Fran. ô Cahan Donegal Conel ô Donnel Manus ô Donnel  Tyrlagh Oge ô Boyle  Daniel ô Donnel Downe Lord Iveagh Shilling Magennis  Arthur Magennis Antrim Earl of Antrim Shane ô Neil Sheriff  Col. Thady ô Hara Fermanagh Lord of Eniskillen Cuconaght Mac Gwyre A List of the Principal Officers employed in the Revenue 24 Jun. 1690. Dublin Port Chief Commissioners and Officers established by Patent Commissioners of the Revenue SIR Patrick Trant Knight Francis Plowden Esquires John Trinder Esquires Prot. Richard Collins Esquires Prot. Sir William Ellis Knight Charles Playdel Secretary Nicholas Fitz-Gerald Solicitor Prot. James Bonnel Accomptant General Collectors and Officers appointed by the Commissioners Viz. Doctor James Fitz Gerald Collector Prot. Nathaniel Evans Clerk to the Commissioners Prot. William Alcock Examiner of the Port-Accounts and Warrants and Casheer Prot. Sinolphus Bellasis Clerk of the Coast. Prot. John Kent Land Surveyor and Comptroller of the Store Prot. Edward Prescott Land-Surveyor Land-Waiters Prot. John Robinson Prot. Dennis Boyle Prot. Francis Isaackson Henry Fitz Gerald. Prot. Bartholomew Wybrantz Store Keeper Robert Longfield Chief Clerk of the Quit and Crown-Rents Surveyors of Ringsend William Briscoe Phelim Dempsy Francis Creagh Surveyor at Dunlary Dublin Excise Viz. Prot. Francis Babe Collector Prot. Bernard Waight Surveyor General of Excise _____ Carol Examiner of Excise Accounts Surveyors of Excise Prot. Benjamin Powning Examiner of Diaries Prot. Henry Davis Prot. Jacob Walton Philip Clayton Ports and Districts Athlone Christopher Nicholson Collector Peter Duffe Survveyor Baltimore Dominick Nagle Collector Clonmel Terence Magrath Collector Edward Morris Surveyor Cork Port Sir James Cotter Collector Edward Trant Surveyor Florence Mac Carty Surveyor at Cove Cork Excise Francis Garvan Collector James Griffith Surveyor Dingle Ambrose Moore Collector Drogheda Bernard Byrne Collector Walter Babe Surveyor of Excise Morris Morierty Survey at New-key Dungarvan Thomas Mead Collector Ennis John Mac Nemara Collector James Dalton Surveyor Foxford Valentine Kirwan Collector Nicholas Toppin Prot. Surveyor Galway Port Arthur Nagle Collector Galway Excise James Brown Fitz Jeffrey Collector Kilkenny Caesar Colclough Collector Samuel Pigeon Prot Surveyor Kinsale Dominick Rice Collector Dominick Murrogh Surveyor Limerick John Rice Collector Nicholas Skiddy Surveyor Loughrea Stephen Dean Collector Maryburrow Garret Trant Collector William Bourne Surveyor Moyallow John Longfield Collector Richard Aylward Surveyor Naas Edmond Fitzgerald Collector Robert Dowdal Surveyor Rosse James Butler Collector Mark Whitty Surveyor of Excise Sligoe Owen Dermot Collector Trim Richard Barnwal Collector Hugh Mac Donogh Surveyors Richard Barton Waterford Councellor Butler Collector James Heas Surveyor Wexford Anthony Talbot Collector Wicklow Barnaby Hacket Collector Youghal Patrick Fitzgerald Collector David Fitzgerald Surveyor A List of the Names of the New Burgesses of Strabane and Londonderry Viz. STRABANE Commonly call'd Soveraign JOhn ô Neile Shane Mac Con Backagh ô Neile Burgesses Gordon ô Neile Son of Sir Phelim ô Neile the Great Rebel who was Hang'd Drawn and Quarter'd He burnt Strabane in 1641. John ô Neile Shane Mac Neile Rammar Ô Neile William Roe Hamilton Constantine ô Neile James Cunningham Robert Adams Cloud Hamilton Brian ô Neil Mac Brian Mac Cormuc Mac Rory Grana ô Neil John Browne Robert Gamble Patrick Bellew James Mac Gee Art ô Neile Art Mac ô Neile Ramar ô Neile John Donnelly Shane fadda ô Donnelly James Mac Enally John Mac Rory Shane groom Mac Philip Mac Rory Burnt in the Hand Terence Donnelly Turlogh ô Donnelly Henry ô Neile Henry Mac Phelmy Duff Mac Art Mac Rory ô Neile His Father hang'd Roger Mac Cony Rory Mac Brian Mac Con modura Mac Conway His Father hang'd Dominick Mac Hugh Dominick Mac Rory Ballagh Mac Hugh Charles ô Cahan Cormuck Mac Manus Keiogh ô Cahan Charles ô Conway Cormuck Mac Owen oge Mac Owen Modera Mac Conway LONDONDERRY COrmuck ô Neile Mayor Sheriffs Horace Kennedy and Edward Brooks Aldermen Cohanagh Mac Gwire Gordon ô Neile Constantine ô Neile Constance ô Neile Manus ô Donnel Peter Manby Peter Dobbin Antho. Dobbin John Campsie Daniel ô Dogherty William Hamilton Roger ô Cahan Daniel ô Donnel Nicho. â—urside Alexander Lacky Constance ô Dogherty Daniel ô Sheile Roger ô Dogherty Brian ô Neile and John Buchanan Daniel ô Sheile Chamberlain Burgesses Francis ô Cahan Robert Butler Cornelius Callaghan Thomas Moncriefe Hugh ô Hogan John Mackenny John Campsie Henry Campsie James Lenox John ô Hogan William Stanly James Connor Hugh Eady John Donnogh Alexander Gourdon John Crookshanks Phel Mac Shaghlin John ô Linshane Art ô Hogan Charles ô Sheile Johnlius ô Mullan John Sheridan James Sheridan Constance ô Rorke Dom. Boy Mac Loghlin John Nugent William ô Boy John ô Boy William ô Sullivan Dionysius Mac Loghlin Manus ô Cahan Hugh Mac Loghlin Hugh More ô Dogherty Ulick ô Hogurty Henry Ash Tho. Broome Pet. Mac Peake Hen. Dogherty Robert Shenan Cornelius Magreth Art ô Hogan N o. 9. Privy Councellers appointed by Letters from King James Dated the 28th of February 1684 and such as are Sworn since by particular Letters for the Time being LOrd Primate Lord Chancellor Lord Archbishop Dublin Lord High Treasurer Secretary of State Chancellor of the Exchequer Master of the Ordnance Lord Chief Justice of the King 's Bench. Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer Lieut. General of the Army Colonel of the Regiment of Guards James Duke of Ormond not sworn Henry Earl of Thomond Cary Earl of Roscomon ... Earl of Ardglass Henry Earl of Drogheda Hugh Earl of Mount-Alexander Richard Earl of Ranelagh not sworn Francis Earl of Longford Maurice Viscount Fitzharding Murrogh Viscount Blesinton Robert Fitzgerald Esq not sworn Sir Charles Fielding not sworn Sir Richard Reynel not sworn Sir Thomas Newcomen Sir Robert Hamilton Esquires not sworn Adam Loftus Lemuel Kingdon Sworn afterwards by particular Letters Sir Paul Rycaut Thomas Heitley Esq Earl of Tyrconnel Earl of Lymerick Lord Viscount Ikerin Lord Viscount Galmoy Esquires Thomas Nugent Dennis Daly Stephen Rice Rich. Hamilton Sir William Wentworth Earl of Ballymore Nicholas Purcel Esq Earl of Clanrickard Earl of Antrim Justin Mac Carty Esq Lord Viscount Gormanst own Lord Viscount Rosse Earl of Tyrone Lord Viscount Netterville Lord Lowth Sir William Talbot Esquires Anth. Hamilton Thomas Sheridan Symon Luttrel Fitzgerald Villers Esq Colonel Garret Moore Lord Bellew Charles White Esq Col. Cormusk ô Neil Francis Plowden Esq Privy Consellors Sworn before King James after his coming to Ireland DUke of Powis Duke of Berwick Earl of Abercorne Lord Thomas Howard Earl of Melfort Lord Chief Justice Herbert Lord Dover Colonel William P Colonel Dorrington Marquis D'Albeville Lord Kilmallock Colonel Sarsfield Lord Merryon Earl of Carlingford Earl of Clanrickard Lord Kenmare Lord Clare N o 10 The Civil List of Officers and the Times of their Entring on their Offices CHANCERY SIR Alexander Fitton Knight Created Lord Fitton and Baron of Gosworth in the County of Lymrick Lord High Chancellor of Ireland 23 April 1689. Sir William Talbot Baronet made
Master of the Rolls Dennis Fitzgerald his Deputy Masters Dr. Alexius Stafford Popish Dean of Christ-church 2d May. Ignatius Berford Esq Dr. of the Laws 6th May. Dr. Matthew Kennedy 10 May. Dr. Michael Plunket a Romish-Priest 23 July Thomas Arthur Soldier Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper This is in Trust for Robert Arthur's Wife Niece to Lord Tyrconnel 1st Aug. William Dorrington Register James Nagle Cursitor and Ingrosser of all Original Writs Henry Temple Esq and Owen Coyle who was Indicted and Outlawed of Forgery Examinators Six Clerks John Newel John Maynard .... Power Thady Meagher John Herny and Geoghegan Baskervile Polewheel Pursuivant KINGS BENCH Thomas Lord Nugent Baron of Riverston L. Chief Justice 2d Justice Vacant not being worth Fees of passing Patent Sir Brian O Neil Baronet Third Justic. 6th July 1689. Randal Mac Donnel Esq Clerk of the Crown and Prothonorary Francis Nugent Deputy Prothonotary Brian Kerny Deputy Clerk of the Crown COMMON PLEAS John Keating Esq Lord Chief Justice 2. Justice Dennis Daly Esq 3. Justice Peter Martin Esq 23 Jan. 1689. Edmond Fitzgerald Esq Chief and only Prothonotary Richard Fenner his Deputy 16 Jan. 1689. Robert Barnwel Esq Custos Brevium and Chirographer James Nagle Clerk of the Outlawries EXCHEQUER Buno Talbot Esq Chancellor Treasurer Vacant Sir Stephen Rice Lord Chief Baron Sir John Barnwel Knight Second Baron Sir Henry Lynch Baronet Puny Baron 1st Aug. 1689. Oliver Grace Esq Chief Remembrancer Second Remembrancer not disposed of formerly an Office of great Perquisites but now not worth Fees of passing Patent 8 Aug. Walter Lord Dungan Clerk of the Common Pleas. Murtagh Griffin his Deputy Philip Dwyer his Sub-Deputy 6 Jul. 89. Richard Talbot of Malahide Esq Auditor General 23 Jul. 89. Chr. Malone Sergeant Dillon's Clerk Surveyor General This in Trust for Lady Tyrconnel and her Daughter married to Col Dillon 3 Oct. 1689. James Nagle Clerk of the Estreats and Summonister 24 October Richard Morgan Pursuivant 28 Nov. 89. Francis Stafford Esq Clerk of the Pipe 20 Dec. 89. Charles White Esq Clerk of the First Fruits and 20th Parts Marcus Baggot First Sergeant at Arms. 7 Jan. 1689. Thomas Haughton Second Sergeant at Arms. 16th Jan. Brian Mac Dermot Esq Clerk of the Pels and Tallies and Clerk of the Treasury 13 Feb. 89. Patrick Kennedy Gent. Comptroller of the Pipe 18 Feb. 89. Thady Meagher Clerk of the Errors This is on the Statute for Writs of Error from the King's-Bench to the Exchequer Chamber 27 February John Barry Gent. Chief Chamberlain Simon Carrick Second Chamberlain 6 March Oliver Grace Esq Transcriptor and Forein Opposer Lords Commissioners of the Treasury 9th July 89. Duke Tyrconnel Henry Lord Dover Lord Riverston Chief Justice Sir Stephen Rice Lord Chief Baron Buno Talbot Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr. Adam Colclough Secretary 27 August Hugh Reilly Esq Clerk of the Privy Council Commissioners of the Mint in Dublin 26 Aug. 1689. John Trinder William Talbot Thomas Goddars Esq William Bromfield Francis Rice Edward Fox and Walter Plunket Gent. 31 Jan. 1689. Grant to Alderman James Malone and Rich. Malone of the Office of Printer General Commissioners of the Revenue Sir Patrick Trant Sir William Ellis John Trinder Richard Collins Fr. Plowden Esq Sir Theobald Butler Charles Playdel Secretary Receivers General Sir Henry Bond Lewis Doe Esq Nicholas Fitzgerald Solicitor Robert Longfield Clerk of the Quit-Rents and of Forfeited Estates c. N o 11. 2d June 1690. An Account of the General and Field Officers of King James's Army out of the Muster Rolls DUKE of Tyrconnel Captain-General Lieutenants-General Duke of Berwick Richard Hamilton Count Lozune General of the French Monsieur Leary alias Geraldine Lieut. General Dom. Sheldon Lieut. General of the Horse Major-Generals Patrick Sarsfield Monsieur Boisteau Antho. Hamilton Wahup Brigadeers Tho. Maxwell John Hamilton Will. Dorrington Solomon Slater Muster-master-General Robert Fitz-Gerald Comptroller of the Musters Sir Rich. Nagle Secretary at War Receivers General Sir Henry Bond Louis Doe Sir Michael Creagh Pay-master-General Felix O Neile Advocate-General Dr. Archbold Physician to the State Patrick Archbold Chirurgeon-General HORSE Duke of Tyrconnel Collonel Dom. Sheldon Lieut. Coll. Fra. Meara Major Lord Galmoy Coll. Laur. Dempsy 1st Lieu. Coll. Char. Carrole 2d Lieu. Coll. Robert Arthur Major Patrick Sarsfield Coll. Lord Kinsale Lieut. Coll. Roger Magilligan Major Hugh Sutherland Coll. Edm. Pendergast 1st L. Coll. Talbot Lassells 2d L. Coll. Will. Cox Major Lord Abercorne Coll. Lieu. Coll. Major Henry Luttrell Coll. Sir James Moclare Lieu. Coll. Major John Parker Coll. Tho. Gifford Lieu. Coll. John Metham Major Nicholas Pursel Coll. Lieu. Coll. Major DRAGOONS Lord Dimgan Coll. Lieut. Coll. Major Sir Neile O Neile Coll. Lieut. Coll. Major Lord Clare Coll. John Mac Nemara 1st L. Coll. James Philips 2d L. Coll. Francis Browne Major Symon Luttrell Coll Lieut. Coll. Edmund Moclare Major Robert Clifford Coll. Alex. Mackenzie Lieut. Coll. Major Fran. Carroll Coll. Tarens Carroll 1st L. Coll. Fran. Boismoroll 2d L. Coll. Major Tho. Maxwell Coll. Daniel Magennis Lieu. Coll. Callaghane Major FOOT Will. Dorrington Collonel of the Guards Will. Mansel Barker Lieu. Coll. Tho. Arthur Major John Hamilton Coll. James Nugent Lieu. Coll. Majors John Talbot 1st James Gibbons 2d Lord Fitz-James Coll. Edw. Nugent 1st Lieu. Coll. Porter 2d Lieu. Coll. Dodsby Major Earl of Clancarty Coll. John Skelton Lieu. Coll. Philip Rycaut Major Earl of Clanrickard Coll. Edmund Madden Lieu. Coll. Major Earl of Antrim Coll. Mark Talbot Lieu. Coll. James Woogan Major Earl of Tyrone Coll. Tho. Nugent Lieu. Coll. Richard Nagle Major Richard Nugent Coll. Lieu. Coll. Major Lord Gormanstowne Coll. Richard Eustace Lieu. Coll. Major Henry Dillon Coll. Walter Bourk Lieu. Coll. John Morgan Major Lord Galway Coll. John Power Lieu. Coll. Major Lord Bellew Coll. Nich. Fitz-gerald 1st L. Coll. Le Sir Doge 2d L. Coll. John Dowdale Major Lord Kinmare Coll. Lieu. Coll. Major Lord Slane Coll. Maurice Connell Lieu. Coll. Major Cormuck O Neile Coll. Lieu. Coll. Major Charles Cavenagh Coll. James Lacy Lieu. Coll. Gros. Pordevarande Major Tho. Butler Coll. D' Busby Lieut. Coll. Major Lord Kilmallock Coll. John Power Lieu. Coll. John Chapell Major Sir Maur. Eustace Coll. John Woogan Lieu. Coll. Major Sir John Fitz-gerald Coll. Lieu. Coll. Major Lord Lowth Coll. Lieu. Coll. Major Earl of Westmeath Coll. Mich. Delahoyde Lieu. Coll. Gowen Talbot Major Major-General Boisteau Coll. Monsieur Beaupre Lieu. Coll. Hurly Major Lord Bofine Coll. Will. Connock Lieu. Coll. John Bodkin Major Oliver O Gara Coll. Tady Connor Lieu. Coll. Major John Grace Coll. Robert Grace Lieu. Coll. Cha. Moore Major Edward Butler Coll. John Innis Lieu. Coll. Garret Geoghegan Major Art Mac Mahon Coll. Philip Reyley Lieu. Coll. Hâ—gh Magennis Major Charles Moore Coll. Ulick Bourk Lieu. Coll. ....... Major Dudley Bagnall Coll. James Power Lieu. Coll. .... Corbet Major Gordon O Neile Coll. Conn O Neile Lieu. Coll. Henry O Neile Major Nicholas Brown Coll. George Traps Lieu. Coll. Dermot Mac Auliffe
beating and injuring Protestants ibid. 12. In disarming them p. 67 13. The Dispensing Power of more mischief still than ill Administration First Only to be allowed in Cases of Necessity ibid. 14. Secondly In such Cases the People have as much right to it as the King Instance in the Sheriff of Warwickshire from Dr. Sanderson p. 68 15. Thirdly The wickedness either in King or People in pretending Necessity where there is none p. 69 16. King James's employing Popish Officers was such a Dispensation ibid. 17. And no Necessity for it unless such as was Criminal p. 70 18. King James dispensed with all when it was against Protestants p. 71 Sect. 4. Thirdly King James's dealing with Civil Offices and the Privy Council p. 72 1. Several outed notwithstanding Patents ibid. 2. Act of Parliament for voyding Patents Irish hereby made Keepâ—rs of Records which before they had corrupted when they could get to them p. 73 3. Revenue Officers changed for Roman Catholicks though to the Prejudice of the Revenue p. 74 4. Sheriffs and Justices of Peace from the Scum of the People ibid. 5. Privy-Councellors all in effect Papists p. 76 Sect. 5. Fourthly King James's dealing with Corporations p. 77 1. The Peoples security in these Kingdoms is the choice of Representatives in Parliament To preserve this Papists excluded from Corporations in Ireland Protestants had made great Concessions to the King by their New Rules for Corporations The King not satisfied with this but would have all p. 77 78 2. Rice and Nagle's managing of Quo Warranto's a horrid Abuse of the Kings Prerogative and the Law p. 78 79 3. Other methods of destroying Charters p. 80 4. Particular Corporations in Dublin how ordered ibid. 5. Voyding Charters led to voyding Parents for Estates ibid. 6. Corporations by the New Charters made absolute Slaves to the Kings Will. First by Consequence no free Parliament could be Returned Secondly Protestants could not serve in the Corporations p. 80 81 7. Protestants hereby driven from the Kingdom ibid. Sect. 6. Fifthly King James's Destruction of the Trade p. 82 1. Trade to be destroyed that the King might have his Will of his Subjects Poor People willing to serve for little in an Army as in France ibid. 2. In order to ruin the Protestants who were the chief Traders Driven hereby out of the Kingdom p. 83 3. This ruined a great many that depended on them ibid. 4. The Irish in employ who had the ready Mony gave it only to Papist Tradesmen p. 84 5. Exactions of the Revenue-Officers great discouragement to Merchants and Traders p. 85 6. Protestant Shoopkeepers quitted for fear of being forced to Trust ibid. 7. Transportation of Wooll connived at by Lord Tirconnell to ruin our woollen Trade p. 86 8. Roman Catholick principal Traders ruined also by King James by the Act of Repeal p. 87 Sect. 7. Sixthly King James's Destruction of our Liberty p. 88 1. No general Pardon at King James's Accession to the Crown Protestants hereby questioned for things in the Popish Plot on false Evidences ibid. 2. Protestants sworn into Plots and seditious Words Instance 1. In County Meath 2. In County Tipperary p. 88 89 3. New Magistrates in Corporations plagued Protestants p. 90 4. New Levies and Rapparee's imprisoned those that resisted their Robberies Instance in Mr. Brice of Wicklow Maxwel and Levis Queens County Sir Laurence Parsons p. 91 5. General imprisonment of Protestants from Midsummer 1689. to Christmas No Habeas Corpus's allowed Protestants of Drogheda barbarously used at the Siege and of the County of Cork by imprisonments p. 92 93 6. Hard Usage of Protestants in Prisons Powder placed to blow them up Leak's Evidence against the Prisoners in Dublin defeated by an Accident p. 93 7. K. James aware of all the ill Treatment of Protestants informed at large by the Bishop of Limrick All Protestants confined by his Proclamation to their Parishes p. 94 8. Arts to conceal this in England Intollerable staying in Ireland Necessary to close in with King William p. 95 Sect. 8. Seventhly King James's destruction of our Estates 1. By disarming the Protestants by Lord Tirconnell p. 97 1. Government dissolved that does not preserve Property ibid. 2. The Irish very low at the Prince of Oranges's Invasion Would easily have been brought to submit Protestants able to have mastered them Lord Mountjoy opposed seizing Tirconnell p. 97 98 3. Protestants resolved not to be the Aggressors were inclined to submit to King James till they found his destructive designs Monsieur d' Avaux complained of the Measures put on King James by Tirconnell p. 98 99 4. Tirconnell's Arts and Lyes to gain time pretending to be ready to submit to King William till he form'd his new Levies Lord Chief Justice Keatings Letters and Observations on it p. 99 5. New Levies necessary to be subsisted on Plunder This gave credit to the Letter to Lord Mount Alexander Decemb. 6. 1688. p. 101 6. And made Derry shut its Gates against the Earl of Antrims Regiment p. 102 7. Obliged to do thus by their Foundation p. 103 8. Provoked to it by the unjust taking away their Charter p. 104 9. This made also the Enniskiliners refuse two Companies sent by Lord Tirconnell and the Northern Gentlemen to enter into an Association for their own defence ibid. 10. Lord Tirconnell hastened to run them into blood before King James's coming p. 106 11. Justification of their declaring for their present Majesties ibid. 12. Their defence of themselves of great benefit to the Protestant Cause and almost miraculous p. 107 13. Lord Tirconnell's Lyes and Wheedles to Lord Mountjoy to send him to France p. 109 14. Lord Mountjoy's Reasons to accept it Articles granted to him by Tirconnell for the Protestants not kept p. 110 15. Lord Tirconnell proceeds to disarm the Protestants Manner of doing it and taking away their Horses A perfect Dragooning p. 111 16. Proclamation issued after it had been done by verbal Orders p. 113 17. The Arms for the most part embezled by the Soldiers who took them This had like to have occasioned a worse Dragooning prevented by the Bishop of Meath p. 113 114 18. The manner of taking up and embezling Horses p. 114 19. Miserable condition of the Protestants being disarmed amongst their Irish Enemies Protestants had the highest Legal Property in their Arms. The Government by taking them away must design their ruin p. 115 20. No Reason for disarming us but to make us a Prey p. 116 21. It was necessary in King James's Circumstances but the Necessity occasioned by his own fault ibid. Sect. 9. Secondly Lord Tirconnell's Attempts on the Protestants Personal Fortunes p. 117 1. Which he destroyed by encouraging Popish Tenants against their Protestant Landlords and swearing them into Plots Gentlemen forced to live for some time before the Turn on their Stocks p. 117 118 2. Forced into England with little ready Mony Many burnt out of their Houses in the Country Many robbed and some murthered
