The History of England, from the Accession of James II Volume III Part 26

[Footnote 103: The sermon deserves to be read. See the London Gazette of April 14. 1689; Evelyn's Diary; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; and the despatch of the Dutch Amba.s.sadors to the States General.]

[Footnote 104: A specimen of the prose which the Jacobites wrote on this subject will be found in the Somers Tracts. The Jacobite verses were generally too loathsome to be quoted. I select some of the most decent lines from a very rare lampoon:

"The eleventh of April has come about, To Westminster went the rabble rout, In order to crown a bundle of clouts, a dainty fine King indeed.

"Descended he is from the Orange tree; But, if I can read his destiny, He'll once more descend from another tree, a dainty fine King indeed.

"He has gotten part of the shape of a man, But more of a monkey, deny it who can; He has the head of a goose, but the legs of a crane, A dainty fine King indeed."

A Frenchman named Le n.o.ble, who had been banished from his own country for his crimes, but, by the connivance of the police, lurked in Paris, and earned a precarious livelihood as a bookseller's hack published on this occasion two pasquinades, now extremely scarce, "Le Couronnement de Guillemot et de Guillemette, avec le Sermon du grand Docteur Burnet,"

and "Le Festin de Guillemot." In wit, taste and good sense, Le n.o.ble's writings are not inferior to the English poem which I have quoted. He tells us that the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London had a boxing match in the Abbey; that the champion rode up the Hall on an a.s.s, which turned restive and kicked over the royal table with all the plate; and that the banquet ended in a fight between the peers armed with stools and benches, and the cooks armed with spits. This sort of pleasantry, strange to say, found readers; and the writer's portrait was pompously engraved with the motto "Latrantes ride: to tua fama manet."]

[Footnote 105: Reresby's Memoirs.]

[Footnote 106: For the history of the devastation of the Palatinate, see the Memoirs of La Fare, Dangeau, Madame de la Fayette, Villars, and Saint Simon, and the Monthly Mercuries for March and April, 1689. The pamphlets and broadsides are too numerous to quote. One broadside, ent.i.tled "A true Account of the barbarous Cruelties committed by the French in the Palatinate in January and February last," is perhaps the most remarkable.]

[Footnote 107: Memoirs of Saint Simon.]

[Footnote 108: I will quote a few lines from Leopold's letter to James: "Nunc autem quo loco res nostrae sint, ut Serenitati vestrae auxilium praestari possit a n.o.bis, qui non Turcico tantum bello impliciti, sed insuper etiam crudelissimo et iniquissimo a Gallis, rerun suarum, ut putabant, in Anglia securis, contra datam fidem impediti sumus, ipsimet Serenitati vestrae judicandum relinquimus.... Galli non tantum in nostrum et totius Christianae orbis perniciem foedifraga arma c.u.m juratis Sanctae Crucis hostibus sociare fas sibi duc.u.n.t; sed etiam in imperio, perfidiam perfidia c.u.mulando, urbes deditione occupatas contra datam fidem immensis tributis exhaurire exhaustas diripere, direptas funditus exscindere aut flammis delere Palatia Principum ab omni antiquitate inter saevissima bellorum incendia intacta servata exurere, templa spoliare, dedit.i.tios in servitutem more apud barbaros usitato abducere, denique pa.s.sim, imprimis vero etiam in Catholicorum ditionibus, alia horrenda, et ipsam Turcorum tyrannidem superantia immanitatis et saevitiae exempla edere pro ludo habent."]

[Footnote 109: See the London Gazettes of Feb. 25. March 11. April 22.

May 2. and the Monthly Mercuries. Some of the Declarations will be found in Dumont's Corps Universel Diplomatique.]

[Footnote 110: Commons Journals, April 15. 16. 1689.]

[Footnote 111: Oldmixon.]

[Footnote 112: Commons' Journals, April 19. 24. 26. 1689.]

[Footnote 113: The Declaration is dated on the 7th of May, but was not published in the London Gazette till the 13th.]

[Footnote 114: The general opinion of the English on this subject is clearly expressed in a little tract ent.i.tled "Aphorisms relating to the Kingdom of Ireland," which appeared during the vacancy of the throne.]

[Footnote 115: King's State of the Protestants of Ireland, ii. 6. and iii. 3.]

[Footnote 116: King, iii. 3. Clarendon, in a letter to Rochester (June 1. 1686), calls Nugent "a very troublesome, impertinent creature."]

[Footnote 117: King, iii. 3.]

[Footnote 118: King, ii. 6., iii. 3. Clarendon, in a letter to Ormond (Sep. 28. 1686), speaks highly of Nagle's knowledge and ability, but in the Diary (Jan. 31. 1686/7) calls him "a covetous, ambitious man."]

[Footnote 119: King, ii. 5. 1, iii. 3. 5.; A Short View of the Methods made use of in Ireland for the Subversion and Destruction of the Protestant Religion and Interests, by a Clergyman lately escaped from thence, licensed Oct. 17. 1689.]

