The English steel we could disdain—
Secure in valor’s station—
But English gold has been our bane—
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!”
The deeds in arms of Anne’s great general, Marlborough, who was a traitor to both King James and King William, have been partially related in the chapters bearing on the career of the Franco-Irish Brigade and need no farther mention in this history.
In the days of William III appeared a pamphlet called “The Case of Ireland Stated,” which was written by William Molyneux, a member of Parliament, for the Dublin University. It appeared in 1698, and made, at once, a powerful impression on the public mind. It, in brief, took the ground that Ireland—that is, Protestant, colonial Ireland—was, of right, a separate and independent kingdom; that England’s original title of conquest, if she had any, was abrogated by charters granted to Ireland from time to time, and, finally, denied that the king and Parliament of England had power to bind the kingdom and people of Ireland by English-made laws. The English Parliament was, of course, greatly shocked and scandalized at the idea of a “mere Irishman” putting forth such theories, and solemnly ordered his book to be burned, publicly, by “the common hangman”—a functionary always in high favor when Ireland needs to be “disciplined.” The book was burned accordingly, but its spirit did not die then, nor is it yet dead, or likely to die, while Ireland contains a population. King William, in replying to the English Parliament’s address on the subject of Molyneux’s utterance, assured its members that “he would enforce the laws securing the dependence of Ireland on the imperial crown of Great Britain.”
In the chapter on the penal laws, many of the enactments of the reign of Anne have been summarized. Her sway was a moral nightmare over Ireland, and it is a remarkable historical coincidence that the Green Isle suffered more, materially and morally, under the English female than the male sovereigns. Under Elizabeth and Anne, the Irish Catholics were persecuted beyond belief. Under Victoria’s rule, which the British statistician, Mulhall, has called “the deadliest since Elizabeth,” they starved to death by the hundred thousand or emigrated by the million.
The régime of Queen Anne, like that of her predecessors and successors on the throne, gave the government of Ireland into the hands of Englishmen, who held all the important offices, from the viceroyalty downward, and who chose their sub-officers from among the least national element of the Irish people. This system, although somewhat modified, continues to the present day. In the Irish Parliament, there was an occasional faint display of sectarian nationality, but it proved of little advantage when the English wanted matters in that body to go as they wished. Ireland then, as a majority ruled by a minority, “stood on her smaller end,” and so it is even in our own times, notwithstanding occasional “concessions” and “ameliorations.”
But, from the day when the pamphlet, or book, of Molyneux saw the light, a Patriot party began to grow up in the Irish Parliament. The old Irish nation had, indeed, disappeared, for a period, but the new one soon began to manifest a spirit that roused the bitter hatred of England. Such infatuated Irish Protestants as still believed that they would be more gently treated on account of common creed with the stronger people were soon bitterly undeceived.
The death of Queen Anne, all of whose children by the Prince of Denmark had died before her, occurred in July, 1714. It is said that she secretly favored the succession of her half-brother, acknowledged by Louis XIV, and the Jacobite party in Great Britain, as James III of that realm, but the last Duke of Ormond, the Earl of Orrery, Bishop Atterbury, and Lord Bolingbroke, the Jacobite leaders in England, lost their nerve after the Queen’s death and allowed the golden opportunity of proclaiming the exiled Stuart king to pass away. The Hanoverian faction, which called James “the Pretender,” took advantage of their vacillation to proclaim the Elector of Hanover, who derived his claim from the Act of Succession or Settlement (which ignored the Stuart male line, or any of its Catholic collateral branches, and excluded them from the throne), under the title of George I. He derived his claim, such as it was, from James I, whose daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, had married the King of Bohemia. Her daughter, Sophia, married the Elector of Hanover and became mother of King George, who was a thorough German in speech, manner, and habit, although not in person or in manly characteristics. But he was a Protestant, and that sufficed for England. On August 1, 1714, he was proclaimed in London and Edinburgh, and on the 8th of that month in Dublin. The Scotch Jacobites ridiculed his accession in a racy “skit,” which began with—