to destroy so many thousand Widows and Orphans to confirm unlawful and usurped possessions to violate the publick Faith to punish Virtue to countenance Vice to hold Loyalty a Crime and Treason worthy of Reward The bloody and covetous States-man who chiefly occasioned all this disorder was very often heard to say with a fierce countenance and passionate tone the Irish deserve to be extirpated and then he would after his usual manner come out with a great Oath and swear they shall all be extirpated Root and Branch Good God what a Heathen expression is this in the mouth of a Christian who is expresly commanded to love his Enemies Does he think that the Divine Providence which orders the growth of Herbs the fall of Leaves and appoints an Angel for the guard of every individual person takes no care to preserve an entire Body of a Nation and that it shall be in the power of one man to destroy the work of God at his pleasure of such a Man that could not prevent his own disgrace not avoid the many other inconveniences which are like to fall upon him This proud Haman who joyntly with some few others to get Money for themselves and Estates for their Children contrived the general extirpation of the whole Irish race but before he could fully compass his wicked Design I must confess he went very near to do it and if God had given him a longer continuance of power he would undoubtedly make good his word was forced for his own safety and the preservation of his life to quit his fine House forsake his Family and bid his Countrey farewel and to travel in his old age in the dead of Winter through so many dangers at Sea and incommodities by Land to seek for some shelter abroad seeing he could not be secure at home Justu es Domine justum judicium tuum He is gone with all his Greatness and the miseries of the poor Irish do still continue however they are yet in being and live in hope that the fall of their Mortal Enemy may be a beginning of their Rise and that his Majesty will now seriously reflect upon the unparallel'd usage hitherto extended to that Nation who are deprived of the Benefit of Law Justice and publick Faith The cryes and tears of more than an hundred thousand Widows and Orphans being worthy his Majesties Princely consideration And certainly there can be no great difficulty met with to dissannul two illegal Acts which are evidently repugnant not only to the Law of God and Nature contrary to the common reason and consequently void in themselves but also to all sound Policy and reason of State For that the true Interest of England as relating to Ireland consists in raising he Irish as a Bulwark or ballance against our English and Scotch Presbyterians The Irish Papists agreed so well and lived so peaceably with our English Prelatiques during the Reign of King James and Seventeen years of King Charles the First that they seemed to be of one mind in all matters And when the Presbyterian practises and Covenant began to disturb these Kingdoms the Papists and Prelatiques in Ireland as well as in England joyned their hearts and hands against Presbytery for the King The great Earl of Strafford judged it was a true Protestant Cavalier Interest to raise an Army of Papists in Ireland thereby to keep in awe the Presbyterians of Scotland and England And indeed the Presbyterian designs could never have had been compassed if the King had not been forced to disband the same Army Then the Earl now Duke of Ormond thought it was the true English and Cavalier Interest joyn in Parliament with the Roman Catholick Nobility and Gentry of Ireland against the Presbyterian Lords Justices and their Faction and therefore joyntly with them resolved to secure their persons and seize upon the Castle and Magazine of Dublin for his Majesty But this their Design was quashed by an inconsiderate attempt of some Northern Gentlemen which occasioned the late Rebellion and encouraged the presbyterian Lords Justices to force the Kings Loyal Subjects into desperate Courses But no sooner were the presbyterian Lord Justices deposed and imprisoned by the Kings commands but the Roman Catholicks returned to their Duty first by a Cessation next by a submissive peace delivering the whole Kingdom to the Duke of Ormond and joyning with the Cavalier party against the Kings Enemies and so continued untill both were over-powered by Cromwel Another reason why understanding men judge the Irish ought to be preserved and their Interest preferred before that of Cromwels Creatures is that the English of Ireland are not able to defend themselves against the Scots in that Countrey If the Irish be Neuters The Scots are a people so numerous so needy and so near unto Ireland so cunning close and confederated in a common Interest that some of our States-men apprehend they may soon possess themselves of the whole Island they being at this present not only Masters of Vister but spread over the other provinces and very well armed Now if despair should dictate to the destroyed Irish that it is their conveniency to joyn with the Scots against the English that possess