On the fifth of October 1692 the Parliament met at Dublin in Chichester House.  It was very differently composed from the assembly which had borne the same title in 1689.  Scarcely one peer, not one member of the House of Commons, who had sate at the King’s Inns, was to be seen.  To the crowd of O’s and Macs, descendants of the old princes of the island, had succeeded men whose names indicated a Saxon origin.  A single O, an apostate from the faith of his fathers, and three Macs, evidently emigrants from Scotland, and probably Presbyterians, had seats in the assembly.

The Parliament, thus composed, had then less than the powers of the Assembly of Jamaica or of the Assembly of Virginia.  Not merely was the Legislature which sate at Dublin subject to the absolute control of the Legislature which sate at Westminster:  but a law passed in the fifteenth century, during the administration of the Lord Deputy Poynings, and called by his name, had provided that no bill which had not been considered and approved by the Privy Council of England should be brought into either House in Ireland, and that every bill so considered and approved should be either passed without amendment or rejected.403

The session opened with a solemn recognition of the paramount authority of the mother country.  The Commons ordered their clerk to read to them the English Act which required them to take the Oath of Supremacy and to subscribe the Declaration against Transubstantiation.  Having heard the Act read, they immediately proceeded to obey it.  Addresses were then voted which expressed the warmest gratitude and attachment to the King.  Two members, who had been untrue to the Protestant and English interest during the troubles, were expelled.  Supplies, liberal when compared with the resources of a country devastated by years of predatory war, were voted with eagerness.  But the bill for confirming the Act of Settlement was thought to be too favourable to the native gentry, and, as it could not be amended, was with little ceremony rejected.  A committee of the whole House resolved that the unjustifiable indulgence with which the Irish had been treated since the battle of the Boyne was one of the chief causes of the misery of the kingdom.  A Committee of Grievances sate daily till eleven in the evening; and the proceedings of this inquest greatly alarmed the Castle.  Many instances of gross venality and knavery on the part of men high in office were brought to light, and many instances also of what was then thought a criminal lenity towards the subject nation.  This Papist had been allowed to enlist in the army; that Papist had been allowed to keep a gun; a third had too good a horse; a fourth had been protected against Protestants who wished to bring actions against him for wrongs committed during the years of confusion.  The Lord Lieutenant, having obtained nearly as much money as he could expect, determined to put an end to these unpleasant inquiries.  He knew, however,