really believed that in few years he would by some contrivance or other have given away most of the Protestants Estates in Ireland without troubling a Parliament to Attaint them which was a more compendious but not a more certain way to destroy them than the Methods he took It was he that without Hearing after he had Dissolved the Corporations by giving Sentence against their Charters declared void all the Leases of Lands or of Perquisites made by them though long before their Dissolution and on very good considerations and thereupon outed several Protestants of their Leases but it were endless to mention all the Oppressions and unjust proceedings of this Court it were in effect to transcribe the Records of it Let me only observe that the Chief Baron was assisted by Sir Henry Lynch as Second Baron who came indeed short of him in Parts but yielded nothing to him in Malice to the Protestant Religion and Interest 7. The Court of Common Pleas had little to do the business so far as concerned the Protestants and Papists was intirely carried out of it to the Kings Bench or Exchequer and therefore they permitted the Lord Chief Justice Keating still to sit in it but Pinioned with two of their own sort that if any thing should chance to come before him he might be out-voted by them The truth is they were jealous of this Court not only because a Protestant was Chief Justice in it but likewise because Judg Dally sat as puny Judg who though a Roman Catholick yet understood the Common-Law so well and behaved himself so impartially that they did not care to bring their Causes before him so much did they dread the prospect of Justice though before Judges that were of their own Party and Persuasion 8. The Circuits are an extention of the Courts whereby Justice is carried into the Country these were managed much at the same rate with the Courts and where the Sheriff and Judg were both Papists it is not difficult to guess what Justice Protestants must expect what packing of Juries there was amongst them and how deeply the Judges themselves were concerned in such Practices is evident to all that had any Concerns in the Country at that time 9. It will be requisite to say something of the Attourney General which King James made instead of Sir William Domvile whom he turned out after near thirty years supplying the place but he was a Protestant and would not consent to reverse the Popish Outlawries nor to the other Methods they took to destroy the Settlement of Ireland and therefore he was laid aside In his place King James substituted Mr. Richard Nagle whom he afterwards Knighted and made Secretary of State he was at first designed for a Clergy-Man and educated amongst the Jesuits but afterwards betook himself to the Study of the Law in which he arrived to a good Perfection and was employed by many Protestants so that he knew the weak part of most of their Titles Every Body knows how great a part the Attorney General has in the Administration of Justice it being his Office to prosecute and in his power to stop any Suit wherein the King is concerned How he used this Power will appear in one instance tho many may be given One Fitz Gerald of Tycrohan the Heir of a forfeiting Papist had a Suit for a great Estate against Sir William Petty it was tryed in the Exchequer before Chief Baron Rice and Fitz Gerald carried the Cause by the Perjury of two Friars and a Woman who swore a person to be dead in Spain and themselves to be present at his Burial upon whose Life Sir William's Title depended This person soon after appeared to be alive and is so still for ought we know and his being alive was so notorious and manifest that the Attorney General could not deny it Sir William's Counsel and Lawyers designed to indict the Friars and Woman for their Perjury but the Grand Jury refused to find the Bill and I was credibly informed that the Attorney General said that if they did not desist he would enter a Noli prosequi It is certain he refused to prosecute it and it was imputed to his Contrivance that they escaped By such means the Course of Justice was stopped to Protestants and the like Tenderness the Courts generally shewed to Perjurers when the Perjury served their Interest And sure the Protestants were in an ill case whose Lives and Fortunes lay at the Mercy of such Judges and Juries and they must conclude that nothing less than Destruction was designed for them by a King who put them under such Administrators of Justice The same Sir Richard Nagle was the Speaker of the House of Commons in their pretended Parliament and had the chief Hand in drawing up their Acts King James confided chiefly in him and the Acts of Repeal and Attainder were looked on as his Work in which his Malice and Jesuitical Principles prevailed so far that he was not content to out two Thirds of the Protestant Gentlemen of their Estates by the Act of Repeal by which all Estates acquired since 1641 were taken away and to attaint most of those that had old Estates by the Bill of Attainder But to make sure Work he put it out of the King's Power to pardon them therein betraying the King's Prerogative as the King himself told him when he discovered it to him Of which and of him we shall have occasion to give a further account hereafter 10. Into such Hands as we have been speaking of the Administration of Justice and of the Laws was put which were so far from preventing our Ruin that they were made the Means and Instruments thereof and it had been much better for us to have had no Laws at all and been left to our natural Defence than to be cheated into a necessity of Submission by Laws that were executed only to punish and not to defend us 11. It was common for some of those that served King James to come upon the Exchange and without any reason or provocation to fall upon Protestant Gentlemen if they looked a little more fashionable than other people and beat them One was thus beaten with a Cane severely before the Gentleman was aware he was advised for an Experiment to indict the Ruffian that used him thus to see what protection the Law would give us after they had taken away our Swords but the Grand Jury did not think it worth while to trouble the Courts with redressing the Grievances of Protestants and so would not find the Bill A Merchant in Thomas street Dublin found a Fellow that had broken into his Ware house and was conveying his Goods out at the Window to his Fellow Soldiers that stood in the Street to receive them he seised him and brought an Indictment against him for Felony but the Jury acquitted him and then he brought his Action against the Merchant for false Imprisonment and Slander and it cost a good Sum
best it was left to the discretion of a Dragoon what he would count a Serviceable Horse and what he would do with them when he had taken them so that of 10000 Horses at least that were taken from the Protestants at that time the King received not 100 nor had he one Troop raised out of them but whoever could get a Horse whether he were Officer or Soldier from a Protestant went away with it and converted it to his private use of which the Lord Deputy complains in a Proclamation dated March the 1st 1688 but this Proclamation though dated the 1st of March was not published till the 12th the reason of the delay was this the Proclamation ordered Horses that were not fit for Service to be restored and if it had come out according to the date thereof many Protestants that knew in whose Hands their Horses were would have claimed them To defeat them therefore some that had interest with the Deputy got the Proclamation delayed till those that took them might have time to convey them far enough from being found And this was their usual Method they first did the mischief they intended to the Protestants and then they published some antedated Proclamation forbidding it to be done and sometimes when a Proclamation came out before they had gone through with what they intended they denyed to be concluded by it alledging it came out surreptitiously as it happened in this very case of Searching for Arms. 19. Now Arms are the Hedges that secure and preserve our Goods and Lives especially in a Conquered Country such as Ireland is and it was but reason that the Law did allow none but Protestants to have them though they never hindred any Man from arming himself so far as was necessary for his own Defence When therefore they saw the keeping of Arms was made penal to them in the highest degree King James's Proclamation having made it Treason and Rebellion as I shewed before and some would needs perswade them it was really so to which opinion the Lord Chief Justice inclined when he gave charge to the Jury concerning one Wolf who was indicted for keeping some Arms and fined for it as a Misdemeanor when I say they saw that which the Law required them to do made so highly criminal for the Law requires every Freeman of Dublin to keep Arms and those Arms put into the Hands of Tories and Ruffians who had already robb'd them of a great part of their Substance had they not reason to believe that they were disarm'd purposely that they might be the more easily Robb'd or Massacred and that it was as easy for a Government that in one day disarmed them through the whole Kingdom against Reason Law and Justice to find a pretence at another time to take away their Lives they could neither doubt their inclinations nor question their ability to do it If one should tye a Mans Hands and turn him naked amongst Wild Beasts all the World would believe he designed they should devour him and sure we had reason to suppose the same of our Governours and they that treated us thus without provocation and against the Laws could not expect that we should be unwilling to change our Masters if a fair opportunity offered By the Law we have as much property in our Arms and Horses that we buy with our Mony and in a conquered Country such as Ireland is where every Forty Years we constantly have had a Rebellion they are as necessary for us as our Cloathes or Estates which indeed can signify nothing without them And the King might as justly pretend that he had occasion for them and take them from us without consideration as our Horses and Arms the oppression to us in our circumstances was really equal 20. It may perhaps be imagined by those who are Strangers to our Affairs that we had abused our Arms to oppress and wrong our Neighbours or to oppose the King and therefore deserv'd to lose them but it is observable that it doth not appear that any one Protestant in Ireland before this Disarming had used his Arms to injure any R. C. nor did they hurt any that was not either actually robbing them of their Goods or assaulting their Persons no not in the North where they refused to give up their Arms they kept even there on the defensive and offended no Man but when first Assaulted So that there was not the least reason or colour to disarm us except that we might be Plundered and Robb'd without being able to make resistance Our crime for which we lost our Arms for which we were exposed naked to our Enemies and for which the best Gentlemen in the Kingdom were obliged to walk without a Sword was because they suspected that we would not otherwise tamely part with our Goods or suffer our selves to be abused and affronted in the Streets by every Ruffian which was the condition of the best amongst us 21. 'T is true King James could not carry on a War for the advancement of Popery without our Goods and he could not be secure of them whilst we had Arms but I hope all the World is convinced that it was not our Counsels nor Actings that brought him to these Straits nor was it to be expected that we should be content to be undone to repair the errors and faults of those Wicked Counsellors who put him on those desperate courses which lost him his Crown All our crime is then that we could not be content to be undone with him and by him and rather chose to desire Protection Liberty and the restitution of our Priviledges and Arms from their present Majesties than to be in the condition of the Vilest of Slaves under King James a crime for which I am confident no Papist condemns us in his Conscience however he may rail at us and call us disloyal SECT IX The attempts made on the Personal Estates of Protestants before the Revolution in England 1. THe Earl of Tyrconnel when made Deputy of Ireland found the Riches of the Kingdom in the Hands of Protestants the Flocks the Herds the rich Houshold-Stuff and Plate Beneficial Leases improved Rents Trade and Mony were almost intirely theirs whereas the Papists by their Idleness Ignorance and numerous Begging Clergy were so low in their Fortunes that they were in no condition to raise or maintain such an Army as was necessary to carry on his Designs in this Kingdom and he was sure the Protestants that had the Riches would not contribute to support them He therefore applied himself with all art and industry to impoverish them He did what he could as I have already shew'd to destroy their Trade he put all the hardships imaginable on Protestant Tenants that they might not be able to pay their Rents and he encouraged the Popish Tenants to oppose their Landlords It was whispered amongst them that they need not pay their Rents for the Land in a little time would be their own
his Government over them 6. The Case of the Purchasers and Improvers in Ireland seem'd the hardest the Land forfeited by the Rebellion in 1641. was set out to those that had been Adventurers and Soldiers in that War and many of these had sold them at Twelve or Fifteen years Purchase the Purchasers had built fair Houses and Villages on them inclos'd Deer-Parks planted Orchards and Gardens and laid out vast Sums in these and other Improvements it seem'd hard to turn them out without consideration to try therefore whether any thing would make King James relent they endeavour'd to see what he would do for these poor Men how their Case was prest and represented to King James may be judged by a Paper given him by the Lord Granard and drawn up by the Chief Justice Keating with the Approbation of other Protestants 't is in the Appendix King James read it and made no other answer to it but That he would not do evil that good might come of it the meaning of which Words as then apply'd is not easily understood It has been a common Question put to the Gentlemen of Ireland by some that neither know them nor their Affairs What have you lost But sure whosoever knows the extent of Ireland and the value of Land in it will see that the Interest of the English Protestants ruined by King James since he came to the Crown is of greater value than the Estates of all that favour his Cause in England and Scotland and I suppose it would put them out of conceit with him or any other King that should take away but one half of their Estates from them SECT XIII Eighthly King James brought the Lives of his Protestant Subjects in Ireland into imminent danger 1. I Suppose from the former Sections it is sufficiently apparent what Invasions King James made on the Liberties and Fortunes of his Protestant Subjects there remained to them only their Lives and these as will appear from this Section were put in imminent danger by him many were lost and the rest escap'd with the greatest hazard When King James came into Ireland it was certainly his Interest to exercise his Clemency towards his Protestant Subjects and he knew it to be so and therefore in his Declaration which he sent privately into England he made large Professions of his tenderness towards them and boasted how much their safety had been his care every body expected a Proclamation for a General Pardon and Indemnity should have been sent before him and that â—e would have put an effectual stop to the illegal Prosecutions against their Lives and to the Robberies of their Fortunes that every where were going on at his coming but on the contrary he rather pusht on both and not content with the Laws that already were in force which Partial Judges and Juries wrâ—sted to destroy them he made new snares for them by Acts of his pretended Parliament and by several private declarations whereby not only he but his inferior Officers took on them to dispose of the Lives of Protestants 2. It is not reasonable to charge his Majesty with the private Murther committed on Men in their Houses which were many up and down the Kingdom several even in the City of Dublin Only thus far in some degree he may be thought responsible for them he knew very well with what barbarous Murthers the Papists of Ireland had been charg'd in the Rebellion of 1641 he knew what inveterate hatred they carried towards the Protestants and how many Tories and Robbers constantly disturbed the Peace of the Kingdom and yet without any necessity at all he threw himself upon these People he encouraged them he Armed them he gave Commissions even to those that had been Tories and guilty of Murthers and therefore cannot altogether be excused from the Irregularities committed by them especially when there was no search made after or Prosecution of the Murthers as it happened in the case of Colonel Murry of Westmeath Brother in law to my Lord Granard an old Gentleman who had serv'd King Charles the first and second and suffered considerably for his Loyalty he was way-laid and shot dead as he rode to his own House under King James's Protection and with some marks as he imagined of his Favour Yet no enquiry was made after it There were many such private Murthers but I do not think it necessary to insist on them I shall confine my self to such as are of a more publick Nature which gave us just reasons to fear that the Government had a design upon our Lives 3. Such were first encouraging Witnesses to swear us into feigned Plots and Conspiracies of these there were many set up in the Kingdom almost every County had one set up in it and many were put into Prison and indicted for high Treason as Captain Phillips and Mr. Bowen in the County oâ— Westmeath and several others in other places some of which I have before mentioned and when the perjuries of the Witnesses came to be plainly discovered they yet were encouraged and protected from any Legal prosecution Of this nature a Conspiracy was framing against one Mr. William Spike and if it had taken effect it would have reached to a great many more The contrivance was thus one Dennis Connor had a mind to a small Employment which Mr Spike held in the Castle he had petitioned for it but Spike by the Interest of my Lord Powis tho a Protestant kept his place being found diligent in it Connor resolv'd to try another experiment to get him removed he framed a Letter as from one in Inniskilling directed to Spike in which the writer thanks him for his Intelligence and refers to a method agreed on for seizing the Castle of Dublin on a certain Day The Letter to make the thing more credible abuses King James in very ill terms Connor drops this Letter in the Castle where Spike came every Day knowing that as soon as it was found Spike would be seized and then he might manage the Plot as he pleased but his Contrivance was spoiled for the Sentinel saw him drop the Paper and procured him immediately to be seized he was examined before the Chief Justice and I think before King James also why he wrote such a wicked Letter he said it was for the Kings service to remove Spike whom he believed to be a Rogue and who being a Protestant would betray the King Spike Prosecuted him in the Kings-Bench but after all that could be done the Jury brought Connor in not Guilty pretending that it did not appear that this was the very Letter dropt by Connor tho he had confest it before the King and the Lord Cheif Justice and tho it was proved and owned to be his hand and a rough draft of it found with him and the Sentinel swore he dropt a Letter which he delivered to the Officer and the Officer swore that was the Letter delivered by the Sentinel to him tho
but by the legal course of Juries But King James and his Parliament intended to do the work of Protestants speedily and effectually and not to wait the slow methods of proceeding at the Common Law They resolv'd therefore on a Bill of Attainder and in order to it every Member of the House of Commons return'd the Names of such Protestant Gentlemen as liv'd near him or in the County or Burrough for which he serv'd and if he was a stranger to it he sent into the County or Place for information they were in great haste and many escaped them on the other hand some that were actually in King James's Service and fighting for him at Derry of which Cornet Edmund Keating Nephew to my Lord Chief Justice Keating was one were return'd as absent and attainted in the Act. When they had made a Collection of Names they cast them into several Forms and attainted them under several Qualifications and accordingly allow'd them time to come in and put themselves on Tryal the Qualifications and Numbers were as follow 1. Persons Attainted of Rebellion who had time given them till till the Tenth of August to surrender themselves and be tryed provided they were in the Kingdom and amenable to the Law at the time of making the Act otherwise were absolutely Attainted One Archbishop One Duke Fourteen Earls Seventeen Viscounts and one Viscountess Two Bishops Twelve Barons Twenty six Baronets Twenty two Knights Fifty six Clergymen Eleven hundred fifty three Esquires Gentlemen c. 2. Persons who were absentees before the Fifth of Novem. 1688 not returning according to the Proclamation of the Twenty fifth of March attainted if they do not appear by the First of September 1689. One Lord. Seven Knights Eight Clergymen Sixty five Esquires Gentlemen c. 3. Persons who were Absentees before the Fifth of November 1688. not returning according to the Proclamation of the Twenty fifth of March attainted if they do not appear by the First day of October 1689. One Archbishop One Earl One Viscount Five Bishops Seven Baronets Eight Knights Nineteen Clergymen Four hunder'd thirteen Esquires Gentlemen c. 4. Persons usually resident in England who are to signifie their Loyalty in case the King goes there the First of October 1689. and on His Majesties Certificate to the Chief Governour here they to be discharged otherwise to stand attainted One Earl Fifteen Viscounts and Lords Fourteen Knights Four hunder'd ninety two Esquires Gentlemen c. 5. Absentees by reason of sickness and noneage on proving their Loyalty before the last day of the first Term after their return to be acquitted and restor'd in the mean time their Estates Real and Personal are vested in His Majesty One Earl Seven Countesses One Viscountess Thirteen Ladies One Baronet Fifty nine Gentlemen and Gentlewomen 6. They vest all Lands c. belonging to Minors Ladies Gentlewomen in the King till they return and then upon Proof of their Loyalty and Faithfulness to King James they are allow'd to sue for their Estates before the Commissioners for executing the Acts of Repeal and Attainder if sitting or in the High Court of Chancery or Court of Exchequer and upon a Decree obtain'd for them there the Sheriffs are to put them in possession of so much as by the Decree of one of those Courts shall be adjudged them The Clauses in the Act are so many and so considerable that it never having been printed intire I thought it convenient to put it into the Appendix Perhaps it was never equall'd in any Nation since the time of the Proscription in Rome and not then neither for here is more than half as many Condemned in the small Kingdom of Ireland as was at that time proscribed in the greatest part of the then known World yet that was esteemed an unparallel'd Cruelty When Sir Richard Nagle Speaker of the House of Commons presented the Bill to King James for his Royal Assent he told him that many were attainted in that Act by the House of Commons upon such Evidence as fully satisfied the House the rest of them were attainted he said upon common Fame A Speech so very brutish that I can hardly perswade my self that I shall gain credit to the Relation but it is certainly true the Houses of Lords and Commons of their pretended Parliament are Witnesses of it and let the World judge what security Protestants could have of their Lives when so considerable a Lawyer as Sir Richard Nagle declares in so solemn an occasion and King James with his Parliament approves that common Fame is a sufficient Evidence to deprive without hearing so many of the Gentry Nobility and Clergy of their Lives and Fortunes without possibility of pardon and not not only cut off them but their Children and Posterity likewise By a particular Clause from advantages of which the former Laws of the Kingdom would not have deprived them though their Fathers had been found guilty of the worst of Treasons in particular Tryals 7. I shall only add a few Observations on this Act and leave the Reader to make others as he shall find occasion 1. Then this Act leaves no room for the King to pardon after the last day of November 1689. if the Pardon be not Enroll'd before that time the Act declares it absolutely void and null 2. The Act was conceal'd and no Protestant for any Money permitted to see it much less take a Copy of it till the time limited for Pardons was past at least Four Months So that the State of the Persons here attainted is desperate and irrecoverable except an Irish Popish Parliament will relieve them for King James took care to put it out of the power of any English Parliament as well as out of his own Power to help them by consenting to another Act of this pretended Parliament Intituled An Act declaring that the Parliaments of England cannot bind Ireland and against Writs of Errors and Repeals out of Ireland into England 3. It is observable with what hast and confusion this Act was drawn up and past perhaps no man ever heard of such a crude imperfect thing so ill digested and compos'd past on the World for a Law We find the same Person brought in under different Qualifications in one Place he is expresly allow'd till the First of October to come and submit to Tryalâ— and yet in another Place he is attainted if he do not come in by the First of September many are attainted by wrong Names many have their Christian Names left out and many whose Names and Sirnames are both put in are not distinguished by any Character whereby they may be known from others of the same Names 4. Many considerable Persons are left out which certainly had been put in if they could have gotten their Names which is a further proof of their hast and confusion in passing the Bill It is observable the Provost Fellowâ— and Scholars of the Colledge by Dublin are all omitted the Reason was
