XXXII. relieving of such persons as had been injured by the CHAP. acts of settlement," as far forth as might be consistent with reason, justice, and the public good." He published a declaration expressive of the favour shewn by him to protestant subjects, and his protection of their civil and religious rights, assuring all persons of a free pardon, who should return to their obedience in twenty-four days after his intended appearance in England. If he really intended, as true policy would dictate, to regulate his conduct by such rules, the violence of the factions, into whose hands he had fallen, deprived him of the ability. The catholics were determined to push matters to extremity in their own favour, without a decent regard to the interest of their monarch; and the French ambassador, d'Avaux, who had accompanied him into Ireland, affected to take the lead, and to dictate, in his council. By the influence of the latter all military preferments were given to Frenchmen; and the former consoled themselves, in the midst of their indignation at this partiality, by the opportunity afforded them of ruining the pro testants. settlement. Instead of provision for the relief of those who Repeal of had suffered by the acts of settlement and explana-the acts of tion, a bill for the repeal of these acts was received in the lower house with a tumultuous shout of joy. 'Daly, the catholic judge, spoke against it with such severity, that the commons in a rage ordered him to beg pardon at the bar of their house; but were suddenly so delighted by false intelligence of the surrendry XXXII. CHAP rendry of Derry, that, in an overflow of good humour, they remitted his punishment. In the upper house it was opposed, on principles of justice and policy, by the protestant bishop of Meath, who is said to have thus acted by the private advice of James. This monarch, how greatly soever hostile to the acts of settlement, could not be ignorant that the passing of such a bill must prove highly prejudicial to his interest, as being most highly offensive to the English of even his own party; yet, yielding to the combined wishes of the catholic Irish and the French ambassador, he gave his assent, rejecting every application against the bill of repeal. This bill contained a preamble, which pronounced the Irish clear from any guilt of rebellion, who had taken arms against the existing government in 1641, and a clause, by which were forfeited and vested in the king the real estates of all persons, dwelling in the British islands, who acknowledged not the king's power, or aided, or corresponded with, those who rebelled against him, since the first of August of the year sixteen hundred and eighty-eight. Enormous act of atBainder. Not contented with an act calculated to deprive of his estate almost every protestant of Ireland capable of writing, this parliament proceeded to an act of attainder, which marked the extreme of intemperate conduct. A number of persons in the service of the prince of Orange, those who had retired from the kingdom and returned not in obedience to the king's proclamation, and numbers of persons resident in Britain, thence presumed to be adherents of William, XXXII. William, were adjudged to death and forfeiture, as CHA P. guilty of high treason, unless they should surrender within certain periods assigned. Even those who were detained abroad by sickness, or non-age, could not be restored to their estates until they should have proved their innocence. Two thousand four hundred and sixty-one persons, of all orders and conditions, were included in this sentence, many of whom, as Nagle told the king, when he presented to him the bill, "were attainted on such evidence as satisfied the house, and the rest on common fame." The act was so framed as to preclude the king from all power of pardoning after the first of November 1689, and was carefully concealed, in the chancellor's custody, from the persons whose lives and properties were thus devoted. When four months had elapsed from the day limited for pardoning, Sir Thomas Southwell obtained a view of it for instructions to his lawyer to draw a warrant for his pardon, which James had promised. When Nagle, enraged at this discovery, declared that the king was merely a trustee for the forfeitures, and had now no power to pardon in this case, the insulted monarch, enslaved by faction, could only impotently complain of the entrenchment on his prerogative by the framing of the bill. Thus this prince, who had imperiously governed the British islands, and might still have continued to rule them arbitrarily, fell by his bigotry into thraldom, into the hands of bigots of his own sect, the most despised of his former subjects, VOL. II. I Notwith СНАР. Acts of 1689. Inquitous plan of coinage. 1689. Notwithstanding the compulsion which James, in cases violently interesting with the ruling faction, seems to have sustained, he asserted his prerogative in some others where his incompliance was less meritorious. He assented, among many, to an act for the freedom of Ireland from the statutes enacted by the English parliament, and from appeals to England; and to one which conferred on the Romish clergy all tythes and ecclesiastical dues payable by persons of their own communion; but he defeated a bill for the repeal of Poyning's law; and would not consent to the establishment of inns of court in Ireland for the instruction of students in jurisprudence, an object of ardent wishes to the Irish catholics. The parliament had voted him a subsidy of twenty thousand pounds a month to be levied on lands; but, finding this insufficient, he imposed by proclamation a tax of the same rate on all chattles, by the sole virtue of prerogative, and resented the remonstrance made against it by his council, saying, "If I cannot do this, I can do nothing." As money was wanted still for the support of a large military force, when no remittance was made from France, the king had recourse to an infamous expedient, a most open outrage on justice and humanity. The utensils of one Moore, who had obtained from the late king a patent for the coining of brass money in Ireland, were seized, and a mint was established in Dublin and Limerick, where base metal, such as that of old cannon, was coined into pieces, which were commanded by proclamation to be XXXII. be taken as legal payment, with some exceptions, atсHA P. the rate of five pounds sterling for the pound weight, worth about four-pence in real value. The king gave his royal promise that, when this money should be decried, he would receive it in all payments, or make full satisfaction in gold and silver: but by subsequent proclamations the nominal value was raised still higher; the original restrictions were removed; the soldiers were paid in this money; it was poured by them and others on the protestants, who were compelled to take it in all payments, for their saleable goods and old debts, in such manner that the obligation of a thousand pounds was discharged by base coin hardly worth thirty shillings. To purchase gold or silver with this money was forbidden on pain of death: and when protestants attempted to exonerate themselves of this base metal by purchasing with it saleable goods, the king forced them to deliver these goods to his agents at a price fixed by himself in the same metal, and exported them to France for his own emolument. James appeared ultimately the only gainer by this infamous project, as in the course of circulation his own party. had become finally possessed of the greatest part of the spurious money, at the very time when William had power to suppress it by proclamation. the univer 1689. The seminaries of learning could not be expected Attack on to escape the tyranny of this bigoted monarch. The sity. protestant school of Kilkenny, erected by the duke of Ormond, was by a new charter converted into a Roman catholic establishment. Green, who had I 2 been |