icted, and hung, drawn, and quartered. Although the most
eminent, he was only one, however, of the victims of this most insane of
panics. Reason seemed to have been utterly lost. Blood and blood alone
could satisfy the popular craving, and victim after victim was hurried,
innocent but unpitied, to his doom.

At last the tide stayed. First slackened, then suddenly--in Ireland at
least--reversed itself, and ran almost as recklessly and as violently as
ever, only in the opposite direction. In 1685 Charles died, and James
now king, resolved with hardly an attempt at further concealment to
carry out his own long-cherished plans. From the beginning of his reign
his private determination seems to have been to make Ireland a
stronghold and refuge for his Roman Catholic subjects, in order that by
their aid he might make himself independent both of England and the
Parliament, and so carry out that despotism upon which his whole narrow,
obstinate soul was inflexibly set.

His first step was to recall the Duke of Ormond, whom Charles had left
as Viceroy, and to appoint in his place two Lords Justices, Lord Granard
and the Primate Boyle, who were likely, he believed, to be more
malleable. All tests were to be immediately done away with. Catholicism
was no longer to be a disqualification for office, and Roman Catholics
were to be appointed as judges. A more important change still, the army
was to be entirely remodelled; Protestant officers were to be summarily
dismissed, and Roman Catholic ones as summarily put in their places.

Such sweeping changes could not, even James found, be carried out all at
once. The Lords Justices were next dismissed, and his own
brother-in-law, Lord Clarendon, sent over as Lord-Lieutenant. He in turn
proving too timid, or too constitutional, his place was before long
filled by Richard Talbot, a fervent Catholic, but a man of indifferent
public honour and more than indifferent private character. Talbot was
created Earl of Tyrconnel, and arrived in 1686 avowedly to carry out the
new policy.

From this point the stream ran fast and strong. The recent innovations,
especially the re-organization of the army, had naturally caused immense
alarm amongst the whole Protestant colony. A petition drawn out by the
former proprietors and forwarded to the king against the Act of
Settlement had made them tremble also for their estates, and now this
new appointment came to put a climax to their dismay. What might not b