Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/296

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Ireland the accession of James II. was received with the gravest apprehension. It was generally believed that the new king, exasperated by the attempts of the extreme Protestant party in England in the previous reign to exclude him from the succession, and elated by their failure, would ascend the throne with a fixed determination to revenge the wrongs of the Roman Catholics on those who had not only attempted to deprive him of the throne for changing his religion, but had also caused innocent blood to be shed during the outburst of fanaticism in 1678. The Acts of Settlement and Explanation were looked upon as doomed, for although James, as Duke of York, held vast tracts of Irish land, it was believed that the surrender of these to the former owners would be easily purchased by a liberal grant, from a Roman Catholic Parliament, of lands to be taken from Protestant proprietors. Only a small minority clung to the hope that, sobered by misfortune and warned by the example of his father of the danger of extreme courses, he might follow a prudent policy; and while gaining religious toleration and a free exercise of their form of worship for his own co-religionists—which might also be the occasion of securing like benefits for the Protestant Nonconformists—he would not seek to repeal the Acts of