The Siege of Derry, Bishop William King, and concepts of Liberty: "if liberty be lost it is never to be retrieved"

The gates of Londonderry were closed on 7 December 1688, in the face of an army bearing down upon them which was led by the Earl of Antrim. In late February 1689, the Dublin government of King James II received a leaked intel report which said that the northern civilian population:

"... were untrained, and had few experienced officers: that the most part were without arms; and, such as had them, their arms were unfixt and unfit for service; that they were very much scattered, and their number not near what had been written, and was confidently reported in Dublin; and that they wanted all ammunition and necessary provisions for appearing in the field..." (online here). 

So, it was time for the government to strike. Derry was in rebellion. King James II was on his way to Ireland to try to build a counter-offensive to reclaim his throne. A new King and new Queen had been offered the crown, but coronation hadn't yet happened. Any potential opposition needed to be crushed. Now.

Just over a week later on 7 March 1689, the government issued 'A Proclamation' (online here) which pretty much criminalised the entire population of "the province of Ulster ... no less offence than high treason" and announced that the army had been approved "to march into the province of Ulster to reduce the rebels there by force of arms". It offered pardon to any who would surrender, except for ten named individuals.

The proclamation probably gave the government a degree of legal cover for what they planned to do (although in the age of the king having 'arbitrary power', and long before the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the King could do whatever he wanted). It promised leniency towards the civilian population, but in fact there are widespread accounts of army brutalisation and 'perfidious acts' unleashed upon against the general public in a campaign of oppression. James recruited men with skills in civilian persecution elsewhere, such as Conrad Von Rosen, who wrote –

"... the wives and children of the rebels in Londonderry have retired to Belfast and the neighbouring places, and the hardiness of their husbands and fathers deserves the severest chastisements ... make an exact research in Belfast and its neighbourhood, after such subjects as are rebellious to the will of the king, whether men, women, boys, or girls, without exception, and whether they are protected or unprotected, to arrest them and collect them together, that they may be conducted by a detachment to this camp, and driven under the walls of Londonderry, where they shall be allowed to starve, in sight of the rebels within the town ..."

King James II himself arrived at the historic walls on 18 April 1689, beginning the formal Siege of Derry. The siege ended 105 days later on 1 August.  If we count the whole period, from the shutting of the gates on 7 December 1688 right through until 1 August it makes a grand total of 237 days.

It is impossible for us to imagine the conditions that 30,000 people within the walls had to endure; these were experiences which drove emigration to America, the stories of which were handed down to the American-born generations that followed.

One of those who knew many of the survivors was Bishop William King. On page four of his 1691 publication The State of the Protestants of Ireland (online here), he makes this statement –

"… If we look back into history we shall find the best the happiest most prosperous people most jealous of their liberty and while they continued firm in their resolution of maintaining it against the encroachment of their governors even with the hazard of their lives they have continued great and happy; but no sooner did they degenerate from this zeal, but they became contemptible and dwindled into nothing: 

and at this day let us look into the whole world and we shall find every nation happy and thriving at home and easy to their neighbours abroad according as they have preserved themselves from slavery whereas all countries under unlimited monarchies decay in their strength and improvements and though they may flourish for a little time by the ruin of their lesser neighbours yet they at last unpeople their own countries and seem to be permitted by God to come to that exorbitant power for their own ruin and for a plague to mankind.

And indeed the greatest mischief of a civil war is the danger of subjecting the state to the absolute power of some potent general as it happened in Rome, Florence, and in England in the late civil war: for to lose even half the subjects in a war is more tolerable than the loss of liberty since if liberty and good laws be preserved an age or two will repair the loss of subjects and improvements though they be ever so great but if liberty be lost it is never to be retrieved but brings certain and infallible destruction*; as it did to Rome, and has brought in a great measure to Florence, and will to England if ever the prerogative do swallow up the liberties and privileges of the subjects. So far it is from truth that the allowing of resistance in some cases of extremity has greater inconveniences than absolute subjection ..."

The Boston Revolt in Massachussetts began 18 April 1689 on the same day as the Siege of Derry. When the 13 British colonies of America sought liberty - and eventually a new revolution - in the 1770s many of their writers and thinkers pointed back to the Glorious Revolution.

Agreed concepts - and actual experiences - of liberty bound the transatlantic community together. The only solution to the tyrannies they endured was liberty, which was backed up by a legally binding Bill of Rights to protect the citizenry.

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A famous quote at the time, from the diary of soldier John Hunter, says this:

“I am sure it was the Lord kept the city, and none else; for there were many of us that could hardly stand on our feet before the enemy attacked the walls, who, when they were assaulting the out-trenches, ran out against them most nimbly and with great courage. Indeed, it was never the poor, starved men that were in Derry that kept it out, but the mighty God of Jacob, to whom praise for ever and ever.” 

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In The Declaration of the Inhabitants of Derry of December 1688 (online here), there are echoes of their descendants' thinking in the 13 Colonies in the 1770s. Each community demanded their liberties whilst at the same time expressing their loyalty to the King:

"...Wherefore we do declare and remonstrate to the world that, as we have resolved to stand upon our guard, and defend our walls, and not to admit of any Papists whatsoever to quarter among us, so we have firmly and sincerely determined to persevere in our duty and loyalty to our sovereign Lord the King, without the least umbrage of mutiny or seditious opposition to his royal commands..."  

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John Graham, in Ireland Preserved, records the kindnesses of some local Catholic parish priests towards their Protestant neighbours who were in distress - see p 283-4 here.

The critical lesson here is that your relationship to institutional power - a state, a church, a monarchy, etc - is not the same as your relationship with your neighbour. However, some form of institutional power is probably trying to emotionally recruit you, while a competing one is trying to emotionally recruit your neighbour - and thereby to set you against each other.

As Rev Thomas Witherow said in his 1873 book about Derry, 'Every admirer of King William should remember that, as that great monarch often said, he had come over "to deliver the Protestants, but not to persecute the Papists." To tolerate honest difference of opinion, is the spirit that William always aimed to promote.' 

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* this all sounds much like Patrick Henry's famous 'give me liberty or give me death' (Wikipedia here). Patrick Henry's father was from Aberdeen; his sister Elizabeth was married to Ulster descended William Campbell, one of the signatories to the Fincastle Resolutions of 20 January 1775 (see previous post here).