[Footnote 120: King, iii. 2. I cannot find that Charles Leslie, who was zealous on the other side, has, in his Answer to King, contradicted any of these facts. Indeed Leslie gives up Tyrconnel's administration. "I desire to obviate one objection which I know will be made, as if I were about wholly to vindicate all that the Lord Tyrconnel and other of King James's ministers have done in Ireland, especially before this revolution began, and which most of any thing brought it on. No; I am far from it. I am sensible that their carriage in many particulars gave greater occasion to King James's enemies than all the other in maladministrations which were charged upon his government." Leslie's Answer to King, 1692.]

[Footnote 121: A True and Impartial Account of the most material Pa.s.sages in Ireland since December 1688, by a Gentleman who was an Eyewitness; licensed July 22. 1689.]

[Footnote 122: True and Impartial Account, 1689; Leslie's Answer to King, 1692.]

[Footnote 123: There have been in the neighbourhood of Killarney specimens of the arbutus thirty feet high and four feet and a half round. See the Philosophical Transactions, 227.]

[Footnote 124: In a very full account of the British isles published at Nuremberg in 1690 Kerry is described as "an vielen Orten unwegsam und voller Wilder and Geburge." Wolves still infested Ireland. "Kein schadlich Thier ist da, ausserhalb Wolff and Fuchse." So late as the year 1710 money was levied on presentments of the Grand Jury of Kerry for the destruction of wolves in that county. See Smith's Ancient and Modern State of the County of Kerry, 1756. I do not know that I have ever met with a better book of the kind and of the size. In a poem published as late as 1719, and ent.i.tled Macdermot, or the Irish Fortune Hunter, in six cantos, wolfhunting and wolfspearing are represented as common sports in Munster. In William's reign Ireland was sometimes called by the nickname of Wolfland. Thus in a poem on the battle of La Vogue, called Advice to a Painter, the terror of the Irish army is thus described

"A chilling damp And Wolfland howl runs thro' the rising camp."]

[Footnote 125: Smith's Ancient and Modern State of Kerry.]

[Footnote 126: Exact Relation of the Persecutions, Robberies, and Losses, sustained by the Protestants of Killmare in Ireland, 1689; Smith's Ancient and Modern State of Kerry, 1756.]

[Footnote 127: Ireland's Lamentation, licensed May 18. 1689.]

[Footnote 128: A True Relation of the Actions of the Inniskilling men, by Andrew Hamilton, Rector of Kilskerrie, and one of the Prebends of the Diocese of Clogher, an Eyewitness thereof and Actor therein, licensed Jan. 15. 1689/90; A Further Impartial Account of the Actions of the Inniskilling men, by Captain William Mac Cormick, one of the first that took up Arms, 1691.]

[Footnote 129: Hamilton's True Relation; Mac Cormick's Further Impartial Account.]

[Footnote 130: Concise View of the Irish Society, 1822; Mr. Heath's interesting Account of the Worshipful Company of Grocers, Appendix 17.]

[Footnote 131: The Interest of England in the preservation of Ireland, licensed July 17. 1689.]

[Footnote 132: These things I observed or learned on the spot.]

[Footnote 133: The best account that I have seen of what pa.s.sed at Londonderry during the war which began in 1641 is in Dr. Reid's History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.]

[Footnote 134: The Interest of England in the Preservation of Ireland; 1689.]

[Footnote 135: My authority for this unfavourable account of the corporation is an epic poem ent.i.tled the Londeriad. This extraordinary work must have been written very soon after the events to which it relates; for it is dedicated to Robert Rochfort, Speaker of the House of Commons; and Rochfort was Speaker from 1695 to 1699. The poet had no invention; he had evidently a minute knowledge of the city which he celebrated; and his doggerel is consequently not without historical value. He says

"For burgesses and freemen they had chose Broguemakers, butchers, raps, and such as those In all the corporation not a man Of British parents, except Buchanan."

This Buchanan is afterwards described as

"A knave all o'er For he had learned to tell his beads before."]

[Footnote 136: See a sermon preached by him at Dublin on Jan. 31. 1669.

The text is "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake."]

[Footnote 137: Walker's Account of the Siege of Derry, 1689; Mackenzie's Narrative of the Siege of Londonderry, 1689; An Apology for the failures charged on the Reverend Mr. Walker's Account of the late Siege of Derry, 1689; A Light to the Blind. This last work, a ma.n.u.script in the possession of Lord Fingal, is the work of a zealous Roman Catholic and a mortal enemy of England. Large extracts from it are among the Mackintosh MSS. The date in the t.i.tlepage is 1711.]

[Footnote 138: As to Mountjoy's character and position, see Clarendon's letters from Ireland, particularly that to Lord Dartmouth of Feb. 8., and that to Evelyn of Feb. 14 1685/6. "Bon officier, et homme d'esprit,"

says Avaux.]

[Footnote 139: Walker's Account; Light to the Blind.]

[Footnote 140: Mac Cormick's Further Impartial Account.]

[Footnote 141: Burnet, i. 807; and the notes by Swift and Dartmouth.

Tutchin, in the Observator, repeats this idle calumny.]