James had some strong partisans in England also—mostly among the Roman Catholic and Episcopalian High Church elements, but they were powerless to stem the overwhelming tide of public opinion against him. Ireland was with him vehemently, except the small Protestant minority, chiefly resident in Ulster, which was enthusiastic for William and Mary. Representatives of this active element had closed the gates of Derry in the face of the Earl of Antrim, when he demanded the town’s surrender, in the name of the deposed king, in December, 1688. This incident proved that the Irish Protestants, with the usual rule-proving exceptions, meant “war to the knife” against the Catholic Stuart dynasty. Thus civil war, intensified by foreign intervention, became inevitable. The towns of Inniskillen, Sligo, Coleraine, and the fort of Culmore, on the Foyle, either followed the example of Derry, or were seized without ceremony by the partisans of William and Mary in Ulster and Connaught. These partisans, headed by Lord Blaney, Sir Arthur Rawdon, and other Anglo-Irishmen, invited William to come into the country, “for the maintenance of the Protestant religion and the dependency of Ireland upon England.” Thus, again, was the Protestant religion made the pretext of provincializing Ireland, and because of this identification of it with British supremacy the new creed has remained undeniably unpopular with the masses of the Irish people. The latter are very ardent Catholics, as their long and bloody wars in defence of their faith have amply proven, but while this statement is undeniable, it can not be denied either that had the so-called Reformation not been identified with English political supremacy, it might have made much greater inroads among the Irish population than it has succeeded in doing. Ireland was treated not a whit better under the Catholic rulers of England, from 1169 to the period of Mary I—Henry VIII was a schismatic rather than a Protestant—than under her Protestant rulers, until James II appeared upon the scene, and his clemency toward the Irish was based upon religious rather than national grounds. Even in our own day, the English Catholics are among the strongest opponents of Irish legislative independence, and in the category of such opponents may be classed the late Cardinal Vaughan and the present Duke of Norfolk.