In England, William of Orange had meanwhile landed in Torbay, and James had fled precipitately to France.  Tyrconnel, who seems to have been unprepared for this event, hesitated at first, undecided what to do or how matters would eventually shape themselves.  He even wrote to William, professing to be rather favourable than otherwise to his cause, a profession which the king, who was as yet anything but firm in his own seat, seems to have listened to with some belief, and General Richard Hamilton was sent over by him to negotiate matters with the viceroy.

The passions awakened on both sides were far too strong however, for any such temporizing.  Louis XIV. had received James upon his flight with high honour, and his return to the throne was believed by his own adherents to be imminent.  In England, especially in London, the excitement against the Irish Catholics was prodigious, and had been increased by the crowd of Protestant refugees who had recently poured in.  The Irish regiments brought to England by James had been insultingly disbanded, and their officers put under arrest.  “Lilibullero,” the anti-Catholic street song, was sung by thousands of excited lips.  Lord Jefferies, who embodied in his own person all that the popular hatred most detested in his master’s rule, had been dragged to prison amid the threatening howls of the populace.  The “Irish night,” during which—­though without the faintest shadow of reason—­the London citizens had fully believed an Irish mob to be in the act of marching upon the town, with the set purpose of massacring every Protestant man, woman, and child in it, had worked both town and nation to the highest possible pitch of excitement.  In Ireland too the stream had gone too far and too fast to turn back.  The minority and the majority stood facing one another like a pair of pugilists.  The Protestants, whose property had been either seized or wasted, were fast concentrating themselves behind Lough Foyle.  Thither Tyrconnel sent Richard Hamilton—­who, deserting William, had thrown himself upon the other side—­with orders to reduce Londonderry before aid could arrive from England.  To James himself Tyrconnel wrote, urging him to start for Ireland without delay.  Though unprepared at present to furnish soldiers, Louis was munificent in other respects.  A fleet of fourteen men-of-war, with nine smaller vessels, was provided.  Arms, ammunition, and money without stint were placed at the command of the exile, and a hundred French officers with the Count d’Avaux, one of the king’s most trusted officials, as envoy, were sent to accompany the expedition.  On March 12, 1689, James II. landed at Kinsale.

XLIII.

WILLIAM AND JAMES IN IRELAND.