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The Articles of Capitulation at Limerick
were fair and just; James considered them even generous. But the Irish
and French generals had it in their power to make almost any terms they
pleased. William's army, though it had taken Thomond Bridge over the Shannon
and the fort which guarded it, was as far as ever from entering the city.[1]
Besides the rumours of the near approach of the French fleet to relieve
the town, William's troops, which had met in Ireland with a resolute resistance
such as they had not expected, were sorely needed in Flanders to check
the rapid advance of the armies of Louis XIV.
[1] G. Story, Continuation of the Impartial History of the Wars in Ireland
(1691), p. 276.
Berwick says that the generals of the Prince of Orange would have agreed
to almost anything to put an end to the war. By the Military Articles
liberty was given to any officers and soldiers to pass overseas to France
or any other place they wished, with their families and goods; ships and
money being provided for their embarkation. Prisoners of war were to be
set free and the sick allowed to embark at a later date. In consideration
of the surrender of the town the garrison was to march out with military
honours, retaining their horses and a portion of their guns; the garrisons
of the counties of Clare, Cork, and Kerry were to have the same terms
as Limerick in every respect. But once embarked for foreign countries
there was to be no return. Ginkel made it clear that any man or officer
who entered the armies of France, or any other forces of King William's
enemies, could never re-enter the country on pain of death; the choice
to be made was final.
The men were called upon to choose whether they would go into permanent
exile or enter the army of William. Both sides did their best to persuade
the disbanding army to declare for their respective masters. Ginkel, who
regretted the loss of hundreds of well-seasoned troops and their absorption
into the ranks of the new King's enemies, to be later used against him,
did all that he could in the way of persuasion to induce them to stay
at home. The French officers, on the other hand, promised them good positions
in France and high pay "equal to what they would receive in England,"
if they would adhere to the French interest. They were desirous of transporting
as many full companies as they could in order to secure for themselves
a good reception in France. The clergy supported them, preaching that
they would best serve their own cause and that of religion by entering
the armies of Louis and following King James to France, "and then
a good quantity of brandy to wash it down."[2] With these contrary
admonitions ringing in their ears the men were drawn out in divisions,
fourteen thousand men by poll, on the Clare side of the Shannon, and ordered
to march forward; those inclining to go to France were to march straight
on, while those who had decided to stay at home or enter the army of William
were to file off at a given point.
[2] Ibid., p. 260.
To Ginkel's disappointment the Royal Regiment, which contained fourteen
hundred of the pick of the army, marched steadily forward under their
officers, while of the remaining foot part went one way and part the other.
But of the large body of men who, under the influence of their comrades'
examples, had volunteered for France dozens ran away before they reached
the port of embarkation at Cork; of the fourteen hundred who had promised
to go one week before not five hundred arrived at the port in time for
the departure of the transports. The ships sailed but half-full. The Ulster
Irish, sooner than go abroad or remain in the south, moved home to the
north in throngs, driving their cattle and blocking the roads with their
goods, preferring, says Story, to make the long journey into Ulster, "rather
than to settle in Kerry, Clare, and Limerick, where land was plenty and
cheap, among the Irish of Munster."[3]
[3] G. Story, op. cit., 270-271.
According to James's account thirty thousand men passed into France to
join the Scottish Jacobite troops already assembled there after the defeat
at Dunbar. In most cases the wives and children of the soldiers seem to
have gone with them, and Sarsfield superintended their embarkation at
Cork, he himself crossing over with the last boat. A certain number of
the troops were also carried from Kerry to Brest, and here an unfortunate
accident occurred, which embittered the feelings of the departing soldiers.
The men were embarked first according to list, the boats returning for
the officers and the families of the men. Whether the boats or the ships
were overfull, or from the haste of the French officers to get the men
off, some women, fearing to be left behind, clung to the boats and were
dragged out to sea. Many were drowned, and the fingers of those who held
tight were barbarously chopped off, so that they fell into the water.
O'Kelly states that the women and families were left behind, contrary
to the Articles, but it is clear that many crossed over with their husbands
and fathers.
