned. What impression these reports
made on the Protestants of our island may be easily inferred from the
fact that they moved the indignation of Ronquillo, a Spaniard and a
bigoted member of the Church of Rome. He informed his Court that, though
the English laws against Popery might seem severe, they were so much
mitigated by the prudence and humanity of the Government, that they
caused no annoyance to quiet people; and he took upon himself to assure
the Holy See that what a Roman Catholic suffered in London was nothing
when compared with what a Protestant suffered in Ireland, [238]
The fugitive Englishry found in England warm sympathy and munificent
relief.
Many were received into the houses of friends and kinsmen.
Many were indebted for the means of subsistence to the liberality of
strangers. Among those who bore a part in this work of mercy, none
contributed more largely or less ostentatiously than the Queen. The
House of Commons placed at the King's disposal fifteen thousand pounds
for the relief of those refugees whose wants were most pressing,
and requested him to give commissions in the army to those who were
qualified for military employment, [239] An Act was also passed enabling
beneficed clergymen who had fled from Ireland to hold preferment
in England, [240] Yet the interest which the nation felt in these
unfortunate guests was languid when compared with the interest excited
by that portion of the Saxon colony which still maintained in Ulster a
desperate conflict against overwhelming odds. On this subject scarcely
one dissentient voice was to be heard in our island. Whigs, Tories,
nay even those Jacobites in whom Jacobitism had not extinguished
every patriotic sentiment, gloried in the glory of Enniskillen and
Londonderry. The House of Commons was all of one mind. "This is no time
to be counting cost," said honest Birch, who well remembered the way
in which Oliver had made war on the Irish. "Are those brave fellows in
Londonderry to be deserted? If we lose them will not all the world cry
shame upon us? A boom across the river! Why have we not cut the boom in
pieces? Are our brethren to perish almost in sight of England, within a
few hours' voyage of our shores? " [241] Howe, the most vehement man of
one party, declared that the hearts of the people were set on Ireland.
Seymour, the leader of the other party, declared that, though he had not
taken part in setting up the new government, he should cordially support
it in all that might be necessary for the preservation of Ireland,
[242] The Commons appointed a committee to enquire into the cause of the
delays and miscarriages which had been all but fatal to the Englishry of
Ulster. The officers to whose treachery or cowardice the public ascribed
the calamities of Londonderry were put under arrest. Lundy was sent to
the Tower, Cunningham to the Gate House. The agitation of the public
mind was in some degree calmed by the announcement that, before the
end of the summer, an army powerful enough to reestablish the English
ascendency in Ireland would be sent across Saint George's Channel, and
that Schomberg would be the General. In the meantime an expedition
which was thought to be sufficient for the relief of Londonderry
was despatched from Liverpool under the command of Kirke. The dogged
obstinacy with which this man had, in spite of royal solicitations,
adhered to his religion, and the part which he had taken in the
Revolution, had perhaps entitled him to an amnesty for past crimes. But
it is difficult to understand why the Government should have selected
for a post of the highest importance an officer who was generally and
justly hated, who had never shown eminent talents for war, and who, both
in Africa and in England, had notoriously tolerated among his soldiers
a licentiousness, not only shocking to humanity, but also incompatible
with discipline.
On the sixteenth of May, Kirke's troops embarked: on the twenty-second
they sailed: but contrary winds made the passage slow, and forced the
armament to stop long at the Isle of Man. Meanwhile the Protestants of
Ulster were defending themselves with stubborn courage against a great
superiority of force. The Enniskilleners had never ceased to wage a
vigorous partisan war against the native population. Early in May they
marched to encounter a large body of troops from Connaught, who had
made an inroad into Donegal. The Irish were speedily routed, and fled to
Sligo with the loss of a hundred and twenty men killed and sixty taken.
Two small pieces of artillery and several horses fell into the hands of
the conquerors. Elated by this success, the Enniskilleners soon invaded
the county of Cavan, drove before them fifteen hundred of James's
troops, took and destroyed the castle of Ballincarrig, reputed the
strongest in that part of the kingdom, and carried off the pikes and
muskets of the garrison. The next incursion was into Meath. Three
thousand oxen and two thousand sheep were swept away and brought safe
to the little island in Lough Erne. These daring exploits spread terror
even to the gates of Dublin. Colonel Hugh Sutherland was ordered to
march against Enniskillen with a regiment of dragoons and two regiments
of foot. He carried with him arms for the native peasantry; and many
repaired to his standard. The Enniskilleners did not wait till he came
into their neighbourhood, but advanced to encounter him. He declined an
action, and retreated, leaving his stores at Belturbet under the care
of a detachment of three hundred soldiers. The Protestants attacked
Belturbet with vigour, made their way into a lofty house which
overlooked the town, and thence opened such a fire that in two hours the
garrison surrendered. Seven hundred muskets, a great quantity of powder,
many horses, many sacks of biscuits, many barrels of meal, were taken,
and were sent to Enniskillen. The boats which brought these precious
spoils were joyfully welcomed. The fear of hunger was removed. While the
aboriginal population had, in many counties, altogether neglected the
cultivation of the earth, in the expectation, it should seem, that
marauding would prove an inexhaustible resource, the colonists, true to
the provident and industrious character of their race, had, in the midst
of war, not omitted carefully to till the soil in the neighbourhood of
their strongholds. The harvest was now not far remote; and, till the
harvest, the food taken from the enemy would be amply sufficient, [243]
Yet, in the midst of success and plenty, the Enniskilleners were
tortured by a cruel anxiety for Londonderry. They were bound to the
defenders of that city, not only by religious and national sympathy,
but by common interest. For there could be no doubt that, if Londonderry
fell, the whole Irish army would instantly march in irresistible force
upon Lough Erne. Yet what could be done? Some brave men were for making
a desperate attempt to relieve the besieged city; but the odds were
too great. Detachments however were sent which infested the rear of the
blockading army, cut off supplies, and, on one occasion, carried away
the horses of three entire troops of cavalry, [244] Still the line of
posts which surrounded Londonderry by land remained unbroken. The river
was still strictly closed and guarded. Within the walls the distress had
become extreme. So early as the eighth of June horseflesh was almost
the only meat which could be purchased; and of horseflesh the supply was
scanty. It was necessary to make up the deficiency with tallow; and even
tallow was doled out with a parsimonious hand.
On the fifteenth of June a gleam of hope appeared. The sentinels on the
top of the Cathedral saw sails nine miles off in the bay of Lough Foyle.
Thirty vessels of different sizes were counted. Signals were made from
the steeples and returned from the mast heads, but were imperfectly
understood on both sides. At last a messenger from the fleet eluded the
Irish sentinels, dived under the boom, and informed the garrison that
Kirke had arrived from England with troops, arms, ammunition, and
provisions, to relieve the city, [245]
In Londonderry expectation was at the height: but a few hours of
feverish joy were followed by weeks of misery. Kirke thought it unsafe
to make any attempt, either by land or by water, on the lines of the
besiegers, and retired to the entrance of Lough Foyle, where, during
several weeks, he lay inactive.
And now the pressure of famine became every day more severe. A strict
search was made in all the recesses of all the houses of the city; and
some provisions, which had been concealed in cellars by people who had
since died or made their escape, were discovered and carried to the
magazines. The stock of cannon balls was almost exhausted; and their
place was supplied by brickbats coated with lead. Pestilence began, as
usual, to make its appearance in the train of hunger. Fifteen officers
died of fever in one day. The Governor Baker was among those who sank
under the disease. His place was supplied by Colonel John Mitchelburne,
[246]
Meanwhile it was known at Dublin that Kirke and his squadron were on
the coast of Ulster. The alarm was great at the Castle. Even before this
news arrived, Avaux had given it as his opinion that Richard Hamilton
was unequal to the difficulties of the situation. It had therefore been
resolved that Rosen should take the chief command. He was now sent down
with all speed, [247]
On the nineteenth of June he arrived at the head quarter of the
besieging army. At first he attempted to undermine the walls; but his
plan was discovered; and he was compelled to abandon it after a sharp
fight, in which more than a hundred of his men were slain. Then his
fury rose to a strange pitch. He, an old soldier, a Marshal of France in
expectancy, trained in the school of the greatest generals, accustomed,
during many years, to scientific war, to be baffled by a mob of country
gentlemen, farmers, shopkeepers, who were protected only by a wall which
any good engineer would at once have pronounced untenable! He raved, he
blasphemed, in a language of his own, made up of all the dialects spoken
from the Baltic to the Atlantic. He would raze the city to the ground:
he would spare no living thing; no, not the young girls; not the babies
at the breast. As to the leaders, death was too light a punishment for
them: he would rack them: he would roast them alive. In his rage he
ordered a shell to be flung into the town with a letter containing
a horrible menace. He would, he said, gather into one body all the
Protestants who had remained at their homes between Charlemont and the
sea, old men, women, children, many of them near in blood and affection
to the defenders of Londonderry. No protection, whatever might be the
authority by which it had been given, should be respected. The multitude
thus brought together should be driven under the walls of Londonderry,
and should there be starved to death in the sight of their countrymen,
their friends, their kinsmen. This was no idle threat. Parties were
instantly sent out in all directions to collect victims. At dawn, on the
morning of the second of July, hundreds of Protestants, who were charged
with no crime, who were incapable of bearing arms, and many of whom had
protections granted by James, were dragged to the gates of the city.
