which they were obliged to follow their lord, the head of that family, upon any occasion of hosting, into the field; and upon failure thereof the lands were forfeited to their lord."* From his grace's early application for these grants,† it is evident enough what use he intended to make of them; as also what were the true motives of his backwardness to conclude the cessation in 1643; and of his frequent disobedience to his majesty's urgent commands to hasten the peace of 1646; and of his carrying on, at the same time, a private correspondence and treaty with the Scotch covenanters in Ulster, in opposition to that peace; and of his hindering the Irish to be included in the general act of indemnity, after the restoration, or to be indulged with the necessary enlargement of time, for proving their inconvenience in the court of claims. From all this, I say, it is manifest that his grace fosesaw, that a differ ent conduct in any of these conjunctures, would have precluded him from some part of that vast emolument, which he expected from these grants, and which he knew, was in the end to be proportioned to the extent, duration, and heinousness of the insurrection. * "Most of the marquis of Ormond's vassals and tenants, far from per, forming this condition of their tenure, had engaged in the rebellion and fought against him in the field, And king Charles I. to prevent any interfering of the claim of the crown and the rights of the lord, and any fitigation of the marquis of Ormond's rights to those forfeited lands, had, in August 1642, conveyed to him all the right, title and interest which the crown had, or might have, in any of those lands. This was now confirmed by king Charles II. &c.”—Cart. Orm. vol. ii. fol. 218, The same writer, however, tells us, "that his grace had, in the time of the troubles, to raise money for the supply of the army and service of the crown, entered into many judgments, statutes, recognizances, mortgages, and other securities to Roman catholics, who had forfeited the same to his majesty. And that all these were first, by a special grant, and afterwards by the act of settlement, given to his grace as fully as the crown enjoyed the same; but that his grace sent directions to pay the persons who had advanced him the money on these securities, their full demand in some cases, and a just and equal composition in others." Id. ib. fol. 809.-But is it reasonable to believe, that Roman catholics who had freely lent their money to his grace, with a view of enabling him to subdue the rebels, would afterwards rashly incur a forfeiture of it by promoting or abetting the rebellion? 1642. See Cart. Orm. vol. iii, "And thus we find his noble friend, the earl of Anglesey,* acknowledging in print, in 1681, "that it was then apparent, that his grace and his family, by the forfeiture and punishment of the Irish, were the greatest gainers of the kingdom, and had added to their inheritance vast scopes of land, and a reve. nue three times greater than what his paternal estate was + be fore the rebellion; and that most of his increase was out of their estates who adhered to the peaces of 1646 and 1648, or served under his majesty's ensigns abroad." From whence his lordship justly concluded, that "his grace could not have been very sincere, in making either of these peaces with the Irish; 2 Let. to the earl of Castlehaven. Castlehav. Mem, 1st. ed. When the duke of Buckingham was endeavoring to supplant Ormond in the king's favor, and make overtures to the earl of Anglesey to join him for that purpose, the "earl rejected these overtures with indignation, and gave Ormond notice of the designs formed against him.-Lel. Hist. of Irel. vol. iii. p. 453. See Cart. Orm. vol. ii, fol. 482. A knowing contemporary writer asserts, "that the annual rents of Ormond's estate before the war, were but seven thousand pounds sterling (his ancient estate being then encumbered with annuities and leases, which otherwise was worth forty thousand pounds sterling per annum), and at present (1674) it is close upon eighty thousand. Now the first part of his new great revenues, is the king's grant of all those lands of his own estate which were leased or mortgaged; the rest were grants of other men's estates, and other gifts of his majesty." His gifts and grants are thought to amount to £630,000.—Unkind Deserter, p. 161-2. See Queries. ib. Append. p.168. The pamphlet containing these queries, was published in England soon after the restoration, but seems not to have been answered by any of the duke's friends either then or for some years after. "If his grace (says a contemporary author in 1676) or any one for him, can answer the said queries, why is he or they so long silent? they render his integrity sus pected, they wound his fame and honor. Certainly, if there were any way to answer them, and prove them false, Father Walsh would, long before now, have spoken it loudly to the world.”—Unkind Deserter, p. 172. Nor was this silence of the duke of Ormond and his friends the effect of contempt or disregard of the supposed calumny. The printer of the pam❤ phlet was prosecuted and imprisoned, and two hundred copies seized in his house; and although his poverty and charge of children were very great, yet he would never confess who set him to work; such a confesssion would have procured him his liberty, but he seemed to slight it, being maintained very well in prison, where he lay a long time very contentedly, without making any application, or using any means to be bailed or discharged."-Carte's Orm. vol. ii. fol. $85. but that, whatever moved him thereto, whether compassion, natural affection, or any thing else, he was in judgment and conscience against them; and so," adds he, "he has since appeared, and hath advantage by their laying aside."* It is, therefore, no wonder that his grace's noble brother-inlaw, lord Muskerry, when on his death-bed, declared to him. self, "that the heaviest fear that possessed his soul, then going into eternity, was for his having confided so much in his grace, who had deceived them all, and ruined his poor country and countrymen.” 3 The duke of Ormond befriends the Irish, IN the year 1679,† when so much innocent blood was shed in England, by means of the perjuries of Titus Oates, and 3 Unkind Deserter, &c. 1 Cart. Orm. vol. ii. f. 306. * "My lord duke of Ormond," says the earl of Essex, lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1674-5, "has received above £300,000 in this kingdom, besides all his great places and employments; and I am sure the losses in his private estate have not been equal to those I have suffered (in the preceding civil war), and yet he is so happy as no exception is taken to it.”State Lett. p. 213-14, +Such was the people's abhorrence of popery at this time, in England, and so light and excusable in their opinion did a person's being a protestant, render any other vice that a person might be guilty of," that when Nell Gwin (Charles II's mistress) was insulted in her coach at Oxford, by the mob, who mistook her for the duchess of Portsmouth (another mistress of that king's, but a papist), she looked out of the window, and said with her usual good humor, " pray good people be civil, I am the protestant w—e.” And this laconic speech drew upon her the blessings of the populace, who suffered her to proceed without further molestation."