Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/88

Charles II whom advanced age and feeble health had unfitted for more than a nominal share in the administration, to govern the country as Lords Justices; and under their government a parliament was elected, which professed to represent the Irish people, but which represented in reality only the Protestant caste. The corporations, by which a large majority of the members were returned, were wholly composed of Cromwellians, while the enormous confiscations of landed property had rendered the preponderance of the same party in the counties scarcely less absolute. It is not, therefore, surprising that, although no law as yet excluded Roman Catholics from the House of Commons, only one Roman Catholic was returned. In the Upper House the Protestant majority was almost equally great.

In the following year James Butler, formerly Marquis and now Duke of Ormond, revisited as Viceroy the country in whose history he had already played so great a part. The Duke was descended from an illustrious Roman Catholic family; he had commanded a Roman Catholic army against the men who were now his colleagues; and, although he had been educated by the Court of Wards as a Protestant, the sincerity of his Protestantism was not altogether above suspicion. From him, therefore, his Catholic 76