prorogued without passing the bills, and the hopes of the king's Irish subjects were extinguished. Their earnest respectful remonstrances had been continuously spurned, and they were driven to desperation. "Half the realm was found to belong to his Majesty, as his ancient demesnes and inheritance, upon old, feigned titles of 300 years past by juries against law, their evidence, and conscience, who were corrupted to find the said titles, upon promise of part of the lands so found for the king or other rewards; or else drawn thereto by threats of the judges in the circuit, or heavy fines, mulcts, and censures of pillory, sty-marking, and other cruel and unusual punishments."

The banner of revolt was hoisted: the people of Ulster, driven from their homes to starve in woods and forests, swept like a torrent over the plains which once belonged to them, and in one week O'Neil was at the head of 30,000 men. The lords and gentlemen of the Pale, who were mostly of English descent, repaired in great numbers to Dublin, and applied to the Government for arms and authority to array themselves on the side of the Crown, but their application was insultingly refused, and they were ordered by proclamation bearing date October 28, 1641, to leave Dublin within twenty-four hours. They were forced into revolt. The Lords Justices Borlase and Parsons justified their conduct by declaring, “The more rebels, the more confiscation." Extensive forfeitures were the principal object of the chief governors and their friends. "Whatever were their professions, the only danger they really apprehended was that of a speedy suppression of the rebels." Troops arrived from England and Scotland. The English Parliament, with the reluctant consent of the king, passed an Act (the Act of Subscription of Charles I.) reserving 2,500,000 acres of arable meadow and pasture land in Ireland, out of 10,000,000 assumed to have been already forfeited by the insurgents; as security for money advanced in England for the expenses of the war. The orders of the lords in council to the army were "to wound, kill, slay, and destroy all the rebels and their adherents and relievers and burn, spoil, waste, consume, and destroy, and

demolish all places, towns, and houses where the rebels were or have been relieved or harboured, and all the corn and hay there, and to kill and destroy all the men there inhabiting able to bear arms." In the execution of these orders the Lords Justices declare that the soldiers murdered all persons promiscuously, not sparing the women, and sometimes not the children.

The downfall of Stafford led to the appointment of a committee of the Irish Lords and Commons, who demanded the graces as a settlement of the land question. The delay of Charles in acceding to their wishes alienated them from the monarch, and the committee entered into correspondence with the leaders of the disaffected portion of the English Parliament. The Marquis of Ormonde was appointed Lord Deputy, and became leader of the Irish royalists, who adhered to the cause of Charles with greater fidelity than could have been expected from their previous ill-treatment. Yet the mass of the Irish people who had been deprived of their possessions by the displacement of the tanistry system of landholding were disaffected to the royal cause. A large section of them, guided by the advice of the papal nuncio, refused a hearty cooperation, and this naturally embarrassed the king's forces. Ormonde held most of the fortified places in Ireland; Dublin, Derry, and Belfast were the only strongholds of the Parliament. The success of Ormonde induced the Parliament to appoint Cromwell Lord Deputy, and he was accompanied to Ireland by a considerable army. He completely broke the power of the royalists. The sack of Drogheda was a fearful exhibition of his power; he showed no mercy. Other fortresses were captured, the garrisons were put to the sword, and whole cities were left unpeopled.

Cromwell's success was followed by the expatriation of 30,000 to 40,000 able-bodied men, who might have been very troublesome had they remained at home. They entered the service of foreign states, and formed the celebrated Irish Brigade, which was recruited by a further expatriation in the reign of William III. The gallant conduct of the Irish

at the battle of Dettingen led George III. to exclaim, "Accursed be the laws which have deprived me of such subjects!" Cromwell forced the families of those who had entered foreign service on board ship, and carried them to the West Indies. The numbers are variously estimated at from 6,000 to 100,000. Four Parliamentary Commissioners were named to govern Ireland. Their courts were called "Cromwell's slaughterhouses." The cry was for blood, and they came as sheep to the slaughter. The next act was to banish all "the Irish" into Connaught and Clare. The object was to leave the other three provinces to English and Scotch settlers. The design being to obtain the land by the first Act of Settlement, the forfeiture of two-thirds of their estates had been pronounced against those who had borne arms against the Parliament of England or their forces, and onethird against those who had resided in Ireland any time from Oct. 1, 1649, to Nov. 1, 1650, and had not been in the actual service of Parliament, or supported its interests. By the second Act of Settlement it was provided that all persons claiming under the former qualification should get not a portion of their land, but an equal area at the west of the Shannon in Connaught or Clare.