—Graing, Biogr. Hist, vol. iv. p. 189, note. "The notorious Titus Oates" says the reverend Mr. Grainger," was, soon after the accession of king James, convicted of perjury, upon the evidence of sixty reputable witnesses, of whom nine were protestants. He was sentenced to pay a fine of two thousand marks, to be stripped of his canonical habit, to be whipped twice in three days, by the common hangman, and to stand in the pillory at Westminster-hall gate, and at the Royal Exchange; he was moreover to be pillored five times every year, and to be imprisoned during life. The hangman performed his office with uncom mon rigor. The best thing James ever did was punishing Oates for his his flagitious associates, encouraged and patronised by the earl of Shaftsbury," the peace and quietness of Ireland was a great disappointment to that earl and his party; and they took all possible methods to provoke and exasperate the people of that kingdom, already too much discontented. For that end, they procured orders from the council of Ireland, to transmit severe bills against the Irish catholics in matter of religion, in hopes to drive them into a new rebellion. It was now proposed to introduce the test act, and all the English penal-laws, into Ireland; and that a proclamation should be forthwith issued for encouraging all persons, that could make any further discoveries of the horrid popish plot, to come in and declare the same."* 1 Cart. Orm. vol. ii, f. 494, perjury; and the greatest thing Oates ever did, was supporting himself under the most afflictive part of his punishment with the resolution and constancy of a martyr. A pension of four hundred pounds a-year was con ferred upon this miscreant by king William. He was, for a clergyman, remarkably illiterate; it is well known that he was the son of an anabaptist ; and he probably died in the communion in which he had been educated.” -Biographic. Hist. of Eng. vol. iv. p. 348. "Titus Oates (says the same biographer) was restrained by no principle, human or divine, and like Judas would have done any thing for thirty shillings; he was one of the most accomplished villains that we read of in his tory; he had been chaplain on board the fleet, whence he was dismissed for an unnatural crime, and was known to be guilty of perjury before he set up the trade of witnessing; he was successful in it beyond the most sanguine expectation: he was lodged at Whitehall, and had a pension assigned him of £1200 a-year. The era of Oates's plot was also the grand æra of whig and tory.-Id. ib. p. 201-2. Some have concluded from the following passage in D'Avaux, that the prince of Orange had a considerable share in framing this most iniquitous plot: "I presume to declare," says that count, that I have omitted nothing to discover the combinations that the prince of Orange has engaged in with the most abandoned of the English. On the 21st September, 1679, I sent intelligence that Oates, who has since that time been so notorious; Freeman, of whom I have already spoken; and Du Moulin, a man of intrigue and an execrable villain; arrived together in Holland some years past, and that the prince of Orange had been in grand conferences with them."-D'Avaur, tom.i. p. 32. See M'Pherson's Hist. of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 343. Certain it is, that after that prince became king of England, he attempted to have reversed Oates's sentence; but the commons refused to gratify him in so impious an act. That villain, however, was pardoned and pensioned by his majesty, as above-mentioned. * On the first report of the popish plot, " Peter Talbot, archbishop of The duke of Ormond, then lord lieutenant of Ireland and luckily at that juncture in England, employed all his interest with the king, to prevent the calling a parliament for these cruel purposes. "I will venture," says his grace in a letter to the earl of Arran on that occasion, "to tell you, without a cypher, that the reason why the calling of a parliament in Ireland sticks, is the severity of two bills transmitted against the papists; the one taking away the votes of peers, whilst they are papists; and the other inflicting death upon a certain sort of popish clergy, if found in Ireland; the one seeming unjust, and the other cruel, and neither necessary. For my part, I confess, if I had been here when the expelling of the popish lords passed, I should have voted against it in conscience and prudence; in conscience, because I know no reason why opinion should take away a man's birth-right; or why his goods or lands may not be as well taken away; since money misapplied is, for the most part, a more dangerous thing in disaffected hands, than a word in his mouth. And I think no less of the other bill, for upon serious and cool thoughts, I am against all sanguinary laws, in matters of religion, purely and properly so called."* 2 Cart. Orm. vol. ii, fol. 535. Dublin, in a dangerous fit of the stone, was imprisoned in the castle. Orders were issued, that all officers should repair to their respective garrisons; that popish ecclesiastics should départ from the kingdom, popish seminaries and convents should be supprest. Informations quickly multiplied, and directions were received from England to seize Richard Talbot (afterwards duke of Tyrconnel), lord Mountgarret and his son, and a colonel of the name of Peppard. Lord Mountgarret, represented as a dangerous conspirator, was of the age of eighty years, bed-ridden, and in a state of dotage; and, to the further discredit of the evidences, no colonel Peppard was known or could be found in Ireland."-Leland's History of Ireland, vol. iii. p. 474. * Previous to, and concomitant with Oates's plot, the minds of the people were inflamed by sermons, pamphlets, &c. containing the grossest and most abominable aspersions on the civil principles of Roman catholics. Thomas Barlow, bishop of Lincoln, eminently distinguished himself on that occasion, in a book of one hundred and thirty-six pages in quarto ; which though clearly refuted by Peter Walsh, in a letter to his lordship, containing five hundred and ninety pages in octavo, yet is still made use of by all the libellers on that topic, as an inexhaustible fund of arguments against allowing the rights of subjects, in these kingdoms, to the profes-, sors of that religion; although their dutiful and loyal conduct affords the |