At Cork Sarsfield had room to spare, and both the English and French
gazettes of the day speak of the arrival of the main body of troops in
France with their wives and children.[4] James was said to be very pleased
at their arrival, and he took an early opportunity of reviewing the newly
landed troops; but among the French "the Irish did not find themselves
so very welcome as they expected to have been."[5] In spite of the
promises made, the rank of every officer was reduced to what it had been
before the war, the temporary war rank not being taken into account, and
with it the rate of pay. No proper quarters were provided for the men,
who had to encamp in the open fields outside Brest, and they as well as
the officers had to be content with the low pay of the country. James
had good reason to feel touched that they acquiesced in an arrangement
so disadvantageous to themselves "merely to please their own King
and in hopes that the overplus of their just pay, amounting to 50,000
livres a month, retrenched from them, might abate the obligations of their
Master to the French Court."[6] These men compare most favourably
with the multitude of self-seeking gentry in England who, the moment they
saw James in difficulties, hastened to make terms with the other side.
A Williamite writer of the day speaks of them as "those unhappy gentlemen
who by the loss of plentiful fortunes at home had nothing left but their
swords."[7] He comments on their "inflexible steadiness to the
interest of an unfortunate and declining king, whom they looked upon as
their lawful sovereign" and for whom they exposed themselves "to
inexpressible hardships and perpetual dangers" rather than accept
the terms offered to them by William, whom they regarded as a usurper.
[4] Macariae Excidium, p. 157, and notes, pp. 493-495. There had been
some discussion on this subject between Sarsfield and Ginkel, however,
difficulties having been raised by the French about the embarkation of
the women ; see Sarsfield's letter in Gilbert, Jacobite Narrative of the
War in Ireland, 1688-91 (1892), Appendix No. XVII (2), pp. 308-9.
[5] G. Story op. cit., pp. 288-290, and see the letter of complaint from
an Irish Officer, p. 291.
[6] Ibid., p. 289; J. S. Clarke, Life of James II, from his own memoirs,
ii, and Jacobite tract, quoted J. C. O'Callaghan, History of the Irish
Brigades in the Service of France, pp. 30-31.
[7] Forman, quoted J. C. O'Callaghan, op. cit., p. 31.
They were formed into a bodyguard for James, and became part of the famous
Irish Brigade, which made its valour felt on every battlefield of Europe
during the next hundred years. The nucleus of this fine fighting force
had been formed by the troops that had been exchanged by James for the
French regiments sent over early in the war by Louis XIV, and who had
gone abroad in 1689 under Viscount Mountcashel. The commanders of the
other regiments, as now reformed, were the Hon. Colonel Daniel O'Brien,
soon to become Viscount Clare, the colonel of the famous "Clare's
Dragoons," and young Arthur Dillon, son of Viscount Dillon, a dashing
soldier without whose leadership the troops absolutely refused to leave
Ireland. The new contingent brought the Brigade up to 24,430 men. They
wore the grey tunics and the hats turned up with the white cockade which
gave rise to many a Jacobite song. There is a touch of humour in the displeasure
they showed at the grey uniform; they wanted the scarlet coats of the
British infantry ! Nor would they be satisfied until on the review of
the regiments by James at Brest he brought them the promise of the King
of France that they should have red coats instead of the tunics in which
they had fought at Limerick. It was only when, at Fontenoy, they were
mistaken for British regiments by their own allies that they consented
to a change. Many of them were flung into the wars of Flanders and Savoy,
and the watchfulness, resource, and steadfastness of the Irish Brigade
at Cremona under Mahony placed it in the highest rank of valour. They
had, as the French commander reported, "accomplished marvels"
in the difficult campaign in Savoy and Piedmont.
Yet when Mahony was sent to Paris to report, he said nothing of the Irish
troops. King Louis noticed the omission. "You have said nothing,"
he observed, "of my brave Irish." "Sire, we emulated the
martial ardour of the other troops," was their captain's simple reply.[8]
Such were the men, brave, modest, loyal, who in an evil day for their
country went as exiles out of Ireland. They were to be joined, during
the succeeding years, by numbers of their fellow-countrymen who fled from
the rigour of the penal laws in the reigns of William and Anne. They won
abroad the fame and position that should have been theirs by right at
home, but they left the country of their birth leaderless, bereft of the
wisdom and moderation which might have guided popular causes in the future
into sound channels of reform, instead of running into dangerous courses
and underground methods. It is hard to know whether England or Ireland
suffered the greater loss through the defection of these Catholic gentlemen,
the natural leaders of their people. "Cursed be the laws that deprived
me of such soldiers!" exclaimed George II, when, in 1745, his regiments
faced the charge of the Irish Brigade on the field of Fontenoy.
