be made good after the coming of the French Fleet: And first it was but reasonable, seeing it was within the Intent of the Articles. Secondly, it was Prudence not to deny it, since the French Fleet being Eighteen Men of War, Four Fireships, and Twenty Ships of Burden, were certainly too hard for Captain Coal and his Squadron then in the Shannon, and might have put what Men and Provisions they pleased into the English Town, our Army also being gone to Quarters, we had only Five Regiments in the Irish Town, with my Lord Drogheda's, and my Lord Lisburn's, Encamp'd without the Walls. Provisions also were so scarce with us, that our Men had only a Pint of Meal a Day allowed them, and the Irish in the other Town were not only more in Number, but better provided, so that if Justice could not have obliged the General to the Confirmation of that Clause, yet Discretion at that Juncture would”. NOTE 278, Page 156. Neither was there any Article made, for assuring the true worship, or securing the Bishops. By this assertion, Colonel O'Kelly appears to have judged the Treaty of Limerick rather from the unfortunate results of its violation as regards the religious freedom of the Irish Roman Catholics, than from what the very first of the Civil Articles sets forth in their favour on that head, and from the statements, in the second and ninth of the same Articles, respecting the Oath of Allegiance, by which it was stipulated (as if to guard against the introduction of any such extra Oaths as were afterwards introduced) that such Oath, “and No other,” was to be administered to the Irish Roman Catholics submitting to King William's and Queen Mary's government, or the new order of things established by the Revolution. The words of the first of the Civil Articles referred to are: "The Roman Catholicks of this Kingdom, shall enjoy such Privileges in the Exercise of their Religion, as are consistent with the Laws of Ireland; or as they did enjoy in the Reign of King Charles the II; And their Majesties, as soon as their Affairs will permit them to Summon a Parliament in this Kingdom, will endeavour to procure the said Roman Catholicks such farther Security in that Particular, as may preserve them from any Disturbance upon the Account of their said Religion." The second of those Civil Articles guaranteeing the possession of their estates, &c., and the exercise of their professions, trades and callings, to the Irish Roman Catholics therein embraced, does so on the condition, that they should not "neglect or refuse to take the Oath of Allegiance made by Act of Parliament in England in the First Year of the Reign of their present Majesties, when thereunto required." That Oath was as follows: "I, A. B., do sincerely Promise and Swear, That I will be Faithful and bear true Allegiance to their Majesties, King The Civil Articles of Lymerick, exactly printed from the Letters Patents, wherein they are Ratified and Exemplified by Their Majesties under the Great Seal of England, pp. 3-11: Published by Authority. Dublin, Printed by Robert Thornton, and are to be Sold by the Booksellers. 1692. — King William and Queen Mary. So help me God." And the ninth of the Civil Articles of the Treaty says: "The Oath to be administered to such Roman Catholicks as submit to their Majesties government, shall be the Oath above-said, AND NO OTHER". What "privileges" the Irish Roman Catholic lawyers, concerned in the drawing up of the Treaty of Limerick, conceived, that they were securing for themselves and their countrymen of that religion, in specifying such "privileges," as those "they did enjoy in the reign of King Charles the II." and in likewise providing, that the previously-cited Oath of Allegiance," and NO other," should be administered to them after their submission, may be judged of, by the speech of one of those lawyers, Sir Theobald Butler, when he appeared at the bar of the Anglo-Irish House of Commons, together with two other eminent Roman Catholic barristers, Sir Stephen Rice and Counsellor Malone, on Tuesday, February 22nd, 1703, to protest against the passing of a bill, entitled, "An Act to Prevent the further Growth of Popery," as subversive of the rights secured to themselves, and their Roman Catholic countrymen, by the Treaty of Limerick. In mentioning the religion of himself and the great mass of his countrymen, as "that religion, which, by the first of Limerick Articles, the Roman Catholics of this kingdom were to enjoy, as they did in the reign of King Charles II.," Sir Theobald observes, and then there was no law in force, that deprived any Roman Catholic of this kingdom of any of such their native birth-right, or any other thing, which, by the laws of the land then in force, any other fellow-subjects were intituled unto". The penal enactments against the Irish Roman Catholic Prelacy, &c., which, according to Colonel O'Kelly's views, would seem as if passed from a want of due provisions for the religious liberty of his countrymen in the Treaty of Limerick, are well known, and will be found at length in the Acts of Parliament, 7 & 9 William III. sess. I. c. 26. By the Treaty of Limerick," observes Mr. Parnell, afterwards Sir Henry Parnell, and, finally, Lord Congleton, respecting the Irish Roman Catholics, 66 they were protected from being called upon to take any other oaths, besides the Oath of Allegiance of the 1st William and Mary. By