It was imagined that the piteous sight would quell the spirit of the
colonists. But the only effect was to rouse that spirit to still greater
energy. An order was immediately put forth that no man should utter the
word Surrender on pain of death; and no man uttered that word. Several
prisoners of high rank were in the town. Hitherto they had been well
treated, and had received as good rations as were measured out to the
garrison. They were now, closely confined. A gallows was erected on one
of the bastion; and a message was conveyed to Rosen, requesting him
to send a confessor instantly to prepare his friends for death. The
prisoners in great dismay wrote to the savage Livonian, but received
no answer. They then addressed themselves to their countryman, Richard
Hamilton. They were willing, they said, to shed their blood for their
King; but they thought it hard to die the ignominious death of thieves
in consequence of the barbarity of their own companions in arms.
Hamilton, though a man of lax principles, was not cruel. He had been
disgusted by the inhumanity of Rosen, but, being only second in command,
could not venture to express publicly all that he thought. He however
remonstrated strongly. Some Irish officers felt on this occasion as it
was natural that brave men should feel, and declared, weeping with pity
and indignation, that they should never cease to have in their ears the
cries of the poor women and children who had been driven at the point of
the pike to die of famine between the camp and the city. Rosen persisted
during forty-eight hours. In that time many unhappy creatures perished:
but Londonderry held out as resolutely as ever; and he saw that his
crime was likely to produce nothing but hatred and obloquy. He at length
gave way, and suffered the survivors to withdraw. The garrison then took
down the gallows which had been erected on the bastion, [248]
When the tidings of these events reached Dublin, James, though by no
means prone to compassion, was startled by an atrocity of which the
civil wars of England had furnished no example, and was displeased by
learning that protections, given by his authority, and guaranteed by his
honour, had been publicly declared to be nullities. He complained to
the French ambassador, and said, with a warmth which the occasion fully
justified, that Rosen was a barbarous Muscovite. Melfort could not
refrain from adding that, if Rosen had been an Englishman, he would
have been hanged. Avaux was utterly unable to understand this effeminate
sensibility. In his opinion, nothing had been done that was at all
reprehensible; and he had some difficulty in commanding himself when he
heard the King and the secretary blame, in strong language, an act of
wholesome severity, [249] In truth the French ambassador and the French
general were well paired. There was a great difference doubtless, in
appearance and manner, between the handsome, graceful, and refined
diplomatist, whose dexterity and suavity had been renowned at the most
polite courts of Europe, and the military adventurer, whose look and
voice reminded all who came near him that he had been born in a half
savage country, that he had risen from the ranks, and that he had once
been sentenced to death for marauding. But the heart of the courtier was
really even more callous than that of the soldier.
Rosen was recalled to Dublin; and Richard Hamilton was again left in the
chief command. He tried gentler means than those which had brought so
much reproach on his predecessor. No trick, no lie, which was thought
likely to discourage the starving garrison was spared. One day a great
shout was raised by the whole Irish camp. The defenders of Londonderry
were soon informed that the army of James was rejoicing on account of
the fall of Enniskillen. They were told that they had now no chance of
being relieved, and were exhorted to save their lives by capitulating.
They consented to negotiate. But what they asked was, that they should
be permitted to depart armed and in military array, by land or by water
at their choice. They demanded hostages for the exact fulfilment of
these conditions, and insisted that the hostages should be sent on board
of the fleet which lay in Lough Foyle. Such terms Hamilton durst not
grant: the Governors would abate nothing: the treaty was broken off; and
the conflict recommenced, [250]
By this time July was far advanced; and the state of the city was, hour
by hour, becoming more frightful. The number of the inhabitants had been
thinned more by famine and disease than by the fire of the enemy. Yet
that fire was sharper and more constant than ever. One of the gates was
beaten in: one of the bastions was laid in ruins; but the breaches made
by day were repaired by night with indefatigable activity. Every attack
was still repelled. But the fighting men of the garrison were so much
exhausted that they could scarcely keep their legs. Several of them, in
the act of striking at the enemy, fell down from mere weakness. A very
small quantity of grain remained, and was doled out by mouthfuls. The
stock of salted hides was considerable, and by gnawing them the garrison
appeased the rage of hunger. Dogs, fattened on the blood of the slain
who lay unburied round the town, were luxuries which few could afford
to purchase. The price of a whelp's paw was five shillings and sixpence.
Nine horses were still alive, and but barely alive. They were so lean
that little meat was likely to be found upon them. It was, however,
determined to slaughter them for food. The people perished so fast that
it was impossible for the survivors to perform the rites of sepulture.
There was scarcely a cellar in which some corpse was not decaying. Such
was the extremity of distress, that the rats who came to feast in those
hideous dens were eagerly hunted and greedily devoured. A small fish,
caught in the river, was not to be purchased with money. The only
price for which such a treasure could be obtained was some handfuls of
oatmeal. Leprosies, such as strange and unwholesome diet engenders, made
existence a constant torment. The whole city was poisoned by the stench
exhaled from the bodies of the dead and of the half dead. That there
should be fits of discontent and insubordination among men enduring such
misery was inevitable. At one moment it was suspected that Walker had
laid up somewhere a secret store of food, and was revelling in private,
while he exhorted others to suffer resolutely for the good cause. His
house was strictly examined: his innocence was fully proved: he regained
his popularity; and the garrison, with death in near prospect, thronged
to the cathedral to hear him preach, drank in his earnest eloquence with
delight, and went forth from the house of God with haggard faces and
tottering steps, but with spirit still unsubdued. There were, indeed,
some secret plottings. A very few obscure traitors opened communications
with the enemy. But it was necessary that all such dealings should be
carefully concealed. None dared to utter publicly any words save words
of defiance and stubborn resolution. Even in that extremity the general
cry was "No surrender. " And there were not wanting voices which, in low
tones, added, "First the horses and hides; and then the prisoners;
and then each other. " It was afterwards related, half in jest, yet not
without a horrible mixture of earnest, that a corpulent citizen, whose
bulk presented a strange contrast to the skeletons which surrounded him,
thought it expedient to conceal himself from the numerous eyes which
followed him with cannibal looks whenever he appeared in the streets,
[251]
It was no slight aggravation of the sufferings of the garrison that
all this time the English ships were seen far off in Lough Foyle.
Communication between the fleet and the city was almost impossible.
One diver who had attempted to pass the boom was drowned. Another
was hanged. The language of signals was hardly intelligible. On the
thirteenth of July, however, a piece of paper sewed up in a cloth
button came to Walker's hands. It was a letter from Kirke, and contained
assurances of speedy relief. But more than a fortnight of intense misery
had since elapsed; and the hearts of the most sanguine were sick with
deferred hope. By no art could the provisions which were left be made to
hold out two days more, [252]
Just at this time Kirke received a despatch from England, which
contained positive orders that Londonderry should be relieved. He
accordingly determined to make an attempt which, as far as appears, he
might have made, with at least an equally fair prospect of success, six
weeks earlier, [253]
Among the merchant ships which had come to Lough Foyle under his convoy
was one called the Mountjoy. The master, Micaiah Browning, a native of
Londonderry, had brought from England a large cargo of provisions. He
had, it is said, repeatedly remonstrated against the inaction of
the armament. He now eagerly volunteered to take the first risk of
succouring his fellow citizens; and his offer was accepted. Andrew
Douglas, master of the Phoenix, who had on board a great quantity of
meal from Scotland, was willing to share the danger and the honour.