[8] "Vous ne me parlez que des Francois hê! qu'auront done
fait mes braves Irlandois?" "Sire, nous avons suivi leur rapidité
guerrièrê." J. C. O'Callaghan, op. cit., 215-216.
It was in Flanders, in the battle of Landen in 1693, that Sarsfield was
fated to die. The village had been taken and retaken several times, and
Sarsfield, Lord Lucan, had distinguished himself by his courage and intrepidity.
He commanded the left wing of the French army, and just as they were pushing
their way into the place their leader fell, pierced by a bullet in the
breast. It was the fiercest stand-up fight, men said, until the battle
of Malplaquet. "At Landen the Irish guards avenged the affront of
the Boyne," but the loss of Sarsfield made it a sad day for Ireland.
To his countrymen he was, and has remained ever since, the idol and the
darling of their dreams. On one side of Anglo-Norman descent, on the other
the son of Anne O'More, daughter of "Rory of the Hills," he
seemed in some mysterious way to embody the hopes and sorrows of his people.
His portrait shows him to have been a dreamer, a man of ideals. Whether
he was a great general or whether, as James unkindly said, "he had
no head," to Irishmen he was a very perfect, gentle knight, and he
died as became a gentleman.
We have hitherto considered only the Military Articles of the Capitulation
of Limerick; it is necessary also to speak of the Civil Articles, of which
the King remarks with justice in his Life, "Had the English kept
them as religiously as such engagements ought to be observed, the world
had not seen so many crying examples of ancient and noble families reduced
to the last degree of indigence, only for adhering to their Prince in
just defence of his right."[9] The inhabitants of Limerick had at
first proposed their own terms of surrender. They had sent Sarsfield and
Wauchop to Ginkel with seven articles, which included free liberty of
worship to Catholics and one priest to each parish; civil rights as citizens,
with the power to enter all employments civil and military; and the restoration
of such estates as had been held by Catholics before the Revolution. They
also prayed for an Act of Indemnity for all past offences. These proposals
Ginkel peremptorily refused, saying that though he was a stranger to the
laws of England yet he understood that what they insisted on was so far
contradictory to them and dishonourable to himself that he would not grant
any such terms.
[9] J. S. Clarke, James II, ii, 466-467.
As finally agreed, the Civil Articles restored "to the Roman Catholics
such privileges in the exercise of their religion as are consistent with
the laws of Ireland, or as they did enjoy them in the reign of Charles
II"; with the promise that "as soon as their affairs will permit
them to summon a Parliament in this kingdom, their Majesties will endeavour
to procure the said Roman Catholics such further security in that particular
as may preserve them from any disturbance upon the account of their said
religion." Full liberty to enjoy their estates, rights, titles, and
privileges was granted to all the inhabitants of Limerick or any other
garrison town in possession of the Irish, and to all officers and soldiers
of King James now in arms in his service over all the southern counties,
and "all such as are under their protection in the said counties,"
on taking the oath of allegiance to William and Mary. This included the
inhabitants of Limerick, Cork, Kerry, Clare, Sligo, and Mayo, which are
specified by name. Moreover, the right to exercise their callings, trades,
and professions, whatsoever they might be, was to be recovered and held
"as freely as they did use, exercise, and enjoy the same in the reign
of King James II," on taking the oath of allegiance to their present
Majesties. A special mention is made of merchants and traders beyond seas
who were also to be received and restored if they returned home and submitted
within eight months. All persons included in the above wide classes were
to receive a general pardon on submission. The oath demanded was a simple
declaration of allegiance to the new King and Queen, unaccompanied by
those Oaths of Supremacy and Abjuration, which every Catholic held to
be incompatible with his religion. This important concession was made
more definite by a special clause in the treaty, which said: "The
oath to be administered to such Roman Catholics as submit to their Majesties'
Government shall be the oath above-said, and no other."
