Long before King James had left England, the Protestants in the north of Ireland, were generally in arms; appointed themselves officers; inlisted men; armed and arrayed them; they regimented themselves, and had frequent rendezvous: they appeared in the field with drums beating and colours flying they chose governors of counties, and appointed councils. and committees to carry on their business: they disarmed the native Irish, and such of the Protestants, as they suspected not to be cordial to their cause. All this was not only done without the authority of James, at that time king of Ireland; but the royal authority for it was not even pretended. On the contrary, it is manifest by their subsequent conduct, and boasting of it (when the revolution had succeeded) as meritorious, that it was all intended in direct opposition to the king: and was therefore at that time manifestly a treasonable levying of war against the crown.* This formidable armed force of the northern Protestants had been gaining strength several months before the landing of William in Torr Bay: and they continued daily in an improving state of organization and regular warfare against the existing government of the country.†

"September 1688, they prayed for King James. The beginning of March "following, they proclaimed the Prince of Orange king, and prayed for him. "The 15th day King James's army broke their forces at Drommore in the "north of Ireland, and reduced all but Derry and Enniskillen. Then they prayed again for King James, that God would strengthen him to vanquish and overcome all his enemies. In August following, Schomberg went over with an English army then as far as his quarters reacht, they returned to pray the same prayer for King William: the rest of the Protestants still praying for "victory to King James and for his people; and yet now tell us, that all that "while they meant the same thing: four times in one year praying forwards "and backwards point blank contradictory to one another."

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The association under the orders of which all this was done was established and they began to arm in September 1688. Vide p. 7. of the Faithful History of the Northern Affairs of Ireland from the late King James's Accession to the Crown, to the Siege of Londonderry, by a Person who bore a great Part in these Transactions. This author was a predetermined enemy of James.

It is a matter of no small moment to ascertain the dates of the leading facts of the revolution of 1688, in Ireland: for it bore very differently both in fact and principle upon England and Ireland. That James abdicated in England is as unquestionable, as that he did not abdicate in the same manner and at the same time in Ireland. He left Whitehall when he went to Faversham, on the 11th of December, 1788: but he returned to London, and quitted England only on the 23d of December following: and his abdication was not formally determined in the convention till the ensuing February. Long before any of these three facts could have been known in Ireland, we find (in Mr. Boyse's Vindication of Mr. Osborne in Reference to the Affairs in the North of Ireland, p. 11.) that Mr. Osborne was, in November, 1688, entrusted by his brethren the Non-conformist ministers and other gentlemen of note and interest in the province of Ulster, to get some gentlemen sent from Dublin to the prince with instructions signed by archdeacon Hamilton and Alexander Osborne in the name of the rest, to congratulate the arrival of the Prince of Orange into England, and tender their services to him. They accordingly sent a person with a memorial to the Prince of Orange on the 8th of December, 1688, greatly enlarging on those instructions: the original of which papers Mr. Boyse at the

Tyrconnel under these embarrassments summoned all the loyal part of the nation to arm in support of the rights of their lawful sovereign, upon which their own rights also depended, against the northern rebels, and the efforts of the usurper, (such was the style of the castle.)

