g Duke of
Berwick was declared Commander in Chief; but this dignity was merely
nominal. Sarsfield, undoubtedly the first of Irish soldiers, was placed
last in the list of the councillors to whom the conduct of the war was
entrusted; and some believed that he would not have been in the list at
all, had not the Viceroy feared that the omission of so popular a name
might produce a mutiny.

William meanwhile had reached Waterford, and had sailed thence for
England. Before he embarked, he entrusted the government of Ireland to
three Lords Justices. Henry Sydney, now Viscount Sydney, stood first
in the commission; and with him were joined Coningsby and Sir Charles
Porter. Porter had formerly held the Great Seal of the kingdom, had,
merely because he was a Protestant, been deprived of it by James, and
had now received it again from the hand of William.

On the sixth of September the King, after a voyage of twenty-four hours,
landed at Bristol. Thence he travelled to London, stopping by the road
at the mansions of some great lords, and it was remarked that all
those who were thus honoured were Tories. He was entertained one day
at Badminton by the Duke of Beaufort, who was supposed to have brought
himself with great difficulty to take the oaths, and on a subsequent
day at a large house near Marlborough which, in our own time, before the
great revolution produced by railways, was renowned as one of the best
inns in England, but which, in the seventeenth century, was a seat of
the Duke of Somerset. William was every where received with marks of
respect and joy. His campaign indeed had not ended quite so prosperously
as it had begun; but on the whole his success had been great beyond
expectation, and had fully vindicated the wisdom of his resolution to
command his army in person. The sack of Teignmouth too was fresh in
the minds of Englishmen, and had for a time reconciled all but the most
fanatical Jacobites to each other and to the throne. The magistracy
and clergy of the capital repaired to Kensington with thanks and
congratulations. The people rang bells and kindled bonfires. For the
Pope, whom good Protestants had been accustomed to immolate, the French
King was on this occasion substituted, probably by way of retaliation
for the insults which had been offered to the effigy of William by
the Parisian populace. A waxen figure, which was doubtless a hideous
caricature of the most graceful and majestic of princes, was dragged