Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/215



England rejected James the Second for his impolitic and arbitrary efforts to introduce the strange principle of religious toleration, his first hope of coming to his own again lay in his Irish Catholic subjects. They, it is true, had no great reason for devotion to a Stuart. For them "the Restoration" had been an empty phrase. While in England and Scotland the Royalists had regained their lands from the Puritans, their Irish brethren had perforce to content themselves with a regal "thank you." Acts of Settlement and Explanation and Courts of Claims left most of the Cromwellians in undisturbed possession of their newly-acquired property. Of the portion they did disgorge, James, then Duke of York, and other royal favourites had appropriated immense slices.

The Irish Catholics at the Revolution numbered some 900,000 of the population. They were poor, and unarmed; opposed to them stood some 300,000 English Protestant colonists, backed by all the resources of their country and the veteran army of the Prince of Orange. But 203