p in T.C.D. in 1662, being only 19 years old. He led the
opposition in the parliament of '89 with great vigour and pertinacity.
He resisted all the principal measures, and procured great changes in
some of them, as appears by "The Journal." He had a fearless character
and ready tongue. He continued a leader of the Ultras after the battle
of the Boyne, and quarrelled with the government. King William, finding
how slowly the Irish war proceeded, had prepared and sent to Ireland a
proclamation conceding the demands of the Roman Catholics, granting
them perfect religious liberty, right of admission to all offices, and
an establishment for their clergy.[19] While this was with the printers
in Dublin, news came of the danger of Limerick. The proclamation was
suppressed by the Lords Justices, who hastened to the camp, "to hold
the Irish to as hard terms as possible. This they did effectually."
Still these "hard terms" were too lenient for the Ultras, who roared
against the treaty of Limerick, and demanded its abrogation. On the
Sunday after the Lords Justices had returned, full of joy at having
tricked the Irish into so much harder terms than William had directed
them to offer, they attended Christ Church, and the bishop of Meath
preached a sermon, whose whole object was to urge the breaking of the
treaty of Limerick, contending (says Harris, in his Irish Writers in
Ware, p. 215) that "peace ought not to be kept with a people so
perfidious." The Justices, and the Williamite or moderate party, were
enraged at this. The bishop of Kildare was directed to preach in Christ
Church on the following Sunday in favour of the treaty; and he obtained
the place in the privy council from which the bishop of Meath was
expelled; but ultimately the party of the latter triumphed, and enacted
the penal laws.

The list of the Lords Temporal has been made out with great care, from
all the authorities accessible.

Ireland had then but two dukes, Tyrconnell and Ormond. Ormond possessed
the enormous spoils acquired by his grandfather from the Irish, and was
therefore largely interested in the success of the English party. He,
of course, did not attend. His huge territory and its regal privileges
were taken from him by a special act.

Considering the position he occupied, the materials on the life of
Tyrconnell are most unsatisfactory. Richard Talbot was a cadet of the
Irish branch of the Shrewsbury family, and numbered in his ancestors
the first n