to confirm the king's "declaration," in Chichester House,* a building on College Green, erected by Sir Arthur Chichester, and accepted by the Government in discharge of a debt of £10,000 from his estate. As the greater part of the freeholders of the counties, and the burgesses of the towns, consisted of the new settlers, the Commons were very largely composed of men of the "new interest." Only one Roman Catholic was returned. The bill, drawn as it was by men of the "new interest," and substantially confirming the "new interest" in its new possessions, soon passed the Lower House in all its stages. The House of Lords, in which numbers of the old Anglo-Irish sat, gave it a very different reception. For many of the old peers it meant ruin to themselves and their friends. For the Orrerys, the Montraths, the Albemarles, the Massarenes, it was the title to their newly acquired estates. Every effort was made by the old peers, led by the Earl of Kildare, to increase the amount of the reprisal ground at the expense of the new interest. It was discovered that the commissioners had made clandestine grants of the reprisal ground to their own friends, and loud complaints were raised against "the doubling ordinance" passed by the English Parliament during the civil wars, which entitled each adventurer, who in addition to his first venture advanced one-fourth more, to receive lands to the value of double the original loan. At length the

Chichester House was pulled down in 1728, and in the following year the first stone of the Parliament House was laid on its site by Archbishop Boulter. It was completed in 1739.

bill passed the Upper House, and having been transmitted to England for the king's approval, the struggle was transferred to Whitehall; where Richard Talbot, a violent Roman Catholic, was the not over-judicious champion of the old Irish cause. For six months the agents of the two Irish parties contested every point, till Charles, sick and tired of the prolonged wrangle, disallowed the doubling ordinance, and approved the bill.*

Ormonde now went to Ireland as lord-lieutenant, with the title of duke, and was presented by the Irish Parliament with £30,000.† A court of claims was, on February 13, 1663, set up in Dublin, in which the dispossessed landowners proceeded to press for their rights. It sat for three months, during which time 158 judgments of innocent were given and only nineteen of guilty. The "new interest" took alarm at these results, for the innocent were entitled to immediate restitution of their lands, and there was great fear that the supply of reprisal ground for those who were to be supplanted would fall short. The Protestants believed that they were going to be sacrificed to the Roman Catholics. A great agitation was raised. A few of the "new interest," including some members of Parliament, engaged in a plot which had been hatched by Blood (afterwards of regalia celebrity) and the more desperate of the Presbyterians, who were suffering from the persecution of the reinstated Episcopal Church, to seize the castle and restore the Republic. The plot was betrayed and stifled; but the Government became alarmed. The time by which the decrees in the Court *Act of Settlement, 14, 15 Car. 2, c. 2. † 14, 15 Car. 2, c. 16.

U

of Claims were to be obtained was limited to one year from the date of its first sitting, at the expiration of which time it was closed; so that, out of some four thousand claims ready for hearing, but eight hundred only were disposed of. A "bill of explanation" was introduced for the protection of the "new interest," and another interminable wrangle was maintained in London. At length, from sheer weariness a compromise was come to, by which the adventurers and soldiers agreed to give up one-third of their land for the satisfaction of the Royalist claims, and the "'49 officers" to accept ten shillings in the pound for their arrears. The House of Commons was purged of certain members who had been concerned in Blood's conspiracy, and their places filled with supporters of the Government. The explanatory Act* was passed, and five commissioners appointed to carry out its provisions.

The outcome of the confiscation and subsequent settlement was that, whereas before the rebellion the Irish Roman Catholics held two-thirds of the profitable land of Ireland, in 1672 they held but one-third. The king seized the occasion to secure to the Crown a considerable revenue by reserving a quit-rent of from Id. to 3d. per acre, from both the restored and the confirmed proprietors. Ormonde got back all his estates and something considerable in addition, in all 130,000 acres. Lord Clanricarde, Lord Inchiquin, Lord Roscommon, Lord Antrim, Lord Westmeath, Lord Castlehaven, and many others who had managed to secure friends at * 17, 18 Car. 2, c. 2.

court, were also capriciously selected for restoration to their lands. Numbers who claimed, with quite as much justice as many who were restored, to be "innocent and "loyal," like the Barrons of Burnchurch, were left in their poverty without a shadow of compensation, and retired to the continent, railing bitterly against the king's ingratitude: while the time-serving new men, the Cootes, the Clotworthys, the Hills, the Fortescues, the Taylors, who had now got the country in their grasp, secured every acre they had acquired without any deduction. Dr. Petty calculates that the Roman Catholics recovered of their forfeited property about 2,340,000 Irish acres; while of the 7,500,000 acres of good land, which he estimated the island to contain, the Protestants held 5,220,000. The net result of this attempt on the part of the Irish to emancipate themselves from the rule of the English Oligarchy, was that they lost just one-half of the lands they before had held, and had seated the English Oligarchy still more firmly on their shoulders.

CHAPTER II.

TOLERANCE AND INTOLERANCE. A.D. 1660-1687.

THE clergy of the Established Church had come back in triumph. The twelve vacant bishoprics had been filled up, and the new prelates consecrated in St. Patrick's Cathedral with great pomp and solemnity. The Church had suffered considerably under the Commonwealth. In England the bishops had been driven from their sees and from the House of Lords, and their lands had been sold. The parish clergy had been ejected from their benefices, and compelled to give place to those who were willing to take the covenant. In Ireland the Church had been completely overwhelmed by the storm of civil war ; and Bishop Bramhall, "the Irish Laud," as Cromwell called him, had been scheduled with Castlehaven and Inchiquin as incapable of pardon either of life or estate. And now the Church had got the upper hand, and it signalized its return to place and power by an outburst of bigoted intolerance. It was not the party of Usher, but the party of Laud, which found itself master of the situation. Bramhall had come back as Archbishop of Armagh, and John Leslie to Raphoe; Henry Leslie