The two merchantmen were to be escorted by the Dartmouth frigate of
thirty-six guns, commanded by Captain John Leake, afterwards an admiral
of great fame.
It was the thirtieth of July. The sun had just set: the evening
sermon in the cathedral was over; and the heartbroken congregation
had separated, when the sentinels on the tower saw the sails of three
vessels coming up the Foyle. Soon there was a stir in the Irish camp.
The besiegers were on the alert for miles along both shores. The ships
were in extreme peril: for the river was low; and the only navigable
channel Tan very near to the left bank, where the head quarters of the
enemy had been fixed, and where the batteries were most numerous.
Leake performed his duty with a skill and spirit worthy of his noble
profession, exposed his frigate to cover the merchantmen, and used his
guns with great effect. At length the little squadron came to the place
of peril. Then the Mountjoy took the lead, and went right at the bottom.
The huge barricade cracked and gave way: but the shock was such that the
Mountjoy rebounded, and stuck in the mud. A yell of triumph rose from
the banks: the Irish rushed to their boats, and were preparing to board;
but the Dartmouth poured on them a well directed broadside, which threw
them into disorder. Just then the Phoenix dashed at the breach which the
Mountjoy had made, and was in a moment within the fence. Meantime the
tide was rising fast. The Mountjoy began to move, and soon passed safe
through the broken stakes and floating spars. But her brave master was
no more. A shot from one of the batteries had struck him; and he died
by the most enviable of all deaths, in sight of the city which was his
birthplace, which was his home, and which had just been saved by his
courage and self-devotion from the most frightful form of destruction.
The night had closed in before the conflict at the boom began; but the
flash of the guns was seen, and the noise heard, by the lean and
ghastly multitude which covered the walls of the city. When the Mountjoy
grounded, and when the shout of triumph rose from the Irish on both
sides of the river, the hearts of the besieged died within them. One who
endured the unutterable anguish of that moment has told that they looked
fearfully livid in each other's eyes. Even after the barricade had been
passed, there was a terrible half hour of suspense. It was ten o'clock
before the ships arrived at the quay. The whole population was there
to welcome them. A screen made of casks filled with earth was hastily
thrown up to protect the landing place from the batteries on the other
side of the river; and then the work of unloading began. First were
rolled on shore barrels containing six thousand bushels of meal. Then
came great cheeses, casks of beef, flitches of bacon, kegs of butter,
sacks of Pease and biscuit, ankers of brandy. Not many hours before,
half a pound of tallow and three quarters of a pound of salted hide had
been weighed out with niggardly care to every fighting man. The ration
which each now received was three pounds of flour, two pounds of beef,
and a pint of Pease. It is easy to imagine with what tears grace was
said over the suppers of that evening. There was little sleep on either
side of the wall. The bonfires shone bright along the whole circuit of
the ramparts. The Irish guns continued to roar all night; and all night
the bells of the rescued city made answer to the Irish guns with a peal
of joyous defiance. Through the whole of the thirty-first of July the
batteries of the enemy continued to play. But, soon after the sun had
again gone down, flames were seen arising from the camp; and, when the
first of August dawned, a line of smoking ruins marked the site lately
occupied by the huts of the besiegers; and the citizens saw far off the
long column of pikes and standards retreating up the left bank of the
Foyle towards Strabane, [254]
So ended this great siege, the most memorable in the annals of the
British isles. It had lasted a hundred and five days. The garrison had
been reduced from about seven thousand effective men to about three
thousand. The loss of the besiegers cannot be precisely ascertained.
Walker estimated it at eight thousand men. It is certain from the
despatches of Avaux that the regiments which returned from the blockade
had been so much thinned that many of them were not more than two
hundred strong. Of thirty-six French gunners who had superintended the
cannonading, thirty-one had been killed or disabled, [255] The means
both of attack and of defence had undoubtedly been such as would have
moved the great warriors of the Continent to laughter; and this is the
very circumstance which gives so peculiar an interest to the history
of the contest. It was a contest, not between engineers, but between
nations; and the victory remained with the nation which, though inferior
in number, was superior in civilisation, in capacity for selfgovernment,
and in stubbornness of resolution, [256]
As soon as it was known that the Irish army had retired, a deputation
from the city hastened to Lough Foyle, and invited Kirk to take the
command. He came accompanied by a long train of officers, and was
received in state by the two Governors, who delivered up to him the
authority which, under the pressure of necessity, they had assumed.
He remained only a few days; but he had time to show enough of the
incurable vices of his character to disgust a population distinguished
by austere morals and ardent public spirit. There was, however, no
outbreak. The city was in the highest good humour.
put forth announcing in boastful language to the English people that
their rightful King had now signally refuted those slanderers who had
accused him of affecting zeal for religious liberty merely in order to
serve a turn. If he were at heart inclined to persecution, would he not
have persecuted the Irish Protestants? He did not want power. He did not
want provocation. Yet at Dublin, where the members of his Church were
the majority, as at Westminister, where they were a minority, he
had firmly adhered to the principles laid down in his much maligned
Declaration of Indulgence, [221] Unfortunately for him, the same wind
which carried his fair professions to England carried thither also
evidence that his professions were insincere. A single law, worthy of
Turgot or of Franklin, seemed ludicrously out of place in the midst of a
crowd of laws which would have disgraced Gardiner or Alva.
A necessary preliminary to the vast work of spoliation and slaughter
on which the legislators of Dublin were bent, was an Act annulling the
authority which the English Parliament, both as the supreme legislature
and as the supreme Court of Appeal, had hitherto exercised over
Ireland, [222] This Act was rapidly passed; and then followed, in quick
succession, confiscations and proscriptions on a gigantic scale. The
personal estates of absentees above the age of seventeen years were
transferred to the King. When lay property was thus invaded, it was not
likely that the endowments which had been, in contravention of every
sound principle, lavished on the Church of the minority would be spared.
To reduce those endowments, without prejudice to existing interests,
would have been a reform worthy of a good prince and of a good
parliament. But no such reform would satisfy the vindictive bigots who
sate at the King's Inns. By one sweeping Act, the greater part of the
tithe was transferred from the Protestant to the Roman Catholic
clergy; and the existing incumbents were left, without one farthing
of compensation, to die of hunger, [223] A Bill repealing the Act of
Settlement and transferring many thousands of square miles from Saxon to
Celtic landlords was brought in and carried by acclamation, [224]
Of legislation such as this it is impossible to speak too severely:
but for the legislators there are excuses which it is the duty of the
historian to notice. They acted unmercifully, unjustly, unwisely. But it
would be absurd to expect mercy, justice, or wisdom from a class of men
first abased by many years of oppression, and then maddened by the
joy of a sudden deliverance, and armed with irresistible power. The
representatives of the Irish nation were, with few exceptions, rude
and ignorant. They had lived in a state of constant irritation. With
aristocratical sentiments they had been in a servile position. With the
highest pride of blood, they had been exposed to daily affronts, such as
might well have roused the choler of the humblest plebeian. In sight of
the fields and castles which they regarded as their own, they had been
glad to be invited by a peasant to partake of his whey and his potatoes.
Those violent emotions of hatred and cupidity which the situation of the
native gentleman could scarcely fail to call forth appeared to him under
the specious guise of patriotism and piety. For his enemies were the
enemies of his nation; and the same tyranny which had robbed him of his
patrimony had robbed his Church of vast wealth bestowed on her by
the devotion of an earlier age. How was power likely to be used by
an uneducated and inexperienced man, agitated by strong desires and
resentments which he mistook for sacred duties? And, when two or three
hundred such men were brought together in one assembly, what was to be
expected but that the passions which each had long nursed in silence
would be at once matured into fearful vigour by the influence of
sympathy?
