James II
incomplete without some account of that memorable assembly which sat at the King's Inns in Dublin during the summer of 1689.
On the 7th of March James sailed for Ireland and landed on the 12th at Kinsale.71 From Kinsale he proceeded to Dublin, and there issued a series of proclamations, one of which summoned the Irish parliament to meet on the 7th of May.72 The parliament which assembled in obedience to his summons differed widely from the body bearing the same name which had been dissolved twenty-three years before. Of sixty-nine temporal lords who were Protestants only five took their seats: the rest were among the Ulster insurgents or intriguing with William at Whitehall. Of eighteen spiritual lords73 eleven had left the kingdom; of the remaining seven the Primate and the Bishops of Waterford and Killaloe were excused attendance on the ground of age and infirmity; but the two former signed by proxy a protest against the repeal of the Act of Settlement. Twenty-seven Roman Catholic lords attended, five of whom had been lately raised to the peerage, while the attainders of more than half the remainder had been recently reversed.74
The Lower House was composed of two hundred and thirty-four members, the counties of Londonderry and Fermanagh and a considerable
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