On the 7th of May, the day after the Te Deum, James met his Parliament. What sort of a Parliament it was, and what it was likely to do in Ireland may be surmised from the fact that there were only six Protestants in the whole House of Commons, consisting of two hundred and fifty members. Only fourteen lords appeared to his summons, and of these only four were Protestants. By new creations, and by reversal of attainders against Catholic peers, he managed to add seventeen more members to the Upper House, all Catholics, so that in the whole Parliament there were only ten Protestants, and four of these were the Bishops of Meath, Ossory, Cork, and Limerick. The majority of these members were not only Catholic, eager to visit upon the Protestants all the miseries and spoliations which the latter had inflicted on them, but they were men totally unaccustomed to the business of legislation or government, from having been long excluded from such functions, and condemned to pass their time on their estates in that half savage condition which qualified them rather for bandits than for lawgivers and magistrates.
James's first act was that of complete toleration of liberty of conscience to all Christian denominations. This sounded well, and was in perfect keeping with his declarations and endeavours in England for which he had been driven out, and England had now an opportunity of observing with what justice; of judging whether or not his real object had been wrongfully suspected. In his speech from the throne, he reverted with great pride to these endeavours, and to his determination still to be the liberator of conscience. This was language worthy of the noblest lawgiver that ever existed; but, unfortunately, James's English subjects never could be persuaded of his sincerity, and did not believe that this happiness would arrive as the result of his indulgence. The very next Act which he now passed decided that they had not mistrusted him without cause. Scarcely had he passed the Act of Toleration, when he followed it up by the repeal of the Act of Settlement, by which the Protestants held their estates, and their rights and liberties in Ireland. This just and tolerant monarch thus, at one stroke, handed over the whole Protestant body to the mercy of the Irish Catholics, and to one universal doom of confiscation. The Bill was received with exultation by this Parliament, which portended all the horrors which were to follow.
But there were other parties whose estates were not derived from the Act of Settlement, but from purchase, and another Act was passed to include them. It was a Bill confiscating the property of all who had aided or abetted the Prince of Orange in his attempt on the Crown, or who were absent and did not return to their homes before the 5th of October. The number of persons included in this great Act of Attainder, as it was called, amounted to between two and three thousand, including men of all ranks from the highest noble to the simplest freeholder. All the property of absentees above seventeen years of age was transferred to the king. The most unbounded lust of robbery and revenge was thus kindled in the public mind. Every one who wanted his neighbour's property, or had a grudge against him, hurried to give in his name to the Clerk of the House of Commons, and, without any or much inquiry, it was inserted in the Bill.
To make the separation of England and Ireland complete, and to set up the most effectual barrier against his own authority, should he again regain the throne of England, James permitted his Parliament to pass an Act declaring that the Parliament of England had no power or authority over Ireland, and this contrary to the provisions of Poynings' Act, which gave the initiative power to the English Council, and made every Irish Act invalid unless first submitted to the King and Council of England.
Having transferred the property of the laity back to the Irish, another Act made as sweeping a conveyance of that of the Church from the Protestant to the Catholic clergy. Little regard had been had to Catholic rights in piling property on the Protestant hierarchy, and as little was shown in taking it back again. The Anglican clergy were left in a condition of utter destitution, and more than this, they were not safe if they appeared in public. They were hooted, pelted, and sometimes fired at. All colleges and schools from which the Protestants had excluded the Catholics were now seized and employed as Popish seminaries or monasteries. The College of Dublin was turned into a barrack and a prison. No Protestants were allowed to appear together in numbers more than three, on pain of death. This was James's notion of the liberty of conscience, and a tender regard for "every man's rights and liberties." It was a fine lesson, too, for the clergy and gentry who had welcomed him to Ireland as the friends of passive obedience. They had now enough of that doctrine, and went over pretty rapidly to a different notion. The Protestants everywhere were overrun by soldiers and rapparees. Their estates were seized, their houses plundered, their persons insulted and abused, and a more fearful condition of things never existed in any country at any time. The officers of the army sold the Protestants protections, which were no longer regarded when fresh marauders wanted more money.
