placed himself at its head. He rode slowly down the hill. His brilliant uniform glittered in the evening light. "The day is ours, boys!" he cried. "They are broken! Let us beat them to some purpose!"

Then something sped through the air from the enemy's right; struck him and carried his head away. The dead man's horse swung round, the body upright in the saddle for a pace or two before it fell to the ground. A paralysis seized his officers. The battle was all but won; this charge would have completed the victory, yet his second in command, de Tesse, a Frenchman, did not advance. Instead of making that charge for victory, he began to retire. Ginckel's almost beaten army saw the movement, pressed forward. Mackay's Horse turned the left flank of the Irish. In the centre the Irish held the ground till they were caught between Ginckel's and Mackay's men. Then the rout commenced.

And Sarsfield, waiting for orders on the other side of the hill, only knew the day was lost as the Irish regiments broke over the crest. To keep back the foe was now impossible. But cool, great, he kept his head, and organised the retreat in so masterly a way that a document in the French annals says "He performed miracles, and if he was not killed or taken it was not from any fault of his own." He led his soldiers in order to Limerick.

The Irish army gathered there. On the 25th of August, Ginckel invested the city on three sides. William wanted the war ended; Ginckel was empowered to give favourable terms. A free pardon was offered to all; the Catholic gentry would be restored to their estates. The offer created at once a peace party within the city. It was opposed by Sarsfield. French aid might come; the army could defend Limerick again. He won, and Ginckel's summons was refused. Sixty guns then opened upon the city; an English fleet bombarded it from the river. But Limerick remained untaken. Once more she showed the soul of her army and her citizens. Unable to carry the town by assault, Ginckel turned the siege into a blockade. Then Luttrel, an Anglo-Irish officer, long suspected, showed him a pass over the Shannon. One morning the Irish beheld the foe on the Clare side of the river. Again Ginckel offered favourable terms.

The peace party said it was folly to refuse. This party, resisted, Sarsfield saw, would attempt to hand over the city to Ginckel.

Yet Limerick made one more fight. It was September 23rd. From dawn the bloody struggle lasted. Then a parley was held; firing ceased. For the third time Ginckel offered his terms. At last, Sarsfield accepted them. When the soldiers and citizens heard

that the defence had ended, they uttered loud cries of anger and grief, many ran to the ramparts and broke their weapons there. Limerick had capitulated!

The terms were to be signed in the presence of the Lord Justices. Sarsfield demanded that. They came posting down from Dublin; they put their signatures to the treaty. Irish Catholics were to have the right to exercise their religion; to have the rights of citizens; to be preserved from all disturbances. By the military articles, the garrison was to march out with arms and guns, baggage, colours flying, drums beating. Officers and men, Rapparees and volunteers, who wished to expatriate themselves, were free to do so, and might depart in companies or parties. If plundered on the way, William's government was to make good their loss. Fifty ships were to be provided for their transportation; two menof-war for the officers.

Ginckel did not want that fine war material to escape. Would the Irish regiments join France or William? On the 5th of October they were to march out of Limerick. That day they were to make their choice. The royal standards of England and France were set up in a field. To one standard or the other each regiment was to turn. Sarsfield, Ginckel and their staffs watched the scene. The Irish Foot Guards came first, the finest of the regiment, fourteen hundred strong. They marched to the Standards. Then, without a pause, the splendid column wheeled to the side of France. That day of the fourteen thousand men of the Irish army, only one thousand and forty-six men turned to William's standard.

A few days later a French fleet came up the Shannon. It brought men, money, arms, ammunition, stores and clothing. The news reached Sarsfield. Stunned, he remained silent for a few moments. Then :-"Too late," he said, "the Treaty is signed. Ireland's and our honour is pledged. Though one hundred thousand Frenchmen offered to aid us now, we must keep our word!"

In his quarters Ginckel heard that the fleet had come. He was alarmed. Would Sarsfield tear up the Treaty? Would the French soldiers land? Would the Irish regiments listed for France, men with their arms, renew the fight? The cautious Dutchman, an honest brave man, himself, feared.

But his anxiety was soon ended. Sarsfield, the unbuyableSarsfield, the man of honour-had forbidden the French to land. Instead, their ships were to transport the Irish regiments to France.

Not a man of these saw Ireland again.

CHAPTER LIII

THE LATER PENAL LAWS

WHEN fire and sword had signally failed to suppress the Irish race, new means to that end must be found. So the fertile mind of the conqueror invented the Penal Laws.

Professor Lecky, a Protestant of British blood and ardent British sympathy, says (in his History of Ireland in the 18th Century) that the object of the Penal Laws was threefold:

(1) To deprive the Catholics of all civil life

(2) To reduce them to a condition of most extreme and brutal ignorance

(3) To dissociate them from the soil.

He might, with absolute justice, have substituted Irish for Catholics-and added, (4) To extirpate the Race.

"There is no instance," says Dr. Samuel Johnson, “even in the Ten Persecutions, of such severity as that which the Protestants of Ireland exercised against the Catholics." 1

Like good wine the Penal code improved with age. It was only in the 18th century that it attained the marvellous perfection which caused Edmund Burke to describe it as "a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, as well fitted for the oppression, im

1 Dr. Johnson evidently laboured under delusion that these dreadful persecutions were entirely the fault of the Protestants of Ireland, not of the Government of England. Lecky, however, knew Irish history; and this is what he has to say of the Penal Code (in his "History of Ireland in the 18th Century"): "It was not the persecution of a sect, but the degradation of a nation. It was the instrument employed by a conquering race (the Anglo-Irish) supported by a neighbouring Power, to crush to the dust the people among whom they were planted. And, indeed, when we remember that the greater part of it was in force for nearly a century, that its victims formed at least three-fourths of the nation, that its degrading and dividing influence extended to every field of social, political, professional, intellectual, and even domestic life, and that it was enacted without the provocation of any rebellion, in defiance of a treaty which distinctly guaranteed the Irish Catholics from any further oppression on account of their religion, it may be justly regarded as one of the blackest pages in the history of persecution."

