The Battle-fields of Ireland from 1688 to 1691: Including Limerick and Athlone, Aughrim and the Boyne

Few monarchs ever ascended the English throne under more unfavorable auspices than James II. Though he reached it in the order of legitimate right, it was at a time when the monarchy of England was well-nigh divested of its most vital prerogatives, and when the voice of the sovereign had little more weight in the national councils than that of any ordinarily dissentient member; and to this were superadded rivalries, jealousies, and hatreds, which having their sources in remoter times, gathered strength like the rivers, and grew deeper and darker in their course.

As a representative of Scottish royalty, he inherited many a bitter memory from Bannockburn to Flodden, and as a descendant of the unfortunate Mary, he was an object of hatred to the old reform families of England, with whom her persecutor, Elizabeth, was still a hallowed memory; he was a grandson of James I., whom neither the acquisition of a kingdom, nor the confiscation of Ireland,—so grateful to every English adventurer,—could redeem from national contempt; a son of Charles I., whom the revolutionary elements evoked in Church and State by the pedantry of his father, had brought to the scaffold; and brother to the second Charles, one of the most indolent and dissolute monarchs that ever disgraced a throne. Through the last three reigns, the name of Stuart had been a term of distrust or hatred, both to the High Church party of England, and the fanatics of Scotland; but through some unaccountable cause, it had one, and only one, abiding-place,—the heart of Catholic Ireland,—whose people, through every phase of that dynasty, had experienced nothing but treachery, confiscation, and proscription.

Other circumstances, too, though of a domestic nature, tended to establish the unpopularity of James, and to raise up difficulties in his road to royalty. In 1671, his wife, the Duchess of York, though nominally a Protestant, died in communion with the Catholic Church, and from that time forward he himself made open profession of Catholicity. Towards the beginning of 1673 he was married to Mary of Modena, a Catholic, and the daughter of a royal house then in close alliance with France. The Parliament, which met shortly after, expressed great indignation at this event, and gave practical effect to its resentment. A declaration of indulgence which had been issued by Charles in 1671, granting to dissenters from the High Church the public observance of their religion, and to Roman Catholics the right to hear Mass in private houses, was censured, and repealed in its application to the Catholics. In this session was also passed the "Test Act," which continued in full legal force down to the reign of George IV., and which, with some modifications, is virtually observed at the present day. By the passage of this act, every Catholic official in the realm was removed, and the Duke of York lost the command of the British navy, in which he had won high distinction, and which he had brought to a greater degree of efficiency than it had hitherto known. These and similar marks of disapprobation were specially meant for James, who was then heir-presumptive, and showed him the dangers that beset his way to the throne. He, however, continued on unwavering in his principles, while every exercise of conscience on his part was met by a check on the king's prerogative, or a direct censure on himself. But when it became known, after the demise of Charles, that he, too, had received the last sacraments at the hands of a Catholic priest, and that James had been instrumental in the conversion of his reprobate brother, the rage of the High Church party knew no bounds, and their denunciations were echoed through every recusant party in the land.