Between James and his parliament there was little in common, except
hatred of the Protestant religion. He was an Englishman. Superstition
had not utterly extinguished all national feeling in his mind; and he
could not but be displeased by the malevolence with which his Celtic
supporters regarded the race from which he sprang. The range of his
intellectual vision was small. Yet it was impossible that, having
reigned in England, and looking constantly forward to the day when he
should reign in England once more, he should not take a wider view of
politics than was taken by men who had no objects out of Ireland. The
few Irish Protestants who still adhered to him, and the British nobles,
both Protestant and Roman Catholic, who had followed him into exile,
implored him to restrain the violence of the rapacious and vindictive
senate which he had convoked. They with peculiar earnestness implored
him not to consent to the repeal of the Act of Settlement. On what
security, they asked, could any man invest his money or give a portion
to his children, if he could not rely on positive laws and on the
uninterrupted possession of many years? The military adventurers among
whom Cromwell portioned out the soil might perhaps be regarded as
wrongdoers. But how large a part of their estates had passed, by fair
purchase, into other hands! How much money had proprietors borrowed on
mortgage, on statute merchant, on statute staple! How many capitalists
had, trusting to legislative acts and to royal promises, come over
from England, and bought land in Ulster and Leinster, without the least
misgiving as to the title! What a sum had those capitalists expended,
during a quarter of a century, in building; draining, inclosing,
planting! The terms of the compromise which Charles the Second had
sanctioned might not be in all respects just. But was one injustice to
be redressed by committing another injustice more monstrous still? And
what effect was likely to be produced in England by the cry of thousands
of innocent English families whom an English king had doomed to ruin?
The complaints of such a body of sufferers might delay, might prevent,
the Restoration to which all loyal subjects were eagerly looking
forward; and, even if his Majesty should, in spite of those complaints,
be happily restored, he would to the end of his life feel the pernicious
effects of the injustice which evil advisers were now urging him to
commit. He would find that, in trying to quiet one set of malecontents,
he had created another. As surely as he yielded to the clamour raised at
Dublin for a repeal of the Act of Settlement, he would, from the day
on which he returned to Westminster, be assailed by as loud and
pertinacious a clamour for a repeal of that repeal. He could not but be
aware that no English Parliament, however loyal, would permit such laws
as were now passing through the Irish Parliament to stand. Had he made
up his mind to take the part of Ireland against the universal sense of
England? If so, to what could he look forward but another banishment
and another deposition? Or would he, when he had recovered the greater
kingdom, revoke the boors by which, in his distress, he had purchased
the help of the smaller? It might seem an insult to him even to suggest
that he could harbour the thought of such unprincely, of such unmanly,
perfidy. Yet what other course would be left to him? And was it not
better for him to refuse unreasonable concessions now than to retract
those concessions hereafter in a manner which must bring on him
reproaches insupportable to a noble mind? His situation was doubtless
embarrassing. Yet in this case, as in other cases, it would be found
that the path of justice was the path of wisdom, [225]
Though James had, in his speech at the opening of the session, declared
against the Act of Settlement, he felt that these arguments were
unanswerable. He held several conferences with the leading members of
the House of Commons, and earnestly recommended moderation. But his
exhortations irritated the passions which he wished to allay. Many of
the native gentry held high and violent language. It was impudent, they
said, to talk about the rights of purchasers. How could right spring out
of wrong? People who chose to buy property acquired by injustice must
take the consequences of their folly and cupidity. It was clear that the
Lower House was altogether impracticable. James had, four years
before, refused to make the smallest concession to the most obsequious
parliament that has ever sat in England; and it might have been expected
that the obstinacy, which he had never wanted when it was a vice, would
not have failed him now when it would have been a virtue. During a short
time he seemed determined to act justly. He even talked of dissolving
the parliament. The chiefs of the old Celtic families, on the
other hand, said publicly that, if he did not give them back their
inheritance, they would not fight for his. His very soldiers railed on
him in the streets of Dublin. At length he determined to go down himself
to the House of Peers, not in his robes and crown, but in the garb in
which he had been used to attend debates at Westminster, and personally
to solicit the Lords to put some check on the violence of the Commons.
But just as he was getting into his coach for this purpose he was
stopped by Avaux. Avaux was as zealous as any Irishman for the bills
which the Commons were urging forward. It was enough for him that those
bills seemed likely to make the enmity between England and Ireland
irreconcileable. His remonstrances induced James to abstain from openly
opposing the repeal of the Act of Settlement. Still the unfortunate
prince continued to cherish some faint hope that the law for which the
Commons were so zealous would be rejected, or at least modified, by the
Peers. Lord Granard, one of the few Protestant noblemen who sate in that
parliament, exerted himself strenuously on the side of public faith and
sound policy. The King sent him a message of thanks. "We Protestants,"
said Granard to Powis who brought the message, "are few in number.
We can do little. His Majesty should try his influence with the Roman
Catholics. " "His Majesty," answered Powis with an oath, "dares not say
what he thinks. " A few days later James met Granard riding towards the
parliament house. "Where are you going, my Lord? " said the King. "To
enter my protest, Sir," answered Granard, "against the repeal of the Act
of Settlement. " "You are right," said the King: "but I am fallen into
the hands of people who will ram that and much more down my throat. "
[226]
James yielded to the will of the Commons; but the unfavourable
impression which his short and feeble resistance had made upon them was
not to be removed by his submission. They regarded him with profound
distrust; they considered him as at heart an Englishman; and not a day
passed without some indication of this feeling. They were in no haste to
grant him a supply. One party among them planned an address urging him
to dismiss Melfort as an enemy of their nation. Another party drew up
a bill for deposing all the Protestant Bishops, even the four who were
then actually sitting in Parliament. It was not without difficulty that
Avaux and Tyrconnel, whose influence in the Lower House far exceeded the
King's, could restrain the zeal of the majority, [227]
It is remarkable that, while the King was losing the confidence and
good will of the Irish Commons by faintly defending against them, in
one quarter, the institution of property, he was himself, in another
quarter, attacking that institution with a violence, if possible,
more reckless than theirs. He soon found that no money came into his
Exchequer. The cause was sufficiently obvious. Trade was at an end.
Floating capital had been withdrawn in great masses from the island. Of
the fixed capital much had been destroyed, and the rest was lying
idle. Thousands of those Protestants who were the most industrious and
intelligent part of the population had emigrated to England. Thousands
had taken refuge in the places which still held out for William and
Mary. Of the Roman Catholic peasantry who were in the vigour of life the
majority had enlisted in the army or had joined gangs of plunderers. The
poverty of the treasury was the necessary effect of the poverty of the
country: public prosperity could be restored only by the restoration
of private prosperity; and private prosperity could be restored only
by years of peace and security. James was absurd enough to imagine that
there was a more speedy and efficacious remedy. He could, he conceived,
at once extricate himself from his financial difficulties by the simple
process of calling a farthing a shilling. The right of coining was
undoubtedly a flower of the prerogative; and, in his view, the right of
coining included the right of debasing the coin. Pots, pans, knockers of
doors, pieces of ordnance which had long been past use, were carried to
the mint. In a short time lumps of base metal, nominally worth near a
million sterling, intrinsically worth about a sixtieth part of that sum,
were in circulation. A royal edict declared these pieces to be legal
tender in all cases whatever. A mortgage for a thousand pounds was
cleared off by a bag of counters made out of old kettles. The creditors
who complained to the Court of Chancery were told by Fitton to take
their money and be gone. But of all classes the tradesmen of Dublin,
who were generally Protestants, were the greatest losers. At first, of
course, they raised their demands: but the magistrates of the city took
on themselves to meet this heretical machination by putting forth a
tariff regulating prices. Any man who belonged to the caste now
dominant might walk into a shop, lay on the counter a bit of brass worth
threepence, and carry off goods to the value of half a guinea. Legal
redress was out of the question. Indeed the sufferers thought themselves
happy if, by the sacrifice of their stock in trade, they could redeem
their limbs and their lives. There was not a baker's shop in the city
round which twenty or thirty soldiers were not constantly prowling. Some
persons who refused the base money were arrested by troopers and carried
before the Provost Marshal, who cursed them, swore at them, locked them
up in dark cells, and, by threatening to hang them at their own doors,
soon overcame their resistance. Of all the plagues of that time
none made a deeper or a more lasting impression on the minds of the
Protestants of Dublin than the plague of the brass money, [228] To the
recollection of the confusion and misery which had been produced by
James's coin must be in part ascribed the strenuous opposition which,
thirty-five years later, large classes, firmly attached to the House of
Hanover, offered to the government of George the First in the affair of
Wood's patent.
