1689] THE REVOLUTION IN IRELAND 813 places occupied by vehement and disorderly Catholics, who lived, we are told, constantly at free quarters on the Protestant inhabitants. The arrival of William in England had brought matters to a crisis. The Papists thought their time was at length come. The whole country was full of panic and rumours of a coming massacre. Many of the English fled. The gentry and yeomen gathered Panic among themselves together to the towns and strong houses, to the Englishry. attempt if possible to make good for themselves that security which the Government would not give them. The two most important of these centres were Enniskillen and Londonderry. At the former, early in 1689, the Protestant population refused admittance to two companies of Popish infantry which had been ordered to be quartered on them. The gentry collected, drove the soldiers away, appointed Gustavus Hamilton governor, garrisoned the houses round Lough Erne, and held the district for King William. At Londonderry the same process took place. A regiment of 1200 Papists, under the Earl of Antrim, was sent to the city, and the mayor and sheriffs, who by the new charters were Papists, were proceeding to admit them, when thirteen young apprentices of Scotch birth took upon themselves to close the gates, and the Protestant gentry were summoned from the neighbouring country to defend the Londonderry city. In two days it was strongly garrisoned, and the and Enniskillen troops withdrew. It was in vain that Lord Mountjoy, garrisoned. William's negotiation with Tyrconnel. a Protestant, who still remained faithful to James, attempted a compromise. Some few troops under Lundy were indeed admitted, but the country was still held for the Protestants, and Lundy was obliged, in appearance at all events, to accept the new Government. Meanwhile William had attempted to enter into negotiations with Tyrconnel. For this purpose he had employed as his agent Richard Hamilton, who had once held a commission in James's army, but who now professed to have changed his allegiance. Hamilton pledged his word that, if he failed in his commission, he would come back in three weeks; but, forfeiting his promise, he returned to his old allegiance, and became a chief leader on the side of James. But the character of the quarrel was already changing, the real object of Tyrconnel, in common with the greater part of the Irish Catholics, was to uphold neither James nor William, but to destroy for ever the English supremacy. For this purpose he was willing to use the name of James, object Irish trusting in fact to the assistance of Louis, to whom he opened his real design. He succeeded in ridding himself of Mountjoy, Tyrconnel's independence. whose loyal influence was likely to thwart his plans, by sending him on a mission to St. Germains, where James now held his Court, and where he was at once apprehended. He then summoned the Irish to arms. An army of 50,000 Papists was collected, and many thousands more took arms on their own behalf, and ravaged the Protestant settlements around them. To complete the Irish supremacy, Tyrconnel ordered the Protestants to be disarmed. The destruction wrought is inconceivable. Property which has been estimated at £5,000,000 was destroyed. Whole herds of cattle were killed and left to rot in the fields; 50,000 are said to have been thus killed in six weeks, while about 400,000 sheep were similarly slain. Unable to withstand this general movement, the Protestants in the south and west were overpowered, or retreated if possible to the strongholds of Londonderry and Enniskillen. In those two places the flower of the English settlers stood at bay, surrounded on all sides by hordes of liberated serfs now in mutiny against their former masters. An army was ordered to His temporary success. march northwards under the traitor Richard Hamilton. The Protestants fled before it; 30,000 of them collected as a last asylum behind the walls of Londonderry. over. The country was in this condition when James, in answer to the He gets James messages which Tyrconnel had sent him, determined, with the assent of Louis, and with considerable assistance in officers and arms, himself to visit Ireland. He landed at Cork, and soon appeared in the capital, while William, unable to act with energy on account of the difficulties which surrounded him, was assailed by unthinking men with violent abuse for not taking stronger measures to prevent those disasters which he was really watching with the greatest dismay. Character of On his arrival in Dublin it was gradually brought home to James that it was no feeling of passionate loyalty which was exciting the Irish population. Among those who attended his Court Irish Jacobites. there were two distinct factions. Some Englishmen, with the loyal feelings which animated English Jacobites, were anxious to re-establish James and to retain the English influence in Ireland. Another party, which included Tyrconnel and almost all the Irish Papists, were fighting to destroy the English supremacy, they cared not how, and intriguing to secure the assistance of France. James would naturally have inclined to the former party, but soon learnt that the power of his partisans was entirely gone. He made a feeble struggle, and, contrary to the wish of the French 1689] SIEGE OF LONDONDERRY 815 and Irish, proceeded himself to the siege of Londonderry. On his march he found that the Protestants, as they retired, had destroyed all the crops and houses behind them. He journeyed through a desert, and when he found that the inhabitants of the siege of city had got rid of their treacherous governor Lundy, Londonderry. had taken matters into their own hands, and appointed Walker, a clergyman, and Major Henry Baker, joint governors, he determined to return instantly to Dublin, there to hold a Parliament. The prosecution of the siege was intrusted to a French general, Maumont, and Richard Hamilton. The defence was so vigorous that the siege was soon turned into a blockade; and while the gallant city was holding out to the last extremity, the Parliament at Dublin met. Wild legislation Parliament. As a matter of course, considering the circumstances under which it was collected, it consisted entirely of Catholics. It proceeded to act with a recklessness which might be expected from an enslaved nation suddenly called to power, and from of the Irish men who for years had been unused to public life. The great Act of Settlement, that compromise which in Charles II.'s reign had settled the share of land to be held by the Protestant emigrants who had followed Cromwell's victorious arms, was