their Estates without question the English Interest will be lost in Ireland It is better therefore that the Irish Nation be gained by restoring them to their own such only excepted as had their hands in murdering English than that a few presbyterian and phanatick up-starts be made great by other Mens Estates and the whole Kingdom endangered to be wrested out of our hands and seperated from the Crown of England You see my Lord that there seems to be as little conveniency as Conscience in my Lord Clarendon's and his covetous partners Settlement of Ireland yet I must confess this Domestick affair agreeth well with his policy in Foreign Negotiations Until his time the Statesmen of Europe particularly the English made it their business to keep the scales equal between France and Spain least either of those two potentates might aspire unto an Universal Monarchy But the Earl of Clarendon made it his business to utterly destroy Spain and exalt the French King to such a height of power that in a short time he might be Master of the Netherlands and find no opposition in his way into England And indeed had not our Kings Conduct and Courage been extraordinary in closing up a new Defensive League so seasonably and in concluding a peace between Spain and Portugal no part of Europe that is worth the Coveting could be free from the French command I hope that as God hath inspired his Majesty to prevent by this League and peace the dangers which corrupt Ministers drew upon us so He will move him to establish a lasting peace in his Dominions by a just repeal of the Irish Act of Settlement And thereby to quash all the Designs against England That France or any Foreigner may endeavour to ground upon the discontents of a destroyed and desperate people Now my Lord that you have had this account of the transactions in Ireland since his Majesties Restauration it were an act worthy your Lordship being a leading Member in the House of peers in England and much relyed upon in the House of Commons to make it your request to his Majesty that the Business of Ireland may receive one publick hearing and all parties concerned appear by their Agents which if your Lordship prevail to get done if the Settlement as it is now Established be deemed Just will be happy for the possessours and take away all Calumnies that the Irish do over all the World east on the Managers of that Settlement But if it appear not to be a just Settlement then Justice in so high a degree will become the King and his Highest Court and will evidence the Truth or Nullitie of what hath been here been offered to your Lordship by My Lord Your Lordships most Faithful and most Humble Servant F. D. FINIS * The D of O hath added as much to his own ancient Estate by the new settlement of Ireland as would have satisfied all the Claims of the just Adventurers And Anglesey and Kingston little less In the Province of Ulster but Three of the Natives restored viz. My Lord of Antrim Sir Henry O-Neil and one more of an inconsiderable Estate In the Province of Conaught but Four viz. the Earl of Clanrickard Lord of Mayo Coll. John Kelley and Coll. Moor. Which the Natives call the black Bill
is rendred impossible and the satisfaction of Adventurers and Souldiers already disposed by the Decrees of the last Court of Claims is much obstructed so many fresh Grants exhausting the stock of Reprisals My Lord I have hitherto set down in brief the hard usage extended to the Irish since his Majesties Re-establishment and examined the Title of the several Interests obstructing their Restoration Now it remains to say somewhat of the undoubted right and indisputable Claim of the Natives to those Estates which by Cromwels Decree and his Majesties confirmation are kept from them I will not take upon me to justifie their first rising although I have seen a Treatise in Latin proving the lawfulness or rather the necessity of that War on their side having begun it in their own defence to prevent the general ruin and destruction designed against the Kindom and themselves by the Presbyterian party both in England and Scotlana I shall not excuse any Subjects presuming to take Arms upon any account or pretence whatsoever without the Authority of their Prince I will only say that by their Insurrection how bloody and barbarous soever some are pleased to print and paint it four hundred English could not be found murdered in Ireland as appeareth by the proceedings and Records yet extant in Dublin of the Usurped Powers severe inquiry and their Court of Justice that for want of Men did hang Women not only without legal proof but without probability that they could or would be guilty of killing Souldiers or Innocent English The Irish insurrection I say hath not been accompanied with that Insolence and Malice in the beginning nor with those sad and dismal effects in the end which other Rebellions have been guilty of and some Pamphlets have charged the Irish with They were scarce 22 Months in Arms when they yielded to a Cessation upon the first notice given of his Majesties pleasure although they had