a paralysing blow, and the sturdy Saxon population prepared not only to defend their possessions, but to exterminate, if necessary, the aboriginal tribes.
Clarendon, the lord-lieutenant, the brother of Rochester, the prime minister of England, in great alarm wrote to James, detailing the immediate effects of this announcement, but James persisted in his obstinate course. He declared that the protestants were his enemies, and that it was necessary to fortify himself with his friends. That his father had lost his head by conceding—he should have said by conceding too late—and that he would concede nothing, he went on putting catholics info the privy council, into the corporations and the army, dismissing protestants to make room for them. He then sent out Tyrconnel, as his unscrupulous instrument, to occupy the post already his, the head of the army; he was at the same time furnished with instructions to take virtually all the functions of government into his hands, and reduce Clarendon to a cipher. Clarendon, like all the Hydes, was meanly attached to office and its emoluments, or he would at once have resigned rather than suffer the indignity of beholding his office usurped by a bullying ruffian like Tyrconnel. This desperate gambler, duellist, and debauchée, soon began to talk of the act of settlement as a damned and villainous thing; set about remodelling the army so as to exclude all protestants, and replace them by catholics; officers and men of the protestant faith were dismissed by wholesale; he was in league with the priests to drill the whole papist population, so as to confer the whole power of the island on them, and place every protestant throat at their mercy. In a very few weeks he had introduced two thousand popish soldiers into the army, and gave out that by Christmas the whole of the troops would be native catholic. In the church and the state he pushed on rudely the same measures, and with a violence of conduct and of language which appeared more like drunken madness than anything else. Taking the cue from him, and instructed by the priests, everybody treated Clarendon with marked insult and contempt. Still clinging meanly to office, he appealed to his brother in London to obtain for him more honourable treatment, but was thunderstruck by the news that Rochester himself was dismissed.
Rochester, the champion to whom the protestants of the Anglican church looked up for aid, had himself as meanly as his brother disgraced himself by suffering his honour to be compromised by the love of office and income. he saw the career which James was running, and which no remonstrance or popular menace Could arrest, and instead of resigning with dignity when his counsels became useless, he had even flattered James with the hope of his conversion. But he did not deceive the Jesuit cabal which surrounded and governed James. They assured the king that nothing would ever make Rochester a genuine supporter of catholic views, and the sooner he cut himself loose from the connection the better. Accordingly, on the 19th of December, the king, with many professions of regard, took from his brother-in-law Rochester the treasurer's staff, but softened his fall by granting him out of the estate of lord Grey's lands to the yearly value of seventeen hundred pounds, and an annuity of four thousand pounds for his own life and that of his son. He was spared also the mortification of seeing his rival Sunderland invested with his office; the treasurership was put in commission; lord Arundel received the privy seal, and Bellasis was made first lord of the treasury. whilst Dover, a ruined gambler, and Godolphin received places at the board.
The fall of Clarendon followed rapidly on that of Rochester. On the 8th of January, 1687, he received the order to resign his post to Tyrcounel. Such was the panic at this news, that no less than fifteen hundred families of gentlemen, merchants, and tradesmen, are said to have fled from Dublin to England in a week, and a reign of terror commenced all over Ireland. The known intentions of the king, and the character of his lord lieutenant, were the signals for proscription to all protestants, and they were turned out of the army, the offices of state, from the bench, and the magistracy, with an indecency which astonished the moderate catholics themselves. Law and justice appeared to be at an end. The worst passions of a population long loaded with every species of injustice were let loose, and the long dominant race now saw themselves the objects of unconcealed hatred and recrimination. The wild population drove off their cattle, set fire to their houses, and the newly-raised soldiery devoted themselves with the gusto of vengeance to pillaging, murdering, and outraging the protestant settlers with a frightful exultation.
Such were the ominous circumstances under which opened the year 1687. By driving from him his relatives, the Hydes, James had severed the last ties betwixt him and protestantism; had demolished the last guarantees of protestant security. The whole protestant public, and many of the more clear-sighted catholics, looked forward with an awful sense of impending mischief, and they were only too correct in their apprehensions.
CHAPTER XIV.
REIGN OF JAMES II. (Continued).
James was determined to push forward his schemes for the restoration of Romanism in defiance of every long-cherished prejudice of the public, and of every constitutional principle. Besides the conversions which interest had made amongst the courtiers, there were a few other persons of more or less distinction who for royal favour had apostatised, but the number was most insignificant. The earl of Peterborough, and the earl of Salisbury, the descendant of Cecil, Elizabeth's minister, had embraced Catholicism, and amongst literary men some half dozen. There was Wyeherley, the
