WILLIAM AND MABY.

171

in the High Street of Oxford. In 1G89, the city extended overabout one tenth part of the space which it now covers, and was ■intersected by muddy streams, which have long been concealedby arches and buildings. A desolate marsh, in which thesportsman who pursued the waterfowl sank deep in water andmire at every step, covered the area now occupied by statelybuildings, the palaces of great commercial societies. Therewas only a single street in which two wheeled carriages couldpass each other. From this street diverged to right and leftalleys squalid and noisome beyond the belief of those who haveformed their notions of misery from the most miserable parts ofSaint Giles’s and Whitechapel. One of these alleys, called, and,by comparison, justly called, Broad Lane, is about ten feetwide. From such places , now seats of hunger and pestilence,abandoned to the most wretched of mankind, the citizenspoured forth to welcome James. He was received with militaryhonours by Macarthy, who held the chief command in Munster.

It was impossible for the King to proceed immediately toDublin; for the southern counties had been so completely laidwaste by the banditti whom the priests had called to arms, thatthe means of locomotion were not easily to be procured. Horseshad become rarities: in a large district there were only twocarts; and those Avaux pronounced good for nothing. Somedays elapsed before the money which had been brought fromFrance, though no very formidable mass, could be draggedover the few miles which separated Cork from Kinsale.*

While the King and his Council were employed in trying toprocure carriages and beasts, Tyrconnel arrived from Dublin.He held encouraging language. The opposition of Enniskillenhe seems to have thought deserving of little consideration.Londonderry, he said, was the only important post held by the

CHAP.

XII.

1689 .

* Avaux, March 1689.