rish disabilities were removed. The Irish
proprietors dispossessed by the Act of Settlement had their lands
restored to them. All Protestants, under terrible penalties, were
ordered to give up their arms before a certain day. 'Men' only
recently with a price upon their heads were now officers in the King's
service, and were {222} quartering their soldiers upon the estates of
the Protestants. There was a general exodus of the Protestants, some
fleeing to England and others into the North, where they finally
entrenched themselves in the cities of Enniskillen and Londonderry,
winning for that last-named city imperishable fame by their heroic
defence during a siege which lasted one hundred and five days.

In the meantime it had become evident in England that the safety of the
kingdom demanded the expulsion of James. His son-in-law, William of
Orange, accepted an invitation to come and share the English throne
with his wife Mary. The fugitive King found a refuge with his friend
and co-conspirator, Louis XIV., and from France continued to direct the
revolutionary movements in Ireland, which he intended to use as a
stepping-stone to his kingdom.

But for Catholic Ireland all these over-turnings meant only a
realization of the long-prayed-for event, a separation from England, a
kingdom of their own, with the Catholic James to reign over them. When
he arrived with his fleet and his French officers and munitions of war,
provided by Louis {223} XIV., he was embraced with tears of rapturous
joy. Their "Deliverer" had come! He passed under triumphal arches and
over flower-strewn roads on his way to Dublin Castle. But almost
before these flowers had faded, James had met the army of William, the
"Battle of the Boyne" had been fought and lost (1690), and as fast as
the winds would carry him he had fled back to France.

As the city of Londonderry had been the last refuge for the Protestants
in the North, it was in the city of Limerick that the Irish Catholics
made their last stand in the South. And the two names stand for
companion acts of valor and heroism. Saarsfield's magnificent defence
of the latter city after the flight of the King and during the terrible
siege by William's army under Ginkel, is the one luminous spot in the
whole campaign of disaster and defeat. With the surrender of Limerick
the end had come. Their "Deliverer" was again a fugitive in France,
and Ireland was face to face with an austere Protestant