and John Sandisford of the same Gent. Henry Westenra of Athlacca in the County of Limerick Esq John Piggot of Kilfenny Esq Richard Stephens of Newcastle Gent. William Trenchard of Mountrenchard Esq ... Trenchard his eldest Son Eramus Smith of Carrigogonnagh Esq .... Harrison of Ballyvorneene Gent. Hugh Massey sen. of Doontrilige Esq Randall Clayton of Williamstown Gent. Henry Hartstonge Arch-Deacon of the Diocess of Limerick and William Harrison of Tuoreen Gent. all late of the County of Limerick Elnathan Lâ—m Merchant Vincent Gookin of Court-Mac-Shiry Esq Jonas Stowell of Killbritten Esq Philip Dimond of Cork Merchant Thomas Mitchell of the same Merchant Richard Boyle of Shannon-Parke Esq Achilles Daunt of Dortigrenau Gent. Nicholas Lysaght of Ardohnoge Gent. and William Harman of Carrigdownam Esq all late of the County of Cork William Gibbs of ... in the County of Waterford Gent. Loftus Brightwell Gent. Robert Beard Gent. Barzilla Jones Dean of Lismore Matthias Aldington of Tircuillinmore Gent. William Aldlington of the same Gent. and Richard Silver of Youghall Gent. all late of the Counties of Waterford and Cork Henry Brady of Tomgreny in the County of Clare Gent. Richard Picket of Clonmel in the County of Tipperary Esq John Lovet Esq John Castle of Richard's-Town Gent. Joseph Ruttorne of Poolekerry Gent. Thomas Vallentine of Killoman Gent. George Clarke of Ballytarsney Gent. John Bright of Shanrehin Gent. George Clarke of the same Gent. Thomas Climmuck of Tullamacyne Gent. William Warmsby Gent. Richard Clutterbuck of Derryluskane Gent. Erasmus Smith of Tipperary Esq William Watts of Drangan Gent. John Evelin of the same Gent. .... Shapcoate of Loghkent Gent. .... Page of the same Gent. Thomas Moor of Carrageenesâ—iragh Gent. Humphery Wray of Ballyculline Gent. Edward Crafton of Luorhane Gent. Alderman ... Clarke of .... John Clarke Gent. Arthur Annesloe Gent. William Warwick and Purefoy Warwick of Ballysidii Gent. Capt. .... Cope Robert Boyle of Killgraunt Gent. Hugh Radcliffe of Clonmel Gent. Edward Nelthrop Gent. Robert Dixon Samuel Clarke Gent. John Jones Gent. Henry Payne Gent. George Clarke of Tobberheny Gent. Edward Huchinson of Knocklosty Gent. Richard Aldworth late chief Remembrancer John Baiggs of Castletowd Gent. and John Buckworth of Shanballyduffe Esq all late of the County of Cipperary John Kingsmell of Castlesin in the County of Donnegall Esq James Hamilton of Dunmanagh in the County of Tyrone Gent. John Aungier Minister of the Vicarage of Lurgen in the County of Cavan William Allen of Kilmore in the County of Monaghan Gent. James Davys of Carrickfergus in the County of Antrim Gent. Samuel Warring of Warringstown in the County of Down Gent. Henry Cope of Loghall in the County of Ardmagh Gent. Gilbert Thacker of Cluttan Esq Archibald Johnson of Loghelly Clerk Oliver St. John of Toneregee Esq and William Brookes of Droincree Clerk all late of the County of Ardmagh Capt. Thomas Caulfeild of Dunamon in the County of Galloway Josepb Stuart of Turrock in the County of Roscomon Gent. and Henry Dodwell of Leytrin in the same County Gent. Paul Gore of Newton in the County of Mayo Esq Have before the said fifth Day of November last absented themselves from this Kingdom and live in England Scotland or the Isle-of-Man and there now abide and by their not coming or returning into this Kingdom upon your Majesties Proclamation to assist in Defence of this Realm according to their Allegiance must be presumed to adhere to the said Prince of Orange in case they return not within the time by this Act prescribed and thereby may justly forfeit all the Lands Tenements the Hereditaments which they or any of them are intituled unto within this Kingdom Be it therefore enacted by the Authority aforesaid that in case the said Person and Persons last mentioned do not by the first Day of October one thousand six hundred eighty nine of his and their own Accord without Compulsion return into this Kingdom and tender him and themselves to the chief Justice of your Majesties Court of Kings-Bench oâ— to some other Judg of the said Court or Judg of Assize in his Circuit or to any of the Lords of your Majesties most honourable Privy Council to be charged with any Crime or Crimes to him or them to be charged or imputed that then or in case he or they upon such his or their Return shall be convict by Verdict of twelve Men or by his or their own Confession upon his or their Arraignment for Treason or upon his or their Arraignment stand mute such Person and Persons so absent and not returning as aforesaid or after his or their Return being convict of Treason as aforesaid shall from and after the said first Day of October one thousand six hundred eighty nine be deemed reputed and taken as Traytors convict and attainted of High-Treason and shall suffer such Pains of Death and other Forfeitures and Penalties as in Cases of High-Treason is accustomed But in case such Person and Persons so returning upon such his or their Trial be acquitted or discharged by Proclamation then such Person and Persons respectively shall from thence-forth be freed discharged and acquitted from all Pains Punishments and Forfeitures by this Act incurred laid or imposed any thing in this Act to the contrary notwithstanding Provided always that in case your Majesty shall happen to go into the Kingdom of England or Scotland before the first Day of October one thousand six hundred eighty nine Then if the said Sir William Meredith Sir Charles Chiney Sir Charles Lloyd Sir Algernon Mayo Sir Richard May Sir Joseph Williamson Sir William Barker Alexander Fraizer Esq John Hollam .... Daniel of the Iron-Works Brooke Bridges Charles Vaughan Hugh Merrick Nathaniel Huett Hierom Hawkins Major John Reade William Trenchard .... Trenchard his eldest Son Erasmus Smith .... Harrison of Ballyverneen Achilles Daunt John Power Lord Decies William Gibbs Loftus Brightwell Robert Beard Matthias Aldington William Aldington John Lovett John Castle Joseph Rittorne Thomas Vallentine George Clarke of Ballytrasiny John Bright George Clarke of Shaurelin Thomas Chinnucks William Warmsby Richard Clutturbruck Erasmus Smith William Watts John Evellin .... Shapcoate of Loghkent .... Page of the same Thomas Moore Humphery Wray Edward Crofton Alderman Clarke John Clarke Arthur Anslow William Warwick Purefoy Warwick Capt. ... Coapes Robert Boyle of Killgrant Hugh Radcliffe Edward Nelthrop Robert Dixon Samuel Clarke John Jones Henry Payne George Clarke and Gilbert Thacker whose Dwelling and Residence always hath been in England shall give your Majesty such Testimony of their Loyalty and Fidelity as that your Majesty will be pleased on or before the said first Day of October one thousand six hundred eighty nine to certify under your Privy Signet or Sign manual unto your chief Governor or Governors of this Kingdom That your Majesty is satisfied or assured of the Loyalty and Fidelity of the Persons last before-named or of any of them That then if such Certificate shall on or before the first Day of November
Let this be Printed Nottingham White-Hall Octob. 15. 1691. THE STATE OF THE PROTESTANTS OF IRELAND Under the late King James's Government IN WHICH Their Carriage towards him is justified and the absolute Necessity of their endeavouring to be freed from his Government and of submitting to their present Majesties is demonstrated LONDON Printed for Robert Clavell at the Peacock at the West-end of St. Paul's 1691. HEADS of the DISCOURSE The INTRODUCTION Containing an Explication of the Doctrine of Passive Obedience and stating the true Notion and Latitude of it page 1 N. 1. That a King who designs to destroy a People abdicates the Government of them ib. 2. The Assertors of Passive Obedience own this but alledge the Case is not to be put p. 2 3. The Arguments of Passive Obedience from Reason and Scripture reach only Cases where the Mischief is particular or tolerable p. 3 4. A War not always a greater Evil than Suffering p. 5 5. The Division of the whole Discourse into four parts ib. Chap. 1. That it is lawful for one Prince to interpose between another Prince and his Subjects when he uses them cruelly p. 6 N. 1. This Point already cleared by several ib. 2. 1. Argument One Prince may have an Interest in the People and Government of another Prince ib. 3. 2. Argument That tho Destruction of a People by their Prince may only be a step to the Destruction of his Neighbours ib. 4. 3. Argument Charity and Humanity oblige every one who is able to succour the oppressed p. 7 5. 4. Argument God seems for this Reason to have divided the World into several Principalities ib. 6. 5. Argument From the Authority of Christian Casuists p. 8 7. 6. From the Practice of Christian Princes Constantine the Great Constantine his Son King Pepin the Holy War c. ib. 8. The Objection from the Oath of Allegiance c. answered from Falkner p. 9 9. From it not being lawful to assist any Prince in an ill Cause p. 10 10. From King Jame's abolishing those Oaths here in Ireland ib. Chap. 2. King James designed to destroy the Protestant Religion p. 12 Sect. 1. The possibility of a King 's designing the Destruction of his Subjects ib. N. 1. That it is necessary the Princes Design should be very evident to justifie the Opposition of his Subjects ib. 2. An Answer to the Objection who shall be Judge ib. 3. Example of Princes that have had such Designs against their Subjects p. 13 Sect. 2. Shewing from the Obligations of his Religion that King James designed to destroy Protestant Subjects p. 14 N. 1. Proved from the Councils of Lateran and Constance from King James's Zeal Confessors and Allies ib. 2. That no Promises of the Prince nor Laws of the Land can secure Protestant Subjects p. 16 Account of Jerome of Prague's safe Conduct p. 17 Sect. 3. King James's Design to ruin his Protestant Subjects proved from the Profession of that whole Party that were most privy to his Councils who privately warned their Protestant Friends of it ib. Sect. 4. The same destructive Designs proved from the Officers employed by him p. 19 N. 1. The Ground of the different Interests of Ireland Account of the Rebellion in 1641 ib. 2. The Subjects Security is that the Officers employed by the King are responsible for what they do amiss p. 20 3. The Officers employed by King James not only not responsible but fitted to destroy us upon account of the five Qualifications following p. 21 Sect. 5. Upon Account of their being Men generally of no Fortune p. 22 N. 1. King James employed such in the Army and Civil Offices and such were his Favourites p. 22 2. He employed such in Corporations p. 23 3. Men of Estates that followed him out of England had little Interest with him ib. 4. The Reason of this that they might not stick at illegal Commands p. 24 Sect. 6. Upon Account of their Insufficiency for their Emploments ib. N. 1. The Roman Catholicks generally insufficient for Business by their long Disuse ib. 2. The Inconveniences of this in the Courts and City p. 25 3. In the Country p. 26 4. Those employed were incapable of Improvement p. 27 Sect. 7. Upon account of their loose Principles and want of Moral Honesty ib. N. 1. Knavery Robbery or Forgery no Bar to Preferments in King James his Army or Employments ib. 2. The lewdest Converts favour'd p. 29 3. All of them very uncharitable and void of Compassion to Hereticks p. 30 4. Many Perjuries amongst them ib. Sect. 8. Upon Account of their Genius and Inclination to destroy the Laws c. p. 31 N. 1. The ancient Condition of the Tenants and Landlords of Ireland ib. 2. The Landlords that did not forfeit their Estates 1641 retained the Genius of their Ancestors p. 32 3. The Humour and Way of Living of such as formerly forfeited or had sold their Estates ibid. 4. The English Laws were intolerable to the old Landlords that retain'd their Estates p. 33 5. Much more to those that had lost them and most of all to the Popish Clergy ibid. 6. King James employed and trusted those most whose Interest and Temper made them greatest Enemies to the Laws p. 34 by the Laws in employing Soldiers ibid. 8. Secondly That Protestants would not serve his turn Answer This only shews what he designed against us p. 57 9. Thirdly That such Levies were necessary in the Kings Circumstances Answer The Papists had brought that necessity The raising and modeling this Army a plain instance of King James's design to destroy us ibid. Sect. 3. Secondly King James's dealing with the Courts of Judicature p. 58 1. Justice in the Hands of â—it Persons the support of a Kingdom King James put it into the most unfit Hands being such as were bent to destroy the Protestants and English Interest ibid. 2. Chancery Primate Boyle and Sir Charles Porter removed Fitton put in His Character His Inclination and Behaviour towards Protestants and great partiality to them ibid. 3. Masters of Chancery of the same sort p. 60 4. On the other Benches one Protestant Judg kept in for a Colour without Power The like done by Burgesses in Corporations p. 61 5. Kings Bench Nugent's Character great Partiality Instance in Captain Fitz Gerald anâ— Sir Gregory Birn Nugent's great hand in the Bill of Attainder c. Sir Bryan ô Neal's Character p. 61 62 6. Excâ—equer Sir Stephen Rice's Character His Inveteracy to Protestants and enmity to the Act of Settlement p. 63 7. Common Pleas little to do Keating's and Daley's Characters p. 64 8. Circuits Alike ill for Protestants Instance Tirrell's Affidavit ibid. 9. Attorney General Sir Richard Nagle his Character and Partiality Instance in Fitz Gerald and Sir William Petty Speaker of the House of Commons drew up the Acts of Repeal and Attainder and betrayed the Kings Prerogative p. 65 66 10. Administration of the Laws turned to the Protestants ruin p. 66 11. Instances in
of a Letter sent the King August 14. 1686. found in Bishop Tirrel's but imperfect p. 303 Lord Clarendon's Speech in Council on his leaving the Government of Ireland p. 310 A General Abstract of the Gross Produce of his Majesties Revenue in Ireland in the three first years of the Management beginning at Christmas 1682. and ended Christmas 1685. p. 312 Sheriffs for the year 1687. p. 313 Lord Lieutenants and Debuty Lieutenants of Counties p. 324 Privy Councellors appointed by Letters from King James dated February 28. 1684. and such as were sworn since by particular Letters p. 333 The Civil List of Officers and the times of their entring on their Offices p. 334 An account of the General and Field Officers of King James's Army out of the Muster Rolls p. 341 A Copy of the Letter dispersed about the Massacre said to be designed on December 9. 1688. p. 345 Lord Mountjoy's Circular Letter on his going to France p. 346 Judge Keating's Letter to Sir John Temple December 29. 1688. p. 347 Proposals humbly offered to the Earl of Tyrconnell Lord Deputy by the Bishop Meath about the intended search for Arms p. 353 An account of the Conditions made in the Field between the High Sheriff of Gallway and the Prisoners afterwards condemned p. 356 A Copy of a Letter from Bishop Maloony to Bishop Tyrrell the Original found amongst Bishop Tyrrell's Papers March 8. 1689. p. 360 Presentment of the Grand Jury of Tipperary against Protestants p. 365 A List of all the Men of Note that came with King James out of France or that followed him after so far as could be Collected p. 366 A List of the Lords that sate in the pretended Parliament at Dublin held May 7. 1689. p. 369 The names of the Knights Citizens and Burgesses returned to the Parliament beginning May 7. 1689. p. 370 An Address to King James in behalf of Purchasers under the Act of Settlement by Judg Keating p. 377 The Lord Bishop of Meath's Speech in Parliament June 4. 1689. p. 389 Copies of the Orders for giving Possessions p. 388 Albaville's Instructions to the Commissioners of Oyer and Terminer p. 392 A Petition of the Minister of Wexford for his Church and the Order thereupon p. 395 Mr. Prowd Minister of Trim his account of the remarkable Accident that happened upon Plundering the Church of Trim p. 397 General Rosen's Order to bring the Protestants before Derry p. 399 Advertisement as it was published by Mr. Yalden in his weakly Abhorrence concerning Dr. King and Dr. Foy p. 404 Collonel Lutterell's Order for numbering Protestants p. 406 Collonel Lutterell's Order forbidding above five Protestants to meet any where p. 407 THE STATE OF THE Protestants of Ireland Under the late King James's Government IN WHICH Their Carriage towards him is justified and the absolute Necessity of their endeavouring to be freed from his Government and of submitting to their present Majesties is demonstrated INTRODUCTION Containing an Explication of the Doctrine of Passive Obedience and stating the true Notion and Latitude of it 1. IT is granted by some of the highest assertors of Passive Obedience that if a King design to root out a people or destroy one main part of his Subjects in favour of another whom he loves better that they may prevent it even by opposing him with force and that he is to be judged in such a case to have Abdicated the Government of those whom he designs to destroy contrary to Justice and the Laws This is Grotius's Opinion in his Book De jure Belli Pacis lib. 1. cap. 4. § 11. where citing Barclay he says If a King be carried with a malitious design to the destruction of a whole Nation he loses his Kingdom which I grant since a will to Govern and to Destroy cannot consist together therefore he who professes himself an Enemy to a whole People doth in that very act Abdicate his Kingdom But it seems hardly possible that this should enter into the heart of a King who is not mad if he govern only one people but if he govern many it may happen that in favour of one people he may desire the other were destroyed Doctor Hammond asserts Passive Obedience as high as any yet he approves this passage of Grotius and of Barclay in his vindication of Christ's reprehending S. Peter from the exceptions of Mr. Marshall p. 327. of his first Volume Grotius saith he mentions some cases wherein a King may be resisted As in case a King shall Abdicate his Kingdom and manifestly relinquish his Power then he turns private man and may be dealt with as any other such And some other the like 2. And it is observable that generally in all Books and Sermons concerning Obedience to Governors where this case is put suppose a King endeavour to destroy his people there are only two answers given to it one is that his Officers and Ministers ought not to obey him if they do the Law will punish them The other is that this case ought not to be put that we ought not to suppose that any King will designedly endeavour to destroy his people nay the Author of Jovian will not allow us to suppose that any King will attempt in England to Govern altogether by Arbitrary Power and the Sword For says he Chap. 12. p. 272. To suppose this is plainly to suppose the utmost impossibility and p. 273. If a King should shut up the Courts obstruct or pervert Justice he allows that all his good Subjects and all the bad too that tendered their own safety would desert him and Chap. 6. p. 152. He says he should be tempted to pray for the destruction of such a Prince as the only means of delivering the Church Falkner in his Christian Loyalty B. 2. Chap. 5. N. 19 20 tells us But if ever any such strange case as is supposed should really happen I confess it would have its great difficulties He brings in Grotius De jure Belli Pacis lib. 1. cap. 4. N. 7. And Bishop Bilsons Christian Subjection Part 3. p. 519. edit 1585. as allowing it and seems to allow their judgment in the case but then tells us that the case above-mentioned ought not at all to be supposed or taken into consideration All which plainly grants that if a King do in earnest design the destruction of his Subjects and get Ministers and Officers to concur with him in it who are ready to execute his wicked intentions and against whom the Law yields no Protection that in such a case the Subjects may desert their Prince decline his Government and Service and seek Protection where they can find it 3. And indeed whoever considers the Discourses that have been written concerning Non-Resistance will find that the reasons given for it either from the nature of the Thing or Scripture reach only tolerable evils and prove that a man ought to be patient under pressures laid on him by his Governor when the mischief is not
