overrun with wolves, the effects of a reduced population, and of war, famine, and the plague.*

We willingly turn from any further detail of these atrocities, to notice the progress of events in Ireland under the Protectorate; and now we come to a brief glimpse of sunshine, one of the very few to be met with in the History of Ireland. When Cromwell had assumed the supreme power, the Irish army were found among the most strenuous of his supporters. They had now secured large masses of property in Ireland chiefly through the instrumentality of their leader, and they looked to the firm establishment of his poweras essential to the security of their new possessions. Ludlow, and a few more of the republican party, refused to acknowledge Cromwell's usurpation; but their resistance proved of no avail, for they were entirely unsupported. Shortly after this, Cromwell appointed his son Henry to the government of Ireland in place of Fleetwood, who was dismissed. All parties are singularly enough agreed that this administration of Henry Cromwell was one of the best that Ireland had ever known. He immediately checked the peculations of the commissioners; and remedied to a great extent the gross abuses which prevailed in the courts of law. He deplored the universal desolation, arising from the virulence of his countrymen, who had scarcely left a single house out of the walled towns undemolished. He abated the rigour of persecution, and endeavoured to secure the affections of the people by wise and just laws. Impressed with a sense of the eminent natural advantages of Ireland, which he surveyed with his own eyes throughout almost its whole extent, he devised numerous beneficial plans for developing its great resources, but which, unfortunately, he had not the opportunity of completing. He took learning under his peculiar care; among his other munificent acts, he purchased with his own money the noble library of Bishop Usher, which he presented to the Trinity College, Dublin. Uninfected with the bigotry of the times, he endeavoured to subdue the zealotry of his soldiery, and to restore the public exercise of religion to some degree of decency. He established his authority so firmly in the hearts of the people, by his urbanity, kindness, and just and humane government, that when a petition was forwarded to Cromwell, by the officers of his own regiment against his administration, counter addresses were immediately transmitted from the army and the inhabitants of every county in Ireland, expressing their resolution of adhering to the protector against all those whose particular animosities endeavoured to re-embroil the public.‡ "Of his integrity and disinterestedness," says Dr. Curry, "he gave many signal proofs, during his administration; but none so signal, or indeed so unprecedented, as that which appeared at the conclusion of it. For upon his recall from Ibid, vol. iii., p. 401.

* Clarendon's Rebellion, p. 706-8. + Leland.

Ireland, although he had held the government of that kingdom four years, he was not master of money enough, after all, to carry him back to England; and was, therefore, under the necessity to crave some from thence for that purpose."

At the very time when Ireland was beginning to settle down into peace and comparative prosperity under the able sway of Henry Cromwell, his father died, and again the country became the scene of turmoil and confusion. Richard Cromwell, who succeeded to the Protectorate, proved altogether unable to hold in command the stormy elements which his father had controlled with so much ease; and it was soon evident that the government was slipping through his fingers. The army became divided against itself; the parliament plotted against the protector, the presbyterians against the independents, and the whole frame of society threatened to become rent asunder. In the meantime, the parliamentary leaders in Ireland, foreseeing the speedy return of the Stuarts to power, made haste to offer their services to Charles, now in exile. Sir Charles Coote, who had hitherto been one of the most vehement opponents of the royal authority, took the lead in this negociation. He was also joined by Lord Broghill, Sir Audley Mervin, Sir John Clotworthy, and others, all notorious for their hostility to the king in the course of the wars of the rebellion. Means were taken by the parliament, who were now also coquetting with Charles, to remove Henry Cromwell from the government of Ireland. They feared his popularity, and his power in the country; and imagined that he would endeavour to maintain his authority by force. Sir Hardress Waller was employed to scize the Castle of Dublin, which he did without the least resistance, Henry Cromwell quietly retiring to a house in the Phoenix Park.