repealed. Many thousands of square miles were at a single blow transferred from English to Celtic landlords. The Act itself may have been unjust, but for years it had been the basis of society, and men had acted as though their titles were secure. Its repeal was therefore a violent act of unjust confiscation. Moreover, as far as James was concerned, nothing could be more disastrous, nothing could more surely destroy any influence he might yet keep in England, where it seemed to foreshadow the justice Protestants might expect from his hands were his reign re-established. Such slight opposition as James offered (for he had the wisdom to see some of the disastrous consequences of the measure) had no effect but to cause profound distrust of himself. Other legislation even more disastrous met with no opposition at his hands. In his want of money he issued false coinage of copper and brass, intrinsically worth perhaps a sixtieth of its nominal value. Thus of course all creditors and mortgagees, who were pretty certain to be Protestants, were ruined. The money was rendered current by threats of punishment against those who refused it. Prices were kept down by law; and to complete this wild legislation, the great Act of Attainder was passed, containing between 2000 or 3000 names. No inquiry was instituted as to the grounds of accusation against those who were attainted, and opportunities were thus afforded for any man who had a personal enemy to introduce his name in the Bill. A limit of time was set within which all those named were bound to surrender themselves to justice or be liable to execution without trial; while, to prevent the King's mercy from interfering with their vengeance, the Commons passed a law that after November the right of pardon should cease. Its effect on English Jacobites. Such legislation, sanctioned by James, while it failed to give him real popularity in Ireland, checked the reaction which was beginning in England. The feeling there grew constantly stronger against the inaction of the Government. The fate of Londonderry and Enniskillen were watched with absorbing interest. A fleet, with some troops under command of Kirke, was at length despatched, but Kirke refused to risk the passage of the river which led from Lough Foyle, and which was now guarded by forts and a boom, and the starving population of Londonderry had the misery of watching the ships as they lay idly in the Lough. But they still held out with astonishing constancy. Their friends in Enniskillen fared somewhat better. They did not confine themselves to defence; but, issuing from the little island in Lough Erne which surrounded their city, they collected from their enemies a considerable quantity of cattle and ammunition, and lived in comparative comfort and security. At length, in July, the fate of Londonderry seemed sealed. Nearly everything eatable had been devoured,—horse-flesh, rats, salt hides, all that could possibly be converted even into the most objectionable food. It seemed impossible to feed the population in any way for two days longer. At last a peremptory order reached Kirke to relieve the city at all hazards. On the 30th of July, three vessels, two transports and a frigate, sailed up the river, and, after a few minutes of difficulty, broke the boom, and in the evening, at ten o'clock, were anchored at the quay. The city was saved after 105 days of siege and blockade. Londonderry saved. Battle of The Irish army immediately broke up from its camp and retreated. As it reached Strabane, on its backward course, it received the news of another disaster. A great effort had been deterNewton Butler. mined on against Enniskillen, but Colonel Wolseley had been sent to take the command by Kirke, and was successful in defeating at Newton Butler the approaching Irish, of whom nearly 2000 were put to the sword or drowned in a neighbouring lough. The news of this defeat hastened the steps of the retreating 1689] the REVOLUTION IN SCOTLAND 817 army as it returned from Londonderry, and it fled in confusion to Charlemont. Violent char acter of the Revolution in Scotland. The same week which saw the relief of Londonderry and the battle of Newton Butler was remarkable also for the great defeat of William's army at Killiecrankie. In accordance with the character of the Scotch people, and in some proportion to the cruelty which had been exercised upon them, the Revolution in Scotland took a more violent form than it had assumed in England, for in the North James had been able to carry out more completely those plans which had produced his fall in the southern kingdom. A Church repugnant to the majority of the people had been forced upon them by law; in defiance of the opposition of a subservient Parliament, all the high places had been filled with Papists; nonconformity had been punished with an arbitrary severity and a ferocious cruelty of which England showed no counterpart; the electoral laws also, by requiring from all electors abjuration of the Covenant and an assertion of the King's ecclesiastical supremacy, excluded all but Prelatists from the right of election. Before collecting a national Convention, to consider the state of the nation under the present circumstances, it was necessary to dispense with the Act which excluded Presbyterians from the franchise. The Convention consequently consisted almost exclusively of Whigs, and the change of Government was marked by grave disorders in many parts of the country; nor, though William disliked these excesses, was he able to repress them, and the Episcopal clergy were in many instances most roughly used. There was at first some talk of a union Opposition with England, for the national feeling of the Scotch was to a union. beginning to yield to the increasing belief that in most points, especially of a financial and commercial character, such a union was very desirable; while many even of the Whigs in England wished for a union of the Churches and the establishment of Episcopacy on some broad and general basis. But the religious feeling of the country was quite averse to such a course, and William was too tolerant a man to wish to apply any coercion to men's consciences. He therefore wrote a letter, in which he did little else than profess his attachment to Protestantism, and his wish if possible to establish the Union. The arrangements he left in their own hands. Unable himself to be present in Scotland, he intrusted the business to the two Dalrymples, father and son, and to Lord Melville, a prudent man, who, though he had retired abroad during the storm which succeeded the Rye-House Plot, had never committed himself warmly |