In reading the Articles it is difficult to see how they could have been
made wider or more liberal in the era in which they were penned. They
were, indeed, to use O'Bruadair's word, "life giving" to the
persons they concerned. The men who signed the Articles had a right to
expect from them liberty in the quiet exercise of their religion, with
the peaceable pursuit of their callings and professions and the possession
of their properties; those common human rights to preserve which for their
subjects Governments exist. It gave them somewhat more enlarged terms
than those which had been given to Galway on its capitulation a short
time before. These included only the "private exercise of their religion
to the Roman Catholic clergy, without prosecution by the penal laws, with
protection of their persons and goods," and the right to lawyers
to practise their profession in peace. Though the Lords Justices who signed
the Articles of Limerick were not officially authorized to agree to these
precise terms, they Lad been directed by William III to offer "any
reasonable terms." Moreover, they undertook "that their Majesties
will ratify these Articles within the space of eight months, or sooner,
and will use their utmost endeavours that the same shall be ratified and
confirmed in Parliament." With these modifications the Articles were
agreed to by the still unconquered city.[10] O'Kelly says that "the
Articles of Capitulation were not so warily drawn but room was left for
captious exceptions," and in fact the clause printed on p. 172 in
italics, which gave equal privileges to all protected persons in the counties
as to the garrison towns, was, either through inadvertence or purposety,
left out in the engrossed copy, thus excluding from the treaty all the
civil inhabitants originally included in the terms, and limiting the pardon
to the garrisons under arms. But it was reinserted at the demand of the
signatories, who now had the additional weight of the French fleet behind
them, and it was solemnly assented to in the copy signed by the King and
Queen, who ratified the treaty in London three months later.
[10] The Articles of Limerick will be found in Harris, Life of William
III (1749), pp. 349-350; see also Sir John Gilbert, Jacobite Narrative
of the War in Ireland, 1688-91 (1892), pp. 298-308.
The only step left to make the treaty into law was its passage into an
Act of Parliament. There is no doubt that William intended to carry out
his pledge. To the Dublin Parliament of 1695 he urged that the treaty
should be ratified as it stood. He desired peace, and had long ago offered
the Irish much more favourable conditions than those of Limerick, in the
hope of bringing the war to an early conclusion. But this proclamation
had been 'smothered' by the Lords Justices, who, hearing that Limerick
was about to capitulate, had hurried off to the camp "that they might
hold the Irish to as hard terms as the King's affairs would admit."
It was with these views in their minds that they drew up and signed the
terms.[11] Almost immediately a party sprang up in Ireland who determined
that the Articles should never be ratified. They had hoped to reap large
fortunes out of forfeitures, and the newly made Williamites, whose adhesion
was probably hastened by the hope of substantial benefits accruing to
the winning side, "thought that no terms at all should have been
made with the Irish, but that they should have been destroyed root and
branch." A large body of moderate Protestants were of a wholly different
opinion, feeling "that it was for his Majesty's honour and interest
both abroad and at home that the Articles should be strictly observed."[12]
Story, the Williamite historian, considered that it was "fully as
unreasonable to destroy other people purely because they cannot think
as we do as it is for one man to ruin another because the outward figure
and shape of his body is not the same with his own."[13] But these
moderate opinions had little weight against the extreme party led by Dopping,
Bishop of Meath, who preached a furious sermon against the treaty from
the pulpit of Christ Church Cathedral on the return of the Lords Justices,
arguing that no faith should be kept with the Irish. He was replied to
the following Sunday by Dr Moreton, Bishop of Kildare, and the King showed
his approval by removing Dopping and appointing Moreton in his place.
William had little power, however, and during the whole of his reign he
was engaged in struggles with his English Parliament, who desired to reduce
their foreign King to a figurehead in English politics. Nevertheless he
cannot be absolved from having abandoned his Irish subjects to the "New
Colonial Interest" then paramount in Ireland.
[11] Harris, Life of William III, p. 350.