the Penal Laws, they are required to take the Oaths of Abjuration and Supremacy, and to subscribe declarations against the principal tenets of their religious faith." (History of the Penal Laws against the Irish Roman Catholics, &c., pp. 10, 46: Dublin, 1808.) Mr. Macauley, in treating of the reign of King James II., thus coincides with the view of Sir Theobald Butler: "The Irish Statute Book, afterwards polluted by intolerance as barbarous as that of the dark ages, then contained scarce a single enactment, and not a single stringent enactment, imposing any penalty on Papists, as such. On our IRISH ARCH. SOC. On side of St. George's Channel, every priest, who received a neophyte into the bosom of the Church of Rome, was liable to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. On the other side, he incurred no such danger. A Jesuit, who landed at Dover, took his life in his hand; but he walked the streets of Dublin in security. Here, no man could hold office, or even earn his livelihood as a barrister, or a schoolmaster, without previously taking the Oath of Supremacy; but, in Ireland, a public functionary was not held to be under the necessity of taking that Oath, unless it were formally tendered to him. It therefore did not exclude from employment any person whom the government wished to promote. The Sacramental Test and the Declaration against Transubstantiation were unknown; nor was either House of Parliament closed against any religious sect." (History of England from the Accession of James II., vol. ii. pp. 127-128: London, 1849.) 3 R 66 On the effects of those measures, King James's Memoirs, under the year 1698, observe: The Prince of Orange notwithstanding all his fair pretences to the Confederate Princes, even during the Congress at Riswick passed a new Law in that Kingdom, for the rooting out Popery, which amongst other articles order'd the Banishment of all Regular Priests, which Mons Ruvigny, who commanded there, fail'd not to put in execution; so that they came flocking over into France, and aboue four hundred arriued there in some months after." Then, by "the relief of those distressed persons," as well as other Roman Catholics banished by law from England and Scotland, the royal Memoirs add, respecting the exiled Monarch in France, that there was brought "a new burthen as was sayd upon the King, who had the mortification even after haveing distribited amongst them what was necessary for his own support, to see great numbers ready to perish for want, without his being able to relieue them." 66 According to Captain South's account," says Newenham, "there were, in Ireland, in the year 1698, 495 regular, and 872 secular, clergy of the Church of Rome. According to the same account, the number of regulars shipped for foreign parts, by Act of Parliament, was 424 : viz., from Dublin, 153; from Galway, 170; from Cork, 75; and from Waterford, 26.” A contemporary Williamite letter from " Whitehall, 23d June, 1698," to "Captain Samuel Warren, near Loughbrickland," County Down, has, under the head of Plymouth, the 19th, the following paragraph relative to such deportations from Ireland: "Yesterday came in his Majesty's ship, the Feversham, from Rouen, where she landed 160 Popish Priests from Ireland". NOTE 279, Page 156. There was no stipulation made in favour of prisoners, or of the orphans of those, who were slain in the service of their Prince, and the defence of their country. The Duke of Berwick, in his observations upon the Treaty of Limerick, makes the same remark, relative to the Irish who were prisoners at the time of its conclusion, as Colonel O'Kelly does. Having stated how "les Irlandois demanderent à capituler" the Duke speaks of the Treaty thus: "Le Général ennemi offrit de leur restituer tous leurs biens, & de leur permettre l'exercice de leur Religion, ainsi qu'ils l'avoient sous le regne de Charles II., à condition qu'ils missent bas les armes, & s'en retournassent vivre chez eux tranquillement: mais les Irlandois ne voulurent pas accepter ces conditions, & enfin il fut arrêté, qu'il seroit permis à tous ceux qui étoient alors dans Limerick de retourner chez eux, & de jouir de leurs biens, & qu'on fourniroit à ceux qui voudroient passer en France les vaisseaux suffisans. On eut grand tort de ne pas faire insérer dans les articles, tous les Irlandois en général ; car les Géné b The Civil Articles of Lymerick, &c. (as in Note 277), pp. 4, 5, 6, 8.-Parnell's History of the Penal Laws, &c., as last cited.-Curry's Review of the Civil Wars of Ireland, as before quoted, and vol. ii. raux pp. 227, 228.-Memoirs of King James II., vol. ii. pp. 579, 580.-Newenham's View of the Natural and Political Circumstances of Ireland, p. 196: London, 1809.