These vast appropriations enabled that ambitious soldier to disband an army of which he was afraid; to remove from England the extreme Puritans, who might have been unruly, and to divert their attention from his policy to that of those whom they displaced. The land seized upon, provided a fund from which he was able to discharge their arrears of pay without raising taxes, which might prove obnoxious. The animosity which first showed itself against the queen of Charles I. found ample vent in Ireland against her coreligionists. Cromwell issued in 1652 debentures in the following form :—

"All lawful deductions made, there remaineth due from the Commonwealth to his executors, administrators, and assigns, which sum is to be

until the date hereof, the sum of satisfied out of the rebels' lands, houses, tenements, and heredita

ments in Ireland, in the disposal of the Commonwealth of England.

"Dated the day of 165-."

These debentures bear upon their face a falsehood; the Irish were not rebels against the English Parliament. They had not forfeited their lands by rebellion, inasmuch as they owed it no allegiance. To carry out the iniquitous designs of the regicides, it was necessary that they should get rid of their own army. They lacked the means of payment, and provided it out of the lands of the Irish. Courts were established in Dublin and Athlone for the determining of claims which should be made; a limited time only was allowed. Four Commissioners of Parliament were sent over,Edmund Ludlow, Miles Corbet, John Jones, and John Weaver. The Irish were driven across the Shannon, and confined within its limits by a chain of garrisons. The adventurers accepted as a full satisfaction the moiety of the forfeited lands in nine principal counties. A revenue was reserved for disabled soldiers, and for the widows and orphans of those who had fallen in the parliamentary service (except a part of the lands of bishops, and of deans and chapters, granted to the University of Dublin); these, with the forfeited lands in the counties of Dublin, Kildare, Carlow, and Cork, remained unappropriated, and were reserved by Parliament for future disposal. In 1653 the debentures were sold freely and openly for 4s. and 5s. per pound; and 20s. of debentures, one place with another, did purchase two acres of land, at which rate all the land of Ireland, estimated at 8,000,000 of profitable acres, might have been had for £1,000,000, which in 1641 had been worth above £8,000,000.

Dr. (afterwards Sir William) Petty arrived in Waterford in 1652 as physician to the army in Ireland. On the 11th of December, 1654, he obtained a contract from the Government for admeasuring the forfeited lands intended for Cromwell's soldiers at the rate of £7 3s. 4d. per 1,000 acres. By this contract he gained £9,000, and he afterwards got £900 more for a survey of the adventurers' lands. Through these means

and his private savings he realized about £13,000, with which sum he bought up soldiers' debentures, and acquired large portions of forfeited lands intended for them. When subsequently accused of having obtained his vast estates through undue influences, he defended himself by explaining, as he afterwards stated in his will, that he had "raised about £13,000 in ready money at a time when, without art, interest, or authority, men bought as much land for IOS. in real money as in this year, 1685, yields IOS. per annum above quit rents."

To such an extent was the removal of the people of some districts carried, that Sir William Petty states,

"The people of Tipperary have more universally obeyed the order of transportation than other counties generally had done; that county became so uninhabited and waste that it was impossible to find means to do the work tolerably well."

An order which was made in the Privy Council during the Protectorate proves the extent of the depopulation. It runs thus:

"Whereas Mr. Henry Pain, late one of the Commissioners of Revenue at Clonmel, hath informed us that the transplantation hath been so effectually carried on in the county of Tipperary, and especially in the barony of Eliogarty, that no inhabitant of the Irish nation that knows the country is left in the barony, which may be a great prejudice to the Commonwealth, for want of information of the bounds of the respective territories and the lands therein upon admeasurement; it is therefore ordered that it be referred to the Commissioners of Loughrea to consider if four fit and knowing persons of the Irish nation, lately removed out of the barony into Connaught, and to return them with their families to reside in or near their old habitations, for the due information of the surveyors appointed of the respective bounds of each parcel of land admeasurable, and to continue there until further order.

"Dublin, 20 December, 1654.

"THOMAS HERBERT,

"Clerk of the Council."

An almost complete transplantation of the people of