After a series of plottings and schemings, the royalists openly shewed themselves, and made a vigorous attack on the parliamentary government. A party of them, under Lord Montgomery and others, seized the castle of Dublin, making prisoners of one of the Commissioners and two of his colleagues. Sir Charles Coote seized the town and fort of Galway, declaring for a free parliament, which, however, meant the restoral of the royal power. Collecting a considerable army, he next surprised Athlone; then marched to Dublin, and impeached Ludlow and the Commissioners, of high treason. The royalists in other places seized Youghal, Clonmel, Carlow, Limerick, and Drogheda; so that within a week the strongest places in Ireland had revolted to the side of the king. A council of officers now assumed the government of Ireland, and set the English Council of State at defiance. They beseiged Sir Hardress Waller, who had again seized Dublin Castle, and after five days' resistance, took him prisoner and sent him to England. Loyalty now became the rage; the body of the nation caught

See Curry's Review, p. 400; Warner's Irish Rebellion, &c.

the flame, and emulation gradually increased among the leaders as to who should now, after so many years of disloyalty and rebellion, prove the most loyal and devoted subject. After a discussion in a convention and council of officers, held in Dublin, as to whether they should stipulate for a confirmation of the estates to the adventurers and soldiers, or submit all their interests implicitly to the king, the latter resolution was almost unanimously adopted. The king's declaration at Breda was now presented to the convention, and received with great demonstrations of joy. A present of twenty thousand pounds was voted to his Majesty, four thousand to the Duke of York, and two thousand to the Duke of GloucesCharles was also proclaimed in all the chief towns in Ireland; and an urgent invitation was sent to him to come to Ireland. But the revolution which was now taking place in England through the agency of General Monk, rendered this step unnecessary, enabled him, shortly after, to regain possession of the British throne; and on the 29th of May, Charles was publicly acknowledged King, and the British Commonwealth ceased to exist.

Before concluding our history of the Protectorate, it may not be uninteresting to mention that Cromwell was the first who projected the Union of the English and Irish legislatures. His Instrument of Government' required that a Parliament should be summoned for the three nations, to be thus united into one Commonwealth. The number of members chosen for Ireland was thirty. They were nominated and returned through the influence of the government; for in a time of military violence, crime, and outrage, popular election was entirely out of the question. At Cromwell's death, however, all these arrangements were thrown aside, and Charles entered upon an inheritance of political strife and social discord unsurpassed even in the history of unhappy Ireland itself.

CHAPTER XX.

Expectations of the Catholics disappointed-Are excluded from the act of indemnity--The adventurers and soldiers of Cromwell confirmed in the possession of their estates-Cromwell's severe laws put in force against the Catholics-the loyalists treated as rebels, the rebels as loyalists-Great discontent of the Irish -Lord Roche-Colonel Costello's severe rebuke of Charles-Declaration for the Settlement of Ireland-Re-establishment of the Episcopalian religion-The Puritans become allied to the State church-Cruel decisions of the Commissioners -Confirmed by the Irish Parliament-Expostulation of the Catholics-The Doubling ordinance-The English council bribed-Gross impositions practised on the English government-Irish petitions rejected-A Protestant rebellion threatened-Acts of settlement and explanation.

Ir was but natural that those Catholics who had sacrificed themselves, their fortunes, and their estates, for the maintenance of the royal power in Ireland, should look to the king, on his restoration,

for some acknowledgment for their loyalty and devotedness to his service. They expected, at least, that the estates of which they had been plundered by the soldiers of Cromwell, on account of their attachment to the king's party, would be restored to them when that king again ascended his throne. They expected thanks, they expected gratitude, they expected justice. So confident were they of the restoration of their lost estates at the restoration of the monarchy, that many of them, even before the king had been. proclaimed, reëntered upon their patrimonial inheritances, and expelled the Cromwellian intruders.

