Hitherto the judges appointed by the usurper had been under a restraint, imperfect indeed, yet not absolutely nugatory.

They had known that a day of reckoning might come, and had therefore in general dealt tenderly with the persecuted adherents of the rightful King.

That restraint His Majesty had now taken away.

He had told Holt and Treby that, till he should land in England, they might hang royalists without the smallest fear of being called to account.

[436] But by no class of people was the Declaration read with so much disgust and indignation as by the native aristocracy of Ireland.