Here was broken out a rebellion, dreadful and unexpected; accompanied with circumstances the most detestable of which there ever was any record; and what was the peculiar guilt of the Irish Catholics, it was no difficult matter, in the present disposition of men's minds, to attribute to that whole sect, who were already so much the object of general abhorrence.

Accustomed in all invectives to join the prelatical party with the Papists, the people immediately supposed this insurrection to be the result of their united counsels.

And when they heard that the Irish rebels pleaded the king's commission for all their acts of violence, bigotry, ever credulous and malignant, assented without scruple to that gross imposture, and loaded the unhappy prince with the whole enormity of a contrivance so barbarous and inhuman.[*] [8] * See note H.at the end of the volume By the difficulties and distresses of the crown, the commons, who possessed alone the power of supply, had aggrandized themselves; and it seemed a peculiar happiness, that the Irish rebellion had succeeded at so critical a juncture to the pacification of Scotland.

That expression of the king's, by which he committed to them the care of Ireland, they immediately laid hold of, and interpreted in the most, unlimited sense.
They had on other occasions been gradually encroaching on the executive power of the crown, which forms its principal and most natural branch of authority; but with regard to Ireland, they at once assumed it, fully and entirely, as if delivered over to them by a regular gift or assignment.

And to this usurpation the king was obliged passively to submit; both because of his inability to resist, and lest he should still more expose himself to the reproach of favoring the progress of that odious rebellion.
The project of introducing further innovations in England being once formed by the leaders among the commons, it became a necessary consequence, that their operations with regard to Ireland should, all of them, be considered as subordinate to the former, on whose success, when once undertaken, their own grandeur, security, and even being, must entirely depend.