There can be no question that James, in thus altering, by his own
authority, the terms of all the contracts in the kingdom, assumed a
power which belonged only to the whole legislature. Yet the Commons did
not remonstrate. There was no power, however unconstitutional, which
they were not willing to concede to him, as long as he used it to crush
and plunder the English population. On the other hand, they respected no
prerogative, however ancient, however legitimate, however salutary, if
they apprehended that he might use it to protect the race which they
abhorred. They were not satisfied till they had extorted his reluctant
consent to a portentous law, a law without a parallel in the history of
civilised countries, the great Act of Attainder.
A list was framed containing between two and three thousand names. At
the top was half the peerage of Ireland. Then came baronets, knights,
clergymen, squires, merchants, yeomen, artisans, women, children.
No investigation was made. Any member who wished to rid himself of a
creditor, a rival, a private enemy, gave in the name to the clerk at the
table, and it was generally inserted without discussion. The only
debate of which any account has come down to us related to the Earl of
Strafford. He had friends in the House who ventured to offer something
in his favour. But a few words from Simon Luttrell settled the question.
"I have," he said, "heard the King say some hard things of that lord. "
This was thought sufficient, and the name of Strafford stands fifth in
the long table of the proscribed, [229]
Days were fixed before which those whose names were on the list
were required to surrender themselves to such justice as was then
administered to English Protestants in Dublin. If a proscribed person
was in Ireland, he must surrender himself by the tenth of August. If
he had left Ireland since the fifth of November 1688, he must surrender
himself by the first of September. If he had left Ireland before the
fifth of November 1688, he must surrender himself by the first of
October. If he failed to appear by the appointed day, he was to be
hanged, drawn, and quartered without a trial, and his property was to
be confiscated. It might be physically impossible for him to deliver
himself up within the time fixed by the Act. He might be bedridden.
He might be in the West Indies. He might be in prison. Indeed there
notoriously were such cases. Among the attainted Lords was Mountjoy. He
had been induced by the villany of Tyrconnel to trust himself at Saint
Germains: he had been thrown into the Bastile: he was still lying there;
and the Irish parliament was not ashamed to enact that, unless he could,
within a few weeks, make his escape from his cell, and present himself
at Dublin, he should be put to death, [230]
As it was not even pretended that there had been any inquiry into the
guilt of those who were thus proscribed, as not a single one among them
had been heard in his own defence, and as it was certain that it would
be physically impossible for many of them to surrender themselves
in time, it was clear that nothing but a large exercise of the royal
prerogative of mercy could prevent the perpetration of iniquities
so horrible that no precedent could be found for them even in the
lamentable history of the troubles of Ireland. The Commons therefore
determined that the royal prerogative of mercy should be limited.
Several regulations were devised for the purpose of making the passing
of pardons difficult and costly: and finally it was enacted that every
pardon granted by his Majesty, after the end of November 1689, to any of
the many hundreds of persons who had been sentenced to death without a
trial, should be absolutely void and of none effect. Sir Richard Nagle
came in state to the bar of the Lords and presented the bill with a
speech worthy of the occasion. "Many of the persons here attainted,"
said he, "have been proved traitors by such evidence as satisfies us. As
to the rest we have followed common fame. " [231]
With such reckless barbarity was the list framed that fanatical
royalists, who were, at that very time, hazarding their property,
their liberty, their lives, in the cause of James, were not secure from
proscription. The most learned man of whom the Jacobite party could
boast was Henry Dodwell, Camdenian Professor in the University of
Oxford. In the cause of hereditary monarchy he shrank from no sacrifice
and from no danger. It was about him that William uttered those
memorable words: "He has set his heart on being a martyr; and I have set
my mind on disappointing him. " But James was more cruel to friends
than William to foes. Dodwell was a Protestant: he had some property in
Connaught: these crimes were sufficient; and he was set down in the long
roll of those who were doomed to the gallows and the quartering block,
[232]
That James would give his assent to a bill which took from him the power
of pardoning, seemed to many persons impossible. He had, four years
before, quarrelled with the most loyal of parliaments rather than cede
a prerogative which did not belong to him. It might, therefore, well
be expected that he would now have struggled hard to retain a precious
prerogative which had been enjoyed by his predecessors ever since the
origin of the monarchy, and which had never been questioned by the
Whigs. The stern look and raised voice with which he had reprimanded the
Tory gentlemen, who, in the language of profound reverence and fervent
affection, implored him not to dispense with the laws, would now have
been in place. He might also have seen that the right course was the
wise course. Had he, on this great occasion, had the spirit to declare
that he would not shed the blood of the innocent, and that, even as
respected the guilty, he would not divest himself of the power of
tempering judgment with mercy, he would have regained more hearts in
England than he would have lost in Ireland. But it was ever his fate to
resist where he should have yielded, and to yield where he should have
resisted. The most wicked of all laws received his sanction; and it is
but a very small extenuation of his guilt that his sanction was somewhat
reluctantly given.
That nothing might be wanting to the completeness of this great crime,
extreme care was taken to prevent the persons who were attainted from
knowing that they were attainted, till the day of grace fixed in the
Act was passed. The roll of names was not published, but kept carefully
locked up in Fitton's closet. Some Protestants, who still adhered to
the cause of James, but who were anxious to know whether any of their
friends or relations had been proscribed, tried hard to obtain a sight
of the list; but solicitation, remonstrance, even bribery, proved
vain. Not a single copy got abroad till it was too late for any of the
thousands who had been condemned without a trial to obtain a pardon,
[233]
Towards the close of July James prorogued the Houses. They had sate more
than ten weeks; and in that space of time they had proved most fully
that, great as have been the evils which Protestant ascendency has
produced in Ireland, the evils produced by Popish ascendancy would have
been greater still. That the colonists, when they had won the victory,
grossly abused it, that their legislation was, during many years, unjust
and tyrannical, is most true. But it is not less true that they never
quite came up to the atrocious example set by their vanquished enemy
during his short tenure of power.
Indeed, while James was loudly boasting that he had passed an Act
granting entire liberty of conscience to all sects, a persecution as
cruel as that of Languedoc was raging through all the provinces which
owned his authority. It was said by those who wished to find an excuse
for him that almost all the Protestants who still remained in Munster,
Connaught, and Leinster were his enemies, and that it was not as
schismatics, but as rebels in heart, who wanted only opportunity
to become rebels in act, that he gave them up to be oppressed and
despoiled; and to this excuse some weight might have been allowed if
he had strenuously exerted himself to protect those few colonists, who,
though firmly attached to the reformed religion, were still true to the
doctrines of nonresistance and of indefeasible hereditary right. But
even these devoted royalists found that their heresy was in his view
a crime for which no services or sacrifices would atone. Three or
four noblemen, members of the Anglican Church, who had welcomed him to
Ireland, and had sate in his Parliament, represented to him that, if the
rule which forbade any Protestant to possess any weapon were strictly
enforced, their country houses would be at the mercy of the Rapparees,
and obtained from him permission to keep arms sufficient for a few
servants. But Avaux remonstrated. The indulgence, he said, was grossly
abused: these Protestant lords were not to be trusted: they were turning
their houses into fortresses: his Majesty would soon have reason to
repent his goodness. These representations prevailed; and Roman Catholic
troops were quartered in the suspected dwellings, [234]
Still harder was the lot of those Protestant clergymen who continued to
cling, with desperate fidelity, to the cause of the Lord's Anointed. Of
all the Anglican divines the one who had the largest share of James's
good graces seems to have been Cartwright. Whether Cartwright could
long have continued to be a favourite without being an apostate may
be doubted. He died a few weeks after his arrival in Ireland; and
thenceforward his church had no one to plead her cause. Nevertheless a
few of her prelates and priests continued for a time to teach what they
had taught in the days of the Exclusion Bill. But it was at the peril
of life or limb that they exercised their functions. Every wearer of
a cassock was a mark for the insults and outrages of soldiers and
Rapparees. In the country his house was robbed, and he was fortunate if
it was not burned over his head. He was hunted through the streets of
Dublin with cries of "There goes the devil of a heretic. " Sometimes he
was knocked down: sometimes he was cudgelled, [235] The rulers of
the University of Dublin, trained in the Anglican doctrine of passive
obedience, had greeted James on his first arrival at the Castle, and had
been assured by him that he would protect them in the enjoyment of their
property and their privileges. They were now, without any trial, without
any accusation, thrust out of their house. The communion plate of
the chapel, the books in the library, the very chairs and beds of the
collegians were seized. Part of the building was turned into a magazine,
part into a barrack, part into a prison. Simon Luttrell, who was
Governor of the capital, was, with great difficulty and by powerful
intercession, induced to let the ejected fellows and scholars depart
in safety. He at length permitted them to remain at large, with
this condition, that, on pain of death, no three of them should meet
together, [236] No Protestant divine suffered more hardships than Doctor
William King, Dean of Saint Patrick's. He had been long distinguished by
the fervour with which he had inculcated the duty of passively obeying
even the worst rulers. At a later period, when he had published a
defence of the Revolution, and had accepted a mitre from the new
government, he was reminded that he had invoked the divine vengeance on
the usurpers, and had declared himself willing to die a hundred deaths
rather than desert the cause of hereditary right. He had said that the
true religion had often been strengthened by persecution, but could
never be strengthened by rebellion; that it would be a glorious day for
the Church of England when a whole cartload of her ministers should go
to the gallows for the doctrine of nonresistance; and that his highest
ambition was to be one of such a company, [237] It is not improbable
that, when he spoke thus, he felt as he spoke. But his principles,
though they might perhaps have held out against the severities and the
promises of William, were not proof against the ingratitude of James.
