those who had power were of the same religion. The new settlers had obtained a firm grasp upon the soil, and they were a strong, compact, armed body, quite capable of defending their position in the field. The Irish, on the other hand, were actually dispossessed. They were poor, broken, miserable, and friendless. They were aliens in nationality and Papists in religion, and they managed their cause with little skill. Everything that could be done to discredit them by false rumours of plots, by extravagant exaggerations of the crimes which had undoubtedly been committed by the peasants in Ulster, was done, and great sums were distributed by the agents of the adventurers among the most influential persons in England. It is not surprising that these measures were successful. The Irish had very foolishly quarrelled with Ormond while the Parliament in Dublin voted him a gift of 30,000l. Clarendon used his great influence against them. All the other competing interests in Ireland, we are told, were united 'in their implacable malice to the Irish and in their desire that they might gain nothing by the King's return.'1 English public opinion was strongly on the same side, and the King, after some hesitation, declared 'that he was for an English interest to be established in Ireland, which,' it was truly said, 'showed the Irish plainly enough who were likely to be the sufferers.'2 The motives of the Government can hardly be better stated than by the biographer of the statesman who had the largest share in determining the event. "The King,' writes Carte, 'seemed one while favourable to the Irish, and expressed himself as if he intended the Peace of 1648 should be made good to them; but their agents effaced this disposition in him by insisting perpetually 1 Continuation of the Life of Clarendon, p. 66. on the obligation of the articles of it in all their strictness, and inculcating to him that he was obliged in honour and justice to make them good. Kings do not care to be taught their duty in such a manner, and it sounded harsh to his Majesty. . . . The King considered the settlement of Ireland as an affair rather of policy than justice. When he had made his declaration he was misled to think there were lands enough to reprise such of the adventurers and soldiers as were to be dispossessed to make way for restorable persons; but now that he was sensible of that mistake, and it appeared that one interest or other must suffer for want of reprises, he thought it most for the good of the kingdom, advantage of the Crown, and security of his government, that the loss should fall on the Irish. This was the opinion of his council; and a contrary conduct would have been matter of discontent to the Parliament of England, which he desired to preserve in good humour, for the advantage of his affairs and the ease of his government.' The Irish were accordingly sacrificed with little reluctance. The negotiations that followed were long and tedious, and it will be sufficient here to relate the general result. All attempts to carry out in their integrity the articles of the Peace of 1648, by which the confederate Irish had been reconciled to the King, were completely abandoned, but a Court of English Commissioners was appointed to hear the claims of innocent Papists. 4,000 Irish Catholics demanded restitution as innocents.' About 600 claims were heard, and, to the great indignation of the Protestant party, in the large majority of cases, the Catholics established their claims. The Commissioners, who could have no possible bias in favour of the Irish, appear to have acted with great justice. Those who had the strongest claims were 1 1 Carte's Ormond, ii. 241, 242. VOL. I. I naturally the most eager to be tried. The lapse of time and the confusion of affairs destroyed many proofs of guilt, and it is probable that false testimony was on both sides largely employed. The anger and panic of the English knew no bounds. It was alleged that there would be no sufficient funds to reprise the Protestant adventurers who were removed.1 Parliament was loud in its complaints. A formidable plot was discovered. There was much fear of a great Protestant insurrection in Ireland, and English public opinion was very hostile to all concessions to Catholics. A new Bill of Settlement, or, as it was termed, of explanation, was accord 1 The extreme indignation which this produced among the adventurers may be traced in the often quoted assertion of Pettyone of the most prominent of the class-that not one of twenty who were adjudged innocent were really so. Clarendon fully confirms what has been said about the high character of the Commissioners, but adds: 'There was experience in the prosecution of this affair of such forgeries and perjuries as have not been heard of amongst Christians; in which to our shame the English were not behindhand with the Irish' (Continuation of the Life of Clarendon, folio ed., p. 114). See, too, pp. 125-127. Mr. Froude says: The working of an Act so vaguely