Irish soldiers in England.
Tyrconnel raises fresh regiments.
The attack on Magdalene College, the persecution of the seven bishops, and the proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Commission had little direct effect in Ireland, but they caused many Protestants to make haste out of Tyrconnel’s reach and spread terror among those who were unable to get away. In July 1688 the Irish army was again encamped at the Curragh, and James, unwarned by his father’s and Strafford’s fate, determined to use it for his own purposes in England. In the camp at Kildare all Roman Catholic soldiers—that is, the great bulk of them—were to confess regularly and to forfeit three months’ pay if they failed to produce a priest’s certificate of having received the Sacrament at least twice a year. In the camp at Hounslow loud cheers hailed the acquittal of the bishops. There were a few Irishmen there, and one of them murdered a comrade. He was promptly hanged as the only means of stilling the consequent uproar. A few weeks later Evelyn reports that ‘many murders had been committed by Irish Popish soldiers.’ Officers forfeited their commissions rather than admit Irish recruits at the King’s command. Nearly a whole regiment laid down their arms rather than declare against the tests. In the face of this popular feeling James persevered in his determination to bring over Irish troops. There were not enough of them to be of any real use, and they were guilty of many disorders on the road. Probably they were unpaid, and had to steal or starve. Tyrconnel was weakened by the loss of trained troops. Some 5000 were brought over in all, including about one-half of the Irish standing army of seven or eight thousand. Sarsfield and his men behaved well at Wincanton, but the skirmish there could not influence events. When the Revolution was accomplished most of the Irish were disarmed and kept in the Isle of Wight, whence William III. sent about two thousand as a present to the Emperor for employment against the Turks, thus contributing to the discomfiture of France and indirectly to that of their dethroned king. When the Dutch descent on England was imminent, Tyrconnel began to raise new regiments. He told James that Ireland was rich in men and provisions, but without money, and he sent full particulars through Sarsfield. The supply of competent officers was at once seen to be insufficient, and many non-commissioned officers and men left their colours in the old army with a view to getting promotion with the new levies. Before the end of the year Tyrconnel gave out that His Majesty’s revenue had decreased and was daily decreasing, and the clear pay of a soldier of the line was reduced to twopence halfpenny a day. Hundreds of commissions were issued in a very irregular way, and the new officers, in Archbishop King’s words, ‘were without money, estate, or any visible means to raise their troops and companies and to subsist [so they termed maintaining] them for three months from the first of January, a thing impossible without allowing them to steal and plunder. It was this struck so much terror into Protestants, and made them so jealous and apprehensive of danger that they fled into England in great numbers, especially when they found that the new raised men, as they surmised, began to make havoc of all things.’[172]
The Duke of Ormonde dies.
On July 21, less than a month after the acquittal of the seven bishops, the Duke of Ormonde died at Kingston Hall in Dorsetshire. It was the anniversary of his wife’s death four years before, and the end of his life was clouded by many other losses. His eldest son Ossory, who had a reputation scarcely inferior to Philip Sidney’s, had died in 1680, and his much less satisfactory brother Arran followed in 1685. As soon as the news reached Oxford, Convocation was hastily summoned, and the Duke’s grandson and successor was chosen Chancellor. A royal mandate to stop the election came too late, and the University was saved the indelible disgrace of seeing Jeffreys at its head. In one respect Ormonde was happy in an opportune death, for he did not have to choose between the King and the law. It would have been a bitter thing for him to come under another sovereign when James was still alive, but he opposed his policy. Only a year before his death he signed a protest against admitting a pensioner to the Charterhouse without taking the oath of allegiance and supremacy as required by an express Act of Parliament. The governors who protested with him were Sancroft, a non-juror, Craven, whose loyalty was absolute, Halifax the cautious, Danby and Compton, who signed the invitation to William of Orange, and Nottingham, who was privy to it but shrank from signing. The King and Jeffreys were cowed by this powerful opposition. Besides his anxiety about public affairs, Ormonde was troubled by want of money, for Tyrconnel’s proceedings had interfered with Irish rents, and he foresaw discomforts such as he never expected to feel ‘during the reign of any of the race of King Charles the First.’ His health was gradually failing, though he travelled much almost to the last, but he felt that the time for field sports was over, and that ‘the steps downwards are very natural from a field to a garden, from a garden to a window, from thence to a bed, and so to a grave.’[173]
His character.
Ormonde’s character has sufficiently appeared in the course of these volumes. His patience was boundless. Burnet, who had not much in common with him, says he was ‘firm to the Protestant religion, and so far firm to the laws that he always gave good advices: but even when bad ones were followed, he was not for complaining too much of them.’ His distinguishing principle was loyalty to the person of the sovereign and to the Crown as an institution. Thus, he fought for Charles I. as long as he had any party, and then he surrendered Dublin to the Parliament rather than damage the value of the reversion. Having begun by repressing the Irish rebels, he joined them when they were fain to call themselves royalists. During the interregnum he followed Charles II., and even risked his life in London when Cromwell was at the height of his power. During his three years of retirement after the accession of James, he continued to give good advice, and followed the King as long as he was able to go about. In Ireland he was undoubtedly popular, though an offence to extreme men on either side. Those who were ruined by the Act of Settlement thought he did not do enough for them. The Settlement, however, was not specially his work, but the result of the political situation, and for many he was able to secure special terms. By the Roman ecclesiastics he was, of course, hated, but they had done him all the harm they could in their day of power, and he made no secret of his wish to divide them. Most of his relations were Roman Catholics, but he stood staunchly by the Church of England. For persecution he had no taste, and he did much to soften the action of the English House of Commons. He did not neglect his own interests, though he might have had much more than he got, but some critics forgot that he had been in dire poverty during several years of exile. He, or rather his Duchess, was extravagant, as when 2000l. was spent on Charles II.’s supper, but his own tastes were very simple, and a boiled leg of mutton was all he insisted on. As a soldier he distinguished himself in the early part of the Civil War, but the disaster at Rathmines damaged his military reputation. He had a very bad army there, and Michael Jones had a very good one. His whole career is a comment on Wellington’s question—How is the King’s government to be carried on? The sovereigns whom he served were unworthy of such loyalty, but both England and Ireland profited by it.[174]
Disturbed state of Leinster.
Price’s case.