Human nature at last asserted its rights. After King had been repeatedly
imprisoned by the government to which he was devotedly attached, after
he had been insulted and threatened in his own choir by the soldiers,
after he had been interdicted from burying in his own churchyard, and
from preaching in his own pulpit, after he had narrowly escaped with
life from a musketshot fired at him in the street, he began to think the
Whig theory of government less unreasonable and unchristian than it had
once appeared to him, and persuaded himself that the oppressed Church
might lawfully accept deliverance, if God should be pleased, by whatever
means, to send it to her.
In no long time it appeared that James would have done well to hearken
to those counsellors who had told him that the acts by which he was
trying to make himself popular in one of his three kingdoms, would make
him odious in the others. It was in some sense fortunate for England
that, after he had ceased to reign here, he continued during more than a
year to reign in Ireland. The Revolution had been followed by a reaction
of public feeling in his favour. That reaction, if it had been suffered
to proceed uninterrupted, might perhaps not have ceased till he was
again King: but it was violently interrupted by himself. He would not
suffer his people to forget: he would not suffer them to hope: while
they were trying to find excuses for his past errors, and to persuade
themselves that he would not repeat these errors, he forced upon them,
in their own despite, the conviction that he was incorrigible, that the
sharpest discipline of adversity had taught him nothing, and that, if
they were weak enough to recall him, they would soon have to depose him
again. It was in vain that the Jacobites put forth pamphlets about the
cruelty with which he had been treated by those who were nearest to him
in blood, about the imperious temper and uncourteous manners of William,
about the favour shown to the Dutch, about the heavy taxes, about the
suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, about the dangers which threatened
the Church from the enmity of Puritans and Latitudinarians. James
refuted these pamphlets far more effectually than all the ablest and
most eloquent Whig writers united could have done. Every week came
the news that he had passed some new Act for robbing or murdering
Protestants. Every colonist who succeeded in stealing across the sea
from Leinster to Holyhead or Bristol, brought fearful reports of the
tyranny under which his brethren groaned. What impression these reports
made on the Protestants of our island may be easily inferred from the
fact that they moved the indignation of Ronquillo, a Spaniard and a
bigoted member of the Church of Rome. He informed his Court that, though
the English laws against Popery might seem severe, they were so much
mitigated by the prudence and humanity of the Government, that they
caused no annoyance to quiet people; and he took upon himself to assure
the Holy See that what a Roman Catholic suffered in London was nothing
when compared with what a Protestant suffered in Ireland, [238]
The fugitive Englishry found in England warm sympathy and munificent
relief.
Many were received into the houses of friends and kinsmen.
Many were indebted for the means of subsistence to the liberality of
strangers. Among those who bore a part in this work of mercy, none
contributed more largely or less ostentatiously than the Queen. The
House of Commons placed at the King's disposal fifteen thousand pounds
for the relief of those refugees whose wants were most pressing,
and requested him to give commissions in the army to those who were
qualified for military employment, [239] An Act was also passed enabling
beneficed clergymen who had fled from Ireland to hold preferment
in England, [240] Yet the interest which the nation felt in these
unfortunate guests was languid when compared with the interest excited
by that portion of the Saxon colony which still maintained in Ulster a
desperate conflict against overwhelming odds. On this subject scarcely
one dissentient voice was to be heard in our island. Whigs, Tories,
nay even those Jacobites in whom Jacobitism had not extinguished
every patriotic sentiment, gloried in the glory of Enniskillen and
Londonderry. The House of Commons was all of one mind. "This is no time
to be counting cost," said honest Birch, who well remembered the way
in which Oliver had made war on the Irish. "Are those brave fellows in
Londonderry to be deserted? If we lose them will not all the world cry
shame upon us? A boom across the river! Why have we not cut the boom in
pieces? Are our brethren to perish almost in sight of England, within a
few hours' voyage of our shores? " [241] Howe, the most vehement man of
one party, declared that the hearts of the people were set on Ireland.
Seymour, the leader of the other party, declared that, though he had not
taken part in setting up the new government, he should cordially support
it in all that might be necessary for the preservation of Ireland,
[242] The Commons appointed a committee to enquire into the cause of the
delays and miscarriages which had been all but fatal to the Englishry of
Ulster. The officers to whose treachery or cowardice the public ascribed
the calamities of Londonderry were put under arrest. Lundy was sent to
the Tower, Cunningham to the Gate House. The agitation of the public
mind was in some degree calmed by the announcement that, before the
end of the summer, an army powerful enough to reestablish the English
ascendency in Ireland would be sent across Saint George's Channel, and
that Schomberg would be the General. In the meantime an expedition
which was thought to be sufficient for the relief of Londonderry
was despatched from Liverpool under the command of Kirke. The dogged
obstinacy with which this man had, in spite of royal solicitations,
adhered to his religion, and the part which he had taken in the
Revolution, had perhaps entitled him to an amnesty for past crimes. But
it is difficult to understand why the Government should have selected
for a post of the highest importance an officer who was generally and
justly hated, who had never shown eminent talents for war, and who, both
in Africa and in England, had notoriously tolerated among his soldiers
a licentiousness, not only shocking to humanity, but also incompatible
with discipline.
On the sixteenth of May, Kirke's troops embarked: on the twenty-second
they sailed: but contrary winds made the passage slow, and forced the
armament to stop long at the Isle of Man. Meanwhile the Protestants of
Ulster were defending themselves with stubborn courage against a great
superiority of force. The Enniskilleners had never ceased to wage a
vigorous partisan war against the native population. Early in May they
marched to encounter a large body of troops from Connaught, who had
made an inroad into Donegal. The Irish were speedily routed, and fled to
Sligo with the loss of a hundred and twenty men killed and sixty taken.