Neighbouring People In that Case there is all the Reason in the World that the Prince and People so threatened should prevent their own Ruin by timely interposing in behalf of their Neighbours and by forcing their King to desist from his Injustice and Violence against his own Subjects tho it cost a War to compass it if there appear no other means to do it And this is not only Charity to them but a point of Prudence which every Prince ows to himself Now if we consider the State of Europe at that time the growing Power of France and how much the late King was in the French Interests it will clearly appear that the Measures he took with his Subjects must have been fatal to all Europe especially to the Protestant Interest which he almost openly declared that he designed to destroy and therefore it concerned all Europe more especially Holland who lay nearer to Destruction to interpose in time and nip these Designs in the beginning which they and all Europe saw would have ended in their Destruction as soon as the Ruin of the Protestants in England and Ireland was accomplished and the present Confederacy shews this to be the general Sense of all the States and Princes in Europe as well of the Roman Catholicks as of the Protestants the Pope himself not excepted so that this which has been done to King James is not to be looked on as the single act of their present Majesties or of the People of England but of all Europe as the only means to oppose the intolerable Encroachments or the French King and his Faction 4. Thirdly the same is lawful by the common Rights of Humanity and Charity which are due to the distressed If I see a Man about to kill or destroy another tho I have no authority over either or concern with them yet Humanity obliges me to succour and rescue the oppressed and tho it be a Son that is thus wronged by his Father yet while the Father proceeds with Cruelty and apparent Injustice it alters not the Case or makes it any thing more unlawful for me to afford relief or for him to desire and accept it tho the Father should take it so ill as to engage me in a quarrel to the loss of his life Much more is it lawful for Princes to interpose with a Neighbor-Prince when they see him cruelly and injustly oppress his Subjects and there is much more reason for those Subjects to desire and accept of the kind Offers of such a Deliverer than for a Son to accept it against his Father 5. Fourthly God seems purposely to have divided the World into several Principalities and Dominions and ballanced them a mong themselves that there might be a Refuge for the oppressed and afflicted and that if one King should turn Tyrant or endeavour to destroy his People the others might interpose and stop his Hands and that the fear of being deserted by his Subjects in such a Quarrel might oblige every one to preserve their Love and Affection by Justice and good Government I have reason to believe that the Primitive Church and especially S. Cyprian was of this opinion for they give this Reason why the Church was not trusted to one but to many Bishops Saith S. Cyprian Therefore the Body of Bishops is numerous that if one be guilty of Heresie and dissipate the Flock the rest may interpose and rescue them out of his Hands And sure the Argument is as strong for the number of Temporal as of Spiritual Governors and the Necessity and Justice of their interposing with their Neighbor Princes when they attempt the Destruction of their People is as great as of a Bishops being chastised and restrained by his Fellow Bishops when he attempts to introduce Heresie 6. Fifthly This is agreeable to the Opinion of Christian Civilians and Casuists for which I desire the Reader may consult Grotius de Jure c. lib. 2. cap. 25. n. 8. where he tells us That if it were granted that Subjects might not take Arms lawfully even in the extremest necessity which yet saith he I see is doubted by those who professedly defend the Power of Kings it would not follow from thence but others might take Arms in their behalf This he proves from Reason and Authority and answers the Arguments brought against it See more to the same purpose lib. 2. cap. 20. S. 40. where he tells us That it is so much more honorable to avenge the Injuries done to another than to our selves by how much there is less danger that the sense of anothers pain should make us exceed in exacting such Revenge than of our own or byass our Judgment 7. Sixthly The same appears to be lawful from the Practice of Christian Princes who are celebrated in Histories for doing it this was the Case of Constantine the Great and the Cause of his Quarrel to Maxentius whom for his Tyranny over the Romans Constantine invaded and was received as their Deliverer when he had slain him The Cause of his invading Licinius his Brother in Law was of the like nature against whom he commenced a War for his persecuting the Christians and after he had overcome him he was received by the Christians in Licinius's room and celebrated by the Church and Historians of that time as a most holy and generous Champion in the Cause of Christ. When the King of Persia persecuted the Christians the same Prince threatened him with a War in case he did not desist and no doubt but he would have been as good as his word if the Persian King had not complyed We may observe the same to have been done in the Cause of the Orthodox against the Arrians by Constantine the Younger Son of Constantine the Great who threatened his elder Brother Constantius with a War if he did not desist from persecuting the Catholick Bishops and restore Athanasius to his Bishoprick of Alexandria that great and holy Man accepted of this Mediation and was restored by it which he would not have done if he had judged it unlawful The same was practised by King Pepin and Charles the Great against the Lombards and by all the Princes of Europe in favour of the Christians oppressed by the Turks in the holy War Queen Elizabeth did the same for Holland King James for the Prince Palatine and King Charles the First for Rochel and Bishop Laud who certainly understood the Principles of our Church encouraged both and it is one of the greatest Blemishes of the Reign of King Charles the Second that he suffered the French King to proceed so far in destroying his Protestant Subjects without interposing in their behalf which if he had effectually done he had either prevented it or got an opportunity of rendering his Reign glorious and his Kingdom faâ—e by a War which would in all probability have humbled that Monarch to the advantage of all Europe 8. I know nothing that can be objected against this except it
be the peculiar Obligation that lies on us from the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance which tho it should be allowed lawful for a Foreign Prince to interpose would yet make it necessary for us to fight for our own Prince But to this I answer 1. That those Oaths were made by us to the King as Supreme Governor of these Kingdoms and while he continued such they did oblige us but by endeavouring to destroy us he as Grotius observes in that very Act abdicated the Government since an intention of Governing cannot consist with an intention of Destroying and therefore in all equity we are absolved from Oaths made to him as Governor That this may not seem a new Doctrine I would have the Reader observe that I only transcribe the Learned Falkner in his Christian Loyalty l. 1. c. 5. s. 2. n. 19. Such Attempts saith he of ruining do ipso facto include a disclaiming the governing those Persos as Subjects and consequently of being their Prince or King and then the Expression of our publick Declaration and Acknowledgment would still be secured that it is not lawful upon any pretence whatsoever to take Arms against the King 9. But Secondly No Oath of Allegiance doth oblige any Subject to assist his Prince in an ill Cause If therefore a King should against the Rules of Justice attempt to destroy a Neighbor Nation his Subjects who were convinced of this ought not to fight for him in such a War and if they ought not to assist him to oppress Foreigners much less is it lawful for them to assist him to destroy themselves or to fight against a Prince who comes to rescue them from Destruction intended against them and if no Protestant Subject could lawfully fight for King James in his Quarrel against their present Majesties it is manifest that he himself had thereby voided that Branch of the Oath of Allegiance of fighting for him by making the matter of it unlawful he having brought the Nation into such a Condition that at the same time they defended his Person they must enable him to accomplish his destructive Designs against them which no Casuist will say they were obliged to do They therefore that urge us with the Obligation of the Oaths of Allegiance ought either to make it appear that it was lawful for us to fight for him in an ill Cause or else that it was not an ill Cause to help him to destroy his People Or Thirdly That he had no such Design against us none of which I have yet seen attempted in any Paper that has appeared in his Defence 10. But Thirdly As to us particularly in Ireland his late Majesty King James and his Parliament here by a formal Act did repeal and make void all former Acts that required the tendering or taking those Oaths and left not one legal standing Oath in force whereby we or any other Subjects besides Soldiers were obliged to profess Subjection to him therefore those Oaths being repealed and voided by the King 's own express Act how could he expect that we should look upon our selves to be bound or obliged by them And indeed we must conclude from his Majesties consenting to repeal them either that he designed to release us from the peculiar Obligation arising from them as too strict or else that he did not design to depend on our Oaths for our Loyalty and therefore laid them aside as of no force to oblige us either of which must proceed from an intention to destroy the ancient Government with which he was intrusted and can signifie nothing less than that he did not intend to rule us as his Predecessors did or to depend on those Obligations of Subjection which they judged proper for the Subjects of these Kingdoms to give their King and that as he did not intend to keep his Coronation Oath to us so he did not value our Oath of Allegiance to him having left none that we know of in this Kingdom which any Law obliges us to take CHAP. II. King James designed to destroy the Protestant Religion the Liberty and Property of his Subjects in general the English Interest in particular and so alter the very Frame and Constitution of the Government SECT I. Shewing the Possibility of a Kings designing the Destruction of his Subjects 1. I Have in the former Chapter shewed that it is lawful for a Prince to interpose between another Prince and his Subjects if he attempt to destroy them I promised in the second place to shew that the late King designed and endeavoured to destroy and utterly ruin the Protestant Religion and English Interest in Ireland and to alter the very Frame and Constitution of the Government This I look on as the most material point of our Apology and to need the most clear and full proof for Jealousies and Fears in such a Case ought not to pass for Arguments or be brought into competition with a certain and plain Duty that is with Obedience to lawful Governors The Arguments therefore brought by Subjects to prove their Governors Design to destroy them in those Interests to preserve which is the only Reason of Mens desiring or submitting to Government ought to be so plain and evident that the Conscience of Mankind cannot but see and be convinced of their Truth especially the generality of the Subjects themselves ought to be fully satisfied and acquiesce in them 2. I know 't is commonly objected Who shall be Judge And for this Reason alone some conclude it can never be lawful to make any opposition against a Governor or to side with a Deliverer that comes only to rescue miserable Subjects but I answer there are some Cases so plain that they need no Judge at all every Man must be left to judge for himself and for his Integrity he must be answerable to God and his own Conscience Matters of Fact are often of this Nature and I take this to be one of them for either the People must be left to judge of the Designs of their Governor by what they see and feel from him or else they must be obliged to a blind and absolute Submission without employing their understanding in the case And I dare appeal to all the World whether it be safer to leave it to the Judgments and Consciences of a whole Kingdom to determine concerning the Designs of their Governor or to leave it to the Will and Conscience of the King whether he will destroy them One of these is unavoidable and I am assured it is less probable that the Generality of a Kingdom will concur in a Mistake of this Nature and less mischievous if they should mistake than that a King by Weakness wicked Counsellors or false Principles should design to make his People Slaves subvert the ancient Government or destroy one part of his People whom he hates in favour of another 3. That a Prince may design to destroy his Subjects tho the Asserters of Absolute Passive Obedience would
make it an incredible Thing is so far from being impossible that it is very common of which there are so many Examples both ancient and modern that it is a wonder that Men who know any thing of History should overlook them Nero Caligula Domitian Maximinus Heliogabalus Commodus not only endeavoured but professed it and some of them were mightily concerned that it was not in their power to accomplish it No longer ago than the time of Philip the Second of Spain we have an Example of a Christian King no better than those Heathens Whoever reads the Story of his dealing with the Low Countries must confess that he design'd the utter Destruction of the Laws and Liberties of those People and that in particular he was resolved that not one Protestant should be left alive amongst them The same has been designed and effected in a great measure by the present French King against his Protestant Subjects and he must have a great share either of Impudence or Stupidity that can deny this Prince to have designed and purposely contrived that destruction and by the same Rule that a Man can be so wicked and barbarous as to design the destruction of a third or fourth part of his People he may design the destruction of the greatrr part if they will be such Fools as to suffer him to effect it SECT II. Shewing from the Obligations of his Religion that King James designed to destroy us IT is easie to demonstrate that every Roman Catholick King if he throughly understand his Religion and do in earnest believe the Principles of it is obliged if he be able to destroy his Protestant Subjects and that nothing can excuse him from doing it but want of power This is plain from the third Chapter of the fourth Lateran Council and from the Council of Constance in the Bull that confirms it read in the 45. Session if therefore a Popish King can persuade his Protestant Subjects to submit to him whilst he doth it he is obliged by his Principles to destroy them even when they are the greater part and Body of his Subjects Now King James was as is known to all the World a most zealous Roman Catholick and ingaged with that party of them that most zealously assert and practise this Doctrine of rooting out Hereticks He gave himself up intirely to the Conduct and guidance of Jesuits these were the Governors and Directors of his Conscience and he seemed to have no other Sentiments than such as they inspired into him If then these have prevailed with the French King whom some report to be a merciful Man in his own Nature and certainly a mighty Zealot for his Honor to break his most solemn established Laws violate his repeated Declarations and Oaths and in spite of all these to persecute and destroy his Protestant Subjects if the same have prevailed with the Duke of Savoy to do the like though as he is now convinced manifestly against his Interest nay almost to his own Destruction having lost thereby his best and most resolute and useful Subjects who would have served him most Cordially against France the Enemy he ought most to dread and which one day will swallow up his Dukedom if his Allies do not prevent it If lastly they have prevailed with the Emperor to involve himself in a War that has now lasted about twenty years and almost lost him his Empire rather than suffer a few Protestants to live quietly in Hungary Is not our late Kings being of the same Principles and under the Government of the same Directors of Conscience is not his fondness of France and his Alliance with it his affecting to imitate that King in every thing and above all his prosecuting the same if not worse methods towards the Protestants in Ireland that the King of France did with the Hugonots in his Dominions a clear and full proof of both Kings being in the same design to root out not only the Protestants of these Kingdoms but likewise of all Europe and that we must all have expected the same usage our Brethren met with in France Nor could our Kings Promises and Engagements be any greater assurances to us than those of the French King were to his Subjects It is observable that King James was more than ordinarily liberal in his Promises and Declarations of favour towards Protestants He boasted in a Declaration sent to England and dispersed by his Friends there dated May 8. 1689. at Dublin That his Protestant Subjects their Religion Priviledges and Properties were his especial care since he came into Ireland He often professed that he made no distinction between them and Roman Catholicks and both he here and his Party there did much extol his kind dealings with his Protestants in Ireland What those dealings truly were I shall have occasion to shew the representation of them made in England by him and his Party was no less false than his Promises were unsincere it being plain he had a reserve in them all It is a maxim as I take it in Law that if the King be deceived in his Grant though it pass the Great Seal yet it is void much more must all his verbal Promises be void if he be deceived in them Now if we consider who were the Directors of the Kings Conscience we ought not to wonder that he made no great scruple to evade them Doctor Cartwright one of his Instruments gives us a right notion of King James's Promises in his Sermon at Rippon where in effect he tells us that the Kings Promises are Donatives and ought not to be too strictly examined or urged and that we must leave his Majesty to explain his own meaning in them this Gloss pleased King James so well that he rewarded the Author with the Bishoprick of Chester though very unfit for that Character and shewed in all his actions that he meant to proceed accordingly and the humour run through the whole party whenever they were at a pinch and under a necessity of serving themselves by the assistance or credulity of Protestants they promised them fair and stuck at no terms with them but when their turn was served they would not allow us to mention their promise much less to challenge the performance 2. It plainly appeared that it was not in King James's power if he had been disposed himself to perform his promises to us The Priests told us that they would have our Churches and our Tyths and that the King had nothing to do with them and they were as good as their words nor could his Majesty upon trial hinder them One Mr. Moore preached before the King in Christs Church in the beginning of the year 1690. his Sermon gave great offence he told his Majesty that he did not do justice to the Church and Churchmen and amongst other things said that Kings ought to consult Clergymen in their temporal affairs the Clergy having a temporal as well as a spiritual right in the
bounty yet retained in them the same Principles of Popery that at first stirred them up to Rebellion and to Massacre their fellow Subjects and having besides this their old hatred to the English new edged and heated by seeing the Conquerors possest of the Estates which they themselves by their Rebellion and Cruelty had lost they from time to time let us see their hopes and wishes of Revenge to which the favour they found at the English Court under the shelter of the late Queen Mother and the prospect of the Duke of Yorks's coming to the Crown gave foundation and encouragement Neither could they hide their resentments so as to prevent a just fear and jealousie of them in the Protestants who had so lately and in so signal a manner suffered by them in all their dearest Interests yet these were the persons whom King James chose for his Ministers and Officers with whom he resolved to trust the Employments the strong Holds the Arms and Justice of the Nation a thing so extravagant that we challenge any one to shew a parallel case in any History No body would ever have taken the Arms and Courts of Justice out of the Conquerors hands and put them into the hands of the Conquered exasperated by the loss of their Honours Liberties and Estates except he had a mind they should revenge themselves and recover all that they had lost before and they had been manifestly wanting to their own Interest if they had slipt this opportunity If they hated us so much in 1641 that without provocation and whilst in possession of theâ— Estates they rose as one Man and attempted to destroy us if they were so set on it that they ventured to do it without Arms Discipline or Authority on their side and where the hazard was so great that it was ten to one if they succeeded what could we expect they should do now when provoked to the heighth by the loss of their Estates when Armed Disciplined and entrusted with all the places of Strength Power and Profit in the Kingdom This alone is a Demonstration that the King who thus put us in the power of our inveterate and exasperated Enemies either was extremely mistaken in his Measures or designed our destruction I am sure we must have been destroyed if God had not prevented it almost by a Miracle 2. It is a Maxim in our Law that the King can do no wrong because he executeth nothing in his own person but has Officers appointed by Law to excute his Commands who are obliged not to obey him if he command any thing that is illegal If any Officer obey him in such unlawful Commands it is at his own peril and he is accountable for it the Kings Command being no excuse or protection to any Man for his doing an illegal thing Whilst therefore the King Employs only persons amenable to the Laws that have a value for their Honor for the Liberty of their Country and the Publick Good and have Estates to answer for what wrong they do to the Subjects in executing their Offices there is no great danger of his doing much harm to his People though his intentions were ever so mischievous against them it being the great security of the Subjects and restraint on the Officers of the King that they cannot do any wrong but the injured person has his remedy against them by Law 3. This I remember is all the Humane security Doctor Hicks in his Jovian allows us to preserve our Liberties c. against a tyrannous King And he supposes it so effectual a bar to all attempts of this Nature that he pronounces it impossible for our King to turn Tyrant But the event has sufficiently confuted his surmise and shewn not only the possibility but the actual performance of what he supposes impossible for King James made it his business to find out and actually pitched on a Set of Officers and Instruments that as he expresses it in one of his Declarations would obey him without reserve against whom the Current of the Law was stopt and who were in no condition to make amends for the mischiefs they did all which will appear if I make out 1. That they were Men of little or no Fortunes 2. Unable and unsufficient to discharge the Offices committed to their Trust. 3. That many of them were Men of such loose Principles and Morals that they could not be supposed to stick at any wickedness which was for their Interest 4. That their Inclination and Genius led them to destroy the Laws Liberty and Religion of the Kingdom 5. That most of them were unqualified by Law for the Offices into which they were placed and therefore could not be supposed to study the preservation of those Laws in defiance of which they acted Now if it appears that these were the qualifications of most of King James's Officers and Instruments in Ireland I suppose it will be a further Demonstration of his Intentions and of what we were to expect from him SECT V. I. That the Officers employed by King James were Men generally of little or no Fortune 1. I Suppose the true Reason why one Man is allowed to possess a greater Estate in a Common-wealth than another and to maintain himself by the Labor of other People is that he may be at leisure to attend the publick Business of his Country and that having such a considerable Stock in the common Bottom he may be the more careful to preserve it from sinking Out of such Men therefore of Fortune and Interest every wise and well designing King will supply himself with Officers For their Interest will help to support him and will procure his Commands Obedience and their Fortunes will secure the Subjects from being injured by them their Estates being Pawns to the Publick for their good Behaviour and Reprizals to those they have injured But for this very Reason King James generally employed Men of little or no Fortunes and very often the Scum and Rascality of the World This made him so fond of the Irish who had lost their Estates who depended wholly on him and had no other possibility of subsisting but by espousing his Interest and serving him without reserve I cannot blame them for being ready to embrace the Offer but it was certainly very impolitickly done or an indication of an ill Design in him to employ and espouse Men of such ruined and broken Fortunes I have put into the Appendix a List of the Civil Officers of the Collonels and Lieutenant-Collonels of his Regiments and of the principal persons that he brought along with him from France so far as I could gather them up and it will appear upon view that very few of them were Men of clear Estates and most had no pretence to any at all The Sheriffs and Deputy Lieutenants of Counties were generally poor and mean people many of them had been Servants in the meanest condition to Protestants who if they injured any
