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Mutual enmity between the Englishry and

and by their rude swaggering they | ficent government, a government which scared more respectable guests from should know no distinction of race or his door. * of sect, a government which, while strictly respecting the rights guaranteed by law to the new landowners, should alleviate by a judicious liberality the misfortunes of the ancient gentry. The opportunity had passed away: compromise had become impossible: the two infuriated castes were alike convinced that it was necessary to oppress or to be oppressed, and that there could be no safety but in victory, vengeance, and dominion. They agreed only in spurning out of the way every mediator who sought to reconcile them.

Such was the state of Ireland when the Prince of Orange landed at Torbay. From that time every packet which arrived at Dublin brought tidings, such Irishry. as could not but increase the mutual fear and loathing of the hostile races. The colonist, who, after long enjoying and abusing power, had now tasted for a moment the bitterness of servitude, the native, who, having drunk to the dregs all the bitterness of servitude, had at length for a moment enjoyed and abused power, were alike sensible that a great crisis, a crisis like that of 1641, was at hand. The majority impatiently expected Phelim O'Neil to revive in Tyrconnel. The minority saw in William a second Oliver.

On which side the first blow was struck was a question which Williamites and Jacobites afterwards debated with much asperity. But no question could be more idle. History must do

to

both parties the justice which neither has ever done to the other, and must admit that both had fair pleas and cruel provocations. Both had been placed, by a fate for which neither was answerable, in such a situation that, human nature being what it is, they could not but regard each other with enmity. A king, who perhaps might have reconciled them, had, year after year, systematically employed his whole power for the purpose of inflaming their enmity to madness. It was now impossible to establish in Ireland a just and bene

*King, iii. 2. I cannot find that Charles Leslie, who was zealous on the other side, has,

in his Answer to King, contradicted any of these facts. Indeed Leslie gives up Tyrconnel's administration. "I desire to obviate one objection which I know will be made, as if I

were about wholly to vindicate all that the Lord Tyrconnel and other of King James's ministers have done in Ireland, especially be

fore this revolution began, and which most of

During some weeks there were outrages, insults, evil reports, vio- Panic lent panics, the natural pre- the Eludes of the terrible conflict glishry. which was at hand. A rumour spread over the whole island that, on the ninth of December, there would be a general massacre of the Englishry. Tyrconnel sent for the chief Prótestants of Dublin to the Castle, and, with his usual energy of diction, invoked on himself all the vengeance heaven if the report was not a cursed, a blasted, a confounded lie. It was said that, in his rage at finding his oaths ineffectual, he pulled off his hat and wig, and flung them into the fire.* But lying Dick Talbot was so well known that his imprecations and gesticulations only strengthened the ap-, prehension which they were meant to allay. Ever since the recall of Clarendon there had been a large emigration of timid and quiet people from the Irish ports to England. That emigration now went on faster than ever. It was not easy to obtain a passage on board of a well built or commodious vessel. But many persons, made bold by the excess of fear, and choosing rather to trust the winds and waves than the exasperated Irishry, ventured to encounter all the dangers of Saint George's Channel and of the Welsh coast in open boats and in the depth

any thing brought it on. No; I am far from it. I am sensible that their carriage in many particulars gave greater occasion to King * A True and Impartial Account of the James's enemies than all the other malad-most material Passages in Ireland since Deministrations which were charged upon his cember 1688, by a Gentleman who was an government." Leslie's Answer to King, 1692. Eyewitness; licensed July 22, 1689.

wolf still littered, and where some half naked savages, who could not speak a word of English, made themselves burrows in the mud, and lived on roots and sour milk.*

of winter. The English who remained | it was mentioned, it was mentioned as began, in almost every county, to a horrible desert, a chaos of bogs, draw close together. Every large thickets, and precipices, where the she country house became a fortress. Every visitor who arrived after nightfall was challenged from a loophole or from a barricaded window; and if he attempted to enter without passwords and explanations, a blunderbuss was presented to him. On the dreaded night of the ninth of December, there was scarcely one Protestant mansion from the Giant's Causeway to Bantry Bay in which armed men were not watching and lights burning from the early sunset to the late sunrise.*

the town of Kenmare.

At length, in the year 1670, the benevolent and enlightened Sir William Petty determined to form an English settlement in this wild district. He possessed a large domain there, which has descended to a posterity worthy of such an ancestor. On the improvement of that domain he expended, it was said, not less than ten thousand pounds.

