BOOK future, they protest against this and any other such II. oaths censured by their pastors and Church. Upon 1710 performing and engaging to perform all which, you

will admit as many as shall come to you to the holy sacrament of penance and the rest; but not otherwise.

'I rest, sir, your brother and servant,

SECTION VI.

IF Doddington was right in 1703, when he accused two-thirds of the House of Commons of being High Flyers, the half-dozen following years worked the conversion of a great many of them. The Peers, lay and spiritual, continued malignant; the Commons, though ill inclined to Presbyterianism, were increasingly eager to vindicate their Protestantism. They had petitioned the Queen to reward the provost and fellows of Trinity for their stout adherence to 'Revolution principles.' King William was become the national hero of the country gentlemen and city tradesmen and merchants. On the 4th November, the Viceroy, Chancellor, and Judges, the Mayor and Aldermen of Dublin, walked in procession round the statue in College Green. The glorious memory of the immortal deliverer from Tyrconnell, Popery, and confiscation, became the toast at public dinnersthe criterion to discover the temper of doubtful dispositions-a counter test, as hard for the High Churchmen to swallow as the Dissenters found the sacrament. The Bishops struggled ingeniously, after their methods, to resist the imposition of it. The Bishop of Raphoe and his clergy allowed the Queen no rival in their affections, alive or dead. The Bishop of Cork announced in a sermon, that, to drink to the memory of King William, was a blasphemous parody of the words used at the consecration of the sacramental cup. Another high dignitary discovered that it was dangerously like prayers for

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เ

the dead. In Trinity College, among the younger
students, the display of loyalty to the Protestant
champion provoked hostile demonstrations extremely
curious. The expelled Edward Forbes was the leader
of a party whom his expulsion had neither terrified
nor silenced. He himself followed his 'aspersion of
King William' by a book directly in favour of the
Pretender. The lads at their supper parties, instead
of the Glorious immortal memory!' drank to James
the Third under the disguise of the Three B.'s"1
'the Man that's far away,' or 'the King before
George.' There was something, perhaps, of Irish
contradictoriness about all this. Young Ireland
considered that it had a right to choose its own
sovereign. Scotland, before the union was decided
had at one time threatened to reject the Hanover
succession. Ireland thought she had an equal right
to vindicate her liberty, since the union for which
she had asked had been refused. On the night of
the 4th November the students' chambers were dark;
on the night of the birthday of Ormond, whose
treason was divined instinctively, every window was
illuminated. The King shall enjoy his own again,'
was roared from a hundred throats; and curses and
execrations were yelled at the name of Marlborough.
By the side of the political Toryism there was a no
less singular religious reaction. Serious students,
preparing to be clergymen, were heard maintaining
that the orders of the Church of Rome were as
pure
and holy as those of the Church of England;'
'that it would be better to be ordained by the Pope
than by any English bishop;' that the Revolution

เ

1 Best Born Briton.'

had been a rebellion; that King William had been an encourager of Presbyterians and Dutch rogues; and that the nation was governed by Turks.'

These humours assumed at last a practical form. On the morning of the 26th June, 1710, all Dublin was agitated by the discovery, that the truncheon had been stolen from King William's statue, and the face plastered with mud. The opportunity had been taken when parliament, which had been sitting since May, had adjourned for six weeks. Protestant feeling was so grossly outraged, that even the Lords, who were still in Dublin, were obliged to affect indignation. They met and offered 100l. reward for the discovery of the offenders, and they declared in their Proclamation, that the persons concerned in that barbarous fact, had been guilty of the greatest insolence, baseness, and ingratitude." The guilty parties proved to be three college students. They excused themselves on the plea of boyish frolic. The explanation was accepted, and no serious punishment was thought necessary; but when the Commons reassembled in August, they expressed the most vehement indignation at an act which they interpreted as a direct manifestation of Jacobitism, and they thanked Wharton for his exertion in identifying 'the insolent miscreants' who had been concerned in it.3

On all sides the temper was growing sore. The Bishops, exasperated at Wharton's intimation that they would not be allowed to meddle with the

6

Enquiry into the State of Trinity College, forwarded by Secretary Budgell to Addison, May 30, 1715. MSS. Record Office.

2 Wharton to Sunderland, June 27, 1710. Ibid.

3 Commons' Journals, 1710.

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Dissenters, seized the first opportunity that offered to measure strength with him on a point where they felt confident of support. The Regium Donum had been restored, and there was a tacit understanding that, so long as they kept within the limits which they already occupied, and did not endeavour to extend themselves, the Presbyterian Congregations should not be interfered with.

The pluralism, gross and flagrant, of the Established Church, left many districts entirely without spiritual care. Some of these neglected places had applied to the Presbyterian synod to send them ministers, and the synod had rashly complied. Much ill-feeling had ensued. At last, Presbyterians had ventured to preach to large bodies of people at Drogheda, a place where there was no such excuse, and the Bishops resolved to make an example of them.

The congregation, described, with unapostolic scorn, as consisting of base persons, coopers, shoemakers, and tailors,' were threatened with the stocks. The ministers were arrested, carried before the mayor, and bound over to take their trial at the Assizes. They appealed to the Viceroy, and Wharton ordered the prosecution to be dropped.1

The House of Lords was now dragged into the quarrel. The Bishops, supported by the Lay Peers, whom they moved like pawns on a chess board, complained to the Queen. The Presbyterians, they said, using the language which Swift had put into their mouths, were the cause of all the disorders in Ireland, and the Earl of Wharton was standing by

1 The story is told at length in 'the Loyalty of the Presbyterians in Ireland.' There are also several

letters upon the subject among the Church MSS. in Dublin Castle.