Body in their Employments had not substance enough to answer the Charges of a Suit much less the Damages expected by way of Reparation 2. After the Earl of Tyrconnel had named his Sheriffs of this stamp for the year 1687 it will hardly be found that any Protestant recovered any Debt by Execution The main Reason of this was the Poverty of Sheriffs which made Men unwilling to trust the Execution of a Bond for twenty pounds into their Hands they not being responsible even for such á small Summ as too many found to their cost The Mayors and other Magistrates in their new modelled Corporations were generally of the same sort In Dublin they could not pick up Men enough that had the face to appear as Burgesses and some of those that they named had not Mony to buy themselves Gowns I think their number was never complete It was yet worse in the Country Corporations in many places they were not able to pay the Attorney General 's Fees which stopped their new Charters till the calling a Parliament necessitated him to pass them gratis As to the inferior Officers of the Army such as Captains Lieutenants and Ensigns some hundreds of them had been Cow-herds Horse-boys or Footmen and perhaps these were none of their worst Men for by reason of their Education amongst Protestants they had seen and understood more than those who had lived wild on the Mountains 3. 'T is observable that the Men of clear Estates who followed his late Majesty from England through France as they were but very few so they had but little interest with him of which Duke Powis was one Instance and Lord Dover another Duke Powis made the Protestants believe and perhaps he was sincere in it that he was much against the Proceedings of the pretended Parliament and used his Interest with the King to put a stop to them but was not able to do it Lord Dover was actually dismissed from all his Employments and ready to leave the Kingdom some time before the Alteration happened by the Victory at the Boyn Now King James's Aversion to employ or trust Men of Estates and Fortunes and the reason of his Fondness of such Creatures as had no Being but what he gave them was obvious enough to us that felt it and they themselves did not deny it nay boasted of it as a great instance of his Wisdom He knew these could never thrive but by making him absolute that they would never demur at any Command or enquire for any other Law than his Will that they were out of all fear of being questioned afterwards or of having their Estates forfeited or Families beggared all which are great Restraints on Men of Estates and Honor. 4. And surely there cannot be a fuller Demonstration of a Prince's Design to lay aside the Laws and to rule by force without controul than his putting out Men of Substance and employing Men of broken and desperate Fortunes in places of Trust and Honor who having nothing else to depend upon but the Prince's pleasure must be absolute Slaves to it and yield a blind Obedience to all that is given them in Commission This is the Misery of a People when Servants rule over them And this was the Reason King James employed rather such than any others And it was impossible the Grand Segnior should have fitted himself better with Instruments for promoting an arbitrary Government than he did SECT VI. II. The Insufficiencies of the Persons employed by King James was of mischievous Consequence to the Kingdom 1. THE Poverty and Meanness of the Men was not their worst Fault It is possible that a poor Man may be both honest and able for the greatest Trust. But the Officers employed by King James were such that tho they had been very honest and willing to do Justice they yet must have done much Mischief by their Unskilfulness and Insufficiency for the Offices with which he intrusted them It was both King James's Misfortune and his Subjects that he employed very few of sober Sense and Experience about him whether it was that he could not get Men of Sense to go through with him in all things that he would have had done or whether it proceeded from the Servility observable in dull People whereby they flatter and gain on Princes Or lastly from a Humor incident to great Men which makes them unwilling to have Servants able to pry into their Designs But however it was it was remarkable in King James that dull heavy Men kept his Favor longer and more steadily than Men of Sense and Parts and he generallly chose out the most unfit and most uncapable for Preferments It is plain that even in England he designed the Army should be supplyed with Irish and this Project went farther than the Army he was filling the Burroughs and Corporations with them also and no Body knew where the humour would have stopped Now if there had been nothing else their being kept out of all Employments and Trusts by the Laws for many years past must have incapacitated them and all Roman Catholicks for managing the Affairs of the Kingdom to advantage they neither had fit Education nor had they applyed their minds to the Management of such Affairs they were absolute Strangers to every thing that concerned the publick and then no wonder that they went aukwardly and untowardly about Business How was it conceivable that they should escape signal and mischievous Errors in the Discharge of Offices to which they had never been bred up and of which they never thought till they were put to manage them And yet this they were constrained to do without the Aid or Assistance of any to help them and that under the most difficult Circumstances for the former Officers looked on their Offices as their Freeholds and conceived a great Resentment against such as had turned them out of them against Law and Justice and therefore left them as inâ—â—icate and their Successors as little Information as they could who according to the Nature of ignorant Men were too proud to ask assistance from the others if those had been willing to afford them instruction 2. It is not imaginable how many Inconveniences happened on this Account nothing was done by any Rule or Method the Subjects were every day oppressed and the Officers made themselves ridiculous by their Blunders and Mistakes every Body was petitioning by reason of these Grievances and no Body knew how to redress them None of the new Officers understood his own Business or how to distinguish his Province from another Man's The knavish part of Offices in putting Tricks on People and getting Money were all the Study of the new employed Gentlemen The real and substantial parts of the Offices for which they were instituted and designed were little known and less minded nor could it be expected to be otherwise Could any imagine for Example that Chancellor Fitton that had lain in prison many years and not appeared in any
and the old petty Tyrants that claimed not only a Right to all his Tenant's Substance but likewise a power over his life 3. But many of the old Landlords lost their Estates by Outlawries and Attainders for their Rebellion in the year 1641 and for their murthering the Protestants at that time Many of them had sold their Estates and some had mortgaged them for more than their value two or three times to several persons a Practice very common in Ireland but it is observable that it is the humor of these People to count an Estate their own still tho they have sold it on the most valuable Considerations or have been turned out of it by the most regular Proceedings of Justice so that they reckon every Estate theirs that either they or their Ancestors had at any time in their possession no matter how many years ago And by their pretended Title and Gentility they have such an influence on the poor Tenants of their own Nation and Religion who live on those Lands that these Tenants look on them still tho out of possession of their Estates as a kind of Landlords maintain them after a fashion in Idleness and entertain them in their Coshering Manner These Vagabonds reckoned themselves great Gentlemen and that it would be a great Disparagement to them to betake themselves to any Calling Trade or Way of Industry and therefore either supported themselves by stealing and torying or oppressing the poor Farmers and exacting some kind of Maintenance either from their Clans and Septs or from those that lived on the Estates to which they pretended And these pretended Gentlemen together with the numerous Coshering Popish Clergy that lived much after the same manner were the two greatest Grievances of the Kingdom and more especially hindered its Settlement and Happiness The Laws of England were intolerable to them both nor could they subsist under them 4. As to the Popish Landlords who yet retained their Estates it put them out of all patience to find that the Bodough their Tenant so as they call the meaner sort of People should have equal Justice against them as well as against his Fellow Churl that a Landlord should be called to an account for killing or robbing his Tenant or ravishing his Daughter seemed to them an unreasonable Hardship It was insufferable to Men that had been used to no Law but their own Will to be levelled with the meanest in the Administration of Justice and every time they were crossed by a Tenant that would not patiently bear their Impositions they cursed in their Hearts the Laws of England and called to mind the glorious Days of their Ancestors who with a Word of their Mouths could hang or ruin which of their Dependents they pleased and had in themselves the power of Peace and War 5. This Humor in the Gentry of Ireland has from time to time been their Ruin and engaged them in frequent Rebellions being impatient of the Restraint the Laws of England put on their Power tho they enjoyed their Estates and they still watched an opportunity to restore themselves to their petty Tyrannies and were ready to buy the Reftitution of them at any rate The other sort of Gentlemen I mentioned as they called themselves who were outed of their Estates as well as of their Power by the same Laws hated them yet worse and their Clergy pushed them on with all the Arguments that ignorant Zeal or Interest could suggest insomuch that all sober Men as well as Protestants reckoned these the sworn Enemies of the Laws and Liberties of the Kingdom and were assured that they would stick at no conditions to destroy them their Interest Inclination and Principles all concurring to engage them to do it 6. Now these very Men were the Officers and Instruments King James employed and trusted above all others He espoused their Interest from the time that he had thoughts of the Crown they were his Favourites and Confidents and to provide for them he turned his English and Protestant Subjects first out of the Army then out of their Civil Trusts and Employments and lastly out of their Fortunes and Estates He knew very well that the Tempers and Genius of those Men were at enmity to the Laws and fitted for that Constitution of Slavery under which he designed to bring the Kingdoms He found that none were more fawning to their Superiors than they nor did any flatter with more Meanness and Servility and according to the nature of such People none are more insolent and tyrannous to their Inferiors And this was the reason that they were so dear to King James and that he preferred and trusted them rather than his Protestant and English Subjects The Bargain between him and them was plainly this restore us to our former Power Estates and Religion and we will serve you as you please in your own way An Expression that King James and all his Creatures often used and were very fond of 7. These People found that the King 's Legal Power could never restore them to the condition at which they aimed that the Power and Station they desired was absolutely contrary to the Laws in being and that no Legal Parliament would ever alter the Laws and Constitution of the Kingdom to gratifie them No wonder therefore if they espoused and promoted an absolute and despotick Power in the King and if he and they concurred so heartily to introduce it To do them Justice they made no Secret of it but professed it publickly and on all occasions and accordingly practised it in their several Stations They reckoned and called every one a Whig and Rebel that talked of any other Law than the King's Pleasure They were liberal of their Curses and Imprecations on all occasions but they exceeded and became outrageous against any one that durst alledge that their Proceedings were against Law Damn your Laws was frequently their word it is the Kings pleasure it should be so we know no reason why our King should not be as absolute as the King of France and we will make him so before we have done Nay so extravagant were many of them that they would swear with repeated Or ths that all Protestants were Rebels because they would not be of the King's Religion An Expression I suppose they learned from the French Dragoons 8. Some would undertake to argue the Case with such as seemed more moderate amongst them and put them in mind of the possibility of the Change of the Government and that then the Argument would be good against themselves but they had not patience to hear any such thing mentioned And they generally swore with the most bloody Oaths and bitter Imprecations that they would never subject themselves to any King that was not of their own Religion and that they would lose the last drop of their Blood rather than part with the Sword and Power put into their Hands on any consideration whatsoever These were not the Discourses of one or
Neighbours Cities especially Dublin encreased exceedingly Gentlemens Seats were built or building every where and Parks Enclosures and other Ornaments were carefully promoted insomuch that many places of the Kingdom equalled the Improvements of England The Papists themselves where Rancour Pride or Laziness did not hinder them lived happily and a great many of them got considerable Estates either by Traffick by the Law or by other Arts and Industry 2. There was a free Liberty of Conscience by connivence tho not by the Law and the King's Revenue encreased proportionably to the Kingdom 's Advance in Wealth and was every day growing it amounted to more than three hundred thousand pounds per annum a Sum sufficient to defray all the Expence of the Crown and to return yearly a considerable Sum into England to which this Nation had formerly been a constant Expence If King James had minded either his own Interest or the Kingdoms he would not have interrupted this happy Condition But the Protestants found that neither this nor the Services of any towards him nor his own good Nature were Barrs sufficient to secure them from Destruction 2. It is certainly the Interest of all Kings to govern their Subjects with Justice and Equity if therefore they understood or would mind their true Interest no King would ruin any of his Subjects but it often happens that either Men are so weak that they do not understand their Interest or else so little at their own Command that some foolish Passion or Humour sways them more than all the Interest in the World and from these proceeds all the ill Government which has ruined so many Kingdoms Now King James was so bent on gaining an absolute Power over the Lives and Liberties of his Subjects and on introducing his Religion that he valued no Interest when it came in competition with those 3. Every Body that knew King James's Interest and the true Interest of his Kingdoms knew that it concerned him to keep fair with Protestants especially with that party who were most devoted to him and had set the Crown on his Head and this had been in the Opinion of thinking Men the most effectual way to inlarge his Power and introduce his Religion but because it did not suit with the Methods his bigotted Counsellors had proposed he took a Course directly contrary to his Interest and seemed to take a peculiar pleasure in affronting and oppressing those very Men whom in Interest he was most concerned to cherish and support His Proceeding thus in England was visibly the Cause of his Ruin he had left himself no Friend to stand by him when he stood in greatest need of them Upon his coming to Ireland the Protestants had entertained some favourable Hopes that he would have seen and been convinced of his Error and would now at last govern himself by other measures it was manifestly his Interest to have done so and nothing in probability could have allayed the Heats of England and Scotland so much as his Justice and Kindness to the Protestants of Ireland nor could any thing have had so much the Appearance of an Answer to those many and evident Arguments by which they demonstrated his destructive Designs against those Kingdoms as to have had it to say that in Ireland where it was in his Power he was far from doing what they surmised he intended to do in England or if he had ever any such intentions it was plain he had now altered them These things were laid before him by some that wish'd well to his Affairs and had more Prudence than his furious and bigotted Counsellors and sometimes they seemed to make Impressions on him but the Priests and needy Courtiers who had swallowed in their Imaginations the Spoils and Estates of the Protestants of England as well as of Ireland could not endure to hear of this They seemed mightily afraid lest he should be restored to his Throne by consent of his Protestant Subjects For if so said they we know it will be on so strict Conditions that we shall gain but little by it it will not be in his power to gratifie us And not only they but the Irish in general likewise endeavoured to make his Restitution by way of Articles or Peace impracticable and impossible A Design so extremely foolish that it is strange any should be found so sillily wicked as to promote it or that King James should be so imposed on as to hearken to it and yet it is certain he did at least at some times entertain it and was heard to express himself to one that pressed him to Moderation to Protestants on this account that he never expected to get into England but with Fire and Sword However his Counsellors were not so weak but they saw what disadvantage his dealing with the Protestants had on his Interest in England and therefore they took care to conceal it as much as possible they stopped all Intercourse as far as they could with England they had a party to cry up the mildness of King James's Government towards the Protestants to applaud the Ease the Plenty the Security in which they lived and to run down and discredit all Relations to the contrary that came from Ireland These endeavoured to perswade the World that there was no such thing as a Bill of Attainder or of Repeal no Act taking away the Preferments or Maintenance of the Clergy nor any Imprisonment or Plundering of Protestants no taking away of Goods by private Orders of the King or levying of Monies by Proclamations In short they did that which on all occasions is the Practice and indeed Support of Popery They endeavoured to face down plain matter of Fact with Forehead and Confidence and to perswade the World that all these were mere Forgeries of King James's Enemies As many as believed these Allegations of theirs and were persuaded by them that the Protestants of Ireland were well used by King James were inclined to favour him a certain sign that if they had been really well used by him it would have gotten him many Friends and perhaps reconciled some of his worst Enemies But the Design entertained by him and his Party required the Ruin of Protestants and of their Religion whereas his Interest required that it should not be believed that he designed either and therefore Care was taken to prosecute the Design with all eagerness and deny the Matter of Fact with all impudence and his Majesty took care to promote both for he ruined the Protestants of Ireland by his Acts of Parliament and by the other Methods we shall hereafter speak of and by his Proclamations sent privately into England to his Partisans there assured the World that the Protestant Religion and Interest were his special care and that he had secured them against their Enemies It was his Interest to have done as well as pretended this but the carrying on his Design was so much in his Thoughts that he chose to sacrifice his