Petty's settlement and the nearest English habitation the journey by land was of two days through a wild and dangerous country. Yet the place prospered.

A minute account of what passed in History of one district at this time has The little town which he come down to us, and well founded, named from the bay of Kenillustrates the general state of mare, stood at the head of that bay, the kingdom. The south-western part under a mountain ridge, on the summit of Kerry is now well known as the of which travellers now stop to gaze most beautiful tract in the British upon the loveliest of the three lakes of isles. The mountains, the glens, the Killarney. Scarcely any village, built capes stretching far into the Atlantic, by an enterprising band of New Engthe crags on which the eagles build, landers, far from the dwellings of the rivulets brawling down rocky their countrymen, in the midst of the passes, the lakes overhung by groves hunting grounds of the Red Indians, in which the wild deer find covert, was more completely out of the pale of attract every summer crowds of wan-civilisation than Kenmare. Between derers sated with the business and the pleasures of great cities. The beauties of that country are indeed too often hidden in the mist and rain which the west wind brings up from a boundless ocean. But, on the rare days when the sun shines out in all his glory, the landscape has a freshness and a warmth of colouring seldom found in our latitude. The myrtle loves the soil. The arbutus thrives better than even on the sunny shore of Calabria. The turf is of livelier hue than elsewhere: the hills glow with a richer purple: the varnish of the holly and ivy is more glossy; and berries of a brighter red peep through foliage of a brighter green. But during the greater part of the seventeenth century, this paradise was as little known to the civilised world as Spitzbergen or Greenland. If

Forty two houses were erected. The population amounted to a hundred and eighty. The land round the town was well cultivated.

*In a very full account of the British isles

published at Nuremberg in 1690, Kerry is described as "an vielen Orten unwegsam und voller Wälder und Gebürge." Wolves still infested Ireland. "Kein schädlich Thier ist da, ausserhalb Wölff und Füchse." So late as the year 1710 money was levied on presentments of the Grand Jury of Kerry for the destruction of wolves in that county. See Smith's Ancient I do not know that I have ever met with a and Modern State of the County of Kerry, 1756. better book of the kind and of the size. In a poem published as late as 1719, and entitled Macdermot, or the Irish Fortune Hunter, in six cantos, wolf hunting and wolfspearing ever are represented as common sports in Munster. In William's reign Ireland was sometimes called by the nickname of Wolfland. Thus in a poem on the battle of La Hogue, called Advice to a Painter, the terror of the Irish army is thus described:

A True and Impartial Account, 1689; Leslie's Answer to King, 1692.

There have been in the neighbourhood of Killarney specimens of the arbutus thirty feet high and four feet and a half round. See the Philosophical Transactions, 227.

"A chilling damp And Wolfland howl runs thro' the rising camp."

Two small | intelligence, and their spirit, till the fishing and close of the year 1688. Then at length the effects of the policy of Tyrconnel

corner of Ireland. In the eyes of the peasantry of Munster the colonists were aliens and heretics. The buildings, the boats, the machines, the granaries, the dairies, the furnaces, were doubtless contemplated by the native race with that mingled envy and contempt with which the ignorant naturally regard the triumphs of knowledge. Nor is it at all improbable that the emigrants had been guilty of those faults from which civilised men who settle among an uncivilised people are rarely free. The power derived from superior intelligence had, we may easily believe, been sometimes displayed with insolence, and sometimes exerted with injustice. Now therefore, when the news spread from altar to altar, and from cabin to cabin, that the strangers were to be driven out, and that their houses and lands were to be given as a booty to the children of the soil, a predatory war commenced. Plunderers, thirty, forty, seventy in a troop, prowled round

