ent to which their neighbors were exposed. It is even remarkable,
that the English declaration contained clauses of a strange import. The
king there promised, that he would maintain his loving subjects in all
their properties and possessions, as well of church and abbey lands as
of any other. Men thought that, if the full establishment of Popery were
not at hand, this promise was quite superfluous; and they concluded,
that the king was so replete with joy on the prospect of that glorious
event, that he could not, even for a moment, refrain from expressing it.

But what afforded the most alarming prospect, was the continuance and
even increase of the violent and precipitate conduct of affairs in
Ireland. Tyrconnel was now vested with full authority; and carried over
with him as chancellor one Fitton, a man who was taken from a jail, and
who had been convicted of forgery and other crimes, but who compensated
for all his enormities by a headlong zeal for the Catholic religion.
He was even heard to say from the bench, that the Protestants were all
rogues, and that there was not one among forty thousand that was not a
traitor, a rebel, and a villain. The whole strain of the administration
was suitable to such sentiments. The Catholics were put in possession
of the council table, of the courts of judicature, and of the bench
of justices. In order to make them masters of the parliament, the same
violence was exercised that had been practised in England. The charters
of Dublin and of all the corporations were annulled; and new charters
were granted, subjecting the corporations to the will of the sovereign.
The Protestant freemen were expelled, Catholics introduced; and the
latter sect, as they always were the majority in number, were now
invested with the whole power of the kingdom. The act of settlement was
the only obstacle to their enjoying the whole property; and Tyrconnel
had formed a scheme for calling a parliament, in order to reverse that
act, and empower the king to bestow all the lands of Ireland on his
Catholic subjects. But in this scheme he met with opposition from the
moderate Catholics in the king's council. Lord Bellasis went even so
far as to affirm with an oath, "that that fellow in Ireland was fool
and madman enough to ruin ten kingdoms." The decay of trade, from
the desertion of the Protestants, was represented; the sinking of the
revenue; the alarm communicated to England: and by these considerations
the kin