entitled that regicide's vile adherents to be legally invested with the estates and properties, of so many thousands of the innocent and loyal natives; and that too in breach of articles, by which his grace had solemnly engaged to see these natives restored. But leaving this frivolous apology to the contempt it deserves let us now see, if we cannot assign more probable causes of this partiality, from the constant tenor of his grace's conduct, during the whole time of the preceding war, and for many years after his majesty's restoration. CHAP. XXVII. The probable motives of the duke of Ormond's past and present conduct, with respect to the Irish. "TWO grants were made to the marquis of Ormond by the king, soon after the breaking out of the war in 1641; one was the vesting in him all the securities and mortgages upon his estate, formerly made, and belonging to such persons as were, or had been, in the insurrection. The other, was that of the lands held under him, and forfeited to him for breach of conditions. This grant was confirmed by a clause in the first act of settlement, and the estates thus granted contained a prodigious quantity of land, which had been granted to gen tlemen upon free-farm, or quit-rents, and military tenures; by 1 Cart. Orm. vol. ii. f. 306. dered up at mercy, upon the surrender of the city; and such person or per sons as shall be found to hide or conceal any of the said excepted persons, or be privy to their concealment or attempt of escape, and not discover to the best of their endeavor to prevent the same, shall be understood to have forfeit the benefit of these articles to themselves. Borl. Irish Rebel. f. 359-60. "Colonel Fennel," says lord Castlehaven, " having cowardly or treach erously left the defence of the pass at Killaloe, fled into Limerick with all his party; where, upon the rendition of the town, which happened not long after, freton, with more than his ordinary justice, hanged him.” Mem. p. 128 * It is affirmed that he got as many gentlemen's estates, upon the pretence of a grant of enjoying all lands that he could prove (by witnesses) to have paid him any chiefry, as were worth at least £150,000.-Unkind Desarter, &c. p. 166. which they were obliged to follow their lord, the head of that family, upon any occasion of hosting, into the field; and upon failure thereof the lands were forfeited to their lord."* From his grace's early application for these grants,† it is evident enough what use he intended to make of them; as also what were the true motives of his backwardness to conclude the cessation in 1643; and of his frequent disobedience to his majesty's urgent commands to hasten the peace of 1646; and of his carrying on, at the same time, a private correspondence and treaty with the Scotch covenanters in Ulster, in opposition to that peace; and of his hindering the Irish to be included in the general act of indemnity, after the restoration, or to be indulged with the necessary enlargement of time, for proving their inconvenience in the court of claims. From all this, I say, it is manifest that his grace fosesaw, that a different conduct in any of these conjunctures, would have precluded him from some part of that vast emolument, which he ex, pected from these grants, and which he knew, was in the end to be proportioned to the extent, duration, and heinousness of the insurrection. "Most of the marquis of Ormond's vassals and tenants, far from per, forming this condition of their tenure, had engaged in the rebellion and fought against him in the field. And king Charles I. to prevent any interfering of the claim of the crown and the rights of the lord, and any litigation of the marquis of Ormond's rights to those forfeited lands, had, in August 1642, conveyed to him all the right, title and interest which the crown had, or might have, in any of those lands. This was now confirmed by king Charles II. &c.”—Cart. Orm. vol. ii. fol. 218. The same writer, however, tells us, “that his grace had, in the time of the troubles, to raise money for the supply of the army and service of the crown, entered into many judgments, statutes, recognizances, mortgages, and other securities to Roman catholics, who had forfeited the same to his majesty. And that all these were first, by a special grant, and afterwards by the act of settlement, given to his grace as fully as the crown enjoyed the same; but that his grace seat directions to pay the persons who had advanced him the money on these securities, their full demand in some cases, and a just and equal composition in others." Id. ib. fol. 309.-But is it reasonable to believe, that Roman catholics who had freely lent their money to his grace, with a view of enabling him to subdue the rebels, would afterwards rashly incur a forfeiture of it by promoting or abetting the rebellion? † 1612. See Cart. Orm. vof. iii, "And thus we find his noble friend, the earl of Anglesey,* acknowledging in print, in 1681, "that it was then apparent, that his grace and his family, by the forfeiture and punishment of the Irish, were the greatest gainers of the kingdom, and had added to their inheritance vast scopes of land, and a reve nue three times greater than what his paternal estate was† before the rebellion; and that most of his increase was out of their estates who adhered to the peaces of 1646 and 1648, or served under his majesty's ensigns abroad." From whence his lordship justly concluded, that "his grace could not have been very sincere, in making either of these peaces with the Irish; 2 Let. to the earl of Castlehaven. Castichav. Mem, 1st. ed. When the duke of Buckingham was endeavoring to supplant Ormond in the king's favor, and make overtures to the earl of Anglesey to join him for that purpose, the "earl rejected these overtures with indignation, and gave Ormond notice of the designs formed against him.-Lel. Hist. of Irel. vol. iii. p. 453. See Cart. Orm. vol. ii. fol. 482. † A knowing, contemporary writer asserts, "that the annual rents of Ormond's estate before the war, were but seven thousand pounds sterling (his ancient estate being then encumbered with annuities and leases, which ́otherwise was worth forty thousand pounds sterling per annum), and at present (1674) it is close upon eighty thousand. Now the first part of his new great revenues, is the king's grant of all those lands of his own es tate which were leased or mortgaged; the rest were grants of other men's estates, and other gifts of his majesty." His gifts and grants are thought to amount to £630,000.