though by the Irish clergy suspected to favour the Dissenters too much, and therefore not fit to be trusted with a trial of that nature.”
By combining this suspicion with a contrary verdict in another case, we may conclude that Lord Galway was impartial. In the French Church of Cork, which did not use the liturgy, a feud arose in 1698. The ministerial status of their pastor, Monsieur Fontaine, having been called in question, the bishop recommended that he should be episcopally ordained; and, the good pastor having objected with excessive heat, Bishop Wetenhall formally complained to the Lords-Justices. Lord Galway, says the pastor in his journal, “was disposed to sacrifice me to please the Bishop of Cork.” An unsatisfactory correspondence following, Fontaine resigned, with a reservation which he records thus: “I wrote to Lord Galway and told him that if any change should be made in the mode of worship I had adopted, by the appointment of an Fnglish clergyman, I should feel myself bound, in spite of my resignation, to officiate for that portion of the flock who preferred the French usage. I believe this threat was not without its effect in causing Lord Galway to recommend Mr Marcomb for my successor, which was most satisfactory to me.”[1] The whole system in such cases is easily explained. The bishops predominated in the Irish privy council, so that when Lord Galway referred a case to the council, the episcopal party got their own way. In cases where this result might prove oppressive, Lord Galway kept the business in his own hands, and stood firm to his royal master’s maxims of toleration.
Having been led out of the proper chronological order, I now return to the opening of Lord Galway’s Irish administration. Colonel Arthur Upton of Templepatrick, and for many years M.P. for County Antrim, had long been the acknowledged chief of the Presbyterians. Like all the Presbyterians of influence, he had stood out against Oliver Cromwell; but he early appeared for King William, and raised a regiment from among his tenantry. His eldest surviving son, Captain Arthur Upton, fought at the Battle of Aughrim, but fell among the slain. Thereafter his heir-apparent was Colonel Clotworthy Upton, a brave officer, who in his father’s old age worthily continued his public work. I conclude this section with an extract from a letter from the young Colonel to Mr Carstares, the well-known secretary of King William:—
“London, August 30, 1697. . . . As to our old affair, it stands just as it did, my Lord Galway not being willing, as I apprehend, to meddle with a thing of that nature on his first entrance on the government. His coldness in it, and delays, at last make me believe he never spoke to the king about it; or, if he did, that his Majesty was of opinion with his Lordship, but was unwilling to give a denial to so considerable a body of his faithful friends. Therefore we are put off with courtiers’ promises, and in the meantime we lie under the lash of severe laws. . . . Our government in Ireland pleases all sorts of people extremely; and I doubt not but my Lord Galway’s wisdom and prudence will continue it. — I remain, Reverend Sir, your faithful humble servant,
Sec. 8. — The Earl of Galway’s Government of Ireland from 1697 to 1701.
The Peace with France was signed at King William’s Palace of Neuburg House, close to the village of Ryswick, on the 30th October 1697. In honour of it, the absentee Lord-Justice of Ireland, Viscount Villiers, was made Earl of Jersey, and sent envoy to the Hague.
The peace establishment had now to be settled. Lord Galway had submitted to the king a plan for counteracting the theoretical mania for an immense reduction of the army. To reduce the estimates, as the theorisers must have desired, and at the same time to moderate their craving for a rash disbanding, his lordship proposed to diminish the full pay of officers in Ireland. He received the following letter, dated from the king’s favourite residence in Holland:—
- ↑ “Memoirs of a Huguenot Family,” translated and compiled from the Autobiography of Fontaine. New York, 1853.
