is flight with
high honour, and his return to the throne was believed by his own
adherents to be imminent. In England, especially in London, the
excitement against the Irish Catholics was prodigious, and had been
increased by the crowd of Protestant refugees who had recently poured
in. The Irish regiments brought to England by James had been insultingly
disbanded, and their officers put under arrest. "Lilibullero," the
anti-Catholic street song, was sung by thousands of excited lips. Lord
Jefferies, who embodied in his own person all that the popular hatred
most detested in his master's rule, had been dragged to prison amid the
threatening howls of the populace. The "Irish night," during
which--though without the faintest shadow of reason--the London citizens
had fully believed an Irish mob to be in the act of marching upon the
town, with the set purpose of massacring every Protestant man, woman,
and child in it, had worked both town and nation to the highest possible
pitch of excitement. In Ireland too the stream had gone too far and too
fast to turn back. The minority and the majority stood facing one
another like a pair of pugilists. The Protestants, whose property had
been either seized or wasted, were fast concentrating themselves behind
Lough Foyle. Thither Tyrconnel sent Richard Hamilton--who, deserting
William, had thrown himself upon the other side--with orders to reduce
Londonderry before aid could arrive from England. To James himself
Tyrconnel wrote, urging him to start for Ireland without delay. Though
unprepared at present to furnish soldiers, Louis was munificent in other
respects. A fleet of fourteen men-of-war, with nine smaller vessels, was
provided. Arms, ammunition, and money without stint were placed at the
command of the exile, and a hundred French officers with the Count
d'Avaux, one of the king's most trusted officials, as envoy, were sent
to accompany the expedition. On March 12, 1689, James II. landed
at Kinsale.

XLIII.

WILLIAM AND JAMES IN IRELAND.

James's appearance in Ireland was hailed with a little deserved burst of
enthusiasm. As a king, as a Catholic, and as a man in deep misfortune,
he had a triple claim upon the kindly feeling of a race never slow to
respond to such appeals. All along the road from Cork to Dublin the
people ran out out in crowds to greet him with tears, blessings, and
cries of welcome. Women thronged the banks along the roadsides, and held
up their children