title, majesty, power, pre-eminence, jurisdiction, prerogative, and authority of kings and queens of the same." The Irish act of the same session of parliament, chap. 3. sect. 1. contains the same doctrine.

Hence the conclusion is irrefragable, that the general insurrection of the Irish Romanists in the reign of William and Mary, though in favour of the abdicated monarch, was a rebellion against the crown of England, they being rightfully and lawfully in possession of the crown; and, in truth, the design of the rebels was a separation from England, and the establishment of a separate Romish government under the protection of France. This they made sufficiently evident; for when James had assembled all their leading men, which Romish assembly he styled a parliament; one of their first measures was, to frame a bill declaring the kingdom of Ireland separate and independent of England. When this bil was offered to James for his assent, he refused it on the principle, that his assent to such a bill would ruin his interest with his English partisans, and render his restoration to the crown of England impracticable; on which, this assembly sent him word, by his Attorney-general, that if he refused to assent to such a bill, he might depart from Ireland as soon as he thought fit, and that they would legislate for themselves. Utterly

to root out the Protestant, that is the English interest of Ireland, they repealed the acts of settlement and explanation, and thus at a jerk ruined almost all the Protestant nobility and gentry of that kingdom; but to make assurance sure, they passed a bill of attainder against all Irish Protestants of property or rank, to the amount of two thousand six hundred persons and upwards, by name, cutting off all remainders, and barring all jointures and dowers on the estates of the attainted, so that the widows, infants, and innocents, were punished equally with the attainted persons in respect of their estates. This proscription was more general and cruel than any we read of in history. James was allowed, by this bill of attainder, to pardon any of the persons attainted, on certain conditions, till a limited time expressed in the bill, but lest any of them should comply with the conditions in the bill, within the time limited, and apply to James for a pardon, the bill was never printed or published till the limited period was expired. (See Archbishop King's State of the Protestants in Ireland, and Harris's Life of King William, pages 229, 230, 231.) In short their whole conduct shewed that their taking up arms was to render themselves an independent state separated from England, and that their support of James was, in their opinion, the most eligible expedient for.ef

fecting their purpose, as his interest with the French monarch, at that time the most potent prince in Europe, seemed to them the most effectual means of procuring assistance adequate to the accomplishment of the revolution they meditated. They, in fact, esteemed James a convenient and necessary tool in their hands, for the execution of their traitorous machinations, and looked on him in no other light.

This infatuated prince, during his short reign, had directed all his measures to the subversion of the church establishment in England and Ireland in favour of Popery, but as the Romanists were the most numerous class in Ireland, and the influence of the crown much stronger in Ireland than in England; and as infractions of the law in that kingdom, subject to and dependent upon the crown of England, were attempted and effected with less noise than similar attempts in England, James acted in Ireland in defiance of the laws, not only with less reserve, but with no disguise whatsoever, for the subversion of the Protestant church establishment, and the substitution of a Romish one. He appointed an Irish adventurer, one Talbot, a furious Romanist, whom he advanced to the peerage and made a duke, Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and General and Commander-in-chief of the army there. The first manœuvre of this man was to cashier almost all the Protestant officers of the army, and to put Romanists into

their places; he was a remarkable blasphemer, constantly making use of the most horrid oaths and execrations; and when he had modelled the Irish army by the expulsion of all the Protestant officers, and the substitution of Romanists, he triumphantly expressed himself to the principal Romanists, assembled at the castle of Dublin, antecedently to the revolution in the following prophane manner, "I have put the sword into your hands and G-d d-n you and yours to all eternity if you ever part with it." Romanists were appointed judges in all the courts, and magistrates throughout the kingdom, quo warrantos were brought against the corporation of the city of Dublin, and against all other Protestant corporations throughout Ireland, and their charters mostly annulled, by judgments of his Romish judges. Though a few of them were terrified or cajoled into the surrender of their charters, new charters were granted to most of these boroughs; the corporators appointed were almost all Romanists; there was a very small intermixture of Protestants, of the most timid and complying of that profession admitted into some of them, to keep up a sort of appearance in England. The Protestants were disarmed by the government. (See Archbishop King's State of the Protestants of Ireland, and Harris's History of King William Passim.) By such means were the Protestants of Ireland, im

mediately previous to the revolution, weakened, dispirited, and given up to the power of their merciless Romish countrymen, by the English government, in the hands of a bigoted Romish monarch, insomuch that it is wonderful how they were able to maintain themselves in the major part of the province of Ulster, till they were relieved and succoured by King William after his accession.

Such was the situation of Ireland prior to the rebellion, against the crown of England, in the years 1689, 1690, and 1691; during those years the Irish Romanists rose and acted in a mass, together with a considerable body of French troops, against an army of loyal Irish Protestants, in conjunction with an English army sent to their assistance commanded by King William and his Generals. After three campaigns the Romanists were routed and driven out of almost the whole kingdom, and the mass of their army was cooped up, inclosed, besieged, and driven to the last extremity in a town situated, partly on a small island in the river Shannon, and partly on an adjacent and very minute part of the county of Limerick, connected by a bridge; the whole ambit of the town was barely sufficient to contain these routed rebels. Heaped together in this most unhealthy and inconvenient situation, they were hemmed in, on both sides of the Shannon,