There were three classes of new proprietors-104 English and Scotch undertakers or adventurers; 56 Irish servitors, that is, persons who had been previously engaged in the Irish service of the Crown, and 286 native Irish proprietors. Now after a certain lapse of time the original conditions imposed upon the grantees were felt to be a burden and were gradually overlooked. Proper government supervision was wanting, and the tenants themselves, scarcely able to keep body and soul together, were not strong enough to hold their landlords to the covenanted terms.

"It was in such a state of things," wrote Isaac Butt in 1867, "that the Ulster custom of tenant-right had its origin. These tenants held under terms which bound the landlords to give them fixity, in some instances perpetuity, of tenure. The landlord, while he was evading this obligation, could not venture, even if he were disposed, to interfere with their possession. They were somewhat in the condition of persons holding lands under what are termed accepted proposals, without a legal title, but with a claim in equity strong enough to prevent them from being disturbed. Matters continued in this unsettled state for years. In the troubles which soon after agitated Ulster as well as the rest of the kingdom, arising from the war which has been called 'the Great Rebellion' it was scarcely to be expected that there should be any authoritative adjustment of these claims. During these troubles it was not probable that landlords would interfere with the tenants, upon whose fidelity they relied; and at the end of the Great Rebellion the tenants' claim for security for their holdings resulted in the establishment, in the case of the Protestant tenantry with an acquiescence on the part of the landlords, of that virtual fixity of tenure which has puzzled us in modern days under the name of the 'Ulster tenant-right."""

James I did not confine his activity to Ulster; he made large grants in Longford, Westmeath, Kildare, and Wicklow, and in each case the conditions of the grants were similar to those imposed in Ulster. Sir John Davis even states that the properties in Munster were held on the same condition of giving fixity of tenure to the tenants. In the other settlements that have taken place in Ireland very similar terms were imposed upon the grantees, but the issue has been different, for in Ulster the tenantry belonged to the dominant class, and were accordingly treated with greater consideration, whilst in other parts of Ireland the landlords were able to entirely disregard the conditions of settlement, and in course of time to destroy almost every vestige of the original privileges accorded to their tenantry, who for the most part belonged to the oppressed and hated race of Catholics.

As a salve for this wound-the confiscation of Irish land and the plantation of Ulster-came the shameless treachery of the "Graces." The Irish gentry had consented to raise by voluntary assessment, as a grant to Charles I, the sum of £120,000 in three

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annual instalments, in return for certain concessions or "Graces," from the King, which, considering their load of grievances, did not err on the side of extravagance. The most important of them were the limitation of Crown claims on real estate by an undisturbed possession of sixty years; the legalization of the Connaught titles by the enrolment of the patents of the inhabitants of that province; and the permission to Popish recusants to sue for livery of their estates in the Court of Arches without taking the oath of supremacy, and to practise in the Courts of Law. The Government, with the light of cunning shining in its eyes, accepted the Irish terms; the Royal promise was given, and the money paid over with ingenuous confidence by the passive gentry. But the latter little knew the veiled capacities of Stuart fraud. On the receipt of the sum, the dark and brooding Strafford, who was sent to Ireland in 1633, withdrew without a blush the first two and most important "Graces," in direct violation of the King's word and to his own everlasting infamy. In the gloomy recesses of his fertile and daring brain he had planned the colonization of Connaught and the establishment of an army there, so as to enable Charles to become independent of his English Parliament and dictate his own terms to his subjects by means of a large force and revenue the other side of the Irish Channel. But his scheme, undoubtedly a great one, was indefinitely deferred, as the proposed colonization would certainly have lit a rebellion, and the rulers of Ireland had not the courage to face that conjuncture, although they were quite prepared to filch what they could without putting their necks in danger. Hundreds of titles were vested in the King, and Strafford, ambitious, bold and bad, finally left the shores of Ireland-left her seething with rage and burning for her revenge. The seeds of retribution had been flung broadcast over the land.

