CHAPTER I.

RESTORATION COMPROMISES.

A.D. 1656-1666.

Two

WHILE the redistribution of the land in Ireland was proceeding, events were marching rapidly in England. The Royalists had received their quietus at Worcester; and Cromwell and the army were masters of the situation. The residue of the Long Parliament had been driven from the House by a company of musketeers. The "Barebones" convention had been a fiasco. Houses of Commons, elected upon the basis of an extended franchise and a redistribution of seats, in which for the first time sat thirty members from Ireland, had been summarily dissolved; and Cromwell had finally established a military despotism upon the ruins of the outraged Commonwealth.

The proclamation of the Protectorate was favourably received in Ireland, except by a few sound Republicans like Ludlow, who sullenly resigned office. Soon Henry Cromwell was sent over as lord-lieutenant; and his mild and steady government went far to conciliate all parties, and to promote order in the country. The energy of the settlers soon began to bear fruit. The traces of the

ten years' war disappeared, and the fertile country began to show a smiling face. New buildings rose on the newly made estates, new plantations sprung up, new roads were engineered; and the exported farm produce began to compete with that of England in the English markets.

And now the great Protector's course was run, and he had been quietly succeeded by his son Richard. The members for Ireland appeared again in Richard's Parliament; and upon its swift dissolution followed the fall of Richard, and the recall and the expulsion of the Rump by the army. All were now looking to a restoration of the monarchy, as the only escape from the despotism of a military faction. The Presbyterians, steady Royalists since the king's death, were holding up their heads, and the army of Scotland was marching on London to the dismay of Lambert and Fleetwood and the army of England.

In Ireland, when it became apparent which way the tide was setting, the new landholders perceived that to secure their allotments they must make their peace with the king. Broghill and Coote, the presidents of Munster and Connaught, who had both secured enormous estates under the new settlement, though hitherto ardent anti-Royalists and sample Cromwellians, had already been intriguing with Charles, and inviting him to land at Cork. They surprised Dublin Castle, and sent prisoners to England Sir Hardress Waller and three commissioners of the Parliament; and having secured the principal garrisons in the island, raised the cry for a free Parliament. The army, in which their

influence was unbounded, was secured by providing for the payment of its arrears, and for its future maintenance. The Scotch Presbyterians of the north were only too ready to welcome a restored king who had subscribed the covenant; and on the Declaration of Breda being transmitted to Ireland, Charles was proclaimed in all the principal cities.

The restoration of the monarchy excited lively hopes in the minds of the dispossessed Irish. They thought that as the king "had come to his own again," so should they. Some of them accordingly endeavoured to retake possession of their old estates by force, which rash proceeding gave the new English the opportunity of raising a false alarm of a fresh Irish insurrection, and so to impress the king with the belief that the safety of the kingdom depended on the maintenance of the Protestant interest. The king's first act was to restore the Established Church to its former position, and to reward with peerages the turncoats who had intrigued for his return. Monk was created Earl of Albemarle, Coote was made Earl of Montrath, and Broghill Earl Orrery; and these two last, with Sir Maurice Eustace, the lord-chancellor, were entrusted with the government of the kingdom as lords justices.

The

Then came the great question of the land. Royalists were loud in their demands for a general restoration of their estates. On the other hand the soldiers and adventurers were in possession, the latter by virtue of an Act of Parliament. assented to by

16 Car. 1, c. 32.

the late king; and Charles II. had been reinstated at the instance of these very men and their leaders, whom it would be exceedingly dangerous to disturb. There was still some of the reserved land undistributed, and the estates allotted to certain of the "regicides" were resumed by the Crown; and so, on Coote's and Broghill's recommendations, the king published a declaration for the settlement of Ireland which professed to be an arrangement by which all parties were to be satisfied. This scheme was based upon the plan that the existing new owners should be undisturbed; with the exception that the Church lands were to be disgorged, and that certain select adherents of the king like Ormonde, and the dispossessed Protestants and Roman Catholics who should prove themselves innocent of any complicity in the original rebellion, were to be at once restored to their estates; in which case the new men now in possession were to be "reprised" by the grant of lands equivalent in value out of the unallotted lands. In order that the number of innocents should be reduced as low as possible, the mere fact that a man had lived quietly on his estate while the country round was in the hands of the insurgents, or of his having in any way corresponded with them while he was living in the English quarters, was declared to be a bar to his restoration as an innocent; much more was the joining of the confederacy before 1649, or the adhering to the party of the nuncio, or the negotiating with any foreign prince. Officers who had served the king before the peace of 1649, were to receive allotments from the lands still undistributed in Wicklow, Longford,

Leitrim, and Donegal, as far as they would go. While of the insurgents who had submitted to Ormonde's terms in 1649, those who had accepted from the Parliament a portion of land in Connaught or Clare were to stay there, having put themselves in this position by their own act; those who had left the country and served his majesty abroad were to be restored to their estates, provided the present occupiers should be first reprised.

The successful working of this arrangement depended upon the existence of a sufficiency of the reserved and undistributed land wherewith to "reprise" the adventurers and soldiers who were to be removed. Of this there was not nearly enough for the purpose, and it was, besides, considerably reduced by the prodigal grants made out of it by the king to Ormonde and other special favourites. He gave 120,000 acres in Tipperary, the estates of the regicides, to his brother the Duke of York, and 20,000 acres to the Church over and above the 300,000 it possessed before A.D. 1641. The cities and towns, though they had also been reserved by the late Government, were not available for the purposes of reprisal, as not only had many of them been colonized by Cromwellians, but Charles-who knew the value of having them filled with his own adherents-specially reserved the right "to restore them to such of the corporations as should be found fit for that our grace and favour;" which meant that he should plant them with Royalists, and appoint Royalists to be mayors and aldermen.

On the 8th of May, 1661, the Irish Parliament met