King asserts that the unrepresented boroughs were "about twenty-nine." Now, there were but eighteen boroughs unrestored; but King helps out the falsehood by inserting places—Thurles, Tipperary, Arklow, and Birr—which never had members before or since, by creating a second town of Kells, by transferring St. Johnstown in Longford which returned members, to St. Johnstown in Donegal, which was a seat of war, and by other tricks equally discreditable to his honesty and intelligence.
The towns unrestored could not have sent members to James's parliament, and it was apparently doubted whether they ought to have done so to William's in '92.
Against the Commons actually elected the charge is that only six Protestants were elected. In the very section containing the charge it is much qualified by other statements. "Thus," he says, "one Gerard Dillon, Sergeant-at-Law, a most furious Papist, was Recorder of Dublin, and he stood to be chosen one of the burgesses for the city, but could not prevail, because he had purchased a considerable estate under the Act of Settlement, and they feared lest this might engage him to defend it;" and therefore they chose Sir Michael Creagh and Terence Dermot, their Senior Aldermen, showing pretty clearly that the good citizens of Dublin set little value on the "furious Popery" of Prime Sergeant Dillon, in comparison with their property plundered by the Act of Settlement.
The election for Trinity College is worthy of notice. We have it set out in flaming paragraphs how horribly the College was used, worse than any other borough, "Popish Fellows" being intruded. "In the house they placed a Popish garrison, turned the chapel into a magazine, and many of the chambers into prisons for Protestants." (King, p. 220, Ed. 1744.) Yet, miraculous to say, in the heart of this "Popish garrison," the "turned-out Vice-Provost, Fellows, and Scholars" met, and elected two most bold, notable, and Protestant Williamites.
If this election could take place in Dublin, under the very nose of the Government, and in a corporation in which the king had unquestioned control, one will hesitate about the compulsion or exclusion in other places.
Besides Sir John Meade and Mr. Joseph Coghlan, the members for the College, there "were four more Protestants returned, of whose behaviour I can give no account," says King. Pity he does not give the names.
If we were to allow a similar error in King's account of the creed of the elected, that we have proved in his lists of the borough electors, it would raise the number of Protestants in the house to about fourteen.
Allowing then for the Protestants in arms against the Government—out of the country, or within the seat of war—the disproportion between their representatives and the Roman Catholics will lessen greatly.
One thing more is worth noticing in the Commons, and that is a sort of sept representation. Thus we see O'Neills in Antrim, Tyrone, and Armagh; Magennises in Down; O'Reillys in Cavan; Martins, Blakes, Kirwans, Dalys, Bourkes for Connaught; MacCarthys, O'Briens, O'Donovans for Cork and Clare; Farrells for Longford; Graces, Purcells, Butlers, Welshs, Fitzgeralds for Tipperary, Kilkenny, Kildare, etc.; O'Tooles, Byrnes, and Eustaces for Wicklow; MacMahons for Monaghan; Nugents, Bellews, Talbots, etc., for North Leinster.
Sir Richard Nagle, the Speaker, was the descendant of an old Norman family (said to be the same as the Nangles) settled in Cork. His paternal castle, Carrignancurra, is on the edge of a steep rock, over the meadows of the Blackwater, half-a-dozen miles below Mallow. It is now the property of the Foot family, and here may still be seen the mouldering ruin where that subtle lawyer first learned to plan. Peacefully now look the long oak-clad cliffs on the happy river.