Indeed the dissentient commissioners had worse evils to apprehend than that of being left unremunerated.  One of them, Sir Richard Levinz, had mentioned in private to his friends some disrespectful expressions which had been used by one of his colleagues about the King.  What he had mentioned in private was, not perhaps very discreetly, repeated by Montague in the House.  The predominant party eagerly seized the opportunity of worrying both Montague and Levinz.  A resolution implying a severe censure on Montague was carried.  Levinz was brought to the bar and examined.  The four were also in attendance.  They protested that he had misrepresented them.  Trenchard declared that he had always spoken of His Majesty as a subject ought to speak of an excellent sovereign, who had been deceived by evil counsellors, and who would be grateful to those who should bring the truth to his knowledge.  He vehemently denied that he had called the grant to Lady Orkney villainous.  It was a word that he never used, a word that never came out of the mouth of a gentleman.  These assertions will be estimated at the proper value by those who are acquainted with Trenchard’s pamphlets, pamphlets in which the shocking word villainous will without difficulty be found, and which are full of malignant reflections on William.20 But the House was determined not to believe Levinz.  He was voted a calumniator, and sent to the Tower, as an example to all who should be tempted to speak truth which the Commons might not like to hear.

Meanwhile the bill had been brought in, and was proceeding easily.  It provided that all the property which had belonged to the Crown at the time of the accession of James the Second, or which had been forfeited to the Crown since that time, should be vested in trustees.  These trustees were named in the bill; and among them were the four commissioners who had signed the report.  All the Irish grants of William were annulled.  The legal rights of persons other than the grantees were saved.  But of those rights the trustees were to be judges, and judges without appeal.  A claimant who gave them the trouble of attending to him, and could not make out his case, was to be heavily fined.  Rewards were offered to informers who should discover any property which was liable to confiscation, and which had not yet been confiscated.  Though eight years had elapsed since an arm had been lifted up in the conquered island against the domination of the Englishry, the unhappy children of the soil, who had been suffered to live, submissive and obscure, on their hereditary fields, were threatened with a new and severe inquisition into old offences.