BOOK I. 1636 possessed by the forfeitures, they and their kerns and 1 Whereas in former times, after the conquest of this realm by his majesty's royal progenitors Kings of England, the natives of this realm of Irish blood, being descended of those that did inherit and possess this land before the said conquest, were for the most part in continual hostility with the English, and with those that did descend of the English, and therefore the said Irish were held and accounted and in diverse statutes and records were termed and called Irish enemies: Forasmuch as the cause of the said difference and of making the said laws and statutes doth now cease, in that all the natives and inhabitants of this kingdom, without difference or distinction, are taken into his majesty's protection, and do now live under one law, by means whereof a perfect agreement is or ought to be settled betwixt all his majesty's subjects in this realm: And forasmuch as there is no better means to settle peace and tranquillity in this kingdom, being now inhabited with many worthy persons born in his majesty's several kingdoms, than by abolishing the said laws and giving them free liberty to commerce and match together, so that they may grow into one nation, and there be an utter oblivion and extinguishment of all former difference and disorder between them: be it enacted... that all these laws be for ever utterly repealed.'-Irish Statutes, 13 James I. cap. 5. II. 1636 Then, for the first time, the natural wealth of CHAP. Ireland began to reveal itself. Commerce sprung up, as yet unhampered by navigation acts or disabilities. Busy fingers were set at work on loom and at spinning-wheel. Fields, fenced and drained, grew yellow with rolling corn; and the vast herds and flocks which had wandered at will on hill and valley were turned to profitable account. A livecattle trade was established with Bristol. Traders from half the ports in Europe came to Cork for salt fish, salt butter, and salt meat. The exquisite Irish wool, which the peasants' wives were learning to weave, but which grew in an abundance far beyond their home consumption, was exchanged in the south of Europe for wine. Portugal and Spain were supplied from the Irish forests with pipe-staves; and the Dutch had their shipyards in Irish creeks and havens, where the timber was excellent and cheap.1 Population, which had remained stationary for a thousand years, began suddenly and swiftly to expand. In 1580 the inhabitants of Ireland were reckoned roughly at half a million, and the Protestants among them were too few to be worth counting. In 1641 the population was almost a million and a half, and among them were two hundred and sixty thousand Protestants. When left to themselves the Irish had killed each other down in their perpetual wars, and the children had died for want of food. The institution of the policeman and the cultivation of the soil enabled a race to multiply in geometrical progression, which nature, by the habits with which she had endowed BOOK them, intended perhaps to preserve only in more manageable numbers. I. 1636 The favourable picture had, indeed, another side. If well with the earth-tillers, it was other than well with those who had hitherto been lords paramount, and had lived at their own idle will. 'There was peace,' says the latest and most accomplished exponent of the historical wrongs of Ireland,' ‘but it was the peace of despair; there was prosperity, but among the supplanting strangers.' An act of Parliament, passed in Strafford's viceroyalty, shows the class into whose souls the iron was entering. 'Whereas,' says that act,2 'there are many young gentlemen of this kingdom that have little or nothing to live on of their own, and will not apply themselves to labour, but live coshering in the country, cessing themselves and their followers, their horses and their greyhounds, upon the poorer inhabitants, sometimes exacting money from them, to spare them and their tenants and go elsewhere for their suppers and breakfast, which the poor people dare not deny them .. and whereas by that lawless kind of life of these idle young gentlemen and others, being commonly active young men and such as seek to have many followers and dependants, many other inconveniences are likely to arise, for they are apt, on the least occasion of disturbance, to rifle and make booty of his majesty's loyal subjects, and to be heads and leaders of outlaws and rebels, and in the meantime do and must support their excessive and expenseful drinking and gaming by secret stealth or growing into debt,'-justices of the peace were empowered to 1 The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, by John Prendergast. apprehend all such idle persons and commit them to gaol till they could find sufficient securities for their honest and quiet behaviour. These young gentlemen, being the dispossessed heirs of the forfeited estates, are held entitled, though they were mischievous and idle, to be regarded with sympathy, because deprived of their lawful inheritance. Ireland would have benefited little from such owners of her soil had they remained in occupation. But the act describes, in reality, only the inveterate and immemorial habits of so-called Irish gentlemen before forfeiture was heard or thought of. Too vain of their birth to work, and enabled by the custom of the country to live on the plunder of the poor, they were finding at last the law too strong for them. The peasants whom they robbed were also Irish subjects, whose protection is made England's crime.' 1 An expression in the act shows that the law was becoming feared, and that government was at last a reality. A farmer who a century before had refused to feed and lodge a party of these people would have been promptly hanged or shot. He was still afraid to shut his doors against them, but for another CHAP. II. 1636 BOOK I. 1608 SECTION II. MEANWHILE, though the Earls of Tyrconnell and Tyrone had failed to repeal the penal laws, the Catholics remained substantially unmolested. There was a full staff of archbishops and bishops. Chapels sprung up on all sides. Monasteries were repaired and filled with friars. Priests multiplied with the growth of the people, and were distributed in parishes without need of concealment. The Church throve with the country, and, while able to complain of persecution, practically suffered nothing from it. Two-thirds of the lands in the four provinces still remained in Catholic hands. In the House of Commons, although their powers were controlled by the representatives of the towns of the new settlements, they returned nearly half the members. In the Upper House they had a large majority. They were strong enough to extort from Charles the First a promise of a modification of the Supremacy Oath. It was necessary to remind them by proclamation that the Act of Uniformity remained on the statute book, and that their religious liberties depended on the Crown's indulgence. Fifteen religious houses, which they erected as if in defiance in Dublin itself, under the eye of Government, were seized and condemned. But these houses were soon restored. The proclamations were ridiculed; the hesitation in enforcing the law was construed into cowardice; and instead of gratitude for the connivance which left them the free exercise of their own forms of worship, they cherished |