sank in the social scale at home, or left to live under happier conditions and seek fame and fortune in other lands. Of those disinherited and expatriated Irishmen it can truly be said that evidence of their fine natural qualities is supplied by the fact that many of them achieved distinction and won high honours in their adopted countries.

Sir Bernard Burke, in his most interesting work on "The Vicissitudes of Families," thus sympathetically writes on the subject:

An Irish Peerage' gives a very inadequate account of the royal and noble blood of Ireland. But few of the Milesian races have found their way into the peerage, though some still inherit a portion of their ancient possessions; and it is in the Austrian, French, or Spanish service, among the middle classes or perhaps in the mud-walled cabins of the Irish peasants, that search should be made for the real representatives of the ancient reguli.... Many of the descendants of the minor dynasts could probably be discovered under the frieze coats of the peasants; and a genealogical enquirer might trace in the sunburnt mendicant the representative of the O'Rorkes, the O'Reillys, the O'Ryans, or the O'Sullivans, who were of fame

'Ere the emerald gem of the western world
Was set in the crown of a stranger.'

A

CHAPTER VI.

FTER each of the great Irish confiscationsthose of Elizabeth, James I., Cromwell, and William of Orange-many of the new lords of the soil sought in a variety of ways to supplant and crush out the native race. Not only did they seek to surround themselves with an exclusively Protestant tenantry, but even with regard to industrial occupations, they gave special encouragement to Protestant craftsmen to come in groups and little colonies from foreign countries, settle down and ply their trades in Ireland. There was much religious ferment and disturbance throughout Europe in those days; the "Reformation" was fighting its way and being fought, and some of those who had adopted the new doctrines, finding that life had become unpleasant for them in their own countries, moved away to lands the rulers of which were more tolerant of their opinions. Naturally a number of them sought shelter in England, and many located in parts of Ireland where conditions were specially favourable to them. The majority of those immigrants were Dutch and French Protestants, and their special industries were the weaving of linen and silks. They worked with improved machinery and on new methods. It is true that the manufacture of "silks" as they were called, of fine linen, of beautiful woollens, and of artistically wrought articles of gold and silver was carried on in Ireland long before "Norman foot had dared pollute her independent shore," but in later times, while the Irish people were fighting for their lives, a great advance in all the industrial arts was taking place in countries

more happily circumstanced, and Ireland was left in the rear. The introduction of those foreign artificers would have been a good thing had the scheme been devised and worked in a friendly, or even merely commercial spirit; but in point of fact it was made part of a war against the native race.

The chief promoter of that policy, in his time, was Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, who had been. appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland by King Charles II. Strafford was an able man with large ideas and despotic notions. He thought he could mould Ireland as if it were potter's clay in his hands, and fancied he could shape it into an image and likeness of England. One of the instruments he relied on for that purpose was, curiously enough-the linen trade; but with the manufacture kept exclusively in Protestant hands. He had in his favour an Act of the so-called Irish Parliament entitled, An Act for encouraging Protestant strangers and others to inhabit Ireland," which had been passed some years before his appointment. The promoter of this measure was the Duke of Ormond; under its provisions he and Strafford-who seemed to be quite in love with the scheme--were able to set up a number of those un-Irish—and it may fairly be said, anti-Irish-settlements in various parts of the country. But inspired by such an un-national and unnatural spirit the project did not work very well. Enmities, arising from a variety of causes, against King Charles and all his friends, were gathering force in England; a revolt against the despotic power of the crown was being concerted by men who have ever since been regarded as the fathers of English liberty; and when they commenced operations for the ruin of the king, one of their first blows was struck at his handy-man and favourite, his Lord Deputy for Ireland, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. They managed to bring him to trial for many high crimes and misdemeanours, the chief of which was an alleged

design to raise in Ireland, an army for the service of the king which His Majesty might import and employ against his rebellious subjects in England. He was brought to trial, and had his head cut off on Tower Hill, on the 12th of May, 1641. He was a brave man, and died courageously. Mindful of the fact that his royal master, whom he had served with only too much zeal, had made little or no endeavour to save his life, he pathetically quoted as he mounted the steps of the scaffold the scriptural injunction-" Put not your trust in princes.'

One of those anti-Irish settlements was at Bandon in the County of Cork; and the temper of the dwellers therein may be judged from the inscription set up on the gates of the town:

Turk, Jew, or Atheist

May enter here, but not a Papist.

A proud proclamation, no doubt; but its somewhat too confident authors were not able to live up to it.

Early in the course of the Williamite war (in 1689) a Jacobite force entered and held possession of the town. What ensued is thus told in the Cork Remembrancer :

The Bandonians having heard that the Earl of Clancarty was marching with six companies to reinforce the troop of horse and the two companies of foot then in their town, commanded by Captain Daniel O'Neill, disarmed the garrison, killed some soldiers, took possession of their horses and arms, and would have done much more if they had been assisted. They then shut their gates, and generously refused to gve up any of their leaders; but in the end they purchased their pardon for £1,000, with the demolition of their walls, which were razed to the ground, and never since rebuilt.

An endeavour was made to establish a community of those un-Irish people at Berehaven; but it was on a minor scale, and did not last long. The organiser of the

project was an adventurous Frenchman, one of the Huguenot refugees, named Fontaine. This gentleman was the son of a French Protestant minister. Having fled from France, he lived for some years in England, where he managed to support himself by carrying on some small industries; he then adopted his father's profession; became a Protestant clergyman, and in the year 1694 crossed over to Ireland to minister to a small Huguenot congregation in the city of Cork. After having served in that capacity for some time he took the idea that he could do better for himself by engaging in the fishery business at Berehaven. He rented some land there as a basis of operations, took houses and farms for a number of workpeople, got up a fishing company, and went to reside in the place himself. Had he confined himself strictly to this business he probably would have done very well, but he soon became a Government tool and made himself odious to the people of the locality. He was appointed Justice of the Peace, and in that capacity busied himself about many things having no relation to his commercial enterprise. He was alert and active against that class of dispossessed and desperate poor Irishmen who, living an unsettled life, occasionally taking spoil from the enemy, and ready for any anti-English adventure, were known by the name of "tories," and he was a vigilant agent for the detection and suppression of contraband operations on the southern coast. Aware of the enmity with which he was regarded, and having some knowledge of the art of fortification, he set up around his residence a line of earthworks meant to be serviceable in case any attack should be made upon it.

And his foresight was soon justified, for his "Sod Fort," as it was called, was more than once made an object of attack by parties from some of the privateering craft that were continually hovering round the coast. Two of those affairs are described with some fulness