[12] Harris, op. cit., p. 372.
[13] G. Story, Continuation of the Impartial History of the Wars in Ireland
(1691), p. 275.
The Articles were altogether omitted from the consideration of the Irish
Parliament of 1692-93, and by the time the Parliament of April 1695 was
called together the "New Interest" had so got the upper hand
that the main object in calling the Parliament was declared to be the
"great work of a firm settlement of Ireland upon a Protestant interest."
In such an atmosphere there was little chance of fair treatment for Catholics.
The chances of a just fulfilment of the Articles were still further imperilled
by the discussion in the same Parliament of the Acts of James's Irish
Parliament of 1689, with its Bill of Attainder against the Protestant
landowners. These Acts were all declared void, and erased from the Roll,
and it was in an angry spirit that the House passed on to the consideration
of the Limerick treaty. They rode roughshod over its terms, altogether
omitting the first clause, which contained the charter of the people's
liberties, and declared that "so much of them as may consist with
the safety and welfare of your Majesty's subjects in this kingdom"
only should be confirmed. The disputed clause in the first draft was again
omitted, though solemnly sworn to by the King, and the clauses giving
the Catholics the right of exercising callings and professions were annulled.
Thus in point of social standing the Catholics were flung back again into
the position of inferiors, barred from any hope of rising into positions
of trust or influence; and in regard to religious belief they were less
free than at any time under either the Tudors or the Stuarts. An Act of
the Parliament of 1692 had already made void the simple oath of allegiance
which Catholics were to be called upon to take, and had substituted a
new oath, including a declaration against transubstantiation, for all
members of either House of the Irish Parliament, thus effectually excluding
Catholic members from both Houses.
These Clauses were speedily followed by two others, one for "disarming
all Papists," except the officers covered by the Articles, and the
other to restrain Catholics from sending their children abroad for education.
Thus began "the dark night," as it has well been called, of
the penal laws which marked the period of Protestant ascendency, and continued
for a century and a quarter, gradually spreading its corrupting and debasing
influence over the whole life of the Irish people, gentry and peasants
alike.
The Acts of William and Mary were succeeded in Anne's reign by the Act
of 1704 to "prevent the further growth of Popery," the first
of those two Acts which Burke has termed the "ferocious" Acts
of Anne. The effect of these Acts entered into the home by taking from
a Catholic father the guardianship of his own children, and tempting a
son to turn Protestant by rewarding him with his father's lands. Properties
held by Catholics were broken up by a clause which forbade their descent
to the eldest son if he were of his father's religion; in that case the
property was to be equally divided among all the children; but if the
eldest son was or became a Protestant, even in name, he inherited the
whole property. The object of such provisions was clearly to degrade the
status of the Catholic owner and to pass lands into Protestant hands.
Intermarriage with Protestants was prohibited. Catholics could neither
purchase, sell, bequeath, or inherit landed property, or take land on
a longer lease than thirty-one years; and all inducement to improve land
was taken away by a provision that if a farm produced a profit greater
than one-third of the rent, it should pass to any Protestant who should
discover the rate of profit. Such a provision led directly to the revival
of the hideous trade of the "informer," who reaped profit from
his interference with his neighbour's concerns.
By the penal laws a Catholic could neither rise in the army nor act as
a solicitor, a profession hitherto open to him; the amount of land he
might possess was limited both in size and in the duration of his lease;
he could not vote on vestries, serve on grand juries, act as constable,
sheriff, or magistrate, vote at elections, or sit in Parliament. In every
honourable walk in life he was restrained by the knowledge that there
was nothing to which he could rise, nor any post of responsibility or
trust open to him. He dared not send his sons abroad for education, and
he had difficulty in educating them at home, for by the Act of 8th Anne,
no Popish schoolmaster might teach either publicly in school or privately
in the home, while all priests had to be registered, and were strictly
limited in number. There had been several good Catholic schools in Ireland,
and in the reign of James I a Commission was set up to enquire into their
system of teaching. One, that of Alexander Lynch of Galway, was specially
commended for the intelligence and answering of its students. It was a
large school, numbering one thousand two hundred pupils. Lynch was admonished
to change his religion and teaching, if he would keep his school open.