The cattle were numerous. barks were employed in trading along the coast. The supply of herrings, pilchards, mackerel, and began to be felt even in that remote salmon was plentiful, and would have been still more plentiful, had not the beach been, in the finest part of the year, covered by multitudes of seals, which preyed on the fish of the bay. Yet the seal was not an unwelcome visitor his fur was valuable; and his oil supplied light through the long nights of winter. An attempt was made with great success to set up iron works. It was not yet the practice to employ coal for the purpose of smelting; and the manufacturers of Kent and Sussex had much difficulty in procuring timber at a reasonable price. The neighbourhood of Kenmare was then richly wooded; and Petty found it a gainful speculation to send ore thither. The lovers of the picturesque still regret the woods of oak and arbutus which were cut down to feed his furnaces. Another scheme had occurred to his active and intelligent mind. Some of the neighbouring islands abounded with variegated marble, red and white, purple and green. Petty the town, some with firearms, some well knew at what cost the ancient Romans had decorated their baths and temples with manycoloured columns hewn from Laconian and African quarries; and he seems to have indulged the hope that the rocks of his wild domain in Kerry might furnish embellishments to the mansions of Saint James's Square, and to the choir of Saint Paul's Cathedral.*

From the first, the settlers had found that they must be prepared to exercise the right of selfdefence to an extent which would have been unnecessary and unjustifiable in a well governed country. The law was altogether without force in the highlands which lie on the south of the vale of Tralee. No officer of justice willingly ventured into those parts. One pursuivant who in 1680 attempted to execute a warrant there was murdered. The people of Kenmare seem however to have been sufficiently secured by their union, their *Smith's Ancient and Modern State of Kerry.

with pikes. The barns were robbed. The horses were stolen. In one foray a hundred and forty cattle were swept away and driven off through the ravines of Glengariff. In one night six dwel lings were broken open and pillaged. At last the colonists, driven to extre mity, resolved to die like men rather than be murdered in their beds. The house built by Petty for his agent was the largest in the place. It stood on a rocky peninsula round which the waves of the bay broke. Here the whole population assembled, seventy five fighting men, with about a hundred women and children. They had among them sixty firelocks, and as many pikes and swords. Round the agent's house they threw up with great speed a wall of turf fourteen feet in height and twelve in thickness. The space enclosed was about half an acre. Within this rampart all the arms, the ammunition, and the provisions of the settlement were collected, and several huts of thin plank were built. When these prepara

tions were completed, the men of Ken- | great, and the greater because it was mare began to make vigorous reprisals known that a preaching friar had been on their Irish neighbours, seized rob- exerting himself to inflame the Irish bers, recovered stolen property, and population of the neighbourhood against continued during some weeks to act in the heretics. A daring resolution was all things as an independent common- taken. Come what might, the troops wealth. The government was carried should not be admitted. Yet the on by elective officers to whom every means of defence were slender. Not member of the society swore fidelity on ten pounds of powder, not twenty firethe Holy Gospels.* locks fit for use, could be collected within the walls. Messengers were sent with pressing letters to summon the Protestant gentry of the vicinage to the rescue: and the summons was gallantly obeyed. In a few hours two hundred foot and a hundred and fifty horse had

While the people of the small town of Kenmare were thus bestirring themselves, similar preparations for defence were made by larger communities on a larger scale. Great numbers of gentlemen and yeomen quitted the open country, and repaired to those towns assembled. Tyrconnel's soldiers were which had been founded and incorporated for the purpose of bridling the native population, and which, though recently placed under the government of Roman Catholic magistrates, were still inhabited chiefly by Protestants. A considerable body of armed colonists mustered at Sligo, another at Charleville, a third at Mallow, a fourth still more formidable at Bandon. But the principal strongholds of the Englishry during this evil time were Enniskillen and Londonderry.

Enniskillen.

Enniskillen, though the capital of the county of Fermanagh, was then merely a village. It was built on an island surrounded by the river which joins the two beautiful sheets of water known by the common name of Lough Erne. The stream and both the lakes were overhung on every side by natural forests. Enniskillen consisted of about eighty dwellings clustering round an ancient castle. The inhabitants were, with scarcely an exception, Protestants, and boasted that their town had been true to the Protestant cause through the terrible rebellion which broke out in 1641. Early in December they received from Dublin an intimation that two companies of Popish infantry were to be immediately quartered on them. The alarm of the little community was

Exact Relation of the Persecutions, Robberies, and Losses, sustained by the Protestants of Killmare in Ireland, 1689; Smith's Ancient and Modern State of Kerry, 1756.

