thirteen trustees to be sold to the highest bidder for the benefit of the state." * From 1700 to 1703 a court sat at Chichester House to hear claims on the estates, and auction sales were held from time to time until the whole was disposed of. A considerable portion, consisting amongst others of the lands of Lord Clancarty, Sir Patrick Trant, James Fitzmaurice, Thomas and Nicholas Skiddy, was bought by the "Hollowblade Company" as a speculation for resale. Other portions were knocked down to Dublin merchants and English capitalists. Where the estates were entailed, and the tenant for life only had suffered outlawry, the deferred rights of those in the entail were sustained before the court. And later on, some of the old stock had sufficient interest to obtain the reversal of their outlawries as a matter of grace by special Act of Parliament. An Irish Act† passed in the second year of Queen Anne empowered the Government to let on lease to Protestants the "coarse," "barren," and "surplus" lands which were "a receptacle for thieves, robbers, and tories, to the great detriment of the country." Of this there seems to have been a very considerable quantity; and it is to be observed that in all calculations of the quantity of land confiscated, made by Sir John Davis, Sir William Petty, and the commissioners appointed to inquire into the state of the Irish forfeitures in 1698, account is only taken of the "profitable land" and not of the waste, and the area is reckoned in Irish * English Statutes, 11 and 12 Will. III., c. 2. acres, which are to English acres in the proportion of thirteen to eight.* So wholesale and complete had been the transfer of the land from the Roman Catholic proprietors to the Protestants, that at the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the era of summary confiscation by forfeiture may be said to close, the former were the owners of less than one-seventh of the whole area of Ireland. yards. An English acre contains 4840 square yards ; an Irish acre, 7840 square CHAPTER VI. THE OUTLAWRY OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. A.D. 1692-1727. THE state of the country at the conclusion of the war was indescribably wretched. It had been desolated from end to end by the opposing armies. The wretched farmers who remained had been ruined by requisitions, both from the Irish troops and the foreign mercenaries. In many parts it had been impossible to sow grain; in most the herds had been destroyed: so that the absence of the crops and the loss of the cattle brought the people to the verge of famine. In the towns the small traders had lost heavily by the issue of James's base coin, and the complete interruption of all commercial dealing. The seaports were harried by privateers, which sailed under letters of mark from James. And though the country was utterly reduced and nominally quiet, the English inhabitants found their ricks burnt, their cattle houghed, and their houses broken into by gangs of men, with blackened faces, who beat and otherwise maltreated them. In 1711 the outlaws in Galway and Mayo issued proclamations signed "Ever Joyce," and robbed, burned, and mutilated, till they were the terror of the country side. Stringent Acts were passed, which were perpetually being renewed and made more severe, for the "better suppression of tories and rapparees," under which rewards were given for the bringing in of the outlaws dead or alive; pardon was given to any tory who slew two others, and compensation was given to those who had suffered from the crimes of the tories, and was levied on the barony wherein the offence had been committed. Where the tories were suspected of being Roman Catholics, the fine was levied on the Roman Catholic inhabitants; where they were suspected of being Protestants, on the Protestants. As might have been expected, fraudulent claims were not infrequently made, sham attacks and larcenies being manufactured as a speculation, and compensation demanded and obtained where no loss had been incurred at all. The Government was now absolutely in the hands of the Protestant minority. The English Parliament had passed an Act* abrogating the Oath of Supremacy in Ireland, and requiring members of both Houses to take the Oaths of Allegiance and Abjuration of Popery, and to subscribe to the declaration against transubstantiation, thereby practically excluding Roman Catholics from a seat in either of the Irish Houses. The Irish Parliament, bound hand and foot as it was by Poynings' Act to the Parliament of England, and a mere court for the registration of the decrees of an English cabinet, in * 7 Will. III., c. 21; 9 Will. III., c. 9; 2 Anne, c. 13; 6 Anne, c. 11. English Statutes, 3 Will. and Mary, c. 2. so far as it represented anything represented the Protestant English colony in Ireland. The English colony were the owners of nearly all the soil of the island; monopolized every office of trust and emolument, the commission of the peace, the seats in the town councils. It had fastened its grip firmly on Ireland; and lest at any time the Roman Catholic majority should again lift itself up, the English colony and the English Government, which had suffered so much in maintaining its ascendency, were determined, as far as Acts of Parliament could avail, that the land of Ireland should never again pass into Roman Catholic hands, and that every effort should be made to stamp out the Roman Catholic religion altogether. With this intent a series. of Acts were passed during the reign of William and Anne by the Irish Parliament, which were of a character quite unparalleled, and were in flagrant violation of the treaty of Limerick. By the English Act above referred to, the Irish Parliament was ignored, and the Parliament at Westminster imposed, under a penalty of £500, the two Oaths of Allegiance and Abjuration, and the making of the declaration against transubstantiation, upon every Irish archbishop and bishop; every member of both Houses of Parliament; every person holding office ecclesiastical, civil, or military; every governor, head, and fellow of the university; every master of a hospital or school; every barrister-at-law, clerk in chancery, and attorney; and every professor of law, or physic, or any other science. |