Sydney’s Recognition Parliament
The immediate business of government was implementing the surrender terms agreed at Limerick on 3 October 1691. On 24 February 1692 William and Mary ratified the civil and military articles by letters patent under the Great Seal of England. This was a significant guarantee, but not a simple declaration of general toleration. The civil articles named particular groups—inhabitants of Limerick and other Jacobite garrisons, officers and soldiers, and people in specified western and southern counties—who submitted to the new sovereigns. Within their stated conditions, they were promised the estates, rights and privileges they had lawfully possessed under Charles II, and relief from specified arrears accumulated since Michaelmas 1688.