an infinitesimal portion of the soil belongs to the descendants of those who possessed it before Cromwell.”  But Archbishop King was influenced by the fear he had felt as to what the effect of a repeal of the Act would be; and there can hardly be a doubt that his feelings led him to overestimate the number.  With regard to Lecky’s remark, one can only take it as a strange instance of a gross exaggeration having crept into a book which is usually careful and accurate.  It may be that the statement was not very incorrect according to the evidence the author had before him; but if so, that only proves that the evidence was wrong; for the proceedings in the Land Courts which have been set up in Ireland during the last half century have shown that the proportion of titles to estates which date from an earlier period was far larger than people had supposed.

During the peaceful and tolerant reign of Charles II the country made steady progress.

Under James II, however, everything was reversed.  That unhappy monarch, having ascended the throne tranquilly, with many protestations of toleration and justice to all, succeeded in less than two years in making it clear to the people of England that his object was to confine liberty to those who professed his own creed and that his idea of good government was something like that which was then existing in France and Savoy.  Driven from Great Britain, on his arrival in Ireland he issued a proclamation declaring that his Protestant subjects, their religion, privileges and properties were his especial care; and he had previously directed the Lord Lieutenant to declare in Council that he would preserve the Act of Settlement inviolable.  But the Protestants soon had reason to fear that his promises were illusory and that the liberty which might be allowed to them would be at best temporary.  In a word, what the one party looked forward to with hope and the other with dread was “a confederacy with France which would make His Majesty’s monarchy absolute.”

In order to understand what that meant, to Irish Protestants, it is well to glance at the condition of France at the time.  Louis XIV had begun by directing that the Edict of Nantes was to be interpreted by the strictest letter of the law; and soon after that the condition of the Huguenots became more unhappy than that of the Irish Roman Catholics ever was during the penal laws.  The terrible “Dragonnades” commenced in 1682; soldiers were billeted on heretics, and unfortunate women were insulted past endurance; Huguenots were restricted even as to holding family prayers; children at the age of seven were encouraged to renounce their faith, and if they did so they were taken from their parents who, however, were obliged to pay for their maintenance in convent schools.  Protestant churches were closed, and their endowments handed over to Roman Catholic institutions.  Huguenot children were forbidden all education except the most elementary.  No heretic was allowed to sue a Catholic for debt.  All this, however, did not satisfy the monarch or his ecclesiastical advisers.  On the 18th of October 1685, he issued his famous Revocation of the Edict of Nantes:—­