This model Parliament voted twenty thousand pounds a year to Tyrconnel for bringing this state of things about, and twenty thousand pounds a month to the king. But the country was so completely desolated, and its trade so completely destroyed by this reign of terror and of licence, that James did not find the taxes come in very copiously; and he resorted to a means of making money plentiful worthy of himself. He collected all the old pots, pans, brass knockers, old cannon, and metal in almost any shape, and coined clumsy money out of them, on which he put about a hundred times their intrinsic value. The consequence was that shopkeepers refused to receive this base coin. All men to whom debts were due, or who had mortgages on other men's property, were opposed to having them discharged by a heap of metal which in a few weeks might be worth only a few pence a pound. Those who refused such payment were arrested, and menaced with being hanged at their own doors. Many were thrown into prison, and trade and intercourse were plunged into a condition of the wildest anarchy. The whole country was a scene of violence, confusion, and distress. Such was the state of Ireland and of James's Court when, as we have seen, Schomberg landed with his army at Carrickfergus on the 23rd of August, and roused James, his Court, and the whole country to a sense of their danger, and of the necessity for one great and universal effort. A spirit of new life seemed to animate them, and James, receiving fresh hope from the sight, marched from Dublin at the head of his troops to encounter Schomberg.
During the summer the Court of William had not been an enviable place. In the spring the Parliament had proceeded to reverse the judgments which had been passed in the last reign against Lord William Russell, Algernon Sidney, the Earl of Devonshire, Cornish, Alice Lisle, and Samuel Johnson. Some of the Whigs who had suffered obtained pecuniary compensation, but Johnson obtained none. He was deemed by the Whigs to be too violent—in fact, he was a Radical of that day. The scoundrel Titus Oates crawled again from his obscurity, and, by help of his old friends the Whigs, managed to obtain a pension of three hundred pounds a year. This done, there was an attempt to convert the Declaration of Rights into a Bill of Rights—thus giving it all the authority of Parliamentary law; and in this Bill it was proposed, in case of William, Mary, and Anne all dying without issue, to settle the succession on the Duchess Sophia of Brunswick Lüneburg, the daughter of the Queen of Bohemia, and granddaughter of James I.; but it failed for the time. A Bill of Indemnity was also brought in as an Act of oblivion of all past offences; but this too was rejected. The triumphant Whigs, so far from being willing to forgive the Tories who had supported James, and had been their successful opponents during the attempts through Titus Oates and his fellow-plotters to exclude James from the succession, were now clamorous for their blood and ruin. William refused to comply with their truculent desires, and became, in consequence, the object of their undisguised hatred. They particularly directed their combined efforts against Danby, now Earl of Caermarthen, and Halifax. They demanded that Caermarthen should be dismissed from the office of President of the Council, and Halifax from holding the Privy Seal, and being Speaker of the House of Lords. But William steadfastly resisted their demands, and declared that he had done enough for them and their friends, and would do no more especially in the direction of vengeance against such as were disposed to live quietly and serve the State faithfully.
On the 19th of October the second session of William's first Parliament met. The Commons were liberal in voting supplies; they granted at once two million pounds, and declared that they would support the king to the utmost of their ability in reducing Ireland to his authority, and in prosecuting the war with France. The required sum was to be levied partly by a poll-tax, partly by new duties on tea, coffee, and chocolate, partly by an assessment of one hundred thousand pounds on the Jews, but chiefly by a tax on real property. The Jews, however, protested that they would sooner quit the kingdom than submit to the imposition, and that source was abandoned. The Commons next took up the Bill of Rights, and passed it, omitting the clause respecting the succession of the House of Brunswick, which measure was not brought forward again for eleven years. They, however, took care, at the suggestion of Burnet to insert a clause that no person who should marry a Papist should be capable of ascending the throne; and if any one on the throne so married, the subjects should be absolved from their allegiance.
After thus demonstrating their zeal for maintaining the throne in affluence and power, the Commons next proceeded to display it in a careful scrutiny of the mode in which the last supplies had been spent. The conduct of both army and navy had not been such as to satisfy the public. The Commons had, indeed, not only excused the defeat of Herbert at Bantry Bay, but even thanked him for it as though it had been a victory. But neither had Schomberg effected anything in Ireland; and he loudly complained that it was impossible to fight with an army that was not supplied with the necessary food, clothing, or ammunition. This led to a searching scrutiny into the commissariat department, William himself being the foremost in the inquiry, and the most frightful peculation and abuses were brought to light. The muskets and other arms fell to pieces in the soldiers' hands; and, when fever and pestilence were decimating the camp there was not a drug to be found, though one thousand seven hundred pounds had been charged Government for medicines. What baggage and supplies there were could not be got to the army for want of horses to draw the waggons; and the very cavalry went afoot, because Shales, the Commissary-General, had let out the horses destined for this service to the farmers of Cheshire to do their work. The meat for the men stank, the brandy was so foully adulterated that it produced sickness and severe pains. In the navy the case was the same; and Herbert, now Lord Torrington, was severely blamed for not being personally at the fleet to see into the condition of his sailors, but was screened from deserved punishment by his connections. The king was empowered by Parliament at length to appoint a Commission of Inquiry to discover the whole extent of the evil, and to take remedies against its recurrence.