then the upper hand of their Enemies and it was known the Protestant party could not be well preserved without it This Cessation was enlarged from time to time until a final Peace was solemnly concluded in the City of Kilkenny in the year of our Lord 1648 by and between the Lord Duke of Ormond his Majesties Commissioner in the behalf of his Majesty and the General Assembly of the Confederate Catholâ—cks of Ireland in the behalf of the said Confederate Catholicks This peace was no sooner published than all the Garrisons Forts Citadels Strong-holds and Magazines of the Irish were put under the Command of the Kings Lieutenant all the Nobility Gentry and Magistrates both in Cities and Country submitted to his Government And though the English Rebels have been ever since very succesful in all their attempts yet the Irish notwithstanding they were offered any conditions by the Usurper held out with an undaunted Courage until the last Town and the last Fortress was lost and until they received express Orders from his Majesty to yield to the times and to make the best conditions they could for their own preservation It is remarkable that this peace was concluded in a time when the Irish Nation was in a most flourishing condition having Armies in the Field and most of the Cities and great Towns in their possessions and more than three parts of the Kingdom under their command when they were courted by the Parliament of England and solicited by some Neighbouring Potentates and when by espousing his Majesties quarrel who was then destitute of all humane support they were to draw on their Country all their united Force and Power of the Victorious Rebels in England and Scotland and consequently expose themselves and their Posterity to the danger of an unevitable ruin and destruction I know their Adversaries have practised all the artifice that Malice could invent to perswade the World that his Majesty is no way obliged to make good that peace which was concluded by the Authority of his Royal Father And Solemnly confirmed by himself Those Articles they say were forced from His Majesty by the Irish Confederates who ought to loose the benefit of all his Majesties gracious concessions having banished the Lord Duke Ormond His Majesties Lieutenant out of Ireland It is easily proved that the King was forced to take the Solemn League and Covenant when he was environed by the Presbyteriam Army in Scotland But I do not understand how it can be made out that the Confederates of Ireland were able to exort that peace from his Majesty who was then in France It will seem very ridiculous to say that the Lord Marquess of Antrim and the Lord Muskry imploy'd by the Consederate Catholicks to solicit in a most humble manner for those Articles which only contain a pardon for the past and the liberty of Free-born Subjects for the future should come to Paris with a train sufficient to force a Sovereign Prince lodged in the Louvre who was Cousin German to his most Christian Majesty The other Assertion that the Lord Duke of Ormond was banished out of Ireland by the Confederates is very false His Lordship being driven out of the provinces of Leinster and Munster by the power of Cromwels Army and forced to retire to the province of Connaught from whence he took Shipping for France to inform the Queens Majesty of the sad condiâ—ion of that Kingdom and to implore some succour from abroad which if timely obtained might probably give a stop to Cromwels conquest and render him unable to bring his Victorious Forces out of Ireland and defeat his Majesty at Worcester His Lordship having appointed the Lord Marquess of Clanrickard to Command in his absence as the Kings Deputy to whom the Nation shewed all due obedience and submission is a manifest argument that his Lordship was not banished out of the Kingdom by the Confederate Catholiks for whom he named a Commander in his own absence neither can it reflect upon the generality of the Nation what was decreed by some prelates convened in Jamestown whose unseasonable zeal was soon after condemned and protested against by a general Assembly held in Loghreagh of the Clergy Nobility and Gentry of the whole Kingdom And the advantagious proposals then made by Cromwels Agents were generously rejected by that Assembly the Nation having unanimously resolved to rise or fall with the Kings Interest But what need we any other Evidence to prove that the Irish did not generally violate the Articles of that peace then His Majesties own words in the preamble of his Declaration for the Settlement of Ireland And therefore we could not but hold our self obliged to perform what we owe by that peace to those who had honestly and faithfully performed what they had promised to us c. The Irish being at the last over-power'd at home though they lost their Countrey they did not fail in their Loyalty most of their young Nobility and Gentry having followed his Majesty into Forreign Countries and resorted from all parts to side with those
