and
orders were sent to corporations to admit Roman Catholics to municipal
advantages. [174] Many officers of the army were arbitrarily deprived of
their commissions and of their bread. It was to no purpose that the Lord
Lieutenant pleaded the cause of some whom he knew to be good soldiers
and loyal subjects. Among them were old Cavaliers, who had fought
bravely for monarchy, and who bore the marks of honourable wounds.
Their places were supplied by men who had no recommendation but their
religion. Of the new Captains and Lieutenants, it was said, some had
been cow-herds, some footmen, some noted marauders; some had been so
used to wear brogues that they stumbled and shuffled about strangely in
their military jack boots. Not a few of the officers who were discarded
took refuge in the Dutch service, and enjoyed, four years later, the
pleasure of driving their successors before them in ignominious rout
through the waters of the Boyne. [175]

The distress and alarm of Clarendon were increased by news which reached
him through private channels. Without his approbation, without his
knowledge, preparations were making for arming and drilling the whole
Celtic population of the country of which he was the nominal governor.
Tyrconnel from London directed the design; and the prelates of his
Church were his agents. Every priest had been instructed to prepare an
exact list of all his male parishioners capable of bearing arms, and to
forward it to his Bishop. [176]

It had already been rumoured that Tyrconnel would soon return to Dublin
armed with extraordinary and independent powers; and the rumour gathered
strength daily. The Lord Lieutenant, whom no insult could drive to
resign the pomp and emoluments of his place, declared that he should
submit cheerfully to the royal pleasure, and approve himself in all
things a faithful and obedient subject. He had never, he said, in
his life, had any difference with Tyrconnel, and he trusted that
no difference would now arise. [177] Clarendon appears not to have
recollected that there had once been a plot to ruin the fame of his
innocent sister, and that in that plot Tyrconnel had borne a chief part.
This is not exactly one of the injuries which high spirited men most
readily pardon. But, in the wicked court where the Hydes had long
been pushing their fortunes, such injuries were easily forgiven and
forgotten, not from magnanimity or Christian charity, but from mere
baseness and want of mo