Two small pieces of artillery and several horses fell into the hands of
the conquerors. Elated by this success, the Enniskilleners soon invaded
the county of Cavan, drove before them fifteen hundred of James's
troops, took and destroyed the castle of Ballincarrig, reputed the
strongest in that part of the kingdom, and carried off the pikes and
muskets of the garrison. The next incursion was into Meath. Three
thousand oxen and two thousand sheep were swept away and brought safe
to the little island in Lough Erne. These daring exploits spread terror
even to the gates of Dublin. Colonel Hugh Sutherland was ordered to
march against Enniskillen with a regiment of dragoons and two regiments
of foot. He carried with him arms for the native peasantry; and many
repaired to his standard. The Enniskilleners did not wait till he came
into their neighbourhood, but advanced to encounter him. He declined an
action, and retreated, leaving his stores at Belturbet under the care
of a detachment of three hundred soldiers. The Protestants attacked
Belturbet with vigour, made their way into a lofty house which
overlooked the town, and thence opened such a fire that in two hours the
garrison surrendered. Seven hundred muskets, a great quantity of powder,
many horses, many sacks of biscuits, many barrels of meal, were taken,
and were sent to Enniskillen. The boats which brought these precious
spoils were joyfully welcomed. The fear of hunger was removed. While the
aboriginal population had, in many counties, altogether neglected the
cultivation of the earth, in the expectation, it should seem, that
marauding would prove an inexhaustible resource, the colonists, true to
the provident and industrious character of their race, had, in the midst
of war, not omitted carefully to till the soil in the neighbourhood of
their strongholds. The harvest was now not far remote; and, till the
harvest, the food taken from the enemy would be amply sufficient, [243]
Yet, in the midst of success and plenty, the Enniskilleners were
tortured by a cruel anxiety for Londonderry. They were bound to the
defenders of that city, not only by religious and national sympathy,
but by common interest. For there could be no doubt that, if Londonderry
fell, the whole Irish army would instantly march in irresistible force
upon Lough Erne. Yet what could be done? Some brave men were for making
a desperate attempt to relieve the besieged city; but the odds were
too great. Detachments however were sent which infested the rear of the
blockading army, cut off supplies, and, on one occasion, carried away
the horses of three entire troops of cavalry, [244] Still the line of
posts which surrounded Londonderry by land remained unbroken. The river
was still strictly closed and guarded. Within the walls the distress had
become extreme. So early as the eighth of June horseflesh was almost
the only meat which could be purchased; and of horseflesh the supply was
scanty. It was necessary to make up the deficiency with tallow; and even
tallow was doled out with a parsimonious hand.
On the fifteenth of June a gleam of hope appeared. The sentinels on the
top of the Cathedral saw sails nine miles off in the bay of Lough Foyle.
Thirty vessels of different sizes were counted. Signals were made from
the steeples and returned from the mast heads, but were imperfectly
understood on both sides. At last a messenger from the fleet eluded the
Irish sentinels, dived under the boom, and informed the garrison that
Kirke had arrived from England with troops, arms, ammunition, and
provisions, to relieve the city, [245]
In Londonderry expectation was at the height: but a few hours of
feverish joy were followed by weeks of misery. Kirke thought it unsafe
to make any attempt, either by land or by water, on the lines of the
besiegers, and retired to the entrance of Lough Foyle, where, during
several weeks, he lay inactive.
And now the pressure of famine became every day more severe. A strict
search was made in all the recesses of all the houses of the city; and
some provisions, which had been concealed in cellars by people who had
since died or made their escape, were discovered and carried to the
magazines. The stock of cannon balls was almost exhausted; and their
place was supplied by brickbats coated with lead. Pestilence began, as
usual, to make its appearance in the train of hunger. Fifteen officers
died of fever in one day. The Governor Baker was among those who sank
under the disease. His place was supplied by Colonel John Mitchelburne,
[246]
Meanwhile it was known at Dublin that Kirke and his squadron were on
the coast of Ulster. The alarm was great at the Castle. Even before this
news arrived, Avaux had given it as his opinion that Richard Hamilton
was unequal to the difficulties of the situation. It had therefore been
resolved that Rosen should take the chief command. He was now sent down
with all speed, [247]
On the nineteenth of June he arrived at the head quarter of the
besieging army. At first he attempted to undermine the walls; but his
plan was discovered; and he was compelled to abandon it after a sharp
fight, in which more than a hundred of his men were slain. Then his
fury rose to a strange pitch. He, an old soldier, a Marshal of France in
expectancy, trained in the school of the greatest generals, accustomed,
during many years, to scientific war, to be baffled by a mob of country
gentlemen, farmers, shopkeepers, who were protected only by a wall which
any good engineer would at once have pronounced untenable! He raved, he
blasphemed, in a language of his own, made up of all the dialects spoken
from the Baltic to the Atlantic. He would raze the city to the ground:
he would spare no living thing; no, not the young girls; not the babies
at the breast. As to the leaders, death was too light a punishment for
them: he would rack them: he would roast them alive. In his rage he
ordered a shell to be flung into the town with a letter containing
a horrible menace. He would, he said, gather into one body all the
Protestants who had remained at their homes between Charlemont and the
sea, old men, women, children, many of them near in blood and affection
to the defenders of Londonderry. No protection, whatever might be the
authority by which it had been given, should be respected. The multitude
thus brought together should be driven under the walls of Londonderry,
and should there be starved to death in the sight of their countrymen,
their friends, their kinsmen. This was no idle threat. Parties were
instantly sent out in all directions to collect victims. At dawn, on the
morning of the second of July, hundreds of Protestants, who were charged
with no crime, who were incapable of bearing arms, and many of whom had
protections granted by James, were dragged to the gates of the city.
It was imagined that the piteous sight would quell the spirit of the
colonists. But the only effect was to rouse that spirit to still greater
energy. An order was immediately put forth that no man should utter the
word Surrender on pain of death; and no man uttered that word. Several
prisoners of high rank were in the town. Hitherto they had been well
treated, and had received as good rations as were measured out to the
garrison. They were now, closely confined. A gallows was erected on one
of the bastion; and a message was conveyed to Rosen, requesting him
to send a confessor instantly to prepare his friends for death. The
prisoners in great dismay wrote to the savage Livonian, but received
no answer. They then addressed themselves to their countryman, Richard
Hamilton. They were willing, they said, to shed their blood for their
King; but they thought it hard to die the ignominious death of thieves
in consequence of the barbarity of their own companions in arms.
Hamilton, though a man of lax principles, was not cruel. He had been
disgusted by the inhumanity of Rosen, but, being only second in command,
could not venture to express publicly all that he thought. He however
remonstrated strongly. Some Irish officers felt on this occasion as it
was natural that brave men should feel, and declared, weeping with pity
and indignation, that they should never cease to have in their ears the
cries of the poor women and children who had been driven at the point of
the pike to die of famine between the camp and the city. Rosen persisted
during forty-eight hours. In that time many unhappy creatures perished:
but Londonderry held out as resolutely as ever; and he saw that his
crime was likely to produce nothing but hatred and obloquy. He at length
gave way, and suffered the survivors to withdraw. The garrison then took
down the gallows which had been erected on the bastion, [248]
When the tidings of these events reached Dublin, James, though by no
means prone to compassion, was startled by an atrocity of which the
civil wars of England had furnished no example, and was displeased by
learning that protections, given by his authority, and guaranteed by his
honour, had been publicly declared to be nullities. He complained to
the French ambassador, and said, with a warmth which the occasion fully
justified, that Rosen was a barbarous Muscovite. Melfort could not
refrain from adding that, if Rosen had been an Englishman, he would
have been hanged. Avaux was utterly unable to understand this effeminate
sensibility. In his opinion, nothing had been done that was at all
reprehensible; and he had some difficulty in commanding himself when he
heard the King and the secretary blame, in strong language, an act of
wholesome severity, [249] In truth the French ambassador and the French
general were well paired. There was a great difference doubtless, in
appearance and manner, between the handsome, graceful, and refined
diplomatist, whose dexterity and suavity had been renowned at the most
polite courts of Europe, and the military adventurer, whose look and
voice reminded all who came near him that he had been born in a half
savage country, that he had risen from the ranks, and that he had once
been sentenced to death for marauding. But the heart of the courtier was
really even more callous than that of the soldier.
Rosen was recalled to Dublin; and Richard Hamilton was again left in the
chief command. He tried gentler means than those which had brought so
much reproach on his predecessor. No trick, no lie, which was thought
likely to discourage the starving garrison was spared. One day a great
shout was raised by the whole Irish camp. The defenders of Londonderry
were soon informed that the army of James was rejoicing on account of
the fall of Enniskillen. They were told that they had now no chance of
being relieved, and were exhorted to save their lives by capitulating.
They consented to negotiate. But what they asked was, that they should
be permitted to depart armed and in military array, by land or by water
at their choice. They demanded hostages for the exact fulfilment of
these conditions, and insisted that the hostages should be sent on board
of the fleet which lay in Lough Foyle. Such terms Hamilton durst not
grant: the Governors would abate nothing: the treaty was broken off; and
the conflict recommenced, [250]
By this time July was far advanced; and the state of the city was, hour
by hour, becoming more frightful. The number of the inhabitants had been
thinned more by famine and disease than by the fire of the enemy. Yet
that fire was sharper and more constant than ever. One of the gates was
beaten in: one of the bastions was laid in ruins; but the breaches made
by day were repaired by night with indefatigable activity. Every attack
was still repelled. But the fighting men of the garrison were so much
exhausted that they could scarcely keep their legs. Several of them, in
the act of striking at the enemy, fell down from mere weakness. A very
small quantity of grain remained, and was doled out by mouthfuls. The
stock of salted hides was considerable, and by gnawing them the garrison
appeased the rage of hunger. Dogs, fattened on the blood of the slain
who lay unburied round the town, were luxuries which few could afford
to purchase. The price of a whelp's paw was five shillings and sixpence.
