he trust of the soldiery, the themes
of bards.

King's impeachment of this parliament is amusing enough. His first
charge is, that if the House were full, the majority would have been
Protestant. Now, if the majority preferred acting as insurgents under
the Prince of Orange, to attending to their duties in the Irish house
of peers, it was their own fault. Certain it is, the most violent might
safely have attended, for the earls of Granard and Longford and the
bishop of Meath not only attended, but carried on a bold and systematic
opposition. And so far was the House from resenting this, that they
committed the sheriff of Dublin to prison for billeting an officer at
the bishop of Meath's. Yet the bishop had not merely resisted their
favourite repeal of the Settlement, but, in doing so, had stigmatized
their fathers and some of themselves as murderous rebels.

King's next charge is, that the attainders of many peers were reversed
to admit them. Now this is unsupported evidence against fact, and
simply a falsehood. Then he complains of the new creations. They were
just _five_ in number; and of these five, two were great legal
dignitaries--the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland; the
third was Colonel MacCarty, of the princely family of Desmond, and a
distinguished soldier with a great following; the others, Brown, Lord
Kenmare; and Bourke, Lord Bofin (son of Lord Clanricarde), men of high
position in their counties.

Fitton, Lord Gosworth, occupied the woolsack. That he was a man of
capacity, if not of character, may be fairly presumed from his party
having put him in so important an office in such trying times.[18] He
certainly had neither faction nor following to bring with him. Nor was
he treated by his party below what his rank entitled him to. The
appointments in his court were not interfered with: his decrees were
not impeached, and in the council he sat above even Herbert, the Lord
Chancellor of England. Yet, King describes this man as "detected of
forgery," one who was brought from gaol to the woolsack--one who had
not appeared in any court--a stranger to the kingdom, the laws, and the
practice and rules of court;--one who made constant needless references
to the Masters to disguise his ignorance, and who was brought into
power, first, because he was "a convert papist, that is, a renegade to
his country and his religion;" and, secondly, because he would enable
the Irish to recover their estates by