ere planted culverins and sakers presented by the wealthy
guilds of London to the colony. On some of these ancient guns, which
have done memorable service to a great cause, the devices of the
Fishmongers' Company, of the Vintners' Company, and of the Merchant
Tailors' Company are still discernible, [132]

The inhabitants were Protestants of Anglosaxon blood. They were indeed
not all of one country or of one church but Englishmen and Scotchmen,
Episcopalians and Presbyterians, seem to have generally lived together
in friendship, a friendship which is sufficiently explained by their
common antipathy to the Irish race and to the Popish religion. During
the rebellion of 1641, Londonderry had resolutely held out against the
native chieftains, and had been repeatedly besieged in vain, [133] Since
the Restoration the city had prospered. The Foyle, when the tide was
high, brought up ships of large burden to the quay. The fisheries throve
greatly. The nets, it was said, were sometimes so full that it was
necessary to fling back multitudes of fish into the waves. The quantity
of salmon caught annually was estimated at eleven hundred thousand
pounds' weight, [134]

The people of Londonderry shared in the alarm which, towards the close
of the year 1688, was general among the Protestants settled in Ireland.
It was known that the aboriginal peasantry of the neighbourhood were
laying in pikes and knives. Priests had been haranguing in a style of
which, it must be owned, the Puritan part of the Anglosaxon colony had
little right to complain, about the slaughter of the Amalekites, and
the judgments which Saul had brought on himself by sparing one of the
proscribed race. Rumours from various quarters and anonymous letters in
various hands agreed in naming the ninth of December as the day fixed
for the extirpation of the strangers. While the minds of the citizens
were agitated by these reports, news came that a regiment of twelve
hundred Papists, commanded by a Papist, Alexander Macdonnell, Earl of
Antrim, had received orders from the Lord Deputy to occupy Londonderry,
and was already on the march from Coleraine. The consternation was
extreme. Some were for closing the gates and resisting; some for
submitting; some for temporising. The corporation had, like the other
corporations of Ireland, been remodelled. The magistrates were men of
low station and character. Among them was only one person of Anglosaxon
extraction; and he had turned P