—Unkind Deserter, p. 161-2. See Queries. ib. Append. p. 168. The pamphlet containing these queries, was published in England soon after the restoration, but seems not to have been answered by any of the duke's friends either then or for some years after. "If his grace (says a contemporary author in 1676) or any one for him, can answer the said queries, why is he or they so long silent? they render his integrity sua pected, they wound his fame and honor. Certainly, if there were any way to answer them, and prove them false, Father Walsh would, long before now, have spoken it loudly to the world.”—Unkind Deserter, p. 172. Nor was this silence of the duke of Ormond and his friends the effect of contempt or disregard of the supposed calumny. The printer of the pam phlet was prosecuted and imprisoned, and two hundred copies seized in his house; and although his poverty and charge of children were very great, yet he would never confess who set him to work; such a confesssion would have procured him his liberty, but he seemed to slight it, being maintained very well in prison, where he lay a long time very c tentedly, without making any application, or using any means to be baile or discharged."-Carte's Orm. vol. ii. fol. 385. but that, whatever moved him thereto, whether compassion, natural affection, or any thing else, he was in judgment and conscience against them; and so," adds he, "he has since appeared, and hath advantage by their laying aside."* It is, therefore, no wonder that his grace's noble brother-inlaw, lord Muskerry, when on his death-bed, declared to himself, "that the heaviest fear that possessed his soul, then going into eternity, was for his having confided so much in his grace, who had deceived them all, and ruined his poor country and Countrymen."3 The duke of Ormond befriends the Irish. IN the year 1679,† when so much innocent blood was shed in England, by means of the perjuries of Titus Oates, and 1 Cart. Orm. vol. ii. f. 306. 3 Unkind Deserter, &c. "My lord duke of Ormond," says the earl of Essex, lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1674-5, "has received above £300,000 in this kingdom, besides all his great places and employments; and I am sure the losses in his private estate have not been equal to those I have suffered (in the preceding civil war), and yet he is so happy as no exception is taken to it."— State Lett. p. 213-14. + Such was the people's abhorrence of popery at this time, in England, and so light and excusable in their opinion did a person's being a protestant, render any other vice that a person might be guilty of, "that when Nell Gwin (Charles II's mistress) was insulted in her coach at Oxford, by the mob, who mistook her for the duchess of Portsmouth (another mistress of that king's, but a papist), she looked out of the window, and said with her usual good humor, "pray good people be civil, I am the protestant w-c.” And this laconic speech drew upon her the blessings of the populace, who suffered her to proceed without further molestation.”—Graing. Biogr. Hist, vol. iv. p. 189, note. "The notorious Titus Oates" says the reverend Mr. Grainger, "was, soon after the accession of king James, convicted of perjury, upon the evidence of sixty reputable witnesses, of whom nine were protestants. He was sentenced to pay a fine of two thousand marks, to be stripped of his canonical habit, to be whipped twice in three days, by the common hangman, and to stand in the pillory at Westminster-hall gate, and at the Royal Exchange; he was moreover to be pillored five times every year, and to be imprisoned during life. The hangman performed his office with uncommon rigor. The best thing James ever did was punishing Oates for his his flagitious associates, encouraged and patronised by the earl of Shaftsbury,' "the peace and quietness of Ireland was a great disappointment to that earl and his party; and they took all possible methods to provoke and exasperate the people of that kingdom, already too much discontented. For that end, they procured orders from the council of Ireland, to transmit severe bills against the Irish catholics in matter of religion, in hopes to drive them into a new rebellion. It was now pro. posed to introduce the test act, and all the English penal-laws, into Ireland; and that a proclamation should be forthwith issued for encouraging all persons, that could make any further discoveries of the horrid popish plot, to come in and declare the same." 1 Cart. Orm. vol. ii, f. 494. perjury; and the greatest thing Oates ever did, was supporting himself under the most afflictive part of his punishment with the resolution and constancy of a martyr. A pension of four hundred pounds a-year was conferred upon this miscreant by king William. He was, for a clergyman, remarkably illiterate; it is well known that he was the son of an anabaptist; and he probably died in the communion in which he had been educated.” -Biographic. Hist. of Eng. vol. iv. p. 348. "Titus Oates (says the same biographer) was restrained by no principle, human or divine, and like Judas would have done any thing for thirty shillings; he was one of the most accomplished villains that we read of in history; he had been chaplain on board the fleet, whence he was dismissed for an unnatural crime, and was known to be guilty of perjury before he set up the trade of witnessing; he was successful in it beyond the most sanguine expectation: he was lodged at Whitehall, and had a pension assigned him of £1200 a-year. The æra of Oates's plot was also the grand æra of whig and tory.-Id. ib. p. 201-2. Some have concluded from the following passage in D'Avaux, that the prince of Orange had a considerable share in framing this most iniquitous plot: “ [ presume to declare," says that count, "that I have omitted nothing to discover the combinations that the prince of Orange has engaged in with the most abandoned of the English. On the 21st September, 1679, I sent intelligence that Oates, who has since that time been so notorious; Freeman, of whom I have already spoken; and Du Moulin, a man of intrigue and an execrable villain; arrived together in Holland some years past, and that the prince of Orange had been in grand conferences with them."-D'Avaux, tom.i. p. 32. See M'Pherson's Hist. of Great Britain, vel. i. p. 345.-Certain it is, that after that prince became king of England, he attempted to have reversed Oates's sentence; but the commons refused to gratify him in so impious an act. That villain, however, was pardoned and pensioned by his majesty, as above-mentioned. On the first report of the popish plot, "Peter Talbot, archbishop f |