CHAPTER VII
JACOBITES AND WILLIAMITES
The dispossessed Irish, with characteristic optimism, did not abandon their hopes of redress, nor desist from their efforts to obtain it.[1] The persistency of Talbot and others of their agents prevailed so far that in 1670 the King ordered Sir Heneage Finch, the Solicitor General, to report on the alleged grievances done to the Irish by the Act of Explanation. The report, professing impartiality, is an excellent example of special pleading. It was easy to prove to the satisfaction of the King that he was not bound to keep the peace extorted from his father's and his own necessities in 1648. As to the unheard innocents. Finch, while admitting that there were over 4000 in this case, declared that many of them would have failed to prove their innocence, and that of those who could have done so most, if not all, had received from the usurper lands in Connaught, and so were not altogether destitute.[2] Both these
- ↑ For the general history of this period, see Murray: Revolutionary Ireland and its Settlement. The work is of course strongly anti-Jacobite; but has a useful corrective in the introduction by Dr. Mahaffy. This points out that Dr. Murray has given too much credence to Archbishop King. Davis in the Patriot Parliament of 1689, gives a very clear account of the proceedings of James' Parliament, but of course he takes the opposite standpoint to Dr. Murray's.
- ↑ He says, what seems borne out by the records of the sittings, "There were several times when the Commissioners wanted causes and could not prevail with men to bring them in."
