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236 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
throughout the land of intended massacres on the scale of those seen in 1641; so that hun-
dreds of Protestants fled from their homes to England and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, James had issued his Declaration of Indulgence in England and extended it to Ireland. This contentious Act which gave complete freedom of religion, made the King still more unpopular with the Protestant communities in both countries. In 1688 an heir was born to James, and the English Whigs, in other words, the supporters of Catholic Exclusion, rather than have a line of Catholic sovereigns, renounced their loyalty to James, and invited his eldest Protestant daughter, and her Protestant Dutch husband, William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, to England, ‘to intervene on behalf of the Protestant religion and the liberties of England.’ William and Mary came to England with a fleet and a large army in November 1688, and landed at Torbay, on the Devon coast. The following month, Christmas Eve, to be exact, James hurriedly fled to France where he hoped to enlist the help of King Louis X1V, ‘the Sun King,’ who was then waging his own war with William of Orange. When James left, the throne of England was declared “vacant” by his flight as he was said by his enemies to have ‘abdicated the throne’ and consequentally the crown was given to William and Mary as joint sovereigns. The ‘Glorious Rebellion’ as it came to be known, had begun.
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