WILLIAM AND MARY.

177

But the easy temper and graceful manners of Sidney failedto produce a conciliatory effect. He does not indeed appear tohave been greedy of unlawful gain. But he did not restrain witha sufficiently firm hand the crowd of subordinate functionarieswhom Coningsby’s example and protection had encouraged toplunder the public and to sell their good offices to suitors. Norwas the new Viceroy of a temper to bear hard on the feebleremains of the native aristocracy. He therefore speedily becamean object of suspicion and aversion to the Anglosaxon settlers.His first act was to send out the writs for a general election.The Roman Catholics had been excluded from every municipalcorporation: but no law had yet deprived them of the countyfranchise. It is probable however that not a single RomanCatholic freeholder ventured to approach the hustings. Themembers chosen were, with few exceptions, men animated bythe spirit of Enniskillen and Londonderry, a spirit eminentlyheroic in times of distress and peril, but too often cruel andimperious in the season of prosperity and power. They detestedthe civil treaty of Limerick, and were indignant when theylearned that the Lord Lieutenant fully expected from thema parliamentary ratification of that odious contract, a contractwhich gave a licence to the idolatry of the mass, and whichprevented good Protestants from ruining their Popish neigh-bours by bringing civil actions for injuries done during thewar. *

On the fifth of October 1692 the Parliament met at Dublinin Chichester House. It was very differently composed from theassembly -which had borne the same title in 1689. Scarcely onepeer, not one member of the House of Commons, who had sateat the King’s Inns, was to be seen. To the crowd of O’s andMacs, descendants of the old princes of the island, had succeeded

* An Account of the Sessions of Parliament in Ireland, 1692, London,1693.

Macaulay, llislory. VII. 12

CHAP.

XIX.

J6!)3.