James II
Archbishop Boyle as Lord Chancellor, was dismissed from office,41 and the great seal was entrusted to Alexander Fitton, subsequently created Lord Gawsworth, who, as a papist and a pervert, was doubly obnoxious to the Protestant party. It can scarcely be considered a fortunate circumstance that this gentleman had been convicted of forgery and had passed many years in prison; but it ought in fairness to be added that we have strong reasons for supposing the conviction to have been unjust.42 The charges of ignorance and partiality which have been brought against the new chancellor are unsupported by any real evidence and are probably equally unfounded. Nugent and Rice were shortly afterwards promoted to be chiefs of the courts of King's Bench and Exchequer respectively; and, in a little time, of the nine judges who composed the Irish common-law bench only three were Protestants.43
It was before courts thus constituted that the attack upon the corporations, which had been abandoned in the preceding year, was renewed. The government accused these bodies of having violated the terms of their charters; and pretexts were readily found for pronouncing the great majority of those charters null and void. Fresh charters were then issued, and, in the new
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