, he
suffered nothing that he would not himself have inflicted. The effect of
the insane attempt to subjugate England by means of Ireland was that the
Irish became hewers of wood and drawers of water to the English. The
old proprietors, by their effort to recover what they had lost, lost
the greater part of what they had retained. The momentary ascendency of
Popery produced such a series of barbarous laws against Popery as made
the statute book of Ireland a proverb of infamy throughout Christendom.
Such were the bitter fruits of the policy of James.

We have seen that one of his first acts, after he became King, was to
recall Ormond from Ireland. Ormond was the head of the English interest
in that kingdom: he was firmly attached to the Protestant religion;
and his power far exceeded that of an ordinary Lord Lieutenant, first,
because he was in rank and wealth the greatest of the colonists, and,
secondly, because he was not only the chief of the civil administration,
but also commander of the forces. The King was not at that time disposed
to commit the government wholly to Irish hands. He had indeed been heard
to say that a native viceroy would soon become an independent sovereign.
[164] For the present, therefore, he determined to divide the power
which Ormond had possessed, to entrust the civil administration to an
English and Protestant Lord Lieutenant, and to give the command of the
army to an Irish and Roman Catholic General. The Lord Lieutenant was
Clarendon; the General was Tyrconnel.

Tyrconnel sprang, as has already been said, from one of those degenerate
families of the Pale which were popularly classed with the aboriginal
population of Ireland. He sometimes, indeed, in his rants, talked with
Norman haughtiness of the Celtic barbarians: [165] but all his sympathies
were really with the natives. The Protestant colonists he hated; and
they returned his hatred. Clarendon's inclinations were very different:
but he was, from temper, interest, and principle, an obsequious
courtier. His spirit was mean; his circumstances were embarrassed; and
his mind had been deeply imbued with the political doctrines which the
Church of England had in that age too assiduously taught. His abilities,
however, were not contemptible; and, under a good King, he would
probably have been a respectable viceroy.

About three quarters of a year elapsed between the recall of Ormond and
the arrival of Clarendon at Dublin. During that interval