Hence, long before the death of James, all the hopes which his accession had raised in the minds of the Irish had vanished; yet, strange to say, they were not cured of their love for the Stuart dynasty. They hailed the coming of Charles, the husband of a Catholic princess, with joy. His marriage took place a year previous to the death of his father; and, to know that Henrietta of France was to be their queen, was enough to assure the Irish that, henceforth, they would enjoy the freedom of their religion. The same motive always awakes in them hope and joy. Men may smile at such an idea, but it is with a profound respect for the Irish character that such a sentence is written. Hope of religious freedom is the noblest sentiment which can move the breast of man; and if there be reason for admiration in the motive which urges men to fight and die for their firesides and families, how much more so in that which causes them to set above all their altars and their God! This time their hope seemed well-founded; for the treaty concluded between England and France conferred the right on the Catholic princess of educating her children by this marriage till the age of thirteen. And, in addition, conditions favorable to the English Catholics were inserted in the same treaty. But people were not then aware of the reason for the insertion of those conditions. Hume, later on, being better acquainted with what at the time was a secret, states in his history that "the court of England always pretended, even in the memorials to the French court, that all the conditions favorable to the English Catholics were inserted in the marriage treaty merely to please the Pope, and that their strict execution was, by an agreement with France, secretly dispensed with." The Irish rejoiced, however; and Charles and his ministers encouraged their expectations. Lord Falkland, in the name of the king, promised that, if the Catholic lords should present Charles, who needed money, with a voluntary tribute, he would in return grant them certain immunities and protections, which acquired later on a great celebrity under the name of "graces." The chief of these were--to allow "recusants" to practise in the courts of law, and to sue out the livery of their land, merely on taking an act of civil allegiance instead of the oath of supremacy; that the claims of the crown should be limited to the last sixty years--a period long enough in all conscience; and that the inhabitants of Connaught should be allowed to make a new enrolment of their estates, to be accepted by the king. A Parliament was promised to sit in a short time, in order to confirm all these "graces." The subsidy promised by the Irish lords amounted to the then enormous sum of forty thousand pounds sterling, to be paid annually for three years. Two-thirds of it was paid, according to Matthew O'Connor, but no one of the "graces" was forthcoming, the king finding he had promised more than he could perform.