under the inglorious reigns of Charles and James, Lord Chief Justice Herbert, the Bishop of Chesnow came boldly out of Bantry Bay, with twenty- ter, Colonel Dorrington, the French ambassador eight ships of the line, and gave Herbert battle. D'Avaux, the Marquis d'Albeville, Count Sarsfield, The engagement lasted the whole day; but in and one or two other foreigners. When the Protthe evening the English sheered off for the Scilly estant bishop of Meath, at the head of his clergy, Islands, while the French returned, with a great implored the royal protection and permission to lay show of triumph, to the anchorage they had left in before him an account of the injuries they had rethe morning. James, though a bad sailor, had been ceived, James replied, "I will protect all men in fond of the sea, and had taken a pride in the En- their religion and properties; and as for the wrongs glish navy, which he had helped to deteriorate.' that have lately been suffered by several, it is imIt is said that, when D'Avaux, the ambassador-ex- possible, in these times of commotion, but such will traordinary, exultingly told him how the French happen; but I shall, as far as I can, prevent and sailors had beaten the English, James said, sadly, redress them. However, if I am invaded in this "It is the first time!" This story may be true, kingdom as I have been in England, I must secure though it rests upon indifferent authority; but myself as well as I can." When the popish bishthere is good evidence to show that the English ops and priests who had welcomed him into Dubexiles in France, who had not forgotten their na- lin, and who had sung Te Deum on his arrival, waittionality in their loyalty, grieved at the success of ed upon him, they were received in a very different the French navy, though fighting for their master.3 manner; and these demonstrations, however much James formed a council of government, consisting they might please the Irish Catholics, could not but of his natural son the Duke of Berwick, the Duke serve to ruin all hopes of his return to England. of Powis, the earls of Abercorn, Melfort, Dover, In a series of proclamations that were issued he Carlingford, and Clanricard; Lord Thomas How-commanded all Irish subjects who had lately abanard, the lords Kilmallack, Merrion, Kenure, the doned that kingdom to return home, under assurance of protection, and on pain of outlawry and 1 See vol. iii., p. 680, note. 2 The story is copied by Dairymple from "Short View," &c.-the confiscation (there had been a general flight of Protcomposition of one Higgins, a decided Jacobite. 3 This appears from a letter written by Lord Melfort (who had no such feeling) to James :-"I am extremely sorry," says his lordship, "to see, from several letters, that some of your majesty's servants of our country at St. Germains have been so indiscreet as to show their dislike that the French should beat the English at sea. Indeed, I have pain to believe them so little concerned in your majesty's happiness; but it is written to the Cardinal de Fourbin and to the Duke de Chaulnes. If it have made no noise, then it is well. If there be any thing in it, such are most unworthy, be they who they will, of the honor of serving your majesty; but they name nobody, nor can I guess who the persons are."-Sir H. Ellis's Collection. estants, and of English and Scottish settlers, who apprehended nothing less than a massacre); he required all persons, of what degree or persuasion whatsoever, to join with him against the Prince of Orange; he expressed his gratitude to the Roman Catholics of Ireland for having, with such readiness and cheerfulness, put themselves in arms; but he required such as were not in actual pay, and under regular commanders, not to surrender their arms, but to lay them up in their own houses, because, as was acknowledged, even this meritorious arming had given rise to many robberies; he called upon the country people to supply his army in the north with provisions, and he forbade the soldiery to take any thing without payment; he altered the currency, by declaring that twenty shillings should pass for a guinea; and, lastly, he summoned an Irish parliament to meet at Dublin on the 7th of May. pose the bill as injurious to the public good and destructive of the public faith; but the best argument was used by Dr. Dopping, the Protestant bishop of Meath, who told them that it was fit to get possession of the whole of the promised land before proceeding to divide it. The practical part of the repeal was intrusted to troops of horse and dragoons, or was taken up by the armed Catholics, who seized the property of the Protestants without any nice regard either to justice or mercy. This act was soon followed by another, attainting all who abet manors, lands, goods, and interests of all absentees, and vesting all this property in the crown, and by another, destroying the spirit of Poyning's law, which had been imposed by the conquerors, to make the Irish subordinate to the English parliament.' They voted £20,000 a-year as a proper reward for the patriotism of Tyrconnel, to be taken out of the estates forfeited by the Protestants; and they voted £20,000 per month for the king. They passed an act for liberty of conscience to all Christians; but, as the Catholics formed the immense majority, such of the Protestant clergy as had not fled were left without the means of support, the papists being authorized to pay their tithes to their own priests, and the stipends of Protestant ministers in cities and corporate towns being stopped by law even where the followers of the reformed church were in the majority. All schools and colleges, from which the Protestants had excluded every thing in the shape or likeness of a priest or monk, were now