It is likewise remarkable, that the king declared in express terms, "that he had thought fit, by his sovereign authority, prerogative royal, and absolute power, which all his subjects were to obey, without reserve, to grant this royal toleration." The dangerous designs of other princes are to be collected by a comparison of their several actions, or by a discovery of their more secret counsels: but so blinded was James with zeal, so transported by his imperious temper, that even his proclamations and public edicts contain expressions which, without further inquiry, may suffice to his condemnation.
The English well knew that the king, by the constitution of their government, thought himself entitled, as indeed he was, to as ample authority in his southern as in his northern kingdom; and therefore, though the declaration of indulgence published for England was more cautiously expressed, they could not but be alarmed by the arbitrary treatment to which their neighbors were exposed.

It is even remarkable, that the English declaration contained clauses of a strange import.

The king there promised, that he would maintain his loving subjects in all their properties and possessions, as well of church and abbey lands as of any other.

Men thought that, if the full establishment of Popery were not at hand, this promise was quite superfluous; and they concluded, that the king was so replete with joy on the prospect of that glorious event, that he could not, even for a moment, refrain from expressing it.
But what afforded the most alarming prospect, was the continuance and even increase of the violent and precipitate conduct of affairs in Ireland.

Tyrconnel was now vested with full authority; and carried over with him as chancellor one Fitton, a man who was taken from a jail, and who had been convicted of forgery and other crimes, but who compensated for all his enormities by a headlong zeal for the Catholic religion.
He was even heard to say from the bench, that the Protestants were all rogues, and that there was not one among forty thousand that was not a traitor, a rebel, and a villain.