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HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

chap, produced such a series of barbarous laws against Popery as1(i8 6. made the statute book of Ireland a proverb of infamy through-out Christendom. Such were the bitter fruits of the policyof James.

We have seen that one of his first acts, after he becameKing, was to recall Ormond from Ireland. Ormond wasthe head of the English interest in that kingdom: he wasfirmly attached to the Protestant religion; and his power farexceeded that of an ordinary Lord Lieutenant, first, becausehe was in rank and wealth the greatest of the colonists, and,secondly, because he was not only the chief of the civil ad-ministration, but also commander of the forces. The Kingwas not at that time disposed to commit the governmentwholly to Irish hands. He had indeed been heard to say thata native viceroy would soon become an independent sove-reign.* For the present, therefore, he determined to dividethe power which Ormond had possessed, to entrust the civiladministration to an English and Protestant Lord Lieutenant,and to give the command of the army to an Irish and RomanCatholic General. The Lord Lieutenant was Clarendon; theGeneral was Tyrconnel.

Tyrconnel sprang, as has already been said, from oneof those degenerate families of the Pale which were popularlyclassed with the aboriginal population of Ireland. He some-times, indeed, in his rants, talked with Norman haughtinessof the Celtic barbarians: ** but all his sympathies were reallywith the natives. The Protestant colonists he hated; andthey returned his hatred. Clarendon’s inclinations were very

* Sheridan MS. among the Stuart Papers. I ought to acknowledgethe courtesy with which Mr. Glover assisted me in my search for thisvaluable manuscript- James appears, from the instructions which hedrew up for his son in’ 1092, to have retained to the last the notion thatIreland could not without danger be entrusted to an Irish Lord Lieu-tenant.

** Sheridan MS.