It might have been thought that the news which came from Ireland a few days before the mutiny would have stirred the House of Commons to take some such measure in hand. Tyrconnel had already called the Irish to arms for King James, and on the 14th of March James himself, having obtained aid from the French king, had landed at Cork with some hundreds of officers to organise the Irish levies. The regular troops in the Irish establishment, already manipulated by Tyrconnel before the Revolution, were ready to join him. Some regiments went over to him entire; others split themselves up into Catholics and Protestants, and ranged themselves on opposite sides. It was evident that no less a task than the reconquest of Ireland lay before the English Government; and considering that several regiments had already been detached to Flanders, it was equally evident that the Army must be increased. Estimates were therefore prepared of the cost of six regiments of horse, two of dragoons, and twenty-five of foot, sixteen of which last were to be newly raised, for the coming campaign. Of the new regiments a few lay ready to William's hand. The first was Lord Forbes's regiment, one of the many Irish corps brought over to England by King James in 1688, and the only one which, being made up entirely of Protestants, was not disbanded by William at his accession. It is still with us as the Eighteenth Royal Irish. The next three were corps which had been raised for the support of the Protestant cause at the Revolution. The first of them was a regiment of horse raised by the Earl of Devonshire among his tenantry in Derbyshire, which, long known by the name of the Black Horse, now bears the title of the Seventh Dragoon Guards. The second was a regiment of foot that had been formed at Exeter to join the Prince of Orange on his march from Torbay, and is still known as the Twentieth East Devon; and the third also remains with us as the Nineteenth of the Line. Three more regiments date their birth from March 1689--one raised by the Duke of Norfolk, one enlisted in the Welsh Marches, and a third which was recruited in Ireland but almost immediately brought over to England. These are now the Twenty-second, Twenty-third, and Twenty-fourth of the Line. Six more regiments of infantry which were raised in the same year, but disbanded at the close of the war, were Drogheda's, Lisburn's, Kingston's, Ingoldsby's, Roscommon's, and Bolton's. Of these, curiously enough, no fewer than three were dressed in blue instead of scarlet coats, possibly in flattering imitation of King William's famous Blue Guards. Thus, with ten thousand men to be enlisted, drilled, trained, and equipped, there was no lack of work for the recruiting officer, or for the Office of Ordnance, in the spring of [Sidenote: May 10.]