year 1689, great numbers of the
protestant nobility, clergy, and gentry of Ireland, were attainted of
high treason. The government of the kingdom was, at that time, invested
in the earl of Tyrconnel, a bigoted papist, and an inveterate enemy to
the protestants. By his orders they were again persecuted in various
parts of the kingdom. The revenues of the city of Dublin were seized,
and most of the churches converted into prisons. And had it not been for
the resolution and uncommon bravery of the garrisons in the city of
Londonderry, and the town of Inniskillin, there had not one place
remained for refuge to the distressed protestants in the whole kingdom;
but all must have been given up to king James, and to the furious popish
party that governed him.

The remarkable siege of Londonderry was opened on the 18th of April,
1689, by twenty thousand papists, the flower of the Irish army. The city
was not properly circumstanced to sustain a siege, the defenders
consisting of a body of raw undisciplined protestants, who had fled
thither for shelter, and half a regiment of lord Mountjoy's disciplined
soldiers, with the principal part of the inhabitants, making in all only
seven thousand three hundred and sixty-one fighting men.

The besieged hoped, at first, that their stores of corn, and other
necessaries, would be sufficient; but by the continuance of the siege
their wants increased; and these became at last so heavy, that for a
considerable time before the siege was raised, a pint of coarse barley,
a small quantity of greens, a few spoonfuls of starch, with a very
moderate proportion of horse flesh, were reckoned a week's provision for
a soldier. And they were, at length, reduced to such extremities, that
they ate dogs, cats, and mice.

Their miseries increasing with the siege, many, through mere hunger and
want, pined and languished away, or fell dead in the streets. And it is
remarkable, that when their long expected succours arrived from England,
they were upon the point of being reduced to this alternative, either to
preserve their existence by eating each other, or attempting to fight
their way through the Irish, which must have infallibly produced their
destruction.

These succours were most happily brought by the ship Mountjoy of Derry,
and the Phoenix of Colerain, at which time they had only nine lean
horses left with a pint of meal to each man. By hunger, and the fatigues
of war, their seven thousand three hundre