seized by the Roman clergy and mouastic orders. The Protestant churches fell, of course, into the hands of the triumphant majority; and—which was not quite so inevitable, but which showed in a clear light the popular interpretation of religious liberty the Protestants were forbidden to assemble in Of the Irish Protestants who had not fled, the far greater part were in arms against him. Only six Protestants were returned to the House of Com-ted or assisted the Prince of Orange, forfeiting the mons, and only five lords and four bishops of that faith attended in the Upper House. In his opening speech to this Catholic parliament he thanked them for the exemplary loyalty which they had shown at a time when others of his subjects had "so undutifully misbehaved themselves, or so basely betrayed him;" he expressed his gratitude for their seconding his deputy, Tyrconnel, in his bold and resolute conduct; he assured them that he had come among them to venture his life with them in defense of their liberties and his own rights, and he praised their courage as being equal to their zeal. He continued, "I have always been for liberty of conscience, and against invading any man's right or liberty; having still in mind that saying of holy writ, Do as you would be done to, for this is the law and the prophets.' It was this liberty of conscience I gave, which my enemies, both at home and abroad, dreaded to have established by law in all my dominions, and made them set themselves up against me, though for different reasons: seeing that, if I had once settled it, my people, in the opinion of the one, would have been too happy, and, in the opinion of the other, too great." But the Irish were not sufficiently advanced in civilization to allow of a toleration or to modify the doctrines of the Romish church, which as yet, with a few excep-churches or elsewhere under pain of death. At the tions in obscure corners, was everywhere intolerant, everywhere a persecuting power: their only notion about the law and the prophets was to do as they had been done by-to avenge upon their Protestant conquerors the wrongs and oppressions they had suffered from them, and to recover possession of the lands and privileges they had lost. This latter design, this natural hungering after broad and fertile acres, which, however disguised by religious or party feeling, has been at the bottom of every Irish insurrection, was inevitable in the circumstances; and it compelled James to sanction the repeal, by his parliament, of the Act of Settlement, by which the majority of the Protestants and English and Scottish colonists held their estates in Ire-half of Europe. The desperate resource, in such land. There was no reconciling the rival interests and antagonist feelings: what gratified the Irish was worse than a declaration of war to the knife to the English. "The bill," says a Protestant writer, was received with a loud huzza, which more resembled the behavior of a crew of rapparees over a rich booty than that of a senate assembled to rectify abuses and restore the rights of their fellow-subjects." In the House of Lords two or three of the Protestant minority of nine had the courage to op same time the Protestants were plundered, about equally, by the rapparees and by the officers of James's army, who sold them protections at extravagant rates, and made them renew their protections whenever they wanted more money. And, as a low price had been fixed by proclamation for all the supplies required by the army, and as this low price was paid in base money, the papists, whereever they could, gave the preference to the Protestants as sellers. James had brought only some 400,000 crowns from France; and Louis, though often pressed, was unable to send him more money, having himself to wring from a half-starving people the means of carrying on a war against more than 1 They declared that the parliament of England had no power or authority over Ireland, and that no writs of error and appeal should be made from Dublin to Westminster. In a national sense this was their wisest and best enactment-it was doing what acquired fame to the Grattans and Floods in the memorable Irish parliament of 1782. It appears, however, to be a mistake to assert that Poyning's law was formally repealed. A bill to that effect was brought in by the Commons, but James sent an order to stop it, and it fell to the ground, though the Irish had it much at heart, correctly considering the old act as the greatest sign and means of their subjection to England. By Poyning's law the initiative power was reserved to the English council, and no act could be passed by the Irish parliament without being recommended or perused by the king and council of England. circumstances, was sure to suggest itself to a mind like that of James. He debased the currency, and, by proclamation, ordered his brass coinage to pass for a hundred times more than it was worth. He was as impatient of all opposition to his royal will, as incapable of controlling his arbitrary temper, as ever. When this Irish House of Commons opposed him in a particular measure, he fell into a violent passion, and exclaimed, "I find all Commons are the same;" and when they preferred a complaint against his secretary of state, the rash and insolent Melfort, he said that they were using him unkindly and basely; and declared that, if he had thought they would not let him choose his own servants, he would never have come among them. At the same time his poverty-stricken court was the scene of incessant turmoil and intrigue: Melfort hated D'Avaux, and D'Avaux detested Melfort; the French affected to despise the Irish, and the Irish were jealous of the French, who, whatever had been the arrangements between King James and King