XXXV. commons for the removal of Sir Conftantine Phipps, CHAP. lord chancellor, an active tory; and contrary refolutions were voted by the lords, among whom toryifm had gained the afcendancy; the clergy feconded strenuously the latter, and waited on the duke of Shrewsbury, the chief governor, at the castle, with their reprefentation. Here Sir Robert Molefworth was heard to fay, they who have turned the world upfide down are come hither alfo." The clergy made complaint to the lords, who in confequence requested a conference with the com mons. The latter treated the matter lightly; but the English ministry, compofed now of tories, or dered his removal from the privy council. Previ oufly to this the city of Dublin had been thrown into a ferment by difputes about the choice of a lord mayor, and by a riot which had happened in the election of members for the houfe of commons. An enquiry concerning the latter at the meeting of parliament occafioned the addrefs of the commons against Phipps the chancellor. The lord mayor office had been empowered by late regulations to nominate three aldermen, one of whom fhould be elected his fucceffor, unless reasonable objections could be made to them all. In violation of this rule, in the abfence of Sir Samuel Cook, the man then holding this authority, a violent tory, the aldermen chofe for his fucceffor a whig, named Pleasant. The privy council annulled the election. Of the aldermen, when fummoned to make a new choice, twenty objected to one of the three nominat in ed XXXV. CHAP, ed by Cook; and, before the affair could be brought to a termination, the court was difmiffed. Interfe rence of the liament. The violence of party added one to the many inEnglishpar- ftances of unconftitutional interference of the Englifh parliament in the affairs of Ireland. Some of thefe, which were frequent, from the complete eltablishment of William's authority in this kingdom, have been already incidentally hinted or mentioned; and to notice two or three more may be here fufficient. The forfeiture, decreed in the reign of Charles the first, against the London fociety, of their lands in the county of Derry, had been reversed, and the proprietors repoffeffed, by the acts of fettlement and explanation. In confequence of an act of the Irish parliament for a falvo in this cafe to the rights of the clergy, the bishop of Derry, claimed the lands of his fee, and obtained judgment in his favour on a trial before the Irish peers; but the fo ciety appealed to the English houfe of lords, in the January of 1708, who gave a contrary judgment. The difpute of property was terminated by the removal of the bishop, and a compofition made by his fucceffor with the fociety. Afterwards, in the recefs of the Irish parliament, the earl and countess of Meath were, by an appeal to the English peers, difpoffeffed of fome lands, which had been decreed to be their property by an Irish court of judicature, In February 1703, the Irish lords entered into refolutions, declaring the judgement of their house to be final, not reverfable by any court whatsoever; and that if any fubject within this kingdom fhould afterward appeal from their jurifdiction, or execute an XXXV. an order from any other court contrary to their de- CHAP. termination, he should be deemed a betrayer of her Majelty's prerogative, of the privileges of their house, and of the rights of the fubjects of Ireland. The commons were alfo folicitous to maintain their privileges. A money bill, tranfmitted to England in 1709, and returned to them with alterations, was rejected in its prefent form by a large majority. But the privileges of both houfes were indefenfibly violated by an act of the English parliament, in 1714, to prevent the growth of Schifm, an act levelled by the queen's miniftry against the prefbyterians, as whigs, both in England and Ireland. This law was made to include Ireland as fully as any part of England, as the miniftry knew that a bill to this purpofe could not pafs in the Irish houfe of commons, where the whigs had a fmall majority. 7: CHAP. CHAP. XXXVI. XXXVI. English affairs Union of England and Scotland— Dorfet CHAT WILLIAM the third, vefted by parliament with the English monarchy, had crufhed his opponents English affairs. among the Scots, had finally reduced Ireland, and had feen in 1692 the last attempt for the restoration of his rival, James the fecond, fruftrated by the naval battle of La Hogue, where the French fleet of fixty-three ships of the line, under admiral Tourville, ready to convey a French army into England, was totally defeated by a confiderably fuperior force of English and Dutch veffels under admiral Ruffel. Acting as the head of a great confederacy against France, France, whofe plans he repreffed of inordinate ambition, he at length concluded a general peace with that power in 1697. Delicate in frame by nature, and vexatiously agitated by the factious proceedings of the English parliament, particularly in the refumption of the Irish forfeitures, he gradually declined in constitution, till his death was haftened by a fall from his horse. As Mary, his queen, the eldest daughter of James the fecond, had died before him, the crown, by an act of parliament made in 1689, devolved to Anne, the fifter of Mary, in 1701. This princess fulfilled the foreign engagements of her predeceffor, in entering into a confederacy with the German emperor and the Dutch commonwealth for a war against France, to prevent the establishment of a grandfon of the French monarch (on the throne of Spain. She accomplished in 1706 a union of England and Scotland into one kingdom, ftyled, cognominally with the the iland of which they are parts, the kingdom of Great-Britain; a a union plainly neceflary for the independence of both in the growing magnitude of continental powers, yet not obtained without labour, largesses, and finesse. The war was profecuted with a fuccefs quite glorious on the fide of the Netherlands, where the famous John Churchil, duke of Marlborough, at the head of a confederate army, feemed to threaten the French monarchy with the lowest degradation. But the queen, whofe councils at first were directed by whigs, was in the four last years of her reign guided by a tory miniftry, who CHAP. XXXVI. |