Though brought over to England to help in the suppression of Monmouth’s rebellion against James II., Granard’s took no part in the operations by which the rising was crushed at Sedgemoor, and in the autumn of 1685 returned to Ireland,[2] where evil days awaited it. With James’s attempt against the liberties of his English subjects it is not the province of a regimental historian to deal; but it is necessary to explain that the King, desiring ardently to own an army upon which he could count to obey him blindly in the political campaign he was planning, proposed to drive from the Colours all officers and men upon whom he could not rely implicitly to carry out his schemes. He decided to begin operations in Ireland, where he gave the Earl of Tyrconnel unlimited power to remodel the _personnel_ of the troops. In 1686, Tyrconnel summarily dismissed from many regiments all the Protestants in the ranks, whom he stripped of their uniforms and turned penniless and starving upon the world. The officers fared little better: two of Granard’s captains, John St Leger and Frederick Hamilton, were “disbanded” solely on account of their religious beliefs. As a protest against these proceedings Lord Granard resigned his commission, to which his son Arthur, Lord Forbes, was appointed on March 1, 1686. Next year the regiment “underwent a further purge,” thus described by Brigadier-General Stearne,[3] who was then one of Forbes’s officers. “Tyrconnel made a strict review of each troop and company, wherein he found a great many descendants of the ‘Cromelians,’ as he termed them, who must turn out also, and took the name of every man who was to be of the next disbandment, so that every soldier of an English name was marked down. As soon as the camp broke up and the army returned into winter quarters, most of the officers as well as soldiers were disbanded, and only a few kept in for a while to discipline those that supplied their places.” Tyrconnel rid himself of about four thousand of all ranks, or considerably more than half the Irish army; the men he replaced with peasants, good in physique but without discipline or training, while the officers he appointed were of a very inferior class, who in the war of 1690-91 failed in many cases to turn to good account the splendid fighting qualities of their soldiers. It is, however, only fair to Tyrconnel’s memory to mention that while he thus reduced the efficiency of the Irish army, he increased its power of expansion by devising a short service and reserve system by which many thousand men could be recalled to the Colours in case of need.