[200] Walker’s True Account. Mackenzie says a shot was fired and threats made to burn the gates. Light to the Blind. Avaux to Louis XIV. and to Louvois, April 13/23 and 15/25.
[201] Walker and the author of Light to the Blind substantially agree. Clarke’s Life of James II., ii. 333. Macpherson, i. 186.
[202] Stevens says 1500 English, Scotch, and Irish were landed, but Dangeau (April 20) says ‘plus de quatre mille,’ which must include those in the first fleet. Life of Sir John Leake, chap. iii. Troude, Batailles navales de la France, pp. 189-194. Clarendon and Rochester Correspondence, ii. 45, 65. Captain Mahan observed (Sea-power, chap. iv.) that in spite of Bantry Bay and of the numerical superiority of the French at sea, Rooke never lost command of St. George’s Channel. Schomberg landed unopposed, and ‘the English communications were not even threatened for an hour.’
[203] Stevens, pp. 54-59. Avaux to Louvois, and May 28/June 7 and June 17/27. Stevens followed what was afterwards the mail-coach road from Cork to Dublin by Clogheen, Clonmel, and Callan to Kilkenny. The MS. of his journal in the British Museum has been published with valuable notes by Dr. Robert H. Murray, Oxford 1912.
[CHAPTER LI]
THE PARLIAMENT OF 1689
King James’s Irish supporters. Tyrconnel.
Among James’s advisers during his reign in Ireland Tyrconnel was by far the most important. As a thorough French partisan Avaux supported him, and Berwick, whose sympathies were also French, while noting that he was rich, says he was not accused of getting money unfairly. Anthony Hamilton, who knew him very well, says he did save some property for sufferers by the Cromwellian settlement, and was well paid for his services. His disregard for truth was shown in his dealings with the younger Clarendon and with Mountjoy. The elder Clarendon tells us that he was mixed up in a plot to assassinate Cromwell, and that he had threatened Ormonde with a like fate, since there was no chance of killing him in a duel. He was personally brave, but no soldier. He cursed and swore with a force and frequency remarkable even in that age. As a Gentleman of the Bedchamber he was in the secret of James’s many amours, and was one of the ‘men of honour’ who tried to blast the character of Anne Hyde, notwithstanding which he remained her husband’s trusted servant. James doubted his judgment, even when following his advice. Sheridan is a hostile witness, but his opinion of Tyrconnel has much support from other sources. ‘He was a tall, proper man, publicly known as the most insolent in prosperity and most abject in adversity, a cunning dissembling courtier of mean judgment and small understanding, uncertain and unsteady in his resolutions, turning with every wind to bring about his ambitious ends and purposes, on which he was so intent that to compass them he would stick at nothing, and so false that a most impudent notorious lie was called at Whitehall and St. James’ one of Dick Talbot’s ordinary truths.’[204]
Justin MacCarthy.
Donough MacCarthy, the Muskerry of the Civil War, was created Earl of Clancarty before the Restoration, and after it regained most of his property. He had married Ormonde’s sister, and his third son Justin, who served long in the French army, returned to England with the rank of colonel at a time when the no-popery feeling was at its height. Justin promoted the marriage of his nephew Donough, the fourth Earl, with Sunderland’s daughter. The young lord, though he had been brought up a Protestant by Fell, was not kept safely by him at Oxford, and soon returned to the Church of Rome. His romantic story has been told by Macaulay, and the tale was dramatised by Tom Taylor. His uncle had married Strafford’s daughter, and was thus by several alliances connected with the most powerful people at the English Court. When Charles first entertained the idea of remodelling the Irish army he thought of employing MacCarthy as a fitting instrument. Halifax warned him of the danger of meddling with an army ‘raised by a Protestant Parliament to secure the Protestant interest; and would the King give occasion to any to say that where his hands were not bound up he would show all the favour he could to the Papists?’ Since the Oxford dissolution Charles no longer feared Parliament, and replied that he did not care what people said. He repeated the whole conversation to MacCarthy, which was hardly the way to secure honest advice. Soon after the accession of James, Justin was in command of a regiment at Cork, and became very popular, even with the Protestants of that town. When Clarendon arrived his relations with him were at first quite amicable, but he was more or less in co-operation with Tyrconnel, and a coolness soon arose. He seems to have made love to the Lord Lieutenant’s married sister, which did not mend matters. MacCarthy became major-general in April 1686, when Tyrconnel was made lieutenant-general, and, like him, was sworn of the Privy Council.[205]