CHAPTER XII
Irish Soldiers Ill-Treated in England—Policy of Tyrconnel—King James Chosen by the Irish Nation
SUCH Irish soldiers as had remained in England after the flight of James were mobbed, insulted, and even murdered by the unthinking multitude, so easily excited to deeds of cruelty. These men had done the English people no wrong—they had shed no English blood, and they even wore the English uniform. Many fell in savage combats with the furious mobs, but the majority fought their way to the seaports, where they, by some means, obtained shipment to Ireland, carrying with them many a bitter memory of England and her people. Many of these persecuted troops were well-trained cavalry, who afterward manifested splendid prowess at the Boyne and in other engagements. Their colonels were all members of the ancient Irish nobility, Celtic or Norman, and they were quite incapable of the crimes the credulous English mobs were taught to believe they were ready to commit at the earliest opportunity. Although the English people, in their normal condition, are a steady and courageous race, they are, when unduly excited, capable of entertaining sentiments and performing acts discreditable to them as a nation. A people so ready to resent any imposition, real or fancied, on themselves, should be a little less quick to punish others for following their example. It is not too much to say that the English, as a majority, have been made the victims of more religious and political hoaxes—imposed upon them by evil-minded knaves—than any other civilized nation. It was of the English, rather than ourselves, the great American showman, Barnum, should have said: “These people love to be humbugged!”
From the French court, which entirely sympathized with him, James entered into correspondence with his faithful subject and friend, Tyrconnel, in Ireland. The viceroy sent him comforting intelligence, for all the Catholics of fighting age were willing to bear arms in his defence. James sent Tyrconnel about 10,000 good muskets, with the requisite ammunition, to be used by the new levies. These were obtained from the bounty of the King of France. As Tyrconnel was convinced that Ireland, of herself, could hardly make headway against William of Orange, backed as he was by most of Great Britain and half of Europe, he conceived the idea of placing her, temporarily at least, under a French protectorate, in the shape of an alliance defensive and offensive, if necessary. He had the tact to keep King James in ignorance of this agreement, because he did not wish him to jeopardize his chance of regaining the British crown, which a consenting to the French protectorate would have utterly forfeited. Tyrconnel’s policy, under the circumstances in which Ireland was placed, may have been a wise one, although, in general, any dependency of one country upon another is fatal to the liberty of the dependent nation. Ireland, contrary to general belief, is large enough to stand alone, if she had control of her own resources. To illustrate briefly, she is within a few thousand square miles of being as large as Portugal, and is much more fertile; while she is almost a third greater in area than Holland and Belgium combined. Her extensive coast line, numerous safe harbors, and exceeding productiveness amply compensate for the comparative smallness of her area.
In February, 1689, the national conventions of England and Scotland, by vast majorities, declared that King James had abdicated and offered the crown to William and Mary, who, as might have been expected, accepted it with thanks. Ireland had nothing to say in the matter, except by the voices of a few malcontents who had fled to Britain. Nevertheless, the new sovereigns finally assumed the rather illogical title of “William and Mary, ‘by the grace of God,’ King and Queen of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland.” In France they held not a foot of ground; and in Ireland four-fifths of the people acknowledged King James. James Graham, of Claverhouse (Viscount Dundee), expressed his dissent from the majority in the convention of Scotland. Sir Walter Scott has immortalized the event in the stirring lyric which begins thus:
“To the Lords of Convention ‘twas Claverhouse spoke,
’Ere the king’s crown shall fall, there are crowns to be broke,
So let each cavalier, who loves honor and me,
Come follow the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee!”
James had some strong partisans in England also—mostly among the Roman Catholic and Episcopalian High Church elements, but they were powerless to stem the overwhelming tide of public opinion against him. Ireland was with him vehemently, except the small Protestant minority, chiefly resident in Ulster, which was enthusiastic for William and Mary. Representatives of this active element had closed the gates of Derry in the face of the Earl of Antrim, when he demanded the town’s surrender, in the name of the deposed king, in December, 1688. This incident proved that the Irish Protestants, with the usual rule-proving exceptions, meant “war to the knife” against the Catholic Stuart dynasty. Thus civil war, intensified by foreign intervention, became inevitable.
The towns of Inniskillen, Sligo, Coleraine, and the fort of Culmore, on the Foyle, either followed the example of Derry, or were seized without ceremony by the partisans of William and Mary in Ulster and Connaught. These partisans, headed by Lord Blaney, Sir Arthur Rawdon, and other Anglo-Irishmen, invited William to come into the country, “for the maintenance of the Protestant religion and the dependency of Ireland upon England.” Thus, again, was the Protestant religion made the pretext of provincializing Ireland, and because of this identification of it with British supremacy the new creed has remained undeniably unpopular with the masses of the Irish people. The latter are very ardent Catholics, as their long and bloody wars in defence of their faith have amply proven, but while this statement is undeniable, it can not be denied either that had the so-called Reformation not been identified with English political supremacy, it might have made much greater inroads among the Irish population than it has succeeded in doing. Ireland was treated not a whit better under the Catholic rulers of England, from 1169 to the period of Mary I—Henry VIII was a schismatic rather than a Protestant—than under her Protestant rulers, until James II appeared upon the scene, and his clemency toward the Irish was based upon religious rather than national grounds. Even in our own day, the English Catholics are among the strongest opponents of Irish legislative independence, and in the category of such opponents may be classed the late Cardinal Vaughan and the present Duke of Norfolk.
King James, at the call of the Irish majority, left his French retreat, and sailed from Brest with a fleet provided by King Louis, which saw him in safety to memorable Kinsale, where he landed on March 12, old style, 1689. He was accompanied by about 1,200 veteran troops, French and Irish, with a sprinkling of royalists, Scotch and English, and several officers of high rank, including Lieutenant-General De Rosen, Lieutenant-General Maumont, Major-General De Lery, Major-General Pusignan, Colonel Patrick Sarsfield, afterward the renowned Earl of Lucan, and the king’s two natural sons, the Duke of Berwick and Grand Prior Fitzjames. There came with him also fifteen Catholic chaplains, most of whom could speak the Gaelic tongue, and these gentlemen were very useful to him on a mission such as he had undertaken. The progress of the ill-fated monarch through Ireland, from Kinsale to Dublin was, in every sense, a royal one. The Irish masses, ever grateful to any one who makes sacrifices, or who even appears to make them, in their behalf, turned out in all their strength. A brilliant cavalcade, headed by the dashing Duke of Tyrconnel, escorted the king from town to town. His collateral descent from King Edward Bruce, freely chosen by Ireland early in the fourteenth century, was remembered. James was, therefore, really welcomed as King of Ireland. The Irish cared nothing for his British title. If the choice of the majority of a nation makes regal title binding, then James II was as truly elected King of Ireland, in 1689, as Edward Bruce was in 1315. And we make this statement thus plainly, because it will enable non-Irish and non-Catholic readers to understand why Catholic Ireland fought so fiercely and devotedly for an English ruler who had lost his crown in the assertion of Catholic rights and privileges. There was still another cause for this devotion of the majority of the Irish people to King James. He had consented to the summoning of a national Irish parliament, in which Protestants as well as Catholics were to be represented in due proportion, and this decision on his part made many of the Episcopalian Irish either neutral in the civil conflict or active on his side. The number of such persons as were comprised in the latter class was comparatively insignificant—just enough to mitigate the curse of absolute sectarianism in the contest. The Dissenting or non-conforming Irish were, almost to a unit, hostile to the Jacobite cause.