Second: An act repealing the act of settlement, and indemnifying Catholics who had been declared innocent by the Court of Claims.
Third: An act of attainder against all persons bearing arms for William, declaring their property, real and personal, forfeited, unless they surrendered before a certain day.[16]
Fourth: An act increasing the king's subsidy to £20,000 per month.
These acts all received the royal sanction, though the third met with considerable opposition; and the fourth was passed over an earnest protest from the Protestant lords, spiritual and temporal. But the great act, the one which concerned the future welfare of the country, far more than all the others, met with the persistent opposition of the king, though strenuously advocated by the majority; and so the act of Poyning remained unchanged until the days of Grattan and the volunteers of '82.
At last, and towards the end of June, they reached the great, important business of the session—the ways and means of supporting the army. The Catholic gentry had maintained the war up to the present time, and their means were totally exhausted. The Protestant gentry seemed unwilling to risk fortune or credit on the issue as between the king and the Prince of Orange. The king's condition was desperate, and called for extraordinary remedies; there was no alternative between exaction and abdication, and he overstepped the limitations of trade for the higher law of preservation. He doubled his subsidy by proclamation; established a bank restriction act by the same authority; issued a million and a half of copper coin, and gave it a nominal value. These measures were declared arbitrary, but they were also measures of the direst necessity; he pledged himself to revoke them when the necessity had passed, and also to redeem the coin issued in sterling money. The traders demurred, raised the price of provisions, and rendered the coin almost worthless; the king established a scale of prices, and threatened penalties on those who exacted more. Such was the offence, and such the demand for this "arbitrary assumption." The king in his extremity, the country in the throes of a revolution, the brave men pouring out their life-blood on the battle-field, were as nothing in comparison to the claims of a self-constituted monopoly.
In criticising those "arbitrary assumptions" of the king, we should bear in mind that free trade was then no established principle of either English or Irish legislation; that the corn laws of England, which are somewhat of a kindred character, have been repealed after years of angry agitation, and within a very recent period; that the people, whose rights were of paramount consideration, gave their unqualified approval to those measures; and, even allowing them to have been arbitrary, he could be no patriot who would put the claims of trade in opposition to the liberty of the nation. In one measure alone—his interference with the Dublin University—does the king seem to have acted both unwisely and arbitrarily; and of this, the following extract from Taylor's history will afford a sufficient exposition:—"The first step taken by King James in his war on the Dublin University, proved that he gave that body more credit for common sense than it merited. He nominated a Roman Catholic to be professor of the Irish language, and was afterwards astounded to hear that no such professorship existed in that venerable institution. Doctor Leland rates James very severely for having committed such a blunder, but, truly, the blunder belongs not to him alone. He could scarcely have credited the existence of such a practical jest as an institution whose professed design was to instruct the Irish in the doctrines of the reformed religion, which yet left the teachers wholly ignorant of the language of those whom they had to instruct. Compared with this, the folly of Goldsmith's attempting to teach English in Holland, without first having learned Dutch, sinks into insignificance."[17] The point is well taken, and the oversight of the primary duty of the founders is, no doubt, of a piece with many others that might be noted; but candor compels the acknowledgment, that neither the king nor the Catholic people should be first to rectify a mistake which left the college so harmless in pressing the object of its establishment.
The heads of the institution, alarmed at this interference of the king, endeavored to convert the property of the college into ready money. Tyrconnell ordered the prosecution of the purchaser, and seized on the plate so disposed of. Litigation followed, and after some time the property was restored to the institution, on condition that it should not again be sold. The king next appointed a Catholic to a fellowship of the college, and its authorities demurred; but before the matter was pressed to an issue the candidate's incapacity was discovered, and the affair terminated for the time. Such were the encroachments of the king on that venerable institution, antecedent to the invasion; but now that he had become king regnant in Ireland, he pressed those innovations with more rigor and less cause. He abolished its original charter, expelled the provost for contumacy, and is even accused of a design to convert the college into a Jesuit seminary. This was all inexcusable; the more so, that it was inconsistent with his avowed principles, that it awakened the reasonable apprehensions of the loyal Protestant people, and, above all, that it consumed the time and attention which should have been devoted to the great and pressing demands of the country.
By this unnecessary and ill-timed delay, the military affairs of the nation were allowed to languish; the army, dependent on tardy and forced supplies, had partaken of the general apathy; and were it not for the indefatigable efforts of Tyrconnell, scarcely the semblance of an army could have been maintained to the end of this memorable session. But while the king was engaged in angry discussion with his turbulent Parliament, Tyrconnell was engaged in the organization of the forces. He had already sent 2,500 troops to the army before Derry, had in course of training 9,000 more awaiting arms and equipments from France, and a well-appointed force ready, under Lord Mountcashel, to undertake the reduction of Enniskillen.
CHAPTER VI.
THE BATTLE OF NEWTOWNBUTLER, AND THE RELIEF OF ENNISKILLEN AND DERRY.
The time elapsed since the withdrawal of Galmoy from Enniskillen, on the 24th of March, had not been barren of stirring events; but events of a predatory character, and so differently colored, by the historians of each side, as to leave the mind in a state of uncertainty from the constant succession of almost similar events. This, however, appears distinct enough: that Galmoy, with a small body of troops, continued to check the excursions of the Enniskilleners, and, as the siege of Derry progressed, kept the country open for the passage of the king's trains to and from the metropolis; while, on the other hand, the Enniskilleners, emboldened by his occasional disappearance from their vicinity, renewed their raids under Wolseley, Hamilton, and Blaney, spreading terror wherever they appeared, and supplying their stronghold with the necessary booty of cattle and provender. As their position grew stronger, and their numbers increased, those raids became more frequent and extended, and by the beginning of June were such as to claim immediate and energetic measures for their suppression.