When James ascended the throne, on the 16th of February, 1685, the Earl of Ormond was deputy for Ireland. He had taken a leading part in the most exciting scenes of the last fifty years. Gifted with the highest graces of mind and person, he had figured, in early life, as one of the most important personages of the English court, and had won the highest favors of Charles I., and his queen, Henrietta. His powers of diplomacy and statesmanship were kept in continual exercise during the latter years of that reign; but though gifted with talents to excel in each, in each he was signally unsuccessful; and all the evils that befell that king and eventuated in the extinction of his house, may be fairly traced to the one leading passion of Ormond,--an implacable hatred of the Irish Catholics. It would seem as if all the enmity of all the reformers, from Elizabeth to Cromwell, had in him found an exponent, and in directing his deadly malice against them, he was over-successful: he accomplished their ruin, but virtually consigned his patron and sovereign to the scaffold. His after life was ignoble and inglorious. He became prodigal of honor, tenacious of power, and served as trimmer and timeserver in turn, to Royalists and Parliamentarians alike. But whether in the service of his king or in complicity with his enemies, he held his political principles subservient to his worldly interest, and was consistent only in one passion, his religious intolerance. The character of this statesman had become odious to James long before his accession to the throne; and believing that no wholesome measures of redress could be introduced into Ireland, while one so notorious for his duplicity and hatred of its people remained at the head of affairs, he lost no time in recalling him. He then deputed the government to two Lords-Justices: Boyle, the Protestant primate, and Forbes, Earl of Granard, each of whom had attained a high degree of popularity with the people of all religious denominations. He had reason to believe that these appointments would be received in the spirit which dictated them, and prove a measure of general satisfaction. Upon the Catholic population it had the desired effect; but with the High Church party and the Nonconformists it was quite different. The hatred and jealousy that existed between them was only secondary to their mutual hatred of the Catholics, and these appointments kindled anew the ire of each party against the other. The Puritans were dissatisfied with Boyle, alleging that his Protestantism savored of "Popery;" and the Churchmen averred that Granard was a favorer of the sectaries, and an enemy to the "Establishment."