Title to their Estates but that of the Sword which they have always imployed against the late King and his present Majesty enjoying as a Sallary for their service all the Irish Estates in twelve Counties I do not think any man will be so impudent as to justifie this prodigious Title I am sure their greatest Patrons never durst say they were just but they said very often it was convenient to confirm them in possession of other Mens Land And perhaps we shall not find many other States-men among the Followers of the Gospel who will allow a conveniency so apparent against Justice Ruat Coelum fiat Justicia is a Motto which better becomes a Lord Chancellour Then let us not do what is just but what is convenient It is indeed a most wonderful conveniency to dispossess the Ancient Proprietor who Fought for the King and give his Estate to a Fanatick Souldier who Fought for Cromwel To suppor this pretended Conveniency the first Minister of State made use of a strong Argument derived from the great power of the Cromwellists in Ireland and thus he makes it out The English Army is very considerable now in Ireland they have Swords in their hands and they are in possession of all the great Towns and strong holds in that Kingdom it is not therefore safe to irritate them Nay there is an absolute necessity as the case stands to confirm them in their present possessions For we must not do what is just but what is is convenient These words were often delivered in Councel as so many Oracles and perhaps the greater Statesman did not seriously reflect whether the same Argument might not serve as well to confirm all the Cromwellists in England in their unlawful Acquisitions of the Crown and Church-Lands and so many Cavaliers Estates whereof they were dispossessed upon his Majesties Restauration without any great noise and less danger and yet they were then very considerable They had Swords in their hands and they were in possession of all the strong holds of the Kingdom c. My Lord I have been all over the Kingdom of Ireland and assure your Lordship that the old Inhabitants and Natives of Ireland are Ten for one and far the more considerable Party But large Sums have made that corrupt Minister say any thing that seemed advantagious to support that other Interest I am confident My Lord admitting them as inconsiderable as he would have them it cannot be half so formidable as the power of that party was in England when the King came in These were all disbanded in less then Six Months time and now 't is more than Seven years that the Fanatick Army is maintained in Ireland without any necessity which occasions that his Majesty receives no Revenue out of that vast and fertil Kingdom Nay he is obliged to send yearly a considerable sum of Money out of England for the maintenance of that Army For my part I cannot nnderstand how the King might safely reduce the English Army and that it should be dangerous for him to disband the Irish Forces who were not half so numerous nor so much to be feared as those in England If the want of Money hindred their disbanding at once with their Brethren in England and Scotland might not they reduce by degrees and by Regiments in eight years time I think it is sufficiently evidenced that the Cromwellian party in Ireland have no more power than what his Majesty hitherto is pleased to grant them by the advice of his first Minister who upholds that Fanatick Army for his own sordid if not wicked ends Let that Favourite that perswades his Master to tolerate Injustice and Oppression upon the account of a Servile Fear have a care that he be not one day convinced either of ignorance Rex est qui posuit metus diramala pectoris quem non ambitio popularis nunquam stabilis faveur Vulgi praecipitis movet The third grand interest and the most destructive to the Natives is that of the Protestant Officers who served his Majesty or the Parliament in Ireland before the year 1649. Whose arrears have been cast up and stated to the vast sum of Eighteen hundred thousand pounds sterl in satisfaction whereof the part of a whole Kingdom which certainly is worth many Millions is conferred upon them They are entitled to all the Natives Estates in four great Counties to all the Cities Corporations and Walled Towns in Ireland to all the Land situated within a mile to the Sea and to the River of Shanon in the Province of Conaught and County of Clare to all the Debts Leases Mortgages and the Reversions of the Irish for not only the real Estates but also all other pretensions and Titles of the unhappy Natives are forfeited And leest all this should come short to content this insatiable Party the last act allows them one hundred thousand pounds out of the two half years Rent from Adventurers Souldiers and restored Irish Though the Roman Catholick Officers have always faithfully adhered to the Kings Interest and never deserted his service as all or most of these Protestant Officers in Ireland have done when the Usurper prevailed yet they being Papist disables them from any satisfaction for their service which was a Qualification not imposed on the Catholicks in England c. But since the Cessation of Arms