Louis, certainly acted as if with a design to transfer the dependency of Ireland from England to France, or at least to render the quarrel between England and Ireland irreconcilable. When Melfort quarreled with Tyrconnel, James was obliged to get the former out of Ireland, and his lordship was sent on a begging mission to the pope, who had no more money to spare than the French king, and less inclination to risk it in a desperate enterprise.' But the departure of that hot-headed Scot did not put an end to the jealousies and jars which raged from the arrival at Dublin down to the flight back to France. Nor could James make up his mind to any fixed plan of On the 5th of September 1690, when James had been driven out of Ireland, Melfort, who was still begging, wrote thus, from Rome, to his royal master at St. Germains:-" He (the pope) said that it was perfectly well, for, that your majesty, being safe, your reestablishment was certain; and that he approved extremely of your having come away, and would write so much to your majesty himself. I told his holiness, that now your majesty was come to France to demand suc cors from that king, the next thing I had commanded me was to beg of his holiness what assistance it was possible for his holiness to give. they could, yet that all would not be near what was sufficient, and that therefore his holiness, of necessity, must see this most just cause perish, to the reproach of all the Catholics who did not assist or help to supmuch honor to gain or lose, and that the eyes of all Europe was upon his holiness to see if he would tamely suffer a Catholic kingdom to fall into the hands of heretics, unconcerned to see so many hundreds of thousands of Catholics under the grievousest persecution, and greatest That the enterprise was great, and that, though France should do all port it. That there never was a time in which the holy see had so temptation to lose their religion. That, by a timely and suitable assistance, his holiness might have had the glory in his pontificate to have advanced the Catholic religion in England and Scotland, where it was not; and, as that would have been much to his honor, I was assured he would never give occasion to the contrary, by suffering a Catholic kingdom to be dismembered from the church in his time, without giv ing all the assistance he could to such as were endeavoring its defense. That a timely supply might do much; and I was sure but 12,000 or 15,000 stand of arms might have prevented these mischiefs if sent in time, since your majesty wanted not men but arms to have outnumbered your enemies. That that was neglected, but that for the future I hoped his holiness would turn his thoughts more intently on a thing in which he and the church of God were so much concerned. His holiness repeated all his former compliments of what he would do and suffer for your majesty, but that he could not act against all the world, and he had not wherewithal to do as he would. That all the world was in war. That war was come into Italy. That there was scarcity at Rome. That the rents of the ecclesiastic state were not paid. That he was in thousands of straits and difficulties. That the little he had given was borrowed: he had in it given his entrails, so difficult is it now to find money."-Ellis's Letters. operation. At one time he thought of repairing, with his Irish army, to England, where his friends flattered him with assurances that it would be no difficult matter to overturn the new and unsettled government; at another moment be entertained the project of Lord Dundee, who informed him that there were no regular troops, except four regiments, in Scotland, and that, upon his landing, all the warlike clans of the Highlands would join him and cut his way to London with their broadswords. In the end, James resolved to subdue the Protestants in Ulster, and to complete the conquest of Ireland; and Dundee was soon lost to that cause of which he was the bravest and ablest champion. Before he fell he equaled the romantic adventures of his model hero, Montrose. After his singular interview with the Duke of Gordon he withdrew into the west; and as soon as he received news of James's arrival in Ireland he hastened to Inverness, where the clans of Lochaber were quarreling with the townspeople about some money claims. He paid the debt in dispute out of his own pocket, and prevailed upon most of the clans to enlist under the banners of King James. From Inverness he made a most rapid Montrose-like march through different parts of the Highlands, calling the fierce clans to arms, promising magnificent rewards to the chiefs, and dispersing the small bodies of militia commanded by officers appointed by the new government. His force gathered like a snowball-he was soon at the head of five or six thousand active and daring Highlanders. The charm of his name was so great, that in some instances clans deserted their hereditary chiefs to follow him; having, however, as of yore, the tempting prospect of plundering all the Lowlands. The Lord Murray, son of the Earl of Athol, had got under arms about a thousand men upon his father's estate and the estate of Lord Lovat, who was married to his sister, under an assurance that they were to serve King James, though in reality Murray intended to make them serviceable to King William. While Murray was reviewing these men they quitted their ranks, ran down to a brook, filled their bonnets with water (other drink being scarce), drank a health to King James, and then, with pipes playing, marched off to Lord Dundee.' The prompter or chief manager of this dramatic scene was Simon Fraser, afterward Lord Lovat, who, at the distance of fifty-eight years, made his exit on Tower Hill, in a manner equally dramatic. Several of the great