So it is not to be wondered at that in the early part of the 18th century a foreign observer in Ireland noted that a Catholic could easily be told by his stooped carriage and subdued manner. Even when Thackeray visited Ireland the Catholic priests, he noted, had an abashed look. The innocent man wondered why that

was so!

poverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man"-and the French jurist Montesquieu to say of it that it was "conceived by demons, written in blood, and registered in Hell."

In the treaty of Limerick the faith and honour of the Crown were pledged not only that the Irish in Ireland should, in their lives, liberties and property be equally protected with the British usurpers in Ireland—but it was especially pledged that they should be "protected in the free and unfettered exercise of their religion." And this solemn pledge of the British crown by which the Irish were induced to lay down their arms marked the beginning of a national robbery and national persecution which for cold-blooded systemisation was hitherto unapproached in the history of Irish persecutions. Just as the flagrant breaking of the solemn Treaty of Limerick is hardly paralleled in history.

When the Lords Justice returned to Dublin after signing the treaty, Dr. Dopping, Protestant Lord Bishop of Meath, preached before them in Christ Church Cathedral upon the sin of keeping faith with Papists. All over the country the persecution and plundering of the papist began again, and was soon in full swing. A million acres of papists' lands were confiscated, and their owners reduced to beggary. The British settlers in Ireland began bombarding Parliament with petitions against the Irish papists. If these people got their liberties it was shown that Ireland would be no place for decent British people.3

And, just three years after the faith and honour of the British crown had been pledged for the protection of the papists, the Parliament passed its "Act for the Better Securing of the Government against Papists." Under this Act, no Catholic could henceforth have "gun, pistol or sword, or any other weapon of offence or de

2 An English gentleman who received the estate in Cork robbed from the McCarthy, was in the twilight of a summer day walking in his easily acquired demesne, when he came on an old man seated under a tree, sobbing heart breakingly. He approached the grieved one, and asked the cause of his grief. "These lands," said the broken old man, "and that castle were mine. This tree under which I sit was planted by my hand. I came here to water it with my tears, before sailing to-night for Spain."

3 Exempli gratia

"A petition of one Edward Spragg and others in behalf of themselves and other Protestant porters in and about the city of Dublin, complains that one Darby Ryan, a captain under the late King James, and a Papist, buys up whole cargoes of coals and employs porters of his own persuasion to carry the same to customers, by which the petitioners are hindered from their small trade and gains. The petition was referred to the Committee of Grievances to report upon it to the House." -(Commons Journals, ii, 699). The impudent villainy of the papist Darby!

fence, under penalty of fine, imprisonment, pillory, or public whipping." It was provided that any magistrate could visit the house of any of the Irish, at any hour of the night or day, and ransack it for concealed weapons. Says John Mitchel of this clause, “It fared ill with any Catholic who fell under the displeasure of his formidable neighbours. No papist was safe from suspicion who had money to pay fines-but woe to the papist who had a handsome daughter!"

Under the pledged faith and honour of the British crown, which promised to secure the Irish from any disturbance on account of their religion, there was passed, next (in the ninth year of William's reign), "An Act for banishing all Papists exercising any ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and regulars of the Popish clergy, out of this kingdom." This Act provided that "All Popish Archbishops, Bishops, Vicars-General, Deans, Jesuits, Monks, Friars, and all other regular Popish clergy shall depart out of this kingdom before the first day of May, 1698"-under penalty of transportation for life if they failed to comply-and under penalty to those who should dare to return, of being hanged, drawn, and quartered.*

And by such liberality of the British was the Irish nation repaid for the generosity it had shown them in its short hour of triumph. And the new and improved era of persecution which began under William-whose faith and honour were pledged that the Irish Catholics should be "protected in the free and unfettered exercise of their religion"-marched onward henceforth with marvellous stride.

Before going on to enumerate the new Penal Laws that were enacted, and the old that were confirmed, it is worth while to glance back a couple of years, and note how Irish Catholics, when the rule of their own country came into their hands, treated their long-time

4 Lecky: "In Ireland all Catholic archbishops, bishops, deacons and vicarsgeneral were ordered by a certain day to leave the country. If after that date they were found in it, they were to be first imprisoned and then banished, and if they returned they were pronounced guilty of high treason and were liable to be hanged, disembowelled, and quartered. Nor were these idle words. The law of 1709 offered a reward of fifty pounds to any one who secured the conviction of any Catholic archbishop, bishop, deacon vicar-general."

Every Irish Catholic could be compelled at any time of the day or night to go before two Justices of the Peace and swear where he heard Mass, who officiated, and who was present. He was forbidden to harbour a schoolmaster or a priest under pain of having all his goods confiscated.

The Anglo-Irish House of Commons of 1719 carried a Bill against Papists in which it was provided that a captured priest who had been officiating in secret, should be branded with a red hot iron upon the cheek. The bill was vetoed in England.