concluded in the year 1643. There was no more fighting between his Majesties Protestant and Roman Catholick Subjects which makes a great difference between their Loyalty in the point of merit and that of our Cavaliers in England who out of a generous resolution without any necessity or consideration of private Interest did freely embrace his Majesties Quarrel siding always with the best although weakest party which they maintained for the space of Six years at their own charges with the loss of so many thousand brave lives who were all Sacrificed as unspotted Victims on the Altar of Loyalty How comes it then to pass that a handful of Irish Protestants should be allowed 1800000 l. for two years service and that our English Royalists who were a hundred times more numerous continued thrice longer in serving the King and whose pure Loyalty was never tainted with the mixture of any treachery or private Interest should get among them all without distinction of Nation or Religion but 70000 l. to be distributed among the Needy Cavaliers who had neither Estates of their own nor any publick Chrges or imployments to keep them from starving Upon what account should the Officers of the Four or five Garrisons in Ireland that plundered ten times more then their pay came to enjoy four large Counties and all the great Towns and Corporations of a Kingdom whilst the whole body of the Royallists in England are so much slighted that there is not one Parish in the Country nor Street in any City conferred upon them Will not the Irish Forty nine Men allow us that Prince Rupert the Duke of
Newcastle Montross Bristol Barkley Middleton Rochester Gerard and several other Noblemen of England and Scotland deserve to have their Arrears stated and satisfied as well as the Grandees of Ireland I there any conveniency for I am sure there can be no Justice to provide for the one and not for the other It cannot be said that his Majesty is obliged by the Act of 17. Car. by his Declaration from Breda or any other Covenant to recompence in so large a manner the mercenary service of his Protestant Officers in Ireland without any regard to be had for the innumerable Sufferings and present want of so many Indigent Cavaliers in England who have not bread to eat nor a house to lye in and scarce a Rag to cover their Nakedness To give some colour to this apparent partiality the first Minister of State is forced to betake himself to his last refuge telling as for a final reason that the Protestant English Interest cannot by maintained in Ireland without extirpating the Natives And therefore that the Counties and Corperations undisposed of by the Commonwealth must not be restored to the Natives upon any account The preservation of this Interest is now become ultima ratio and the non plus ultra to all political Debates and seeing the Learned Gown-man will needs establish it for a first Principle not to be denyed is not amiss to consider more attentively this Idol that occasions so much impiety As for the Protestant Interest I must confess his Majesties bound to maintain it in all his Kingdoms and Dominions as far forth as the Glory of God requires and the Law of Nations and the several Constitutions of particular places will admit Certainly no Man though never so zealous will say that his Majesty was obliged when he held the Town of Dunkirk in Flanders to expiate the ancient Inhabitants and place new English Colonies in their room for the preservation of a Protestant Interest True Religion was ever yet planted by preaching and good example not by violence and oppression An unjust intrusion into the Neighbours Estate is not the right way to convert the ancient Proprietors who will hardly be induced to embrace a Religion whose Professors have done them so much injustice And as to the present Settlement of Ireland it is apparent to the World that the Confiscation of Estates and not the Conversion of Souls is the only thing aimed at If by the English Interest we understand the present Possession of the London Adventurers and of Cromwel's Souldiers there is no doubt it is inconsistent with the restoration of the Irish neither can the New English Title to Land be well maintained without destroying the old Title of the Natives even as the Interest of the late Common-wealth was incompatible with Monarchy and Cromwels Protectorship was inconsistent with the Kings Government But if by the English Interest we understand as we ought to do the Interest of the Crown and Cavaliers of England I see no reason why it might not be preserved in Ireland for 500 years to come as well it was preserved there for 500 years past without extirpating the Natives Why could not the English Interest be maintained in Ireland without extirpation as well as the Spanish Interest is preserved in Naples and Flanders the French Interest in Rossilignion and Alsace the Swedish Interest in Breme and Pomerland the Danish Interest in Norway the Austrian Interest in Hungary the Venetian Interest in Dalmatia and the Ottoman Interest over all Greece and so many other Christian Provinces