land--Treachery of Lundy;
the Inhabitants of Londonderry resolve to defend themselves--Their
Character--Londonderry besieged--The Siege turned into a Blockade--Naval
Skirmish in Bantry Bay--A Parliament summoned by James sits at Dublin--A
Toleration Act passed; Acts passed for the Confiscation of the Property
of Protestants--Issue of base Money--The great Act of Attainder--James
prorogues his Parliament; Persecution of the Protestants in
Ireland--Effect produced in England by the News from Ireland--Actions
of the Enniskilleners--Distress of Londonderry--Expedition under Kirke
arrives in Loch Foyle--Cruelty of Rosen--The Famine in Londonderry
extreme--Attack on the Boom--The Siege of Londonderry raised--Operations
against the Enniskilleners--Battle of Newton Butler--Consternation of
the Irish

WILLIAM had assumed, together with the title of King of England, the
title of King of Ireland. For all our jurists then regarded Ireland as
a mere colony, more important indeed than Massachusetts, Virginia, or
Jamaica, but, like Massachusetts, Virginia, and Jamaica, dependent on
the mother country, and bound to pay allegiance to the Sovereign whom
the mother country had called to the throne, [114]

In fact, however, the Revolution found Ireland emancipated from the
dominion of the English colony. As early as the year 1686, James had
determined to make that island a place of arms which might overawe Great
Britain, and a place of refuge where, if any disaster happened in Great
Britain, the members of his Church might find refuge. With this view
he had exerted all his power for the purpose of inverting the relation
between the conquerors and the aboriginal population. The execution
of his design he had intrusted, in spite of the remonstrances of his
English counsellors, to the Lord Deputy Tyrconnel. In the autumn of
1688, the process was complete. The highest offices in the state, in the
army, and in the Courts of justice, were, with scarcely an exception,
filled by Papists. A pettifogger named Alexander Fitton, who had been
detected in forgery, who had been fined for misconduct by the House of
Lords at Westminster, who had been many years in prison, and who was
equally deficient in legal knowledge and in the natural good sense
and acuteness by which the want of legal knowledge has sometimes
been supplied, was Lord Chancellor. His single merit was that he had
apostatized from the Protestant religion; and this merit was th