lords in the north either openly assisted or secretly connived with Dundee, who had friends in the Scottish privy council, and even among the officers of the regiments that were sent against him. This force of the new government was commanded by General Mackay, a good officer, but who was evidently deceived and hampered on many occasions by his subalterns and other Jacobites in disguise. He, however, cooped Dundee up in the mountains, and prevented any very extensive incursions of the Highlanders. Dundee received orders from James not to risk a battle until he should be joined by re 1 Dalrymple. inforcements from Ireland, which were promised in their broadswords, and cut their way through and abundance, but which, when they arrived, amounted through Mackay's line. The English horse, who only to five hundred men, miserably armed and were very few, galloped off without firing a shot; equipped. The partisan leader was obliged con- the artillery was seized; some of the infantry tinually to shift his quarters by prodigious marches, threw down their arms, and the whole line was in order to avoid or harass the enemy, or to obtain broken or confused. Mackay himself was driven provisions. Mackay's regular troops were no match up to some hills to the west of the pass of Killiin these evolutions for the light-footed, half-naked krankie. When he halted to rally that portion of Highlanders; nor could the Lowlanders bear the his little army which had kept near him, and looked privations of hunger, and thirst, and cold like the back from the heights upon the field of battle, he hardy Celts, whose ordinary life was comparatively saw that there was no pursuit, and said to his offione of privation. In these marches Dundee gen- cers that he was sure the enemy had lost their erally walked on foot with the men, and fared as general.' Nor was he mistaken: Dundee had they did. He possessed a key to their hearts in a fallen in the moment of victory. According to a knowledge of clan history or tradition, and of the Highland tradition, he had a charmed life, and could genealogies of which they were so proud. He expose himself without chance of injury to showers talked with them, sang Celtic songs with them, and of musket-balls made of lead or iron; but one of joked with them, it being one of his maxims that Mackay's soldiers, knowing this fact, and perceiving no general should fight with an irregular army that their shot took no effect upon him, tore off a unless he were personally acquainted with every silver button, put it into his piece, and so gave him man he commanded. Yet the severity of his dis- | his death-wound. Some of the regulars that fled cipline, in certain points, was dreadful, and the only back through the pass were roughly handled by the punishment he inflicted was death, it being another Highlanders, who had met at its southern mouth; of his maxims that any other punishment disgraced but the whole amount of slaughter appears to have a gentleman, and all who followed him were gentle-been greatly exaggerated: Mackay soon collected men! Toward the enemy he was merciless when- the fugitives; and the Highlanders, completely disever he obtained an advantage, even as he had been | pirited by the loss of their leader, retired to their against the Covenanters and Cameronians when homes, leaving, according to their custom, a great simply Graham of Claverhouse. And on this point heap of stones to mark the spot where he had fallen. his maxim was, that, if terror ended or prevented A letter was found in Dundee's pocket, from Lord war, bloodshed was mercy. Toward the end of Melfort, importing that, notwithstanding the promJune he received the Irish reinforcement, and at ises of indemnity, indulgence, and toleration conthe same time intelligence that Mackay was march- tained in a declaration lately issued, he had so ing through Athol to attack the castle of Blair, the worded them that King James, who did not think loss of which place would tend to cut off the com- himself obliged to stand to them, might break munication between the two divisions of the High- through them when he pleased! Buchan and lands. He instantly made one of his flying marches Cannons, who had come over with the Irish troops, to Blair, got there long before the heads of Mackay's made one or two attempts to renew the war; but columns were seen, and advanced to the pass of they failed entirely, and by degrees the clans acKillikrankie, near Dunkeld. On the morning of the cepted King William's proclamation of pardon, and 16th of July, Mackay moved from Dunkeld, and, | laid down their arms. Some time before the battle after halting two hours at the mouth of the deep of Killikrankie the Duke of Gordon had surrendered and gloomy mountain-pass, to ascertain, by means the castle of Edinburgh; and, by the end of the year, of scouts, whether there was an enemy within the the whole of Scotland was tranquil and submissive gorge, he began to enter it about midday, his soldiers to the new government, with the exception of the looking anxiously about them and to the woods and insignificant garrison of the Bass Rock, which had rocks which overhung the pass. But Dundee had the doubtful honor of being the last to strike the no intention to dispute that passage, his plan being banner of the Stuarts.3 to engage in the open plain beyond it, while some Athol clans should press on Mackay's rear, occupy the mouth of the defile on the side of Dunkeld, and make retreat impossible or dangerous in the extreme. Thus Mackay and his regulars got through the pass without seeing any living creatures except the eagles and other birds of prey that wheeled and screamed over their heads; but, a little beyond Killikrankie, they discovered Dundee and his army resting upon the side of a hill. At a favorable moment, when Mackay's line was thin and far extended, either from the nature of the ground or from an intention to outflank, Dundee laid down his Highlanders in compact columns. They received the fire of the regulars, and then, giving one discharge, threw their guns and pistols behind them, fell on with 1 General Mackay's own manuscript, as cited by Dalrymple. 