prevail all that could be obtained was a Clause implying that the Commissioners that should be appointed to execute the Act should set him out a Reprizal under the same Limitations under which he held the Town and Lands of Mollingar which as one of the House of Commons expressed it was a Mouthful of Moonshine So little regard was had to the Services or Merits of Protestants 6. And they had no reason to expect it should be otherwise for there was no regard had to the most considerable Papists where their Interest interfered with the general Design It was resolved to destroy the Act of Settlement the Foundation of the English and Protestant Interest in Ireland This brought along with it Destruction to many Papists that held Estates under it which they had purchased since the year 1662 as well as to Protestants Those Papists were very numerous and more wealthy than the rest especially in Connaught and they were likewise very zealous for King James and many of them in his actual Service and venturing their Lives for him at the time of passing the Act of Repeal yet this did not hinder him from giving away their Estates by that Act to the old Proprietors In short if serving King James truly and faithfully even to their own prejudice whilst it was for his Advantage and his Circumstances needed their Service could have merited his Favour most Protestants had supererogated but all this passed for nothing with him he would be served his own way that is he would have Protestants been active to destroy their Properties Liberty and Religion he would have had them lend their Hands to tie the Chains of Slavery for them and their Posterity to which they had already contributed too far to oblige his Humor both before and after his coming to the Crown against the common Interest of the Kingdom Nothing less than the same blind Obedience would serve him in the State which his Clergy require in the Church which we would not by any means pay him and therefore it was in vain for us to think of preserving our selves by any Merit or Service we could render him he did not think any thing a Protestant could do with a good Conscience to be a Service And if we did all was required yet there never wanted persons about his Majesty who had Malice enough towards us and Interest enough with him to misrepresent our most meritorious Actions 8. Nor was the good Nature and merciful Disposition of King James any greater Security to the Protestants of Ireland than their own Merits towards him There are 't is true Kings in the World that have an absolute Power over the Lives and Liberties of their Subjects and yet govern them with such Justice and Mercy that they suffer very little inconveniency by it but the Examples of this kind are so very rare that it is ill trusting any one with such a Power King James's Partizans made it their Business to represent their Master as the most merciful and justest Prince in the World and then they railed at us that grudged to lay our own and our Posterities Lives and Liberties at his Feet Perhaps if he alone had been to have had the Disposal of them and would have followed his natural Inclinations we should not so much have feared to have trusted him but whilst he had such Ministers about him and embraced a Religion of such Principles as he professed we had no Reason to depend much on his natural Clemency or Inclination for these were sufficient to corrupt the best natured Man in the World 9. No doubt but Charles the Fifth of Germany was of as compassionate and generous a Nature as any Man yet that did not keep him from making havock of his Subjects on account of Religion besides all his Wars and Bloodshed to suppress the Reformation he destroyed by way of legal Process fifty thousand in the Inquisition a Barbarity I believe hardly equalled by Nero Francis the First of France was a Prince equal to any in Generosity and Nobleness of Nature and yet he made no less Havock and Destruction in his Dominions on the same Account The present French King is a Demonstration that neither Love of Glory nor of Interest neither Greatness of Mind nor Goodness of Nature are Antidotes against the Force of Romish Principles or can restrain the Prince that has throughly imbibed them from Blood and Persecution otherwise he would never have made himself infamous by such horrid Cruelties as he has committed on his Protestant Subjects or brought an indelible Blot on a Reign which he would fain have represented to be more glorious than any of his Predecessors It is not necessary that what has been said should bring in question the good Nature or merciful Temper of King James tho we confess we were unwilling to trust it too far We had before our Thoughts the Proceedings in the West of England where we saw his Clemency did not interpose but suffered more to be prosecuted tryed condemned and executed for that one Rebellion and yet it was not so considerable as many others than perhaps had suffered in that manner for many of the Rebellions since the Conquest We found that he consented to attaint above two thousand five hundred of the most considerable persons of this Kingdom and that his good Nature might not be a Temptation to pardon them he put it out of his power to do it by the same Act. After his coming into Ireland very few Pardon 's passed the Great Seal perhaps not three nor had many so much as the promise of a Pardon given them tho very many needed and desired it Many of the Country People who were not of the Army were brought up Prisoners they pleaded that they were not concerned in the Wars that they lived in their Houses and on their Farms and submitted only to the stronger without engaging in the Cause but all to no purpose they were used worse than the Soldiers who were Prisoners and suffered to starve in Jails if the Charity of their Fellow Protestants had not relieved them Many who were wronged and oppressed petitioned his Majesty for Redress but their Petitions were rejected at best mislaid and the Petitioners were so far from obtaining any Answer that they often could never hear what became of their Petitions 10. The chief Counsellors of the King were the Popish Clergy and the Descendents of such as had shed the Blood of so many Protestants in the year 1641 who then ruined and destroyed the Kingdom and made it a heap of Rubbish and a Slaughter-House and whilst he hearkened to the Suggestions and Councils of such it was not possible for him to exert his good Nature and Clemency towards us It was the continual Business of these Counsellors to incense the King against us to represent us as People unworthy of any Favour Humanity or Justice that we were all Rogues Villains and Traitors and not fit to be allowed
imposed on but contributed nothing to relieve us as we found to our Costs and the Protestant Judges and Burgesses finding that they were made Cyphers and Properties of themselves declined at last to Act in their Stations 5. Next to Chancery is the Kings Bench where Subjects are tryed for their Lives and Fortunes upon this was set Mr. Thomas Nugent made afterwards Baron of Riverstown the Son of one who had been Earl of Westmeath but had lost his Honor and Estate for being an Actor in the late Rebellion begun in 1641. This Mr. Nugent who had never been taken notice of at the Bar but for a more than ordinary Brogue on his Tongue as they call it and ignorance in the Law was pitched on by King James to judg whether the Outlawries against his Father and his fellow Rebels should be reversed and whether the Settlement of Ireland founded on those Outlawries should stand good It was a Demonstration to us what the King intended when he assigned us such a Chief Justice and indeed the Gentleman did not fail to answer the expectation conceived of him He reversed the Outlawries as fast as they came before him notwithstanding a Statute made in point against it and in all the Causes that ever came before him wherein the Plaintiffs and Defendants were Papist and Protestant I could not learn from the most diligent Observer that ever he gave Sentence for the latter Nay it is Shrewdly suspected that he went sharer in some considerable Causes and not only appeared for them on the Bench but also secretly incouraged and fomented them Before him a Deed should be judged Forged or not Forged according as it served a Popish Interest And a Protestant needed no more to gain a Cause against another Protestant than to turn Papist which manifestly appear'd in Sir Gregory Birns Case who merely by turning Papist as is noted before in the midst of his Suit against Captain Robert Fitz Gerald got a Deed condemned of Forgery and recovered five or six hundred pounds per annum notwithstanding Mr. Daniel Birn his Father some years before for pretending it was Forged had been Sued in an Action of the Case and forced to pay two hundred pound damages and though there appeared in Court a Bond under Birns Hand obliging him to pay two hundred pound to the Witnesses in case they should prove Captain Fitz Geralds Deed to be Forged yet the proof was accepted But these were common things in this Court and the mischief had been much greater had not a Writ of Error lyen from his Court to the Kings Bench in England In one thing more he signalized himself it was by committing and prosecuting people for feigned Offences and Treasons and by countenancing and encouraging and after discovery protecting false Witnesses against Protestants Many were brought in danger of their Lives by his contrivances and when the accused were acquitted on Tryal by a palpable Demonstration that the Witnesses were Perjured he declared that they neither could nor should be Prosecuted for they only sware for the King and he believed the accused persons guilty though it could not be proved In short he shewed all the venom and rigour against them he could he was set up to destroy them and he went as far in it as his power could reach his weakness not his inclination hindred him from carrying it farther It is not imaginable by any that have not seen and heard him how furiously and partially he was bent against Protestants it may be guessed how he stood inclined to them by the great Hand he had in promoting the Bill of Attainder and the Bill to vest all Absentees Goods in the King whereby much the greater part of the Protestants of Ireland lost all their Estates Personal and Real of which we shall speak more hereafter He was assisted on the Bench by Sir Bryan ô Neal as puny Judg a weak Man that had nothing to recommend him but Venom and Zeal being otherwise disabled both in his Reason and Body Only he had the faculty to do what he was bid especially when it suited with his own inveteracy against Englishmen and Protestants This Character may seem rigid but as many as knew him will not think it exceeds 6. The next Court for business though not for Precedence is the Exchequer in which all Actions wherein the Kings Revenue or any other Mans Estate is concerned may be tryed From this Court no Writ of Error lies in England so they were free here from that Check which was so troublesom to them in other Courts Upon this consideration it was that the whole business of the Kingdom so far as it concerned them was brought into this Court though not so proper for it Here were brought all Actions of Trespasses and Ejectments concerning Estates all Quo Warranto's against Corporations and Scire Facias's about Offices and they thought themselves concerned to have an able Man and one throughly Cordial to their Interest for the Chief Judg in it for if he had wanted Sense or Law though willing as they found by Experience in some of the other Courts he might have been unable to serve them in all Cases They therefore fixed on Mr. Stephen Rice afterward Sir Stephen who had formerly been noted for a Rook and Gamester at the Inns of Court He was to give him his due a Man of the best Sense amongst them well enough versed in the Law but most signal for his inveteracy against the Protestant Interest and Settlement of Ireland having been often heard to say before he was a Judg that he would drive a Coach and Six Horses through the Act of Settlement upon which both depended And before that Act was Repealed in their pretended Parliament he declared on the Bench that it was against Natural Equity and could not oblige This Man did King James choose for Chief Baron and for the final determination of all the Suits that lay between Protestants and Papists either in Common-Law or Equity And it is no hard matter to conjecture what success the Protestants met with in their Suits before a Judg that declared as he did that they should have no favour but Summum jus that is the utmost rigour of the Law Immediately his Court was filled with Popish Plaintiffs every one that had a forged Deed or a false Witness met with Favour and Countenance from him and he knowing that they could not bring his Sentences into England to be re-examined there acted as a Man that feared no after Account or Reckoning It was some considerable time before he would allow a Writ of Error into the Exchequer Chamber though that was in effect to themselves and when it was allowed it was to little purpose before such Judges It was before him all the Charters of the Kingdom were damned and that in a Term or two in such a manner that proved him a Man of Dispatch though not of Justice If he had been left alone it was
served Sir John Topham and Sir John Coghill for their Masterships of the Chancery And the Inferior Bodies of Cities learned this Trick from them and by it outed their Protestant Recorders even before their new Charters Some Officers that claimed a Title to their Offices by Law were not allowed a Legal Tryal but the Chancellor called them before him and on a private Hearing turned them out Thus he served Mr. Charles Baldwin one of the Examinators of the Chancery 2. But to proceed by Retail seemed tedious and therefore to make short Work and rid their Hands of Protestant Civil Officers at once as they had done of the Military They made an Act in their pretended Parliament to void all Patents for Offices during Life or Good Behaviour though granted by King James himself and though the Protestants had laid out their Fortunes to purchase them by King James's own Consent and Permission as many had done Now let the World judg what a step the disposal of these Offices was to the Destruction of Protestants when some of them were of such Consequence that an unfaithful Officer in them might undo many by destroying their Evidences for their Estates in what condition must Protestants be when the Records by which they held their Estates were put into the Hands of those who were their Adversaries in the claim and had nothing to bar them but these Records of which they were now made Keepers who had often before shocked the Protestant Titles by setting up counterfeit Deeds nay and corrupting the Records themselves even whilst Protestants had the keeping of them of which the Records in the Common Pleas Office are yet an unanswerable Evidence counterfeit Judgments being entred there to the sum of some one thousand pound by the Treachery of corrupting Papists I have for the satisfaction of the Reader set down in the Appendix the Names of the most considerable Officers belonging to the Courts that the Change may be more visible 3. The next sort of Officers were such as were concerned in the Revenue these were many of them during Pleasure The Revenue had for five or six years last past been managed by Commissioners to very great advantage They had gotten under them a set of very sharp and severe Officers many of which having been formerly concerned in Trade themselves knew all the Arts of cheating the King in his Duties and were able to discover them and he who was most acute and made greatest Advantage for the King was sure to keep his Place and to be advanced It was hard to find a set of Commissioners and Officers that could serve the King in his Revenue at the Rate these Persons did and therefore they were forced to be slow in changing them yet they did it by degrees and with such Circumstances as plainly discovered that they were resolved as soon as was possible to employ Roman Catholicks only To do them Justice they generally owned it and when any of them had a Friend to prefer to an Office in the Revenue his Argument to remove the Protestant Possessor usually was This Man must be removed and why not now As the Popish Bishop of Elphin wrote to Sir Patrick Trant from Gallway in order to remove a Protestant Gauger employed there In most places they turned out the Protestant Collectors and Officers and put in their Popish Friends though much to the Kings Loss as it often proved and as they themselves knew it would be and did not scruple to own it Their new Collectors either being so ignorant as not to make the best of their Places or so very Corrupt that they run away with the Mony when Collected as it happened at Clonmell or so abused their Trust that they were obliged to change no less than five or six at a time King James himself declaring publickly that they deserved to be hanged That there remained any Protestants employed in the Revenue was plainly from their not having time enough to train up others in their room and not from their intentions to continue Protestants in it to whom they envied even the hated Office of being Publicans 4. The third sort of Officers in the Kingdom are such as have Trust or Honour annexed to them but little Profit of this sort I reckon Sheriffs and Justices of the Peace It was no easie matter to find Roman Catholicks to put into these Offices and it was a most provoking sight to Protestants to see with what kind of Men they supplyed them they were forced to rake into the very Scum and Sink of the People to find a few to set on the Bench as I shewed before Men without Freehold without Sense and without Honesty were made Sherifs and yet they were forced to continue most of them two years not being able to find in some Counties any Roman Catholick that could pretend to be capable of such an Employment Thus in the County of Tyrone Turlogh ô Donelly served two years as Sheriff who had not one foot of Freehold and for his Honesty you may guess at it by this Story which is notoriously true His Son had stolen some Bullocks from his Neighbour Mr. Hamilton of Callidon and brought them to his Father the Sheriffs House some of them were killed and eaten in the House The Owner pursued and found the remainder which were restored and to Compound the Matter a Bond of sixteen pound was entred into by the Sheriff for such as were eaten and if I remember right a Warrant of Attorney for Judgment When he came to Dublin to pass his Accompts as Sheriff he was sued for the Mony but to avoid the Suit he listed himself a Foot Soldier in the Lord Maguires Company and pretended he was Enlisted in the Company two or three days before the Arrest which my Lord likewise vouched though really he was not Enlisted till after the Arrest or Execution Upon which the Attorney that took out the Action or Execution I do not remember which and the Person to whom he owed Mony were brought into great trouble and forced to abscond for violating the Privilege of the Army and obliged for Peace sake to depart from their Claim We had many such Sheriffs and Justices of the Peace and to demonstrate that they designed to out Protestants of all Power there was not one Protestant Sheriff in all Ireland for the year 1687 as may be seen in the Catalogue which I I have given of their Names in the Appendix except Charles Hamilton of Cavan who was put in by mistake as was supposed insteed of John Hamilton of Killeneur who is a Roman Catholick Nay it was designed that not one Protestant should sit on the Bench as Justice of Peace and the Design in a great measure effected not indeed by revoking their Commissions but by making it impossible for them to Act. It was now almost a necessary qualification to preserve a Man in his Place to change or dissemble his Religion and some
whole Troop of Horse on Two or Three Protestant Inns for some Months together till they wearied them out of their Trade drove away their Guests and broke them Sometimes they would compound for a Sum of Mony to be gone and then immediately send another Party as bad as themselves to succeed them by which means they ruined all the little Towns about Dublin and broke the Inhabitants The very first thing they did after they had gotten into the Army was to set a rate on Diet on hay and on Oats not above of what it cost the Innkeeper a thing to which they had been Strangers before but it seemed tolerable in respect of the Free Quarters to which they pretended afterwards though in effect it came to the same thing for they went away and never paid a Farthing for Meat or Drink or any other conveniencies allowed them in their Quarters only some gave Bills which were never paid nay they were not content to have their Meat and Drink and Quarters free but they so ordered the matter that their Quarters were generally better to them than their Pay They commonly had Billets on Three or Four Houses apiece every one of which paid them a certain rate per Week one private Soldier bragg'd that he had Fifteen Quarters the rate paid out of them was according to the quality of the House and the Person that had the Billet the very least was 18 d. or 12 d. per Week and the allowance to the Officers was proportional The truth of this is notorious to all in Dublin and is demonstrable from the number of Publick Houses which were obliged to quarter Men compared with the number of Men quartered in them The Houses were double in number to the Soldiers and yet every House had one or Two Soldiers at the least some Three some Four quartered on them for which they paid Weekly and yet so unreasonable were these Creatures that this would not satisfie them but they would go up and down the Country Stealing and Plundering Meat and Drink and forcing the poor Protestants to bring forth their whole Stock of Provisions of which they used to eat what they pleased and then destroy the rest that the Damned Whigs that is in their constant Dialect the Protestants might not have the benefit of it It was in vain to grumble or complain instead of remedy they were sure to have the injury redoubled upon them If any ventured to prosecute a notorious Robbery committed by a Soldier their Officers appeared in the Court for them and openly threatned the Jury if they found them Guilty Thus Colonel Luttrel afterwards Governour of Dublin appeared at Killmainham and brought off his Soldiers who were guilty of a Robbery by threatning the Jury and telling them that it should be worse for them if they found his Men guilty that the King's Souldiers must not be discouraged and must be allowed when in want to take from those that had meaning the Protestants and by his Authority he saved them being not only an Officer but one of the Justices of the Sessions And in the very Council Allbaville publickly owned that the Protestants durst not complain except they had a mind to be Massacred I use his Words 7. The Priests and Fryars were no less oppressive than the Soldiers they Multiplied in Dublin to Three or Four Hundred at the least they were well Fed and well Cloathed there were not more Lusty Plump Fellows in the Town than they insomuch that they were remarkable for it and reckoning that they consumed but Twenty Pound apiece one with another which was the least they cost the Town Eight Thousand Pound per Annum which is near Four times more than all the Protestant Clergy in Town received they built about Fourteen Chappels and Convents in Dublin and set up Two Nunneries all which came to a great Sum and a great part of it came out of the Protestants Pockets for they were such experienced Beggars that none escaped them and so importunate that none durst refuse them if any did they must expect to be the next who were Robbed They must be content to be Accused and Committed either on some secret Whisper or false Accusation The Insolency of the Friars may be guessed at by their Carriage to the Lord Primate Boyle Two of them as I had before occasion to remark came to demand Mony of him and because he refused them they procured a Warrant from Sir Thomas Hacket to commit his Son in Law and Nephew but others were forced to buy their Peace by large Contributions to them SECT X. The Progress King James made in destroying the Personal Estates of Protestants after the Revolution in England 1. THus the case stood with the Protestants of Ireland long before the Revolution happened in England Their Rents and Receipts were stopt their Expences multiplied and many were driven from their Houses and Farms their Trade decayed and their Towns and Villages destroyed by Robberies and Free Quarters but as soon as the new Levies upon pretence of resisting the Prince of Orange were made the mischief became much more universal and intolerable whereas before only Inns and Publick Houses together with Brewers Bakers Butchers and Chandlers were obliged to quarter Soldiers this Burden was now extended to all Gentlemen of the best quality if Protestants none being exempted this happened soon after the Lord Mountjoys going to France though the Lord Deputy as I noted before did possitively engage to him to the contrary in his Articles these new Guests committed all manner of rudeness and insolencies in their Quarters and drove away as many of the Gentry and Citizens as could steal a Passage or procure a License to be gone by bribing the Secretary Sir William Domvile a Gentlemen of about 80 Years of Age who had been Attorny General near Thirty Years as has been said had his House filled with them they treated the Old Gentleman so rudely and barbarously that all concluded it hastened his Death Some Roman Catholicks that were not known to belong to the Army would come to the Houses of Protestants and agree with them for their best Rooms and suitable Attendance and when they were to go away and should have paid instead of Mony they would present a Billet and then triumph in the trick they had put on their Landlords There are in Dublin about Seven Thousand Houses and it was very rare that King James had Four Thousand of the Army in Town and yet they ordered it so that every House had more or less quartered upon it Some Gentlemen had Ten some Twenty nay some Thirty quartered on them if there was no other Room they turned the Master or Mistriss of the Family out of their own Beds and sent both them and their Lodgers to provide for themselves not only Soldiers were thus quartered but likewise all Gentlemen Priests Fryars and some Noblemen that came with King James from France together with their Servants and