worded depended wholly on the temper of the juries before whom the cases came,' and he speaks of 'the tendency of the juries to favour the native Catholics' (English in Ireland, i. 150, 152). It was expressly provided that there should be no juries in the case, and that the Commissioners (who were all English Protestants) should give the verdict as well as conduct the trials. In the words of Clarendon, 'They were therefore trusted with an arbitrary power, because it was foreseen that juries were not like to be entire' (Continuation of the Life of Clarendon, p. 127). The only case in which juries were admitted was when there was a dispute as to whether particular lands were profitable or unprofitable (14 & 15 Charles II. c. 2, § 6). Carte says: The Act by which the Commissioners were to judge had been framed and passed without the advice or concurrence of one Irishman or Roman Catholic. The rules by which they were to proceed were expressed in that Act, and the Commissioners chosen by the King were Englishmen, Protestants, men of good reputation for parts and integrity, without any relation to Ireland or Irishmen' (ii. 311). 6 ingly brought in and passed. It provided that the adventurers and soldiers should give up one-third of their grants to be applied to the purpose of increasing the fund for reprisals; that the Connaught purchasers should retain two-thirds of the lands they possessed in September 1663; that in all cases of competition between the Protestants and the Roman Catholics every ambiguity should be interpreted in favour of the former; that twenty more of the Irish should be restored by special favour, but that all the other Catholics whose claims had hitherto, for want of time, not been decided by the Commissioners, should be treated as disqualified. Upwards of 3,000 old proprietors were thus, without a trial, excluded for ever from the inheritance of their fathers. The estimates of the change that was effected are somewhat various. Walsh, with a great and manifest exaggeration, stated that, before the rebellion, nineteen parts in twenty of the lands of the kingdom were still in the possession of Catholics. Colonel Lawrence, a Cromwellian soldier in Ireland, who wrote an account of this time, computed that the Irish had owned ten acres to one that was possessed by the English. According to Petty, of that portion of Ireland which was good ground capable of cultivation, about two-thirds, before 1641, had been possessed by Catholics. After the Act of Settlement, the Protestants possessed, according to the estimate of Lawrence, four-fifths of the whole kingdom; according to that of Petty, rather more than two-thirds of the good land. Of the Protestant landowners in 1689, two-thirds, according to Archbishop King, held their estates under the Act of Settlement.3 1 17 & 18 Charles II. c. 2. Crawfurd's Hist. of Ireland, ii. 141, 142. Carte's Ormond, ii. Leland, iii. 440. 2 Petty's Political Anatomy. Crawfurd's Hist. ii. 142. Hallam's Const. Hist. 3 King's State of the Protestants in Ireland, p. 161. The downfall of the old race was now all but accomplished. The years that followed the Restoration, however, were years of peace, of mild government, and of great religious toleration, and although the wrong done by the Act of Settlement rankled bitterly in the minds of the Irish, the prosperity of the country gradually revived, and with it some spirit of loyalty to the Government. But the Revolution soon came to cloud the prospect. It was inevitable that in that struggle the Irish should have adopted the cause of their hereditary sovereign, whose too ardent Catholicism was the chief cause of his deposition. It was equally inevitable that they should have availed themselves of the period of their ascendency to endeavour to overthrow the land settlement which had been made. James landed at Kinsale on March 12, 1689. One of his first acts was to issue a proclamation summoning all Irish absentees upon their allegiance to return to assist their sovereign in his struggle, and by another proclamation a Parliament was summoned for May 7. It consisted almost wholly of Catholics. The corporations had been much tampered with by Tyrconnel; his violent Catholic policy during the months that preceded the Revolution had produced a widespread panic among the Protestant population, and most of the more important Protestant landlords had either gone over to the Prince of Orange or fled to England, or at least resolved to withdraw themselves from public affairs till the result of the struggle was determined. In the Lower House there are said to have been only six Protestant members. In the Upper House the Protestant interest was represented by from four to six bishops, and by four or five temporal peers. The Catholic According to King seven bishops remained in the kingdom. Four received writs and were ordered to attend. The other three were excused on the ground of age or sickness, but two of these (the Primate and the Bishop of Waterford) signed by |