Historical justice obliges us here to remark and confute a most glaring and malicious misrepresentation of Archbishop King (119) where he says: "And least there should be any "terms proposed or accepted by the people in the north, and so, "that country escape being plundered and undone, he made all "the haste he could to involve the kingdom into blood." The fact is so much the reverse, that several proclamations were made requiring the associators to disperse and promising them pardon. There was one of this nature, dated the 25th of January 1688, which was signed by several Protestants of the council as the Earl of Granard, Lord Chief Justice Keating, &c. to which a reference is made in the proclamation mentioned by the archbishop bearing date 7th of March 1688 :* and it is notorious that Mr. Osborne was sent down to the north by the lord deputy before any part of the army was put in motion, with instructions to use all persuasions to the associators to lay down their arms, and give them warning of the very day on which the army would march: with a special instruction, that although ten were excepted in the proclamation, yet he would insist but time of his writing the before-mentioned pamphlet had in his possession. These very instructions argue a long pre-existing organization, which at that time could be nothing short of downright treason. Such also were the acts of shutting the gates of Londonderry against Lord Antrim's regiment sent thither by the lord deputy, and refusing to quarter two companies of soldiers sent to Enniskillen by the same authority. Which two acts Archbishop King says, was all that was done by any Protestant in Ireland in opposition to the government before King James deserted England (p. 118.) We learn from Hamilton's Actions of the Enniskillen Men, p. 3, that this happened on the 16th of December, 1688. But it was on the 3d of December that a certain anonymous illiterately worded letter, announcing an intended massacre of all the Protestants of Ireland on the 9th of that month was picked up in Cumber street and sent to Lord Mount Alexander (and whether true or counterfeit, says his grace (p. 115) was spread over the whole kingdom, and about the same time the gates of Derry were shut against Lord Antrim's regiment; which Archbishop King justifies, as they appeared before the town without the king's livery, (p. 115.) On the 7th of December 1688, (vide Mackenzie's Narrative of the Siege of Londonderry, p. 3) the gates were shut to Lord Antrim's regiment, and on that very same day Mr Hamilton of Tollimore went to Dublin deputed by these Protestant associates to entreat the Earl of Granard, to put himself at the head of the northern army as their general: to which deputation he returned a very indignant answer: that he knew not what it was to command a rabble: that he had lived loyal all his life, and would not depart from it in his old age, and was resolved, that no man should write rebel upon his grave stone. (Lesl. p. 79.)

* This proclamation is to be seen in the Appendix, No. XLII. and is a notable monument of the want of good faith and candour in this trimming prelate : and in justice to the actors in the scenes which his grace was then representing ought to have been comprised in his Appendix amongst other documents of very inferior importance to that public act of government.

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upon three and if it should appear, that they took up arms merely for self-preservation, (as was pretended) then he would pardon these said three persons also.*

An army of about 30000 men was soon formed, and officered chiefly with Catholics. James gave constant assurances, that he would come over to head them in person: he was then at the court of Louis the XIVth, who commiserating his fallen state, and envying the rising power of William, his inveterate enemy, offered him a French army to enable him to reassert his rights: which he with true patriotism declined, alleging "that he would recover his dominions by the assistance of his own subjects or "perish in the attempt." James sailed from Brest with a strong armament, having on board 1200 of his own subjects who then were in the pay of France, and 100 French officers, and landed at Kinsale, in March 1689: from thence he proceeded to Dublin, where he was received as king, with great pomp and solemnity.

+Addresses (says Leland) were instantly poured in upon " him from all orders of people. That of the Protestant estab"lished clergy touched gently on the distraction of the times, "and the grievances they had experienced. He assured them "of protection; he promised to defend, and even to enlarge "their privileges. But his fairest declarations were received "with coldness and suspicion, when all the remaining Protes"tants of the privy council were removed, and their places sup"plied by D'Avaux, Powis, Berwick, the Bishop of Chester, "and others of his zealous adherents. He now issued five "several proclamations: by the first, he ordered all Protestants "who had lately abandoned the kingdom, to return and accept "his protection, under the severest penalties; and that his sub"jects of every persuasion should unite against the Prince of "Orange. The second was calculated to suppress robberies; "commanding all Catholics, not of his army, to lay up their 66 arms in their several abodes: a third invited the country to "carry provisions to his troops: by the fourth he raised the "value of money: and the last summoned a parliament to meet "at Dublin on the 7th day of May; and which did meet, and "sit from that day to the 12th of July, and then adjourned to "the 12th of November following.

* See Mr. Osborne's letter to Lord Massarene taken from the Apology for the Protestants in Ireland. Appendix, No. XLIII.

† 3 Lel. p. 523.

As by the turn of events all acts done by James in Ireland after his abdication of the crown of England, are now considered as acts of rebellion, or usurpation upon the royal powers and prerogatives of King William, it would not be decent to refer to them for any other purpose, than that of proving from them, that the bulk of the Irish nation, who still supported and submitted to his authority, sincerely believed they were not committing rebellion against