+ Ireland's Lamentation, licensed May 18. 1689.

already at hand. They brought with them a considerable supply of arms to be distributed among the peasantry. The peasantry greeted the royal standard with delight, and accompanied the march in great numbers. The townsmen and their allies, instead of waiting to be attacked, came boldly forth to encounter the intruders. The officers of James had expected no resistance. They were confounded when they saw confronting them a column of foot, flanked by a large body of mounted gentlemen and yeomen. The crowd of camp followers ran away in terror. The soldiers made a retreat so precipitate that it might be called a flight, and scarcely halted till they were thirty miles off at Cavan.*

The Protestants, elated by this easy victory, proceeded to make arrangements for the government and defence of Enniskillen and of the surrounding country. Gustavus Hamilton, a gentleman who had served in the army, but who had recently been deprived of his commission by Tyrconnel, and had since been living on an estate in Fermanagh, was appointed Governor, and took up his residence in the castle. Trusty men were enlisted and armed with

* A True Relation of the Actions of the Inniskilling Men, by Andrew Hamilton, Rector of Kilskerrie, and one of the Prebends of the Diocese of Clogher, an Eyewitness thereof and Actor therein, licensed Jan. 15. 1688; A Further Impartial Account of the Actions of the Inniskilling Men. by Captain William Mac Cormick, one of the first that took up Arms, 1691.

great expedition. As there was a scarcity of swords and pikes, smiths were employed to make weapons by fastening scythes on poles. All the country houses round Lough Erne were turned into garrisons. No Papist was suffered to be at large in the town; and the friar who was accused of exerting his eloquence against the Englishry was thrown into prison.*

London

Near the Cathedral rose the Palace of
the Bishop, whose see was one of the
most valuable in Ireland.
The city
was in form nearly an ellipse; and the
principal streets formed a cross, the
arms of which met in a square called
the Diamond. The original houses
have been either rebuilt or so much
repaired that their ancient character
can no longer be traced; but many of

were standing within living memory. They were in general two stories in height; and some of them had stone staircases on the outside. The dwellings were encompassed by a wall of which the whole circumference was little less than a mile. On the bastions were planted culverins and sakers presented by the wealthy guilds of London to the colony. On some of these ancient guns, which have done memorable service to a great cause, the devices of the Fishmongers' Company, of the Vintners' Company, and of the Merchant Tailors' Company are still discernible.*

The other great fastness of Protest-them antism was a place of more derry. importance. Eighty years before, during the troubles caused by the last struggle of the houses of O'Neil and O'Donnel against the authority of James the First, the ancient city of Derry had been surprised by one of the native chiefs: the inhabitants had been slaughtered, and the houses reduced to ashes. The insurgents were speedily put down and punished: the government resolved to restore the ruined town: the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of London were invited to assist in the work; and King James the First made over to them in

their corporate capacity the ground covered by the ruins of the old Derry, and about six thousand acres in the neighbourhood.†

This country, then uncultivated and uninhabited, is now enriched by industry, embellished by taste, and pleasing even to eyes accustomed to the well tilled fields and stately manor houses of England. A new city soon arose which, on account of its connection with the capital of the empire, was called Londonderry. The buildings covered the summit and slope of a hill which overlooked the broad stream of the Foyle, then whitened by vast flocks of wild swans. On the highest ground stood the Cathedral, a church which, though erected when the secret of Gothic architecture was lost, and though ill qualified to sustain a comparison with the awful temples of the middle ages, is not without grace and dignity.

*Hamilton's True Relation; Mac Cormick's Further Impartial Account.

Concise View of the Irish Society, 1822; Mr. Heath's interesting Account of the Worshipful Company of Grocers, Appendix 17.

The Interest of England in the Preservation of Ireland, licensed July 17. 1689.

The inhabitants were Protestants of Anglosaxon blood. They were indeed not all of one country or of one church: but Englishmen and Scotchmen, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, seem to have generally lived together in friendship, a friendship which is sufficiently explained by their common antipathy to the Irish race and to the Popish religion. During the rebellion of 1641, Londonderry had resolutely held out against the native chieftains, and had been repeatedly besieged in vain. Since the Restoration the city had prospered. The Foyle, when the tide was high, brought up ships of large burden to the quay. The fisheries throve greatly. The nets, it was said, were sometimes so full that it was necessary to fling back multitudes of fish into the waves. The quantity of salmon caught annually was estimated at eleven hundred thousand pounds' weight.

* These things I observed or learned on the spot.

†The best account that I have seen of what passed in Londonderry during the war which began in 1641 is in Dr. Reid's History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

The Interest of England in the Preserva tion of Ireland; 1689.

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