The Great Rebellion broke out in Ulster in 1641. Roger O'Moore, an able man, had been the prime mover in the plot and succeeded in bringing together the Catholics of both races. The rising was a vast upheaval of an outraged people, a protest by despairing nature, and the result was in keeping with the treatment that had caused it.3 Sir Phelim O'Neil, the most prominent leader of the rising, did his utmost to keep it within moderate bounds, and published a proclamation from Dungannon in which he declared that his insurrection was in no wise directed

1 Thomas Wentworth, first Earl of Strafford (1593–1641).

2 Also known as Rory O'More (1620-1652).

3 Henry Hallam, the historian, says "The primary causes of the rebellion are not to be found in the supineness or misconduct of the Lords-Justices, but in the two great sins of the English Government, in the penal laws as to religion, which pressed on almost the whole people, and in the systematic iniquity which despoiled them of their possessions."

Sir Phelim O'Neil (1604 ?-1653). Executed March 10 in Dublin.

against the King, or "for the hurt of any of his subjects, either of the English or Scotch nation; but only for the defence and liberty of ourselves and the Irish natives of this kingdom." But in spite of the knowledge of this declaration and a mass of other evidence that points to the same conclusion a vast perversion of facts has been indulged in regarding the rebellion, which would be unaccountable were it not a matter of common knowledge that bigots are not confined to Scotland and can rarely tell the truth. Thus it has been asserted that the rising was part of its leaders a concerted butchery from the first, and pseudo-historians have gravely argued as though the Irish had massacred without any provocation the helpless English, who passively fell, unconscious of any crime, like innocent sheep in a slaughter-house.1

on the

From the commencement of the rising the English Parliament strained every nerve to turn the struggle into a war of extermination. It enacted that no toleration of the Romish religion should be henceforth permitted in Ireland, and that two and a half million acres of profitable land, besides bogs, woods, and barren mountains, should be assigned to English adventurers in return for small sums of money which they raised for the subjugation of the country. The cruelties committed by the victorious party in this carnival of fury beggar description. Thus in the Island of Maggee thirty families were butchered in their beds by the garrison of Carrickfergus, and when Sir Henry Tichborne 2 drove O'Neil from Dundalk, the slaughter of the Irish was such that for some weeks after "there was neither man nor beast to be found in sixteen miles between the two towns of Drogheda and Dundalk; nor on the other side of Dundalk, in the county of Monaghan, nearer than Carrickmacross-a strong pile twelve miles distant." One of the items in Sir William Cole's catalogue of the services performed by his regiment in Ulster is exquisitely laconic "Starved and famished of the vulgar sort, whose goods were seized on by this regiment, 7,000." Finally in 1648 a peace was negotiated between the Confederate Irish on the one side and Ormonde, the Lord-Lieutenant, and Henrietta Maria on the other, and a treaty signed early in 1649. But dissensions soon sprang up between the two parties; the Catholic oil and Protestant water would not mix, and when Cromwell arrived

1 W. E. H. Lecky, who knew better, wrote "I cannot undertake to pronounce upon the question, and shall be content if I have conveyed to the reader my own firm conviction that the common assertion that the rebellion of 1641 began with a general massacre of Protestants is entirely untrue, although, in the course of the long and savage struggle that ensued, great numbers of Englishmen were undoubtedly murdered. The number of the victims, however, though very great, has been enormously and often deliberately exaggerated."

2 Sir Henry Tichborne (1581 ?-1667), Governor of Drogheda.

* Sir William Cole (d. 1653), appointed Governor of Enniskillen on the outbreak of the rebellion.

4 James Butler, twelfth Earl and first Duke of Ormonde (1610-1688).

he found a divided camp. The barbarities of 1641 were followed by the bloody massacres at Drogheda and Wexford in 1649, and those in turn by the Cromwellian Settlement which was carried out by degrees from 1652 to 1654.1

