quarters of a century to preserve their distinct identity and customs, and even appointed a burgomaster to settle their disputes; they usually adhered to some Nonconformist type of Protestantism, but lived on good terms and often intermarried with their Catholic neighbours, were peaceful and inoffensive in their habits, and without exercising any wide or general influence upon Irish life were honourably distinguished from the population around them by their far higher standard of sobriety, industry, and comfort. As agriculturists they were greatly superior to the natives; they introduced a wheelplough, and a new kind of cart, and appear to have practised drill husbandry earlier than any other class in Ireland. They were not, however, generally imitated. A great part of their superiority seems to have been due to the very exceptional advantages they enjoyed, and when in the course of time their leases fell in, and they passed into the condition of ordinary Irish tenants, the colony rapidly disappeared.1

The part which was played by the French refugees was a much more distinguished one. They came over in great numbers after the Revolution, and are said to have comprised an unusually large proportion of members of the higher classes. The Irish Parliament passed in 1692 and renewed in 1697 an Act giving them perfect freedom of worship. There were no less than three French congregations established in Dublin. There were congregations in Cork, Waterford, Carlow, Kilkenny, and Lisburn; and Portarlington, which was built on land granted to Ruvigny, the Earl of Galway, became

ments than common among these Germans; witness Sir W. Osborne's mountaineers!'-Tourin Ireland, ii. 107.

1 See Arthur Young's Tour, i. 468, 480-2; ii. 107; and Wesley's

Journal. A few other facts relating to the Palatines will be found in Mitchell's Hist. of Ireland, i. 47, and in Curry's State of the Catholics in Ireland, ii. 245.

in a great degree a French settlement. Most of the exiles conformed to the Established Church, and translated its liturgy into their own language. They threw themselves very actively into every form of industry, and identified themselves thoroughly with Irish interests. As we have already seen, the first literary journal in Ireland was edited by a French pastor, and the first florists' society was established by refugees. The linen manufacture, which is the most important branch of Irish industry, owed to them very much of its extension and prosperity. The silk manufacture was introduced into Ireland from the French colony at Spitalfields. Portarlington became noted for its schools, great numbers of pupils being attracted by the opportunity of learning French, which was the common language of the town. Among the refugees who ultimately took up their abode in Ireland was Abbadie, who became Dean of Killaloe, and whose treatise on the truth of the Christian religion was pronounced by Pitt to be the most powerful defence of the faith. Cavalier, before he was made Lieutenant-Governor of Jersey, had spent many years in Ireland, and had published there his Memoirs of the Wars in the Cevennes.' 2 Crommelin received the thanks of Parliament and a donation of 10,000l. for the eminent service he had done the country in the establishment of the linen manufacture.3 The name of La Touche has for more than a century been foremost

in every good work in Ireland, and the family who bore it were long the most prominent bankers in Dublin. Barré, who distinguished himself at the siege of Quebec, and who was conspicuous in English parliamentary life during the early years of George III., was a member of a French family in Dublin, and the families of Des Voeux, Lefanu, Maturin, Saurin, and Lefroy all rose in different ways to some distinction. A school for the education of the children of impoverished refugees was established in Dublin in 1723, and still existed in 1818; and in the beginning of the nineteenth century French churches founded by refugees still existed in Dublin, Cork, and Lisburn. In Portarlington the service was celebrated in French till 1816, when it was found that the language had almost died out. Even at the present day the French names of many of its inhabitants, and the title of French Church still retained by one of its places of worship, preserve the memory of its Huguenot origin.1

It is not surprising that the amount of crime and disorder in the country should have been very considerable. Extreme poverty, nomadic habits, the antagonism of law and religion, recent civil war, and the prevalence of smuggling were obvious causes, and there was another influence peculiar to Irish life. While the more enterprising members of the innumerable families that were driven from their ancestral properties found honourable

1 Whitelaw and Warburton's Hist. of Dublin, ii. 841, 842. Burns's Hist. of Protestant Refugees in England, pp. 247-251. Smiles's Huguenots in England and Ireland. Smith's Hist. of the County Waterford, p. xi. Weiss's Hist. des Réfugiés Français, i. 280, 281. Some interest

ing particulars about the French settlement at Portarlington will be found in the Appendix to the Mémoires inédits de Dumont de Bostaquet. See, too, a valuable series of papers on the refugees in the Ulster Journal of Archaology.

careers upon the Continent, most of the feebler and the baser elements remained. Ejected proprietors whose names might be traced in the annals of the Four Masters, or around the sculptured crosses of Clonmacnoise, might be found in abject poverty hanging around the land which had lately been their own, shrinking from servile labour as from an intolerable pollution, and still receiving a secret homage from their old tenants. In a country where the clan spirit was intensely strong, and where the new landlords were separated from their tenants by race, by religion, and by custom, these fallen and impoverished chiefs naturally found themselves at the head. of the discontented classes; and for many years after the Commonwealth, and again arter the Revolution, they and their followers, under the names of tories and rapparees, waged a kind of guerilla war of depredations upon their successors. After the first years of the eighteenth century, however, this form of crime appears to have almost ceased; and although we find the names of tories and rapparees on every page of the judicial records, the old meaning was no longer attached to them, and they had become the designations of ordinary felons, at large in the country. The tradition of the original tories, however, had a very mischievous effect in removing the stigma from agrarian crime, while, on the other hand, the laws against them bore clear traces of the convulsions of civil war Felons at large were proclaimed by the grand juries 'tories in arms and on their keeping.' By a law of 1697, any tory who killed two other proclaimed tories, was entitled to his pardon.2 By a law

1 Many particulars about the tory depredations between the Act of Settlement and the Revolution will be found in Russell and Prendergast's Report to the Master of the Rolls on the Carte

Manuscripts, pp. 92–98, and also in Mr. Prendergast's Ireland from the Restoration to the Revolution.

29 Will. III. c. 9.

which was enacted in 1717, and which did not finally expire till 1776, the same indulgence was conceded to any tory who brought in the head of one of his fellows.1 When Bishop Nicholson first visited his diocese in the North, he found the heads of numerous rapparees placed in all the northern counties over the gaols, and their quarters (for they were executed as for treason) gibbeted through the country.2 Small bands of armed men might be found in many districts attacking houses and levying blackmail. Thus, in 1705, a band under a noted tory named Callihan-numbering at one time five or six, at another as many as fourteen men-infested the counties of Kerry and Cork. In the same year a magistrate of Dungannon speaks of about fifty tories who were then out in the country. In 1725 a band of this kind hovered about the mountains where the Queen's County, the county of Kilkenny, and the county of Carlow touch. In 1739 and 1740 a large band struck terror through the county of Carlow. In 1743 the horrors of famine produced a great increase of highway robbery, and in 1760 a formidable party of agrarian criminals, under a leader known as Captain Dwyer, committed numerous outrages in Tipperary.3

In these facts, however, there is little that was distinctive or peculiar to Ireland. If a bishop had occasionally to be escorted through the mountain passes by guards as he travelled to his diocese, if in advertisements of county fairs we sometimes find notices that the roads on these occasions would be specially protected, such incidents might easily have happened in England. The neighbourhood of London swarmed with highwaymen, and many parts of England were constantly infested by

14 George I. c. 9.

2 British Museum Add. MSS. 6116, p. 195.

3 I have taken these cases from

the Presentments of Grand Juries (Irish State Paper Office) and the Civil and Miscellaneous Correspondence (Irish Record Office).