he did not see it dropt About the same time a Fryer was brought up to Town who pretended to be dumb and maimed the Popish Clergy gave out that Duke Schomberg had cut out his Tongue and thus maimed him and declared that he would serve all the Priests and Fryers after the same manner and they made proposals to revenge it on the Protestant Clergy King James caused the Fryer to be examined and discovered the deceit which falling immediately on Mr Spikes business made the King say in great Anger that for ought he saw the Protestants were wronged and misrepresented unto him and that there were some as great Rogues among the Roman Catholicks as amongst them The Fryers to acquit themselves of the Cheat got their Brother Fryer severely lasht pretending that he was a Spy and none of their Fraternity upon which he was carryed naked through the Town on a Cart in a Savage manner to execution as was suppos'd but was brought back and put into Prison from which after sometime he was dismissed and his Habit restor'd him Many such contrivances there were against the Lives of Protestants and they could not look on themselves as safe while such wicked Men were unpunished the Courts also declaring that the Witnesses though perjur'd could not be punisht because they Swore for the King 2 No Protestant was secure of his Life because the Courts wrested such facts to Treason as were not declared so by any Law Thus Cheif Justice Nugent declared it was Treason for any Protestant to keep Arms or wear a Sword after the King had forbidden it by his Proclamation and declared them Rebels that did so several Gentlemen in the Country had kept their Horses and Arm'd their Servants to watch them against the Robbers commonly call'd Rapparies that plundered them this was construed a Levying War against the King and the pretended Parliament Attainted them of High Treason In the County of Cork one Mr Brown had appear'd in a company of Men who endeavoured to make their escape from those that came to plunder them of their Arms and Horses but misliking the design went home to his own Houfe He was brought before Judg Dally for this at Limerick who upon examination of the matter dismist him judging him innocent of any crime that would bear an Indictment but he was taken up again for the same Fact at Cork and brought before Judg Nugent at the time when King James came first thither Judg Nugent seem'd at first to be of the same opinion with Judg Dally but after he had discours'd his Majesty he proceeded vigourously against the Gentleman and procured him to be found guilty by a partial Jury Every body lookt on this only as an occasion sought for the King to shew his Clemency Mrs. Brown the convicted Gentlemans Wife with five or six Children presented him a Petition begging her Husbands Life at his Feet as the first Act of Grace on his coming into the Kingdom but he rejected her Petition and notwithstanding she reinforc't it with all the Friends and interest she could make the Gentleman was hanged drawn and quartered This awakened all the Protestants in Ireland it made them remember the bloody Executions in the West of England on the account of Monmouth's Rebellion and how small a matter serv'd to take away Mens Lives there they suspected that Judg Nugent would act the same part in Ireland that Chief Justice Jeffreys had done in England and they knew that if the King did not interpose neither Juryes nor Witnesses would be wanting to destroy them in short they became very sensible that their Lives were in imminent danger when they saw a Gentleman of some Estate and Credit in his Country hang'd for being but in the Company for a little time without acting any thing of some others who endeavoured to make their escape from a Crew of Robbers that without Order or Commission came to Plunder them of their Horses and Arms they had the more reason to be Apprehensive of their Lives when they found that no Advantage was let slip against them nor any Articles or Promises however solemnly made to them for their safety and indemnity were regarded of which there were many Examples 3. At the time of the disarming February 24. the Town of Bandon near Cork being frightned and surpriz'd with such an unjust and sudden thing and not knowing where it would end shut up their Gates and turn'd out some Dragoons who were appointed to disarm them General Mac Carty went to reduce them and they believing him to be a Man of Honour yielded to him upon Articles for which they paid him 1000 l. ster by the Articles they were to be indemnified for what was past and a Pardon to be granted them Notwithstanding which Articles the Grand Jury at Cork by direction of Chief Justice Nugent found Bills against them resolving to serve them as he had served Mr. Browne and it was suppos'd that he was encouraged to do it by King James himself The time allowed him for the Assizes would not permit him to try them then and for this reason and on the Importunity and Menaces of General Mac Carty who being on the place thought himself obliged to make good his Articles he put off their Tryal till the next Assizes These Bills lay over their Heads no pardon was granted them and some of them were condemned in the Act of Attainder The Earl of Inchiquin and Captain Henry Boyle had put themselves under General Mac Carty's Protection and he engaged to secure them and their Houses but he did not perform his Promise for Castle-martyr belonging to Captain Henry Boyle with all the Improvements and Furniture to the value of some Thousands of Pounds were destroyed and plundered by his Soldiers assisted with the Rabble and he with the Earl were glad to provide for their safety by leaving all and flying into England In Connaught some Protestants got into Headford Castle belonging to Sir Oliver St. George to avoid the violence of the Rabble They were besieged by the Lord Gallway and surrendred on Articles of Pardon and Safety But at the next Assizes a Bill was prepared against them and presented the Grand Jury at Gallway the Jury tho Papists considered as they said that it might be their own Case another day and some stickled so earnestly against the Bill that there were not enough to find it However no body knew whether every Jury would be of that humour and no care was taken to discountenance such Proceedings Sir Thomas Southwell with some Gentlemen of Munster were unwilling to part with their Horses and Arms many of them having been robbed and plunder'd of their Stocks before and justly suspecting that as soon as their Arms were gone neither their Lives nor the remainder of their Substance could be safe They got together therefore with their Servants to the number of near Two hundred and resolved to march to Sligoe to joyn the Lord Kingston for their
this Mr. Coghlan served as one of the Burgesses for the Colledge the House of Commons requir'd him to come into the House for he had withdrawn himself from it as we observed before at the passing this Act and to give in the Names of the absent Members of the Colledge that they might be put into the Bill he demurr'd at first but was over-rul'd then upon Consultation with Doctor Acton the Vice Provost he moved the House to send for the Colledge Buttler alledging that he had the Buttery Book wherein the Names of the Collegians were in order and without this he could not get them the House hereupon ordered a Serjeant at Arms to be sent for the Butler but he on Mr. Coghlans intimation absconded for some days The House was in haste to pass the Bill and by this means the Collegians escaped an Attainder 5. It was observable that any Application made in behalf of Absentees by their Friends who staid or were in the House constantly made their Condition worse The Application of Mr. Henry Temple in behalf of his Brother Sir John Temple removed him upwards into the first Rank of Attainted Persons the like Petition had the same effect as as to Mr. Richard Warburton and so upon several others The Papists did this to rid themselves of trouble and importunity and to let the Protestants know that all their endeavours for themselves and Friends should do them no Service and that their ruin was absolutely resolved on 6. That their allowing Persons a certain time to come in and submit to Tryal to prove their Innocency was a meer nothing for they very well knew that it was impossible any body should certainly know what time was given each man to come in and it had been a foolish venture for such as were absent to come into a Place where for ought they knew they were already condemned and should be immediately hang'd without a Tryal 2. No body knew what they could call Innocency perhaps writing to or petitioning any one that had King William's Commission nay conversing with such might be reckoned corresponding with Rebels and sufficient Evidence of their Guilt and indeed Judge Nugent had in a manner determin'd this Case for he interpreted one Mr. Desminiers answering a Bill of Exchange for Sir Thomas Southwell who was Prisoner at Galloway a corresponding with Rebels and committed him to Jail for it he likewise put one Mr. Ginnery in Jail for High Treason because being Agent for the Prisoners at Galloway to procure them a Reprieve and other Affairs he received Letters from them though Mr. Ginnery's Father and Brother were amongst them 3. When this pretended Parliament past this Act they were very well aware that the Embargo here was so exceedingly strict that from the time of passing the Act till the First of October nay of November following which was the longest time allowed any one to come in not one Ship or Boat was suffered to pass from hence into England so that it was absolutely impossible the Persons concern'd in this Law should have had any knowledge of it before they were Condemned by it to the loss of Life and Estate beyond the power of the King to Pardon them 4. King James and his Parliament knew perfectly well that the Embargo was so strict on the other side that if the Gentlemen could have had Information yet it was impossible for them to have gotten out of England to tender themselves to Justice within the time wherein the Act required they should do it on no less Penalty than the irrecoverable Forfeiture of Life and Estate which is a plain demonstration that the allowing time for the Attainted Persons to come in and prove their Innocency was a meer colour and had nothing of sincerity in it since they themselves that made the Law were fully informed and satisfied that this was an impossible condition 5. Suppose it had been possible yet it had been a very unwise part for such Protestants as were safe in England to have left it and to have come into Ireland a ruinous Kingdom the actual seat of a War where all the goods and moveables they had left behind them were Imbezell'd by Robbers or by those that had seiz'd them for King James and their real Estates given away to such as were Descendents of their Fathers Murtherers or at least had been in that Rebellion where they must abide a Tryal before Judges and Juryes of profest Enemies whether their Lives should be their own and after all if acquitted could have no other prospect of supporting themselves but Begging amongst a People that had reduced them to this condition These considerations were of such weight with all People that they who were absent were so far from thinking of a return that on the contrary Men of the best Estates who had stayed here wished themselves away and many were content to leave all and venture their Lives in little Boats to the Mercy of the Seas in the depth of Winter reckoning any thing safer and easier than to stay under a Government which had effectually destroyed all the Measures of right and wrong and Condemned so many Gentlemen to the loss of all without allowing them either the favour of being Tryed or so much as Heard 4. I know it will be objected that very few Protestants lost their Lives in Ireland under King James notwithstanding all the severe Proclamations and Laws and the apprehensions under which they lay of danger But to this I answer First that when a full enquiry comes to be made concerning those that were Kill'd by the Soldiers Murthered in their Houses Executed by Martial Law Starv'd and Famish'd in Jails and that Perished by other Violences the number will not be so small as is imagined 2. It is to be considered that the Irish Papists lay under the strictest obligations not to begin Acts of Cruelty for the Murthers they had committed in the last Rebellion were chiefly objected against them they were sensible they had gained nothing by them and that the Cruelty exercised in them was the thing that especially rendred them Odious and lost them their Estates and therefore they thought it the best way not to be too forward in the like practises till they were sure not to be call'd to an after-reckoning They further considered that many of their own Friends were Prisoners in the North and that if they began with Examples of Cruelty on the Protestants who were in their Power their Friends must expect the like from the Enemy in whose Hands they were 'T was this made them dismiss the Poor People they had resolv'd to starve before Derry And they were made believe that not only the Prisoners would Suffer but that the Cruelties they exercised on the Protestants would be Revenged on all the Roman Catholicks in England This was given out by some who understood King James's true interest and that he depended on some Protestants in England for succour and
the Money due to it out of the Exchequer 3. The Foundation consists of a Provost Seven Senior and Nine Junior Fellows and Seventy two Scholars these are partly maintain'd by a Pension out of the Exchequer of 388. l. per Annum this Pension the Earl of Tyrconnel stopt from Easter 1688. and could not be prevail'd with by any intercession or intreaties to grant his Warrant after that time for it by which means he in effect dissolv'd the Foundation and stopt the Fountains of Learning and of Religion this appeared to have been his design more plainly afterwards for King James and his Party not content to take their maintenance from them proceeded and turn'd out the Vice Provost Fellows and Scholars seiz'd upon the Furniture Books and publick Library together with the Chappel Communion Plate and all things belonging to the Colledge or to the private Fellows or Scholars notwithstanding that when they waited on him upon his first arrival in Dublin he promis'd That he would preserve them in their Liberties and Properties and rather augment than diminish the Priviledges and Immunities granted to them by his Predecessors In the House they placed a Popish Garrison turn'd the Chappel into a Magazin and many of the Chambers into Prisons for Protestants the Garrison destroy'd the Doors Wainscots Closets and Floors and damnified it in the Building and Furniture of private Rooms to at least the value of 2000. l. One Doctor Moore a Popish Priest was nominated Provost one Macarty Library Keeper and the whole designed for them and others of their Fraternity 4. It is observable that there was not the least Colour or Pretence of Law for this violence nor could they give the least Reason in Law or Equity for their proceeding except the necessity of destroying of the Protestant Seminaries of Learning in order to destroy their Religion This made them so eager against the Collegians that they were not content to turn them without Process or Colour of Law out of their Free-holds but they sent a Guard after them to sieze and apprehend their Persons and it cost the Bishop of Meath their Vice-Chancellor all his Cunning and Interest with the Governour Lutterell to prevent their Imprisonment With much ado he was prevailed on to let them enjoy their Liberties but with this Condition that on pain of Death no Three of them should meet together So sollicitous were they to prevent the Education of Protestants under Persons of the same Profession and that there might be none to succeed the present Clergy 5. With the same design they hindred the succession of Bishops and inferiour Clergy-men into the room of those that dyed or were removed the Support of Religion as is well known depends very much on the choice and settling of able and fit Persons in Vacancies and it so happened that partly by the uncertainty of Estates partly by frequent Forfeitures to the King partly by the grasping of the Prerogative and other Accidents most of the considerable Preferments and Benefices of the Church were in the disposal of the Crown there are very few Livings in Ireland in the Presentation of Lay Patrons but they either belong to the King or the Bishops The Bishopricks are all in the King and all the Livings in the Bishops Patronage are in the Vacancy of the Bishoprick likewise the Kings This is a great Trust and the King is bound to dispose of it for the good of the Church But King James plainly design'd by the means of his Trust to destroy the Church that had intrusted him for instead of giving the Preferments as they fell to good and able men who might preserve and maintain the Interest of their Religion he seiz'd them into his own hand had the Profits of them returned into the Exchequer and let the Cures lye neglected The Archbishoprick of Cashell the Bishopricks of Clogher of Elphin and of Clonfert were thus seiz'd with many Inferiour Livings and the Money received out of them dispos'd to the maintenance of Popish Bishops and Priests directly against the Laws and Constitution of the Kingdom 6. At this rate in a few years all the Preferments and Livings of the Kingdom of any value must have fallen into the King's hands and we must have expected to have seen them thus dispos'd of for as many as fell after King James's time were put to this use and we were assured by the Popish Priests that all the rest as they became vacant were design'd to the same Purpose and they were so unreasonable that though both Law and Justice allow a competency for serving the Cure whilst a Living upon any Account whatsoever is in the King's Hand yet the Commissioners of the Revenue and Barons of the Exchequer would allow nothing the Bishop of Meath made an Experiment of this Some Livings in his Diocess upon the Death of one Mr. Duddle the Incumbent were seiz'd by the Commissioners of the Revenue being in the King's Presentation the Bishop did what was in his Power towards supplying the Cure and according to his Duty appointed a Curate assigning him a Salary according to the Canons but the Commissioners would not allow him any thing and though the Bishop endeavoured it and petition'd both the Commissioners and Barons of the Exchequer yet he could never get any thing for the Curate This was a Precedent and the same was practis'd in all other Cases all the Absentees Cures were in the same Condition and though they yielded plentifully to King James yet the Curates had no other maintenance than the voluntary Contributions of the poor plunder'd Protestant Parishioners who were forced to pay their Tythes either to King James's Commissioners or to Popish Priests who had Grants of them 7. This was an effectual though a slow way of putting an end to the Ministry at least to deprive them of all legal Title to Preferments for the Bishops being most of them old would soon have dropt off and King James was resolved to have named no more and so the legal Successions of Bishops must in a short time have ceas'd and all the Livings depending on them must likewise have gone in course to maintain Popish Priests that is all the Deanries Dignitaries and most other Benefices 8. The Papists upbraided us with out want of Power and seem'd to laugh at the Snare into which we were fallen by means of our Popish King not considering that this proceeded from a manifest Breach of Trust and Faith in him and that the Case is the same in all Trusts if the Trustees prove faithless and even in all Popish Countries the Kings have the nomination of Bishops as well as in England and that the Succession of Bishops had almost lately failed in Portugal upon some difference between the King and Pope and the Advocate General of France Mr. Dennis Tallon tells us in 1688. that Thirty five Bishopricks being about a third part of the whole Number were vacant in that Kingdom on the same account