-The Rawdon Papers, p. 385. raux ennemis auroient consenti à tout pour mettre fin à cette guerre; mais l'imbécillité des Députés que la garnison avoit chargés de la capitulation, & peut-être la crainte que cette proposition ne fût un obstacle au transport des troupes que quelques personnes, par des vues d'intérêt particulier, souhaitoient, fut cause que l'on n'en fit pas seulement mention. Nombre de Seigneurs & d'Officiers prisonniers en furent ruinés; car ils perdirent totalement leurs biens, sans être assurés de recouvrer leur liberté". NOTE 280, Pages 156-157. Those of the Irish, who decided on leaving their native soil, never hoped to see it again. In the Declaration from his " Camp, by Lymerick, the 5th. of October, 1691," to "the Officers and Soldiers of the Irish Army," Ginkell, after instituting a distinction between such as "had rather promote the British and Irish Interest, than the Designs of France against both," mentions the Irish military as "being at full and entire Liberty to chuse what Part they will take; but if once they go into France, they," he adds, "must not expect to return into this Kingdom again." Of the penalty, on being found guilty of doing so, without a special permission from King William, we have, under the date of 1699-1700, or even after the termination of the war between France and England by the Treaty of Ryswick, an instance, in the Memoirs of Captain Peter Drake, of Drakerath, in the County Meath. "There was," he says, "at that Time, in the Prison, one Captain Barrett, under Sentence of Death, for returning from France, without the King's Sign Manual, which the Laws then required"". NOTE 281, Page 157. Those, who made the unfortunate choice to remain in Ireland, had nothing in prospect then, but contempt, poverty, chains, imprisonment, and every misery a conquered nation might expect, from the power and malice of implacable enemies. The Protestant Jacobite, Dr. Charles Leslie, in his account, in 1692, of the complaints of the Irish on those points, against the more violent of King William's adherents in Ireland®, says: "The vast Number of poor harmless Natives who were daily Kill'd up and down the Fields as they were following their Labour, or taken out of their Beds and Hanged, or Shot immediately for Rapparees, is a most Terrible Scandal to the Government, which the Protestants themselves do Loudly Attest; and many of the Country Gentlemen, as likewise several Officers, even of K. W.'s Army, who had more Bowels or Justice than the Rest, did Abhor to see what small Evidence, or even Presumption, was thought sufficient to condemn Men for Rapparees, and what Sport they made to Hang up poor Irish People by Dozens, almost without Pains to Examine them; they hardly thought them Humane Kind! And since the Peace, have first Robbed them, tho' under the Capitulations of Limerick, and then suffered them to Starve in Ditches, and Eat dead Horses in the High-way, which I have been told by many Protestant Gentlemen, who have seen it, and extreamly Lamented it, to see Men divested of common Mercy or Compassion." And with respect to the further conduct of those men, as regards the Irish and the Treaty of Limerick, the Doctor speaks of "their open grudging and repining, to make good one Article, saying openly, That they will have them reversed in Parliament'. Besides, the Country Militia falling upon, and Robbing the poor Irish, who came out of Limerick, and the Rest of K. James's Quarters, and by many other Indications they have made it known, what Security is to be expected from their Protections; and whether K. James's or K. Williams's Protections were best observ'd. The Truth is, there are none of the Protestants that belong to the North of Ireland, that I have met with, but do confess, That the Irish, while among them in Summer 89. kept their Protections better to the Protestants, than the Protestants have kept theirs to them since. Nay, one, who was of considerable Post there at that Time, told me in these Words: The Truth is, said he, it was in the Power of their Gentlemen and Officers to make their Protections be observed; but that is not in our Power: For our Country Folks will not be restrained from falling upon the Irish." In fine, referring for the verification of this assertion to the written testimony of Dr. Robert Gorges, Secretary to Marshal Schonberg, Dr. Leslie, who gives the document containing that testimony in full, adds: "Doctor Gorges Letter in the Appendix vouches this." The political and religious principles, with respect to the Irish and the Treaty of Limerick, of those Anglo-Irish Williamites, adverted to by Dr. Leslie, as men divested of common mercy or compassion," are thus described, and dissented from, by the English Williamite Chaplain, Story: "I hope it may not be impertinent to endeavour the Answering some Objections that have been since made against the Capitulations of Limerick: As if the Lords Justices and the General had condescended too far in granting the Irish any Terms at all, at least such as they did, which put them into a Condition of Revolting again, whensoever an Opportunity offered it self. That therefore Providence seem'd now to have given the Irish up, as the Barbarous Nations were formerly to the Jews, and that if this Occasion was neglected, of putting it out of their Power for ever hereafter to endanger the English Interest: Or if it was not made a right Use of (by which they understood DESTROYING OF THEM ROOT AND BRANCH) then we might certainly expect, that all the Expence and Blood it has cost England in their Reduction, will in a small Time signifie Nothing; since it's observed, that the Irish of themselves are a sloathful People, naturally inclined to Spoil, Rapine, Stealth and Oppression, bred in no Trades, Manufactures, or other Ways of Civil Industry, to live by in Times of Peace, wherein they never did, nor can endure to continue long, loving always a savage and unbridled Kind of f Compare Note 144, pp. 363-364, and Note 278, pp. 488-491. See Note 69, pp. 276-278. |