But he continued 1,1 his old way and his school was closed by order of
the Commissioners. It shows the strength of religious prejudice at the
period, that the president of this Commission was Ussher, Vice-Chancellor
of Trinity College, a man famous for learning and deeply interested in
education; sympathetic, too, to Irish studies and one of the first to
collect valuable manuscripts for his college. Yet he could approve of
the closing of such a school as Lynch's. But it is just to remember that
Protestant schools in France or Spain would, at this period, have met
with a like fate.
Politically the main body of the Irish nation ceased to exist for over
a century, and socially they were held down to the grade of small farmers
unable, like their Protestant neighbours, either to appear in public with
a sword at their side in the manner of a gentleman, or to possess a horse
of the value of more than £5. No occupations but the linen trade,
which it was desired to encourage and for which they might take apprentices,
were open to them, save in a small way, the number of their apprentices
in all other trades being confined to two. These cruel and degrading laws
arose out of no political necessity and were the outcome of no rebellion;
they originated, not in England, but in Ireland itself, and they were
inspired by the grasping selfishness of the party in power there. They
were confirmed in England largely in consequence of the petitions which
reached the English from the Irish Parliament. Their sole object was to
support "the English and Protestant interest," which was the
paramount theme in the Irish official correspondence of the day. The worst
penal Act of Anne's reign was drawn up in England in 1704 in response
to an appeal of the Irish Parliament of November 19, 1703, which outlined
the heads of the Bill it was desired to have passed.[14] The Catholics
were not the only sufferers; the Sacramental Test disfranchised at the
same moment the whole body of Dissenters, Independents, Presbyterians,
Huguenots, and Quakers, excluding them equally from the army, the civil
service, the corporations, and the magistracy. Such wholesale disabilities,
affecting all but a small minority of the nation, could obviously not
be fully enforced, but their existence served as a perpetual sore, opening
the way to continual friction and petty revenges and insults exercised
by the stronger party upon the weaker. They tended to depress industry,
impoverish the nation and plunge it into ignorance and servitude.
[14] Journals of the Irish House of Commons, iii, 129-135.
The immediate result of the penal laws was to throw a large part of the
population out of employment. "We are apt to charge the Irish with
laziness," wrote Swift a few years later, "because we seldom
find them employed, but then we do not consider that they have nothing
to do."[15] He was speaking of the Protestants, who lived by industry,
but the same could be said in an even greater degree of the Catholics,
who lived largely by the land. The youths of the country, finding all
paths closed to them, left Ireland in large numbers, to take service in
foreign countries. A hundred years later this exodus was still going on.
Lord Charlemont, writing about 1780, laments the deplorable situation
of the Catholic gentry in his day. "Their sons were destitute of
professions; the only occupation left them was foreign service, and of
this they availed themselves; but in the French service, in which a national
brigade had been formed for their reception...they often found themselves
compelled to fight against their King and country and to exercise their
native valour to the destruction of that soil from whence it was derived...When
abroad I had been intimately acquainted with many of my countrymen in
foreign service and never knew one who did not regret the horrid necessity
of bearing arms against his country. My most particular friend, the brave
and truly amiable General O'Donnell, when speaking on this subject, often
wept."[16] On the sufferers the Penal Laws had a double result. They
not only degraded them, but they made them lawless. Legislation that is
unjust will be defied; when it cannot be defied it will be evaded, and
the origin of that defiance of law which we freely blame in the Irish
people may be found to a large extent in the sense that for a hundred
years they were living under laws that they knew to be unjust and felt
to be humiliating.
[15] Letter to Walpole, quoted by R. Ashe King, in Swift in Ireland (1895),
p. 89.
[16] F. Hardy, Life of Lord Charlemont from the Private Letters of his
Lordship (1812), i, 128-132.