without dispossessing the Antient Inhabitants of their Patrimonies and Birth-rights Forts Cittadels Armies and Garrisons Punishment and Reward were hitherto held the only lawful means for the Christian Princes to maintain their Authority and secure their Interest Such an extirpation was never yet practised by any Prince that followed the Law of the Gospel But supposing that the preservation of an English Interest were so sacred a thing that it may be held lawful in that regard to extirpate the old Inhabitants of Ireland who have received from the hand of God that Portion of the Earth for their Inhabitants upon what colour of Title can our rigid Statesman design the extirpation of so many Families in Ireland or the English race and Extraction lineally descended from the best Families in England and those Antient English Colonies who first brought over that Interest into Ireland and maintained it there for so many Ages If this Cannibal English Interest gives no better quarter to the Children of English in Ireland what can Strangers expect Nay what assurance can be had for the prosperity of those very Adventurers and Souldiers that after an Age or two they shall not be likewise devoured or displaced to make room for a new swarm of English Planters upon the account of securing a new English Interest And those new Colonies also within an Age after shall extirpated upon the same score For the Children of those who were planted in Ireland about the beginning of King James his Reign are now destroyed for the better security of an English Interest as well as the posterity of the first English who Invaded the Country in the days of King Henry the Second so that to the Worlds end if we follow this Rule we shall never be able to secure the English Interest in the Kingdom of Ireland The Grandees are the Fourth and last in order that obstruct the Restoration of the Irish Natives Their Title is soon examined being only founded on the Kings free Grant for it cannot be said that His Majesty was bound by any former obligation or pretended conveniency to confer on his Courtiers and Favourites the Land of other People Can there be any conveniency not to speak of Justice that the Kings only Brother and Heir apparent to three Crowns should enjoy so many thousands a year in Ireland of poor Gentlemens Estates whereof some had the honour to serve under his Command in Foreign Countreys And is it fit to expose his Royal Highness and his Princely Posterity to the many inconveniencies and heavy Judgements which commonly follow illegal and unjust acquisitions It is a remarkable passage that Miles Corbeâ— and other Regicides who went over into Ireland got a large proportion of Irish Land for no other service but the execrable Sentence of Death which they gave against our late Soveraign and that the Duke of York should now enjoy all that Land by no other Title but that of the Regicides The Land was given them by a Tyrant for murthering the King let the World judge of the goodness of their Title certainly whosoever comes to inherit them can have no better I shall make no mention here of so many Courtiers of a lesser Sphere who have got vast Estates in Ireland by his Majesties free Gift and whom the first Ministers of State have purposely interressed in that Kingdom to engage them against the Natives whereby the Restoration of the Irish
Princes who favoured his Interest when the King was in France they quitted the Spanish service and when he came to Flanders they abandoned the French service and flocked in great numbers about his Royal Person having made up in short time a handsome body of an Army which rendred his Majesty considerable to his Friends abroad and dreadful to his Enemies at home These are verities that none dare impugn seeing the King himself is most graciously pleased to own them in his Declaration And in the first place we did and must always remember the great affection a considerable part of that Nation expressed to Vs during the time of our being beyond the Seas when with all cheerfulness and obedience they received and submitted to our Orders and betook themselves to that service which we directed as most convenient and behooveful at that time to us though attended with inconveniency enough to themselves which demeanour of theirs cannot but be thought very worthy of our Protection Justice and Favour My Lord Is it not a sad case that the Irish Nation who sacrificed their Lives their Estates and Fortunes and all the Interest they had in their Country for the Kings service who followed his Majesty abroad and stuck to him in his Banishment when he was abandoned almost by all the rest of his Subjects in the three Kingdoms should now be in a far worse condition than they were reduced unto during the Usurpers Reign For then their Estates were kept from them by violence and the un-resistable power of Cromwel's Army but now they seem to be legally adjudged against them by two Acts of Parliament They were then in hopes that God would one day Re-establish his Sacred Majesty in a peaceable and entire Possession of