the whole for English undertakers, the residue was regranted to "the more deserving" of them to hold of the king at certain fixed rents. Small proprietors were especially discouraged, no one being allowed to hold less than a hundred acres "as not good for themselves." The plausible argument was advanced that the natives would be pleased with the change because they obtained a definite estate of inheritance in place of an uncertain estate for life, and that this advantage was a fair equivalent for the loss of more than one-fourth of their gross amount of territory. Whether this were so it is unprofitable to inquire, because the natives, in fact, owing to the dishonesty and greediness of the commissioners and surveyors, never obtained anything like the proportion of land which they were promised.

In Longford, which contained 50,000 acres, they obtained less than one-third, twenty-five of the O'Farrel family being absolutely deprived of every rood. A large tract was reserved to satisfy a claim of £200 a year made by the heirs of Sir Nicholas Malby, and another of " 120 beeves " made by Sir Francis Shane of Granard Castle. Twelve hundred acres were given to undertakers, of whom half were servitors with allotments of 300, 400, and 600 acres each.

In Leitrim, where 201 proprietors executed surrenders, they obtained by regrant half, in Queen's County about two-thirds, the remnant of the tribe of the O'Moores being transplanted bodily into Kerry.

In Wexford there were in all 31 undertakers, to

*For a list of the undertakers of Wexford, see Appendix IV.

whom 33,000 acres were set out. Only 57 natives received any land at all, and to these 57 were allotted 24,615 acres. Three hundred and ninety others who claimed a right to freeholds had no land assigned to them; and they and "the residue of the inhabitants, estimated to be 14,500 men, women, and children," had the choice of either being evicted "at the will of the patentees," or being permitted "to dwell in that country as their tenants." It was then discovered that half the county had been fraudulently given to the undertakers under the name of a quarter, and it was only after much petitioning and agitation, that the land was re-surveyed, and a provision made for 80 more native freeholders.

In most cases the discrimination of the surveyor was sufficient to set out the good land to the undertakers and the unprofitable land to the old possessors.

There was, not unnaturally, the strongest opposition to the new plantation. The discontent was deep and widespread; but a rising was seen to be hopeless, and no attempt at resistance was made. Many of the old proprietors who were removed from their lands betook themselves to the woods and an outlaw's life. Agrarian outrages began to occur, "when the nights grew darker and the winter came on." The Lord-Deputy St. John, the successor of Chichester, endeavoured to hunt down the expelled landowners, and boasts of having exterminated three hundred of them in three years, though he adds, "When one sort is cut off others arise in their places, for the countries are so full of the younger sons of gentlemen who have no means of living and will not work, that

when they are sought to be punished for disorders they commit in their idleness, they go to the woods to maintain themselves by the spoil of their quiet neighbours."

In the mean time Sir Richard Boyle, the lord chancellor, who had got possession of Sir Walter Raleigh's extensive grants of land in Munster, had been making a most methodical plantation on his own account at Tallow. It was an armed colony of 522 men: "horsemen," "pike-men," and "shot-furnished;" every one was a sound Protestant; villages were planned, and schools and churches built for their accommodation. The company of East India merchants also planted three colonies near Dundaniel, on the coast of County Cork, where they started ironworks, and constructed a dock, and built "offices, houses, smiths' forges, and other storehouses." So plentiful and so fine was the timber, growing even to the water's edge, that the shipbuilding trade grew apace. "Two ships of 400 and 500 tons apiece" were launched in the spring of 1613.

Wicklow had yet to be dealt with, the ancient territory of the O'Byrnes. The commissioners reported that at the death of Pheagh McHugh O'Byrne in the rebellion in 1577, his country escheated to the Crown, but that Elizabeth had directed a regrant by letters patent to his son Phelim; that James had given a like direction, which had never been carried out; and they recommended that surrenders should be taken and fresh grants made in the usual way to the O'Byrnes, "at the highest rents procurable." This plan was projected, and a rent of £150 reserved. Provision was made for a plantation, and

Phelim O'Byrne was to receive letters patent confirming him in his estates.

*

A conspiracy was, however, set on foot by Sir Richard Graham, an officer in the army, Sir James FitzPiers Fitzgerald, Sir William Parsons, the surveyor-general, Sir Henry Belling, and Lord Esmond, one of the new undertakers in Wexford, to obtain a conveyance of O'Byrne's land to themselves. They accordingly trumped up a charge against him and his five sons. of corresponding with an outlawed gentleman of the family of Kavenagh. They lodged an information against them, on the testimony of one Thomas Archer, which they wrung from him by torture on a hot gridiron, and that of three vagrant Irishmen who owed O'Byrne a grudge for his having issued his warrant against them as a justice of the peace. Two of the young O'Byrnes were thereupon confined in Dublin Castle, and Phelim and all the five were prosecuted at the Carlow assizes for treason. The grand jury threw out the bill, for which they were heavily fined by the Castle Chamber, and a fresh indictment was preferred at the Wicklow assizes. The grand jury was this time carefully packed with neighbouring undertakers to secure the finding of a true bill, and notorious convicted thieves whom Phelim had convicted at petty sessions were called as witnesses, and pardoned on giving evidence of the prisoners' guilt. The scandal was so abominable and glaring that Sir Frances Annesley and some other

*The Commissioners of Plantations in Wexford were Sir Laurence Esmond, Sir Edward Fisher, Sir William Parsons, and Nicholas Kenny.

gentlemen took up the case and obtained a royal commission to inquire into the matter, which resulted in the O'Byrnes being set at liberty. Their estates, however, covering half the county of Wicklow, of which during the prosecution Parsons and Esmond had been put in possession by the sheriff of Wicklow, were not restored to them, and the plot in that respect was eminently successful.

Success had attended James's plans in Ulster and Leinster, with the additional advantage of filling the empty coffers of the State. Not only had the revenue been swelled by the chief rents reserved from grants to the new freeholders, and from the fines levied on the occasion of the surrenders and regrants, but the immediate result of the improved condition of agriculture, consequent upon the introduction of thrifty English and Scotch farmers, and the progress exhibited by the natives who were not dispossessed, was to increase. the annual receipts from the customs duties from £50 to between £9000 and £10,000. Notwithstanding these advantageous circumstances, however, the want of economy was such in the military and civil expenditure, and the waste and jobbery so great in the way of conferring pensions and sinecures on the Castle clique, that there was an annual deficit in the accounts of over £16,000.

A project was set on foot by the commissioners whom the king sent over to examine into the state of the revenue, for the replenishing of the royal exchequer by attacking the property of the Irish cor