Nine horses were still alive, and but barely alive. They were so lean
that little meat was likely to be found upon them. It was, however,
determined to slaughter them for food. The people perished so fast that
it was impossible for the survivors to perform the rites of sepulture.
There was scarcely a cellar in which some corpse was not decaying. Such
was the extremity of distress, that the rats who came to feast in those
hideous dens were eagerly hunted and greedily devoured. A small fish,
caught in the river, was not to be purchased with money. The only
price for which such a treasure could be obtained was some handfuls of
oatmeal. Leprosies, such as strange and unwholesome diet engenders, made
existence a constant torment. The whole city was poisoned by the stench
exhaled from the bodies of the dead and of the half dead. That there
should be fits of discontent and insubordination among men enduring such
misery was inevitable. At one moment it was suspected that Walker had
laid up somewhere a secret store of food, and was revelling in private,
while he exhorted others to suffer resolutely for the good cause. His
house was strictly examined: his innocence was fully proved: he regained
his popularity; and the garrison, with death in near prospect, thronged
to the cathedral to hear him preach, drank in his earnest eloquence with
delight, and went forth from the house of God with haggard faces and
tottering steps, but with spirit still unsubdued. There were, indeed,
some secret plottings. A very few obscure traitors opened communications
with the enemy. But it was necessary that all such dealings should be
carefully concealed. None dared to utter publicly any words save words
of defiance and stubborn resolution. Even in that extremity the general
cry was "No surrender. " And there were not wanting voices which, in low
tones, added, "First the horses and hides; and then the prisoners;
and then each other. " It was afterwards related, half in jest, yet not
without a horrible mixture of earnest, that a corpulent citizen, whose
bulk presented a strange contrast to the skeletons which surrounded him,
thought it expedient to conceal himself from the numerous eyes which
followed him with cannibal looks whenever he appeared in the streets,
[251]
It was no slight aggravation of the sufferings of the garrison that
all this time the English ships were seen far off in Lough Foyle.
Communication between the fleet and the city was almost impossible.
One diver who had attempted to pass the boom was drowned. Another
was hanged. The language of signals was hardly intelligible. On the
thirteenth of July, however, a piece of paper sewed up in a cloth
button came to Walker's hands. It was a letter from Kirke, and contained
assurances of speedy relief. But more than a fortnight of intense misery
had since elapsed; and the hearts of the most sanguine were sick with
deferred hope. By no art could the provisions which were left be made to
hold out two days more, [252]
Just at this time Kirke received a despatch from England, which
contained positive orders that Londonderry should be relieved. He
accordingly determined to make an attempt which, as far as appears, he
might have made, with at least an equally fair prospect of success, six
weeks earlier, [253]
Among the merchant ships which had come to Lough Foyle under his convoy
was one called the Mountjoy. The master, Micaiah Browning, a native of
Londonderry, had brought from England a large cargo of provisions. He
had, it is said, repeatedly remonstrated against the inaction of
the armament. He now eagerly volunteered to take the first risk of
succouring his fellow citizens; and his offer was accepted. Andrew
Douglas, master of the Phoenix, who had on board a great quantity of
meal from Scotland, was willing to share the danger and the honour.
The two merchantmen were to be escorted by the Dartmouth frigate of
thirty-six guns, commanded by Captain John Leake, afterwards an admiral
of great fame.
It was the thirtieth of July. The sun had just set: the evening
sermon in the cathedral was over; and the heartbroken congregation
had separated, when the sentinels on the tower saw the sails of three
vessels coming up the Foyle. Soon there was a stir in the Irish camp.
The besiegers were on the alert for miles along both shores. The ships
were in extreme peril: for the river was low; and the only navigable
channel Tan very near to the left bank, where the head quarters of the
enemy had been fixed, and where the batteries were most numerous.
Leake performed his duty with a skill and spirit worthy of his noble
profession, exposed his frigate to cover the merchantmen, and used his
guns with great effect. At length the little squadron came to the place
of peril. Then the Mountjoy took the lead, and went right at the bottom.
The huge barricade cracked and gave way: but the shock was such that the
Mountjoy rebounded, and stuck in the mud. A yell of triumph rose from
the banks: the Irish rushed to their boats, and were preparing to board;
but the Dartmouth poured on them a well directed broadside, which threw
them into disorder. Just then the Phoenix dashed at the breach which the
Mountjoy had made, and was in a moment within the fence. Meantime the
tide was rising fast. The Mountjoy began to move, and soon passed safe
through the broken stakes and floating spars. But her brave master was
no more. A shot from one of the batteries had struck him; and he died
by the most enviable of all deaths, in sight of the city which was his
birthplace, which was his home, and which had just been saved by his
courage and self-devotion from the most frightful form of destruction.
The night had closed in before the conflict at the boom began; but the
flash of the guns was seen, and the noise heard, by the lean and
ghastly multitude which covered the walls of the city. When the Mountjoy
grounded, and when the shout of triumph rose from the Irish on both
sides of the river, the hearts of the besieged died within them. One who
endured the unutterable anguish of that moment has told that they looked
fearfully livid in each other's eyes. Even after the barricade had been
passed, there was a terrible half hour of suspense. It was ten o'clock
before the ships arrived at the quay. The whole population was there
to welcome them. A screen made of casks filled with earth was hastily
thrown up to protect the landing place from the batteries on the other
side of the river; and then the work of unloading began. First were
rolled on shore barrels containing six thousand bushels of meal. Then
came great cheeses, casks of beef, flitches of bacon, kegs of butter,
sacks of Pease and biscuit, ankers of brandy. Not many hours before,
half a pound of tallow and three quarters of a pound of salted hide had
been weighed out with niggardly care to every fighting man. The ration
which each now received was three pounds of flour, two pounds of beef,
and a pint of Pease. It is easy to imagine with what tears grace was
said over the suppers of that evening. There was little sleep on either
side of the wall. The bonfires shone bright along the whole circuit of
the ramparts. The Irish guns continued to roar all night; and all night
the bells of the rescued city made answer to the Irish guns with a peal
of joyous defiance. Through the whole of the thirty-first of July the
batteries of the enemy continued to play. But, soon after the sun had
again gone down, flames were seen arising from the camp; and, when the
first of August dawned, a line of smoking ruins marked the site lately
occupied by the huts of the besiegers; and the citizens saw far off the
long column of pikes and standards retreating up the left bank of the
Foyle towards Strabane, [254]
So ended this great siege, the most memorable in the annals of the
British isles. It had lasted a hundred and five days. The garrison had
been reduced from about seven thousand effective men to about three
thousand. The loss of the besiegers cannot be precisely ascertained.
Walker estimated it at eight thousand men. It is certain from the
despatches of Avaux that the regiments which returned from the blockade
had been so much thinned that many of them were not more than two
hundred strong. Of thirty-six French gunners who had superintended the
cannonading, thirty-one had been killed or disabled, [255] The means
both of attack and of defence had undoubtedly been such as would have
moved the great warriors of the Continent to laughter; and this is the
very circumstance which gives so peculiar an interest to the history
of the contest. It was a contest, not between engineers, but between
nations; and the victory remained with the nation which, though inferior
in number, was superior in civilisation, in capacity for selfgovernment,
and in stubbornness of resolution, [256]
As soon as it was known that the Irish army had retired, a deputation
from the city hastened to Lough Foyle, and invited Kirk to take the
command. He came accompanied by a long train of officers, and was
received in state by the two Governors, who delivered up to him the
authority which, under the pressure of necessity, they had assumed.
He remained only a few days; but he had time to show enough of the
incurable vices of his character to disgust a population distinguished
by austere morals and ardent public spirit. There was, however, no
outbreak. The city was in the highest good humour.