Under the Cromwellian Settlement all who had taken part in the rebellion before November 10, 1642, or who before that date had assisted the rebels in any way, as also about a hundred specified persons, were condemned to death and to the absolute forfeiture of their estates. All other landowners who had at any period borne arms against the Parliament, either for the rebels or the King, were to be deprived of their estates, but were promised land of a third of their value in Connaught. If, however, they had held a higher rank than major, they were to be banished from Ireland. Papists who had abstained throughout the war from bearing arms against the Parliament, but had not manifested a constant good affection" towards it, were to be deprived of their lands, and to receive two-thirds of their value in Connaught. In this manner eleven million acres of Irish soil were dealt with and handed over to men who were expected to advance the "English Interest," whilst all the old proprietors belonging to the noblest and most respected families in Ireland were forced from their ancient homes, and driven to seek a strange asylum in Connaught, or some other place beyond the The iniquity of this confiscation has never been forgotten in Ireland. The wrong is indelibly stamped upon the Irish heart, for men who were absolutely innocent of political or other offence were turned adrift, and all that was most respected in Ireland was made the subject of vulgar outrage.2

sea.

On the reinstatement of the monarchy Irish landed relations were again transformed. By the Act of Settlement of 1660 Charles II, on the advice of Clarendon, confirmed to the adventurers all those lands possessed by them on May 7, 1659, which had been allotted under the Cromwellian Settlement. With a few exceptions the lands granted to soldiers instead of pay were likewise confirmed, and officers who had served before June 5, 1649, but had not yet been given lands, were to receive them to the value of rather more than half of what was due to

1 Henry Hallam says of the Cromwellian conquest-" After the King's person had fallen into their hands, the victorious party set themselves in earnest to effect the conquest of Ireland. This was achieved by Cromwell and his powerful army after several years, with such bloodshed and rigour, that, in the opinion of Lord Clarendon, the sufferings of that nation, from the outset of the rebellion, to its close, have never been surpassed but by those of the Jews in their destruction by Titus."

2 As W. E. H. Lecky says-"A very large proportion of them had committed no crime whatever, and it is probable that not a sword would have been drawn in Ireland in rebellion if those who ruled it had suffered the natives to enjoy their lands and their religion in peace. The Cromwellian settlement is the foundation of that deep and lasting division between the proprietary and the tenants which is the chief cause of the political and social evils of Ireland."

Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon (1609-1674).

them. Protestants, however, whose estates had been handed over to adventurers or soldiers, were to be immediately restored, unless they had been in rebellion before the cessation of September 15, 1643, or had taken out decrees for lands in Connaught and Clare; and the adventurers or soldiers who were thus displaced were to receive compensation. The next class dealt with under the Settlement were those termed "Innocent Papists." No one was to be deemed an "Innocent Papist" who before the Cessation had been of the rebels' party; or who had enjoyed his estate real or personal in the rebels' quarters (with the exception of the inhabitants of Cork and Youghal, who were driven into these quarters by force); or entered into the Roman Catholic Confederacy before the Peace of 1648; or had at any time adhered to the Nuncio's party against the Sovereign; or inherited his property from those who were guilty of those crimes; or sat in any of the confederate assemblies or councils, or acted upon any commissions or powers derived from them. Thus, all Catholics who had in sheer despair risen in defence of the threatened existence of their religion, were excluded from the category of grace, although they might be and generally were entirely innocent of and unconnected with the crimes that were perpetrated in Ulster. The "Innocent Papists" who were able to establish their claim, and who had taken and still held lands in Connaught, were to be restored to their old estates by May 2, 1661; but those who had sold the Connaught lands were to satisfy the purchasers of their old estates for the price they had paid, and the necessary repairs and improvements they had made, whilst the adventurers and soldiers who were removed in this manner were to receive immediate compensation. If, however, the properties of "Innocent Papists" had been within corporations, and had consequently carried with them political weight, the old owners were not to be re-established in their possessions unless the King specially determined it, but to be compensated with land in the neighbourhood. The next class consisted of those who had taken part in the rebellion of 1641, but who had submitted and constantly adhered to the Peace of 1648. If these had remained at home and accepted lands in Connaught, they were to be bound by this arrangement, and not restored to their former properties. But if they had served under the King abroad, and sued out no decrees in Connaught or Clare in compensation for their former estates, they were to be restored, although this restitution was to be postponed until reprisals had been made for the adventurers and soldiers who had become possessed of their estates, and also until the other restitutions had been effected. In addition to these, thirty-six persons, who were perfectly innocent, or constant adherents to the peace, were restored at once by special favour.