of all His Majesty's true Subjects in Ireland and shut himself up between two Potent Enemies in England and Ireland whereas by setting the Irish on a sure foot he always hath for a Refuge that Country which he will find to be far better than nothing and may be with time a means to come into England But Trimmers will tell him That it is no matter for His Majesty if he can gain the English Rebels by sacrificing Ireland to them who will inhabit it whether English or Irish nay I believe rather English and so make it an English Interest all along and he will be apt to believe it but it imports the Irish to look about them and consider if that be their Interest Add to all these considerations with many more and better you can think of an essential and indispensible one which is to please this King and Court of whom his Majesty now and you all depend solely and wholly by saving their Interest along with that of his Majesty and your own which cannot be done but by settling of Ireland upon the best and most advantageous foot that can be contrived with Reason and Justice 〈◊〉 it may be a Check upon England as Scotland formerly to keep it from Rebellion against their own Prince From trouble and Invasion upon France and a Tye upon the Kings of England hereafter to keep good Correspondence with France and keep Ireland in a flourishing happy condition and not to be Slaves to all the People and Scums of England If 48 or other were loath to press any such Conditions or Proposals on the King they may make use of the French Minister Count D'Avaux who is with him as a good Adviser and for to manage his Masters Interest I think it may be well and rationally proposed if by the King of France's means such an advantageous settlement may be procured for the Nation and that he would be as a Guarranty or Protection of it to give him as well for his assurance or Guarranty as for the payment of what he advances for the King and Country some Sea-ports in Ireland as you have hinted in your last This is what now comes into my head upon this Subject which M. B. does not neglect to insinuate and imprint as much as he can though not well in his health into the Heads and Hearts of the Ministers and People about Court Though 27 gave no Power or Credit to any body here to speak of Business but to his Son-in-Law L. W. in Cypher 110. but M. B. does it privately upon his own account and acquaintance with the People without thwarting him in any of his Ways But you know what one says tanquam potestatem habeâ—s carries more weight than what he says as a private man And therefore I think it were not amiss that 48. from himself or by the said French Ministers means may get order from 27 that 92 may be heard and Credited at Court as to the Concerns of 78 which to prevent and hinder some that would not have it put into 27's head as 't is thought to desire 92 to follow him as soon as he were well in his health along with 23 and before he saw himself to tell him so knowing he was sick gave orders to 18's fellow traveller whom I added to the Cypher thus 112 to tell him so which he has perform'd only by another Master Barry belonging to 34 for he never came himself to see him which I think was not prudently done of him setting civility aside for they may communicate one to another what may be best to do with 86 for the service of 78 and certainly without any vanity 92 knew better how to manage that interest with 86 than he or any of his profession there But I find some do suspect the sincerity of that Man for the Publick Interest I know not if they wrong him but one thing I know he does not like to see any of 64 or 65 have any hand in Business Of which I think I gave you once already a hint from 87 when he and 98 were there and I cannot tell but it may be he that might have given 27 that advice of drawing 92 from hence who desires not to be but where he may be most useful to his Religion King and Country and if any necessity may be of his Vote there he can send you a Procuration in blank if he be thought more useful or necessary here 'T is now high time I suppose you should ask me what is this great and solid settlement I would have for Ireland To which I answer That you and others there likely know best But that I may speak my own little sense on the matter I say I would have two or three of the Irish Nation to be still of the Kings Council and one of them Secretary of State for the Affairs of Ireland as Scotland has I would have some of their Nobility to be of the Bedchamber by reason both of Honour and Interest I would have all the Employments Civil and Military given to the Natives of the Country Unless the Country thought â—it to introduce some Strangers for better advantage and improvements I would have them restored to their Estates both Spiritual and Temporal usurped by the Cromwellians or under the Title of being Protestants yet with that Proviso for the Spiritual that a Competent Pension should be allowed to the Protestant Possessor during his Life for he can pretend no longer Lease of it or that he should give the Catholick Bishop or Incumbenâ— a competent Pension if it were thought fitter to let him enjoy his Possession during Life I would have the Commerce and Traffick settled with all the Advantage due to a 〈◊〉 Nation and Subjects of which the Merchants 〈◊〉 inform best without any other dependence on or relation to England but what Subjects ought to the King and Crown of which I would not derogate in the least but nothing to do with the Merchants and People of England no more than with those of France Spain and Holland But my Politick Trimmer will say this is of a dangerous consequence for England and for the King in relation to it for they will say the King intends to establish the same Government amongst them both in Spirituals and Temporals that he has in Ireland To which I answer in the first place That we are not here to manage or speak for the Interest of England which would not fail to speak and stand for it self Secondly I say That the Consequence from Ireland's Case to England's does not follow For in Ireland the Catholick Party is much more numerous and strong than the Protestant So that it is for the King's Interest there to favour them or at least do them Justice But in England where the number of Protestants and other Sectaries is by much the greater he can order things otherwise without any Contradiction for â—â—om the one to the other the Consequence does
Encouragers and Abettors of them by an unpardonable neglect in the Execution of his Royal Orders And whereas the Issuing out Commissions of Oyer and Terminer in all the Counties of the Kingdom which was done some Months ago was judged by his Majesty with the Advice of his Privy Council the most Efficacious means to prevent and quash such horrid Disorders I. You are Ordered by his Majesty on sight hereof to let Me his Principal Secretary of State know what you can alledge to justifie your selves from the Imputation of having strangely Neglected all this time the Execution of your Commission which proves the chiefest Cause of this general Desolation of the Country II. You are Commanded by his Majesty to proceed without the least delay to the Execution of your Commission and send to me for his Majesties information a Weekly Account of your Proceedings III. That you Adjourn from one Week to another and at farthest not above a Fortnight IV. That you proceed with all Just Severity against such of the Justices of the Peace as have Bayled contrary to Law Malefactors And against all such as favour in any manner Robbers and Thieves V. That you proceed against all persons whatsoever who have given or will give any Obstruction to the Execution of your Commission And if they prove Officers of the Army or Absent so as you do not think fit to proceed against them that you forthwith send me an Account thereof VI. That you proceed with all Rigour against all persons found Guilty of Counterfeiting the Kings Coyn. VII And lastly That you Order all men to fall upon publick Robbers who have no regard of their Duty towards GOD their King or Country destitute of all sense of humanity and consider them but as wild beasts who live upon Prey and Rapine This is Gentlemen what I have at present in Command from his Majesty to send to you to which I will adde this Advertisement That you cannot light upon better Measures to Allay the KINGS just Resentment of your former Neglects the occasion of a world of Mischief then by a speedy and vigorous Execution of your Commission Let the present general cryes of the people for Justice and the present general Oppression under which the Country groans move you to have a Compassion of it and to raise in you such a publick spirit as may Save it from this inundation of Miseries that break in upon it by a Neglect of his Majesties Orders and by a general relaxation of all Civil and Military Laws Consider that our Enemies leaving us to our selves as they do conclude we shall prove greater Enemies to one another than they can be to us and that we will destroy the Country and enslave our selves more than they are able to do What Inhumanities are daily committed against one another gives but too much ground to the truth of what our Enemies conclude of us I had almost forgot a special Command of his Majesty that is That you will consider the Liberty of Conscience granted by Act of Parliament and to punish the Infringers of that Law who by an indiscreet and inconsiderable Zeal usurp his Majesties Prerogative not reflecting how much his Majesties and the Nations interest and not only the Religion of the Nation but the Catholick Religion in all the parts of Christendom is involved in a Religious Execution of that Liberty of Conscience Dublin-Castle Jan. 2. 1689. I am Gentlemen Your most humble Servant Marquis D Albaville To the Commissioners of Oyer and Terminer for the County of Dublin or to any or either of them to be Communicated to the rest To the Lord Chief Justice Nugent No. 26. A Copy of a Petition of the Minister of Wexford for his Church and the Order thereupon To the KING 's most Excellent Majesty The humble Petition of Alex r. Allen of Wexford Clerk Most humbly Sheweth THAT your Petitioner being Minister of the Parish Church of St. Iberius in the Town of Wexford hath therein for several Years past daily celebrated Divine Service and exercised all other Offices of his Function with Piety to GOD and constant Loyalty to your Majesty Yet Your Petitioner on the 25th of October last was Dispossessed of his said Church contrary to the late Act of Liberty of Conscience by Edward Wiseman Esq Mayor of Wexford who a few dayes after did not only by the Rabble introduced by him brake down and demolish all the Pewes and Altar of the said Church but did seize and unjustly deny your Petitioners Vestmonts Church Book and other Ornaments thereof to the great prejudice of your Petitioner and his Parishoners although your Majesties Roman Catholick Subjects have several Chappels fit for the free Exercise of their Religion both within and without the Walls of the said Town and whereunto several Protestant Inhabitants have given liberal Contribution Your Petitioner further sheweth That he the said Edward Wiseman as Magistrate of the Town of Wexford is obliged as usually it hath been by Act of Vestry to encourage and provide for the relief of distressed Orphans and other poor of the said Town of Wexford yet uncharitably refuseth to interpose his Authority in the behalf of such poor whereby they must inevitably perish if not speedily Relieved May it therefore please Your Majesty to Restore your Petitioner to his Parish Church which was never Forfeited by Absence or otherwise And that the said Edward Wiseman may be obliged to Repair it and leave it in the same condition he found it and that such care may be taken for Relief of distressed Orphans and other Poor from Famine as is usual And Your Petitioner shall ever pray c. At the Court in Dublin-Castle Jan. 28th 1690. Present the KING 's most Excellent Majesty in Council WHEREAS His Majesty is Informed upon Oath That Edw. Wiseman late Mayor of the Town of Wexford did Illegally seize upon the Parish Church of St. Iberius in the said Town of Wexford broke down the Pews and Altar of the said Church and detained the Vestmonts Church-Books and other Ornaments thereunto belonging His Majesty was Graciously pleased to Order Mr. Nicholas Stafford present Mayor of the said Town of Wexford forthwith to cause the said Church and Goods to be Restored to Alex r. Allen Minister of the said Parish in the same condition they were in when Seiz'd upon by the said Edward Wiseman Hugh Reily No. 27. Mr. Prowd Minister of Trim his Account of the Remarkable Accident that hapned upon Plundring the Church of Trim. SIR THIS will give you an Account of an eminent Instance of Gods Vengeance shewn on one John Keating a Church Rapparee who in the very act of Plundring and Breaking of our Church was struck with a sudden Madness in which he continued for the space of Three Weeks and that day three weeks he was struck Mad dyed in a sad and miserable Condition The manner of it was thus This Keating was a Souldier in the Lord of Kinmares
preservation of the Kingdom and that he designed to advance the Popish Irish Interest in Ireland which every Body knows cannot be done without the utter ruin of the English Protestants 3. Yet all this we patiently endured and exercised our Charity in relieving the poor cashiered Soldiers and in putting the ruined Gentlemen into a way of Subsisting which was generally by sending them over Seas to Foreign Service and perhaps their Clamours and Sufferings did contribute to move the Compassion of the Prince of Orange our present Sovereign and forward his Designs 4. In the mean time the new raised Forces and Officers being put into Arms and Command to which they were Strangers into good Cloaths and mounted on Horses for which others had paid behaved themselves with all the insolence common to such sort of Men when unworthily Advanced They every where insulted over the English and had their Mouths continually full of Oaths Curses and Imprecations against them they railed on them and gave them all the opprobrious names they could and if any Chastized them for their Sauciness though ever so much provoked they had the Judges and Juries on their side They might kill whom they pleased without fear of Law as appeared from Captain Nangles murthering his disbanded Officer in the Streets of Dublin but if any killed or hurt them they were sure to suffer as Captain Aston found to his cost who was hanged for killing a Papist upon his abusing the Captains Wife in the Street They immediately ruined all the Protestant Inns of Ireland partly by oppressing them with Quarters partly by paying nothing for what they had in their Quarters and partly by driving away other Guests by their rudeness 5. In this insolence they continued and daily increased till the Prince of Orange came into England But then new Commissions were issued out with all dilligence of one sort or another sometimes five hundred in a day All the Scum and Rascallity of the Kingdom were made Officers every where the Papists arm'd and inlisted themselves and the Priests suffered no Man to come to Mass that did not Arm himself with at least a Skean and half Pike The new Commissioned Officers were obliged without Pay to subsist their Men as they termed it for three months a thing impossible for them to do since most of them were not able to maintain themselves The better sort of their Captains and inferiour Officers had been Footmen or Servants to Protestants One Gentlemans Cowherd was made a Lieutenant but he would fain have capitulated with his Master to keep his place vacant for him if his Commission did not hold Most of them were the Sons or Descendents of Rebels in 1641 who had murthered so many Protestants Many were Outlawed and Condemned Persons that had lived by Torying and Robbing No less than fourteen notorious Tories were Officers in Cormuck ô Neals Regiment and when forty or fifty thousand such were put into Arms without any Mony to pay them we must leave the World to judge what apprehensions this must breed in Protestants and whether they had not Reason to fear the destruction that immediately fell on them they saw their Enemies in Arms and their own Lives in their power They saw their Goods at the mercy of those Thieves and Robbers and Tories now armed and Authorized from whom they could scarce keep them when it was in their power to pursue and hang them And they had all the Reason in the World to believe that a Government that had armed such Men of desperate Fortunes and Resolutions was so far from protecting them which is the only end of all Government that on the contrary it designed to destroy both their Lives and Fortunes The latter of which as will appear by the sequel they have in a manner intirely lost 6. I could never hear any thing pretended for these proceedings except it were either 1. That the Army were the Kings Servants and every Man may employ what Servants he pleases or 2. That Protestants would not concur with the Kings intentions and therefore there was a necessity of dismissing them And 3. as to the general arming the Papists and Plundering the Protestants that it was necessary in order to raise and encourage an Army otherwise the King had had nothing to trust to 7. As to the first of these It is not true that every Man may entertain what Servants he pleases because one ought not to entertain any that are not qualified as the Law requires 2. If it were granted that the Case were the same between the King and his Army as between a Master and his Servants and that a Master might entertain what Servants he pleased neither of which is true yet it is to be considered that where another pays the Servants the Master must be obliged to keep such Servants as well answer the design of such as afford the Wages Now it was the Kingdoms Mony that paid the Soldiers it was given the King by a Protestant Parliament to preserve the Protestant English Interest and suppress the conquered Irish Papists as appears by the Acts themselves it was paid by them out of their proper Fortunes and Estates and for the King to Employ the Mony so given and paid him to Arm those whom it was designed to suppress and destroy those who gave it is the greatest breach of Trust and prevarication of which any can be guilty 8. As to the second Reason that Protestants would not concur with the Kings intentions I believe it is true but the Reason was because the Kings intentions were to destroy the Laws Liberty and Religion Established in his Kingdom they had and would have answered every just intention of the King nay such as were Employed by him had concurred further with him than was perhaps justifiable And his laying them aside as unserviceable to his Designs is a plain Demonstration that those Designs were irreconcilable to the good of the Kingdom and the Protestant English Interest 9. As to the third Reason that it was necessary in order to raise an Army for the King to Arm all the Rascallity of Ireland and to let them destroy the Protestants to subsist and hearten them I answer that this owns a Necessity if not a Design of destroying us and considering that the Papists only by their wicked Counsels had brought that necessity on the Kingdom it can never be imputed to the Protestants by any wise Man as a Crime that they were unwilling to comply with the King to their own Destruction or that they rather chose to be delivered by his present Majesty than ruined by King James and his foolish Counsellors Upon the whole the ordering the Irish Army as it was by King James is a plain Demonstration of his Design to destroy us and a great step towards it and he had effectually done it had not the Providence of God raised up his present Majesty to Relieve us SECT III. Secondly King James's ordering the Courts of
Judicature in such a method as tended to destroy the Protestant English Interest of Ireland 1. THE support and happiness of a Kingdom consists chiefly in the equal and impartial Administration of Justice and that depends on the choice of fit and duly qualified Persons for filling the Courts and Executing the Laws but King James made choice of such Persons for these Offices as were so far from answering the intent of their Places that they made it their business to destroy the Protestant Interest and the Laws that preserve the Liberty of the Subject in general by those Laws no Man was capable of being a Judg who had not taken the Oath of Supremacy The Judges he found on the Bench had taken it but yet some of them were known to be rather too favourable to Papists and considering the influence King James had in his Brothers time in disposing of Offices it is not to be imagined that he would suffer any Man to sit as a Judge who had not been favourably represented unto him in that Point though we must own he was mistaken in some of them hence it came that Protestants did frequently complain of the Favour and Countenance their Adversaries found in the Courts of Justice even in King Charles II. time But when King James came to the Crown moderate nay favourable Judges would not do the Work he designed He found it necessary to Employ the most Zealous of his Party those who both by Interest and Inclination were most deeply ingaged to destroy the Protestant English Interest and accordingly such were picked out and set on all the Benches 2. The Chancery is the great and highest Court wherein the great Frauds and other matters belonging to Trusts and Equity are determined and neither the Lord Primate Boyle who had managed that Court about twenty years nor Sir Charles Porter who succeeded him could answer the Kings intention but Sir Alexander Fitton of whom I have already given some account a Person detected of Forgery not only at Westminster and Chester but likewise Fined by the House of Lords in Parliament must be brought out of Goal and set on the highest Court of the Kingdom to keep the Kings Conscience though he wanted Law and natural Capacity as well as Honesty and Courage to discharge such a Trust and had no other quality to recommend him besides his being a Convert Papist that is a Renegado to his Religion and his Country but the mystery of this was easily found out The Papists of Ireland had gone a great way to retrieve the Estates they had forfeited by the Rebellion 1641 by counterfeit Settlements Forgeries and Perjuries and to do their business in a great measure there needed no more than to find a Judg that would be favourable to and countenance such proceedings and where could they find a more favourable Judg than one who was notoriously involved in the same guilt and who probably in some Cases did not esteem such Arts unlawful but besides this there is requisite to a Chancellor a peculiar quickness of Parts and Dexterity to penetrate into the contrivances of Cheats and Forgeries for which Sir Alexander Fittons natural slowness and heaviness incapacitated him but this very defect together with his Zeal for Popery fitted him to execute the Kings design as effectually as any that could have been found He could not understand the merit of a Cause of any difficulty and therefore never failed to give Sentence according to his inclination having no other Rule to lead him and how he was inclined towards Protestants appeared from his Declarations on all occations against them he did not stick on a Hearing to declare that they were all Rogues and that amongst forty thousand there was not one who was not a Traitor a Rebel and a Villain for this Reason he would not allow the Guardianship of a Child to the Protestant Mother but gave it against the positive words of the Law to the Popish Relations for this Reason he refused to hear so much as a demurrer in the Popish Dean of Christs Church Mr. Staffords Case For this Cause he over-ruled both the common Rules of Practice of the Courts and the Laws of the Land declaring in open Court that the Chancery was above all Laws that no Law could bound his Conscience and he acted accordingly in many Cases where Protestants were concerned After hearing a Cause between one of them and a Papist he would often declare that he would consult a Divine before he gave a Decree that is he would have the Opinion of a Popish Priest his Chaplain Educated in Spain and furnished with Destinctions to satisfie his Conscience how far he should do Justice to Protestants many Papists came and made Affidavits of being in Possession when they never were and got Injunctions and Orders without any more ado to quiet their Possessions But a Protestant though never so palpably disturbed could not procure any Order but was sent to the Common-Law to recover his Possession by a Popish Jury returned by a Popish Sheriff before a Popish Judg that is he must expect Law from Judges and Officers that Sate and Acted in defiance of Law If at any time the Chancellor was forced to grant an Injunction or Decree it was with all the difficulties and delays that could be and often the thing was lost and destroyed before the Order came for recovering it 3. The Administration of Justice and Equity is the great end of Government and it is as good nay better to be without Governours than to have Governors under whom Men cannot reasonably hope for these We see from the choice of a Chancellor what care King Iames took for the Administration of Equity to Protestants To help the matter he added as Assistants to the Chancellor Mr. Stafford a Popish Priest for one Master of the Chancery and Felix ô Neal Son of Turlogh ô Neal the great Rebel in 1641 and Massacrer of the Protestants for another To these generally the Causes between Protestants and Papists were referred and upon their Report the Chancellor past his Orders and Decrees 4. The Courts of Common-Law were put into the same method and great care taken to fill them with Judges who might be ingaged in a profest enmity to the Protestant Interest In Ireland there are only three Judges on a Bench and it was thought fit for a colour till things were Riper to keep one Protestant on every Bench but whilst there were two Votes to one the Protestant Judg could neither do Right to Protestants or retard a Sentence to be given in the favour of a Papist This mock method of seeming to trust Protestants they took likewise in naming Burgesses and Aldermen for Corporations they generally put some few into their New Charters to serve for a pretence of impartiallity and yet to signifie nothing this Method of continuing some few Protestants in Courts and Corporations serving only to silence and exasperate us to be thus