his Crown and Kingdoms and consequently restore to them their ancient Patrimonies which they lost upon the account of his Interest But now they behold his Majesty seated in the Glorious Throne of his Ancestors and themselves out of all hopes of ever enjoying their Estates which are conferred on their and his Majesties Enemies by a final sentence pronounced against them and which surpasseth all the misery that can be Imagined they are eternally condemned by a Messias in whom they hoped for redemption and for whose sake they sacrificed their lives lost their Fortunes quitted their Countrey and forsook all that was dear to them in this World And this done by the corruption and covetousness of two or three persons whereof one was the first Minister The extraordinary merit of this Nation in his Majesties service was fresh in his Majesties memory when he spake after this man-to the House of Peers on the 27 July 1660. Touching the Act of Indempnity I hope I need say nothing of Ireland and that they alone shall not be without the benefit of my Mercy They have shewed much affection to me abroad and you will have a care of my honour and what I have poomised to them My Lord to pass by Honour and Gratitude which some States-men little value how shall we excuse the Injustice of these proceedings Suppose the Peace concluded in the year 1648. was invalid and that his Majesty received no service abroad from any of the Irish Nation can he in justice condemn 7000 Innocents before they are heard inoffensive Persons who never offended his Royal Father nor himself Let us suppose farther that an Innocent person could not be found in all Ireland that every individual of that Nation were an obstinate Rebel from the beginning and that none of them ever deserved the least favour from his Majesty in point of Conscience Honour or Gratitude can our prime Minister and his adherents say that so many thousand Widows and Orphans though never so criminal are not fit objects of his Majesties Compassion and Clemency That Kings are the Anointed of the Lord and his Lieutenants on Earth is an infallible truth received among Christians and as they derive their power immediately from God so they ought to imitate him in their Actions But of all the Divine Attributes his Mercy as it is above all the rest of his Works Misericordia ejus supra omnia opera ejus so is it that alone which Princes are most concerned to follow It is by this Heavenly Virtue that good Kings have been always distinguished from Tyrants and that they appeared to their Subjects as the very Images of Divinity I do not think that the English Crown was ever worn by a Prince more Benign and Merciful than Charles the Second I am confident there is no King now living on Earth who hath given a larger Testimony of his natural propensity and inclination that way How great then must be the Guilt of those Ministers of State that cunningly obstructed the effects of the Bounty and Clemency of so good and gracious a Prince towards an Innocent people and perhaps not the least deserving of his Subjects Their gettings by the Bills of Settlement spoils their plea and pretence for the promotion of protestancy It will seem a paradox to posterity that the Irish Nation which in all Insurrections hath been pardoned and preserved by the Royal Bounty of Kings meerly English should now be condemned to an eternal extirpation by a King of old Irish extraction lineally descended from Fergusius a Prince of the Royal blood of Ireland who of all the Kings that ever Regned in England was most obliged to the Irish Nation and that during the Reign of Charles the Second the most merciful Prince that ever wore a Crown so many thousand Innocents should be exempted from a hearing and others from a General pardon which by a Mercy wholly extraordinary doth extend to some of the very Regicides These are verities not to be doubted of in our dayes which after Ages will hardly admit seeing the like was never before Recorded in Annals or mentioned in any History For since the Creation of Adam to this day and perhaps our posterity to the Worlds end may be as far to seek we cannot produce another example of the like measure extended to a Christian people under the Goverment of a most Christian Prince The most bloody Tyrants of former Ages even those Monsters of Nature who seemed to be born for no other end than the desolation of Mankind did never extirpate their old Friends to make room for their reconciled Enemies So that it must be a very difficult matter to perswade those who are not Eye-witnesses of the Fact that the Royal Authority of our Gracious King which here in England maintains the Peer in his Splendor and Dignity the Commoner in his Birth-right and Liberty which protects the Weak from the oppression of the mighty secures the Nobility from the Insolence of the people and by which Equal and Impartial Justice is indifferently distributed to all the Inhabitants of this Great and Flourishing Realm should be at the same time made use of in his Kingdom of Ireland to condemn Innocents before they are heard