II. 1692 BOOK thought, they would accept without objection; but they threw it out, because it proposed that those acts should be simply cancelled; and the Commons 'found it for their majesties' service and the honour of the Protestants of Ireland, to preserve the record of the Irish barbarity, which would have been taken off the file had the bill passed.' Still more dangerously, they voted that persons commissioned by the Crown to receive the forfeited estates had broken their trust, and had fraudulently diverted them to their own use. They ordered that these persons should be prosecuted, even though they were members of their own House; and, when the Money Bill came on, the immediate object of their assembling, they would not, indeed, in the present exigencies of affairs,' refuse a supply altogether; they voted part of what the Government asked; but, as an assertion of independence, they threw out another part, because the bill had not taken its rise in their House;' and they carried a vote, that it was the undoubted right of the Irish Commons to prepare their own Money Bills, and not receive them from the Crown. Finally, when the Mutiny Act was presented as of pressing importance, and with a special request that it should be unopposed, they threw out this also, in resentment at the admission of Catholic officers into the King's service. Instead of the complacent assembly which Sydney had expected to meet, he found himself in the midst of a nest of exasperated hornets. He prorogued the Parliament till the spring with an angry rebuke. Specially offended with the interference with the Money Bill, and unconscious of the sore point on which he was treading, he 'regretted,' he said, 'that I. 1693 they who were under so many obligations to be СНАР. loyal should have entrenched on the rights of the Crown in rejecting a bill which had not originated with themselves.' He pronounced their vote to be contrary to the laws of their constitution,' and required his protest to be entered in the journals in vindication of the prerogative. The hereditary revenue was unequal to the current expenses. Without supplies the army could not be paid, and must continue to live at free quarters. Money must be raised in some way, and it appears, from Sydney's language, as if the alternative contemplated by the Government was to govern Ireland directly as a province. The King, he said, must resolve whether the Parliment should meet a second time. For himself he thought the lesson had done them good, and he was willing to try the experiment again; but he was not disposed to yield a step of his own policy. 'If they are as foolish and knavish as they were,' he wrote to Lord Nottingham, they must not sit a day.' 'If they are so mad and absurd as not to consent to what is proposed for their own good, if they are afterwards undone, I suppose they will not be pitied." About the Catholics he had speedy reason to discover that the Parliament had been wiser than himself. There was this difficulty then and always in schemes of conciliation, that they could not be acted on consistently, and were liable to be continually reversed under sudden alarms. Lord Sydney had invited Catholics into the army. A report rose in the winter of 1692-3, that a French invasion was to be BOOK II. 1693 looked for in the spring. At once he confessed himself embarrassed 'with a prodigious number of officers, who, without doubt, would do mischief when it was in their power." He had wished to extort from the Legislature a formal toleration of Romanism. He found himself within a few months obliged to recommend the suppression of all Catholic convents, schools, and colleges, and the expulsion of the Catholic hierarchy; he issued an order for an indefinite arrest of priests and regulars,' and followed it by a warrant for the dismissal of the Catholic officers and the substitution of Protestants. 3 The mistake which he had made became more apparent from the action of the Parliament in England. The revolution had given a fresh impulse to Protestantism, and revived the traditions of the past generation. The massacre of 1641 was inseparably connected with Irish Popery in every Protestant mind; and, outside the court circle, there was as much impatience at Westminster as in Dublin at the incompleteness with which Ireland was being handled. The complaints which Sydney had silenced were taken up at St. Stephen's, and the Irish grievances were embodied in a second petition, which could be less easily disposed of. The King was reminded of a promise which he had made to reserve the forfeitures for the consideration of Parliament. The Bishop of Meath and Sydney's secretary, Mr. Pulteney, were sent for and examined in committee; and the indig 1 It is uncertain whether he was alluding to officers in the King's army, or to Tyrconnell's officers, who were allowed to retain their estates under the Limerick Articles. In either case the Govern ment policy was equally condemned. 2 MSS. Record Office, Ireland, January, 1693. S May 30. MSS. Ibid. I. 1693 nation went so far that Sir Charles Porter and Lord CHAP. Coningsby were actually impeached. Coningsby boldly defended himself. Most Protestants, he said, considered that the proceedings now called traitorous had saved Ireland. The Commons decided that there was not matter to sustain a charge of treason; but both his conduct and Porter's were censured as illegal and arbitrary. The King's Government discovered that they must consider with more courtesy the opinion of Ireland. Sydney was recalled, and the Parliament with which he had quarrelled was dissolved. The first attempt at settlement had failed disastrously. A fresh beginning was to be made with new men; and Sir Henry Capel, a distinguished member of the English House of Commons, raised to the peerage as Lord Capel, was sent over to heal the wounds which had been so recklessly opened. BOOK II. 1695 SECTION II. By Two years were allowed to pass before an Irish Legislature was again assembled. The Government was embarrassed by want of money, and great questions were left open which the Protestants were eager should be closed. Both sides were disposed to a compromise when their heats cooled down, and the situation could be discussed dispassionately. judicious handling, by taking into the service of the Crown the favourites of the House of Commons, and by private assurances that their wishes would be considered more respectfully, Capel at last brought about a temper which encouraged him to issue writs for a fresh election. Robert Rochfort, a son of an officer of Cromwell's, and Alan Brodrick, who, in the last Parliament, had led the opposition, were made Attorney and Solicitor-General. Porter was retained as Chancellor, perhaps as a last chance of preserving the wide construction of the Articles of Limerick; but his general policy was discredited, his views were abandoned, and his power gone. The court had perceived at last that Ireland could be governed only by the Protestant gentry, and with some return to the principles of the rule of the Protector. The Commons, it was understood, were willing to leave in abeyance the sole right' of initiating money bills. In return, the Government promised measures for the repression of the Catholics, which on that side would relieve the anxiety. A new difficulty was now likely to rise from the leaven of Jacobitism |