or his own Church. The King, he said,
evidently meant that no man fit for public trust should be excluded
because he was a Roman Catholic, and that no man unfit for public trust
should be admitted because he was a Protestant. Tyrconnel immediately
began to curse and swear. "I do not know what to say to that; I would
have all Catholics in." [182] The most judicious Irishmen of his own
religious persuasion were dismayed at his rashness, and ventured to
remonstrate with him; but he drove them from him with imprecations.
[183] His brutality was such that many thought him mad. Yet it was less
strange than the shameless volubility with which he uttered falsehoods.
He had long before earned the nickname of Lying Dick Talbot; and, at
Whitehall, any wild fiction was commonly designated as one of Dick
Talbot's truths. He now daily proved that he was well entitled to this
unenviable reputation. Indeed in him mendacity was almost a disease. He
would, after giving orders for the dismission of English officers, take
them into his closet, assure them of his confidence and friendship, and
implore heaven to confound him, sink him, blast him, if he did not
take good care of their interests. Sometimes those to whom he had thus
perjured himself learned, before the day closed, that he had cashiered
them. [184]

On his arrival, though he swore savagely at the Act of Settlement, and
called the English interest a foul thing, a roguish thing, and a damned
thing, he yet intended to be convinced that the distribution of property
could not, after the lapse of so many years, be altered. [185] But, when
he had been a few weeks at Dublin, his language changed. He began to
harangue vehemently at the Council board on the necessity of giving back
the land to the old owners. He had not, however, as yet, obtained
his master's sanction to this fatal project. National feeling still
struggled feebly against superstition in the mind of James. He was
an Englishman: he was an English King; and he could not, without some
misgivings, consent to the destruction of the greatest colony that
England had ever planted. The English Roman Catholics with whom he was
in the habit of taking counsel were almost unanimous in favour of the
Act of Settlement. Not only the honest and moderate Powis, but the
dissolute and headstrong Dover, gave judicious and patriotic advice.
Tyrconnel could hardly hope to counteract at a distance the effect which
such advice must produce on the