2 According to some Scottish Jacobite accounts, Mackay lost two thousand in killed and five hundred in prisoners. William's London Gazette, however, was certainly as far from the truth. It stated that a party of Highlanders had carried off certain stores of meal which had been provided for the use of his majesty's forces; that Mackay pursued them to their main body, who were nearly all killed or taken prisoners, &c. 3 In the life of James the most is made of this very trifling yet curious affair. "By this means the Bass (a small fort upon a rock in Leith Road) was the only foot of land, if it may be so called, that the king all the kingdom at defiance; but, being in great necessity for want of provisions, his majesty found means, by some French privateers, of supplying their wants: it was a pleasant sort of independent state, consisting of about fifteen or twenty souls, and their way of subsisting a subject of great curiosity to all sort of people: they had a boat which was of great use to them in making descents, in order to bring off pro remained in possession of; where a few loyal and resolute persons set visions or to get intelligence from their friends: this boat they fre quently changed as they found occasion, till at last they got one which was very large, and more useful on that account, but too heavy to be A few days after losing Dundee, James lost all hope of winning the city of Londonderry, upon which the fate of the north of Ireland depended. The Protestant inhabitants of that city, consisting chiefly of Scottish Presbyterian colonists and their descendants, had acted with admirable spirit. While matters were yet in doubt-before James was absolutely driven out of England, and some time before Tyrconnel had thrown off the mask-they had refused to receive a popish garrison of one thousand two hundred men, who had been dispatched by the lord deputy to make sure of that important place. When this force halted within sight of the town, nine Protestant youths rushed forth from the alarmed city, hauled up the draw-bridge, and shut the gates in their faces. Animated by this action, others flew to the guard-room, broke open the magazine of arms, and distributed the materials; and presently the walls were manned and the few miserable cannon pointed against the Irish troops. Inniskillen, where the Protestant feeling was equally strong, followed the example of Londonderry; and, by dehoisted up by their crane, as they were used to do the others, so, being forced to leave it floating at the foot of the rock, it was taken from them in the night by surprise: this made the government think they would be more inclined to surrender, so sent a sergeant and some soldiers to offer them an indemnity if they would submit; but, instead of that, they had the dexterity to repair their loss by it, for, desiring them to come nearer, under pretense of not hearing well what they said, brought them at last within reach of their firearms; by the terror of which they forced them in, and, disarming the soldiers, seized the boat, and made the prisoners help them up with it as far as to put it out of danger of being retaken as the other had been; and soon after a Danish ship passing within reach of their cannon, they forced her in also, and, having taken a small tribute of provisions and what else they wanted as due to their little independent state, they put their prisoners on board, that they might not help to consume what now began to be too little for themselves; and in this manner they held out till the begin ning of the year 1694, when they were forced by famine to surrender at last." grees, nearly the whole of the province of Ulster rose up in arms and joined in a league for the defense of their property and religion. A general council met at Hillsborough, opened a correspondence with the Prince of Orange, and raised several Protestant regiments. James had proceeded in this direction a few weeks after his arrival in Ireland; and his interests were served by Colonel Lundie, who had been appointed by William to be governor of Londonderry. A few days before James sat down before the town, two regiments arrived from England; but they did not throw themselves into the place, owing to the treacherous assurances of Lundie that it was untenable, and that there were not ten days' provisions in it. There is reason to suspect that at least one of the colonels of these two regiments was a Jacobite. But the townspeople, aware of Lundie's treachery, deposed him, and chose two better defenders in Mr. Walker, a Presbyterian minister, and Major Baker, who were appointed joint governors of Londonderry. When James summoned the place in person they fired upon him. The fortifications were rudely but effectually repaired: a few brave Scotsmen, well acquainted with the art of war, threw themselves into the beleaguered city. After eleven days of unsuccessful attacks, James drew off, and went to Dublin to open the Irish parliament, whose session has been already described. General Rosen, who was left to conduct the siege, was a savage that had improved his natural brutality in the exterminating war which Louis XIV. had waged in the Protestant and defenseless Palatinate. He ordered that all the inhabitants within ten miles round Londonderry should be driven under the walls of that place, and all the country wasted and burned: he proclaimed |