After these solemn and formal acts of sovereignty, the scene changed to open warfare. The defenders of Derry and the Enniskilleners supported the cause of the revolutionists against James's forces, till the arrival of an English army of 40,000 men under Schomberg, which was afterwards headed by William in person. In order to blacken and calumniate the great body of the Catholics, who at this time from principle and duty obeyed James, to whom they had sworn allegiance, Archbishop King, and after him many of our modern authors, have represented the Irish army as an horde of undisciplined rebels, indulging in the extreme of infuriate licentiousness. His grace lays the whole war to the account of Lord Tyrconnel, who could not be prevailed on to defer sending the army to the North till King James's arrival, but hasted to make the parties irreconcilable, by engaging them in blood and by letting loose the army to spoil and plunder. (p. 119.) The truth however is, and it ought not to be suppressed, that the Protestants in the North were worse treated by, and suffered more from William's army in one month, than they had from the Irish army from March to the end of August, when Schomberg landed, although during those five months the Irish army were in possession of the whole province, except the towns of Derry and Enniskillen. Dr. Gorge, who was then secretary to General Schomberg, in writing to Colonel Hamilton, whose estate lay in that country, gives the most pointed refutation of this malevolent untruth of the archbishop. In this letter he informs us, how "it was resolved to treat the Irish Protestants of Ulster rather as enemies than friends. That the goods and stocks of the Protestant inhabitants once seized by the enemy were forfeited, and ought not to be restored, but given as encouragement to the soldiers: that their (the Protestants) oaths and complaints were neither to be believed or redressed; that so an easier and safer approach might be made to invade the little left them by the Irish: that free quartering was the least retaliation that Protestants could give, for being restored to their former estates. If you add to these, the pressing of horses at pleasure, denying the people bread, or seed of their own corn, though the general by his public proclamation requires both, and some openly and publicly contemning and scorning the said proclamation, whereby multitudes of families are already reduced for want of bread, and left only to beg, and steal, or starve; these being the practices, their lawful sovereign. As pieces of historical curiosity, will be found in the Appendix, No. XLIV. the names of those who sat in this parliament, the king's speech to the parliament, their address to the king, the titles of the acts, and the preamble to the bill which passed the commons for repealing the Act of Settlement.

*This letter being a very valuable document of a part of Irish history most grossly misrepresented, is given in the Appendix, No. XLV.

and these the principles, and both as well known to you as to me, it cannot be wondered that the oppressed Protestants here should report us worse than the Irish. To me it seems most strange, but yet it is true, that notwithstanding all the violence, oppression, and wrong done by these (the Enniskillen and Derry forces), and other of our army, on the impoverished, oppressed, and plundered Protestant inhabitants of this province they have had from us, yet you know what I esteem as a great presage of future good, they continue and remain as firm and faithful to us, as the Irish Papists against us. How frequently do we hear them tell us, that though we continue to injure them, rob and destroy them, yet they must trust in us, and be true and faithful to us." What other testimony can be so conclusive, as the evidence of Schomberg's own secretary, to prove that the Irish Protestants suffered less from the spoil and plunder of Tyrconnel's, than Schomberg's army? And that eye witness of the fact, whose interest it was to enhance the excellence and value of William's army, commends the discipline and good government of King James's army, as decidedly superior to those of King William's.

Of all periods in the Irish history the year 1689, is perhaps the most critically important, and requires the chastest colouring. The various acts by which James abdicated the crown of England, viz. by surrendering the executive power, disbanding his army, burning the writs for convening a parliament, casting the great seal into the river, abandoning his post, flying the kingdom, and leaving the invader in possession of the throne, as well as the affections of the majority of the people, could not be pretended to be drawn into a precedent for Ireland, which for want of union, was then an absolutely independent kingdom: the presence of the sovereign, or his deputy, summoning all his liege subjects to their allegiance, bid defiance to all speculative grounds for dispensation or cessation of their former oaths: the resistance made against the attempts of a foreign invader with an army of foreigners, left it no longer dubious, on which side the duty of loyalty called forth every true and faithful subject of the King of Ireland; and the great revolutionary principle. emanating from the will of the people in England, operated more than proportionably in the inverse ratio upon Ireland. In order to weigh the conduct of the Irish of that day, in the true scale of impartial justice, it must be cleared of every idea of the then probable, since certain success and happy result of the revolution of 1688: and it will be impossible for any man, who admits that Ireland then was an independent kingdom, that it enjoyed the same constitution as England, that such constitution is formed upon the fair Whig principles upon which the revolution in England was effected, to aver that an Irishman who