The object of the Penal Laws has been summed up as being designed "to
make the Catholics poor and to keep them poor." But they were even
more directly aimed at making and keeping them impotent both in political
and social life. The possession of unlimited power by a small order is
always attended by the worst results, and in Ireland it ended in the creation
of a class familiarly known as "the Protestant Bashaws" of the
South and West. These men strenuously and consistently opposed any attempts
to alleviate the condition of their tenants,whom they regarded practically
as serfs, or of their Catholic neighbours, whom they considered to belong
to an inferior race. The Penal Code ended in the complete separation of
the two classes; and Hardy, in the years preceding emancipation, considers
that this was the cause of the "hereditary scowl and mien of disgust
and alienation which so long deformed the faces of Irishmen."[17]
[17] Ibid., i, 133.
There were, as was inevitable, a certain number of real or pretended conversions,
and a good deal of outward conformity either with the object of retaining
property and position or of gaining it. These so-called conversions were
naturally distrusted; and Boulter expressed alarm at the large number
of these pseudo-Protestants who were practising the profession of the
law, the practice of which, he says, "from the top to the bottom
is almost wholly in the hands of these converts."[18] A more agreeable
side of the matter was the friendly relations entered into between some
of the Catholic landowners and their Protestant neighbours, who nominally
became, by private arrangement, the temporary holders of the lands, with
the intention of restoring them when the rigour of the Penal Laws should
be relaxed. In most cases these compacts were scrupulously observed, and
the forfeited properties were handed back to the descendants of the original
owners without loss or deduction. The O'Connell properties at Derrynane,
which were considerably enlarged by the business habits of the Liberator's
grandfather, even before the passing of the Relief Bill by the Irish Parliament
in 1782, were retained in the family by the good offices of Hugh Falvey,
of Faha, who had conformed to the Protestant faith in order to become
a barrister-at-law, and who, until a short time before his death, acted
as trustee to the O'Connell estate.[19] On the other hand, Dr. O'Conor
tells us that his uncle, Denis O'Conor of Belanagare, who forfeited one-fourth
of his property for adherence to the cause of James II, was obliged to
plough his own land after the defeat of the Jacobite armies. He was wont
to say to his children, "Boys, you must not be impudent to the poor:
I am the son of a gentleman, but ye are the children of a ploughman."
Many others must have been circumstanced in a similar way.
[18] Archbishop Boulter to the Bishop of London, March, 7, 1727, in Hugh
Boulter's Letters (1769), i, 230-231, and see ibid., 226-227.
[19] Michael MacDonagh, Life of Daniel O'Connell (1929), pp. 2-3.
The Penal Laws were the more unjust because the Catholics had not by any
overt act given reason to the new dynasty to fear their disloyalty. Nor
did they later take any part in the risings in favour of either the Old
or the Young Pretender, their love for the young Charles Stuart being
purely a sentimental one, which had no open consequences. Many of their
bishops and priests, in spite of the disabilities and actual penalties
under which they were suffering continued to charge their flocks, both
in public and private, to co-operate with their Protestant brethren to
preserve order and tranquillity. From time to time they sent to the Government
addresses couched in the most loyal terms, while exhorting their people
"to be just in their dealings, sober in their conduct, religious
in their practice, to avoid riots, quarrels, and tumult and thus to approve
themselves good citizens, peaceable subjects, and pious Christians."
In a remarkable declaration made in 1775, in the reign of George III when
the Penal Laws were as yet unrevoked, they express their unfeigned loyalty
to the Crown, and they explicitly abjure all those doctrines current at
an earlier time—that it is lawful to murder, destroy, or injure
any person whatever under excuse that he is a heretic, or to break an
oath made to a heretic. They abjure the power of the Pope to loose them
from their allegiance to King George, and they declare "that neither
the Pope of Rome or any other prince, prelate, state, or potentate hath
or ought to have any temporal or civil jurisdiction, power, superiority,
or preeminence, directly or indirectly, within this realm." Nothing
could be more explicit than this protest, which was signed by a number
of clergy and laity of rank and sent to Rome as the act and deed of the
Irish Catholics. It was formed on the model of several earlier protests,
but it adds the remarkable promise that when they are restored to the
franchise of their country they will uphold, and see that their representatives
uphold, the arrangements made by Act of Parliament, as established by
the different Acts of Attainder and Settlement; a most unexpected statement
as coming from those who had most severely suffered by those Acts.
END OF CHAPTER XI
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