attainted Lords was Mountjoy. He
had been induced by the villany of Tyrconnel to trust himself at Saint
Germains: he had been thrown into the Bastile: he was still lying there;
and the Irish parliament was not ashamed to enact that, unless he could,
within a few weeks, make his escape from his cell, and present himself
at Dublin, he should be put to death, [230]

As it was not even pretended that there had been any inquiry into the
guilt of those who were thus proscribed, as not a single one among them
had been heard in his own defence, and as it was certain that it would
be physically impossible for many of them to surrender themselves
in time, it was clear that nothing but a large exercise of the royal
prerogative of mercy could prevent the perpetration of iniquities
so horrible that no precedent could be found for them even in the
lamentable history of the troubles of Ireland. The Commons therefore
determined that the royal prerogative of mercy should be limited.
Several regulations were devised for the purpose of making the passing
of pardons difficult and costly: and finally it was enacted that every
pardon granted by his Majesty, after the end of November 1689, to any of
the many hundreds of persons who had been sentenced to death without a
trial, should be absolutely void and of none effect. Sir Richard Nagle
came in state to the bar of the Lords and presented the bill with a
speech worthy of the occasion. "Many of the persons here attainted,"
said he, "have been proved traitors by such evidence as satisfies us. As
to the rest we have followed common fame." [231]

With such reckless barbarity was the list framed that fanatical
royalists, who were, at that very time, hazarding their property,
their liberty, their lives, in the cause of James, were not secure from
proscription. The most learned man of whom the Jacobite party could
boast was Henry Dodwell, Camdenian Professor in the University of
Oxford. In the cause of hereditary monarchy he shrank from no sacrifice
and from no danger. It was about him that William uttered those
memorable words: "He has set his heart on being a martyr; and I have set
my mind on disappointing him." But James was more cruel to friends
than William to foes. Dodwell was a Protestant: he had some property in
Connaught: these crimes were sufficient; and he was set down in the long
roll of those who were doomed to the gallows and the quartering block,
[232]

That James would give his a