But the Catholics reckoned without their host, when they counted on royal gratitude. They forgot that justice and mercy have rarely a place in the cabinets of kings. But this they soon discovered to their cost, for they were again doomed to be sacrificed to the heartless selfishness of the Stuarts. Means were artfully taken to represent to Charles the dangerous state of the Irish, and that they were on the eve of another "rebellion"; and, without further consideration, he at once agreed to exclude the Irish from the general act of indemnity passed on his arrival. All who had aided in the late "rebellion"—that is, in the attempt to maintain Charles I. on his throne-were expressly excluded; and a proclamation was issued confirming all the confiscations of Cromwell, and coolly and unblushingly declaring the Irish Catholics and loyalists who had been excluded from their possessions to be "rebels," and that, having been conquered by his majesty's protestant subjects, their estates and possessions had now become vested in the crown! In the proclamation of the 5th of June, 1660, Charles said he held it to be "his duty to God, and the whole protestant interest, to command, publish and declare, that all Irish rebels, other than such as by articles had liberty to reside in his dominions, and had not forfeited the benefits thereof, that should resort to England or Ireland, should be forthwith apprehended and proceeded against as rebels and traitors; and that the adventurers, soldiers, and others, who were on the first of January last past in possession of any of the manors, castles, houses, or lands, of any of the said Irish rebels, should not be disturbed in their possessions, till either legally ejected by due course of law, or till his majesty, by the advice of parliament, had taken further order therein." By means such as these did usurpation become law, rebellion the constitution, and robbery justice.

At the same time, Charles ordered to be put in force the severe laws passed by the Cromwellians against the Irish. The ordinances issued against their quitting the respective districts into which they had been "planted," were rigidly enforced. They were not allowed to go from one province to another to transact business; the nobility and gentry were forbidden to meet together, their letters were intercepted, and many of them were thrown into prison. They were thus deprived of every opportunity of devising means

N

for their own protection, and for appointing agents to lay their just claims before the king. The puritans, however, and their descendants in Ireland, through whose instrumentality Charles I. had been dethroned and beheaded, were at once taken into favour by his restored son. Sir Charles Coote, under the title of Earl of Montrath, and Lord Broghill, under that of Earl of Orrery, were invested with the administration, and loaded with honours and affluence. Only the Marquis of Ormond, with a few of his friends, were excepted, though with the greatest difficulty, from the general sentence of denunciation passed upon the "rebels," in other words, the loyalists of Ireland. But Charles was now possessed by the idea that his interest lay in mollifying the republicans and puritans settled in Ireland, even though at the expense of his most ardent friends and supporters. The puritans, on the other hand, who had abandoned their notions of republicanism so soon as the property of others came into their hands, were now impressed with the idea that the sanction of the royal authority was necessary to their complete security in the enjoyment of their possessions. And hence the efforts which they and their leaders now made, to represent the Irish people as "rebels," and themselves as the only loyal and devoted supporters of the English government. On the other hand, Ormond endeavoured to persuade Charles, that the puritans had unconsciously done him a great service by establishing an "English interest" in Ireland, and thus carrying out the plantation schemes of his royal predecessors: it was averred that the new proprietors, would only be so much the more devoted to the interests of the monarch, as the retention of their property depended entirely on his sanction and support. Charles, thoroughly unprincipled like his father, resolved at once on sacrificing his friends, and purchasing with the property of which they had been plundered, the favour of his enemies.

As was to be expected, there was loudly expressed discontent at this infamous conduct on the part of Charles. There were still those about his court who had followed him into exile, and sacrificed their all for his sake,-who had even shared their pay with him, and endured poverty, that he might enjoy comparative abundance, -and who had returned with him to England, in the hope that at least they would be allowed to enjoy that which was their own, but had been wrung from them by violence and fraud. To give an instance, we may mention the case of Lord Roche, who, it will be remembered, raised a body of troops at his own expense, to attempt the relief of Clonmel, when besieged by Oliver Cromwell. After the war, he left Ireland with many other of the Irish nobility and gentry, refusing the offer of "composition" which the parliament had proffered to him. He obtained a regiment in Flanders, and joyfully shared his pay with Charles, to support him in his exile. Roche was soon reduced to poverty by the sacrifices which he had made for his king; and was eventually obliged to dispose of his