CHAPTER III
King James’s Imprudent Acts—Witty Retort of a Protestant Peer—Architectural Features of Dublin
OUR last chapter showed that Ireland, although her population was overwhelmingly Catholic, began her struggle for civil liberty by a non-sectarian enactment, which left the exercise of religion free. Yet, strange to say, this wise and liberal policy did not win her the sympathy of Europe, Protestant or Catholic, outside of France, whose king had personal reasons for his friendliness. Louis XIV was both hated and feared by the sovereigns of continental, as well as insular, Europe. A combination, called the League of Augsburg, was formed against him, and of this League the Emperor of Germany was the head and William of Orange an active member. Spain, Savoy, and other Catholic states were as zealous against Louis as the Protestant states of Sweden and North Germany. Even the Pope was on the side of the French king’s foes. In fact, when Duke Schomberg landed, the war had resolved itself into a conflict between the rest of Europe, except Muscovy and Turkey and their dependencies, and France and Ireland. It was a most unequal struggle, but most gallantly maintained, with varying fortune, on Irish soil chiefly, for two long and bloody years.
King James made enemies among his warmest supporters by increasing the subsidy voted him by Parliament to twice the original amount, payable monthly. He also debased the currency, by issuing “brass money,” which led to the demoralization of trade, and Tyrconnel, after James’s departure from Ireland, was compelled to withdraw the whole fraudulent issue in order to stop the popular clamor. Some Protestant writers, notably Dr. Cooke Taylor, have warmly commended the king’s judicial appointments in Ireland, with few exceptions. In short, to sum up this portion of his career, James II acted in Ireland the part of despot benevolently inclined, who thought he was doing a wise thing in giving the people a paternal form of government. But the Irish people can not long endure one-man rule, unless convinced that the one man is much wiser than the whole mass of the nation, which is not often the case. It certainly was not in the case of King James. His establishment of a bank by proclamation and his decree of a bank restriction act annoyed and angered the commercial classes, whose prices for goods he also sought to regulate. But his crowning act of unwisdom was interference with the government of that time-honored educational institution, Trinity College, Dublin, on which, notwithstanding its statutes, he sought to force officers of his own choosing. He also wished to make fellowships and scholarships open to Catholics—a just principle, indeed, but a rash policy, considering that every act of the kind only multiplied his enemies among the Protestants of Ireland, who were already sufficiently hostile. Had King James proceeded slowly in his chosen course, he might have come down to posterity as a successful royal reformer. Unfortunately for his fame, posterity in general regards him as a conspicuous political as well as military failure.
Among King James’s chosen intimates and advisers during his residence in Dublin, the most distinguished were the Duke of Tyrconnel, the Earl of Melfort, Secretary of State; Count D’Avaux, the French Ambassador; Lord Mountcashel, Colonel Sarsfield, afterward so famous; Most Rev. Dr. McGuire, Primate of Ireland, and Chief Justice Lord Nugent. He generally attended Mass every morning in the Chapel Royal, and, on Sundays, assisted at solemn High Mass. One Sunday, he was attended to the entrance of the chapel by a loyal Protestant lord, whose father had been a Catholic, as James’s had been a Protestant. As he was taking his leave, the king remarked, rather dryly: “My lord, your father would have gone farther.” “Very true, sire,” responded the witty nobleman, “but your Majesty’s father would not have gone so far!”
The Dublin of that time was not, in any sense, the attractive city it is to-day. Beyond the great cathedrals and the ancient Castle, there was little to attract the eye, except the beauty of the surroundings, which are still the admiration of all visitors. A century after the reign of King James, Dublin, from an architectural standpoint, became one of the most classical of European capitals; and the Houses of Parliament, the Four Courts, the Custom House, and other public buildings, became the pride of the populace. These monuments of Irish genius still exist, although shorn of their former glory; but they serve, at least, to attest what Ireland could accomplish under native rule. There is not a penny of English money in any of these magnificent structures. All the credit of their construction belongs to the Irish Parliaments of the eighteenth century.