HE Irish no less than the Scots had occasion for resentment at the encroachment of the English. Their religion had been ruthlessly persecuted, and every effort made to suppress it; their property had been confiscated and most of their ancient chiefs driven into exile. Elizabeth, James, and Charles had alike encouraged the design of colonizing Ireland with British settlers. The Irish had struggled long and bravely against the superior powers of the English, but they had been defeated-beaten down-and in the time of James I. there were many portions of Ireland almost unpeopled, and the traveller in his journeys over the burnt plains met more ghastly unburied corpses than living men, more military fortresses than comfortable homes. The natives had either been killed off by the sword, or starved to death, or exiled, all to a miserable remnant incapable of resistance. The best part of the country had been confiscated. The extent of the forfeited land is stated at about half a million of acres, but it is more accurately given as 400,000 acres, situated in the counties of Derry, Donegal, Tyrone, Armagh, Fermanagh, and Cavan; the whole extent of these counties being about ten millions.

The favourite scheme of King James was to colonize Ireland, especially the Ulster province, with English and Scotch. This scheme was known

as the Ulster plantation. "Having got the six forfeited counties carefully surveyed, the lands were allotted to three classes of personsBritish undertakers, who voluntarily engaged in the enterprise; servitors of the Crown, consisting of civil and military officers; and natives. The estates were to consist of three classes-2000 acres, 1500 acres, and 1000 acres. The owner of 2000 was to build, within four years, a castle and a bawn, and to plant forty-eight able-bodied men, eighteen years old or upwards, of English or Scottish descent. The owner of 1500 acres was bound to build, within two years, a strong stone or brick house and a bawn; and the owner of 1000, a bawn. Both were to "plant" men in proportion to their quantities of land, and to keep their houses well furnished with arms. According to these and other regulations and restrictions, the lands were disposed of to 104 English and Scotch undertakers, 56 servitors, and 286 natives. Among the undertakers the chief were the London companies, of whose co-operation James was very proud. They received nearly the whole of the present county of Londonderry, the name London being prefixed to Derry when built and fortified by the corporation, in pursuance of its agreement. They were also to build and fortify the town of Coleraine, and otherwise to spend £1000 on their plantation. Each undertaker was obliged to keep a demesne of 600 acres in his possession, to have four fee-farmers on 120 acres each, six leaseholders each on 100 acres, and on the rest eight families of husbandmen, artificers, and cottagers. The others were under similar obligations in different proportions. All were to reside on their lands for five years after the date of their patents, either personally or by such agents as should be approved of by the State. The British planters and AngloIrish servitors were bound not to alienate their lands to mere Irish, or to demise them to such persons as should refuse to take the oaths to Government. Their houses were to be built after the English fashion, and to be collected, for defence, in towns and villages. The landowners had power to erect manors, to hold courts-baron, and to create tenures. The old natives, whose estates were granted in fee-simple, to be held in socage, were allowed the same privileges; but they were bound to let their lands at the same fixed rents as the English undertakers, to take no Irish exactions from their tenants, and to abolish the old Irish custom of creaghting, or wandering with their cattle for pasture from place to place. The annual rent reserved to the Crown was remitted to the British settlers during the first two years, on account of the expense

of removing from one country to the other. On pretence of raising funds to protect this plantation, the king, in 1611, founded the order of Baronets, the number not to exceed 200, each of whom was to pay for his title a sum of money which would maintain thirty men in Ulster, at eight-pence a day each, for three years. A great part of the province was then covered with forests and marshes, and the open country was desolated by the wars; the ruined towns were little better than clusters of miserable huts. However, considerable numbers of English settled in Ulster, especially the Puritans, who emigrated to avoid persecution at home, and who, together with the disciples of John Knox, gave a strongly Calvinistic and anti-Papal complexion to the Protestantism of Ireland.”

From the survey made by Pynnar, in 1618, it appears that though 8000 men of British birth were settled in the country, yet the fourth part of the land was not fully inhabited. He stated that there had been erected 107 castles with bawns, 19 castles without bawns, 42 bawns without castles or houses, and 1897 dwelling houses of stone and timber.

The plantation scheme was a wretched failure, bad alike for settlers and natives. "Many of those," says an Irish historian, "who were active in carrying out the forfeitures received large grants. Among these was Sir John Davies, who took so lively an interest in the pacification of Ireland. He was a commissioner for inquiring into defective titles, and he afterwards presided as judge, to enforce the findings of the juries, receiving for his pains 4000 acres. Less worthy men than he enriched themselves rapidly with the Irish spoils about this time. Boyle, the great Earl of Cork, went to Ireland as a lawyer's clerk, being obliged to abscond from London 'for erasing documents and counterfeiting hands,' and by forgeries, erasings, and perjuries,' we are told, he put many a man out of his land. In Dublin he had been committed to prison six or seven times within five years. He occupied an office in that city as deputy-escheator; and there, when persons came with a royal order for an estate in Ireland worth a certain specified sum a year, Boyle threw so many difficulties in the way that the English grantee was glad to sell his title for a few pounds, and then the purchaser filled up the blanks himself with the name and locality of the estate, with the number of acres. Thus he got for £20 a year a fine estate in Connaught, containing parsonages, castles, and water mills. In the same manner he got O'Connor county for a nominal rent, some of the best land in Ireland, about ten miles long and six broad. When called to account he either

vehemently protested his innocence with solemn appeals to heaven or he bribed his accusers, or both. In 1603 he married the daughter of the principal Secretary of State, Sir G. Fenton, and then his rise was rapid. In 1616 he was created Baron Boyle, of Youghal (an estate he had bought from Sir Walter Raleigh), and in 1620 he was further elevated to the titles of Viscount Dungarvon and Earl of Cork."

One of the most active agents on behalf of royal intolerance and British

supremacy in Ireland in the days of Charles I. was Sir Thomas Wentworth, who was sent to Ireland as Lord-Lieutenant. Sir Thomas claimed to be descended from the royal line of the Plantagenets and he was possessed of very superior ability. When he first entered the Commons he was on the constitutional side, and offered uncompromising and most effective resistance to the royal encroachments; yet, when tempted by rank and power, he fell utterly, hopelessly, and became the unscrupulous tool of the king. "From the moment that Wentworth put his hand to the plough of despotism he never looked back."

In Ireland the grand efforts of Wentworth were directed against the freedom of the Irish parliament; he was resolved to make that parliament entirely subservient to the royal side by beating down everything like independence among Lords and Commons. "In his treatment of the nobility," says a writer already quoted, "he was more contemptuous and insolent. By brow-beating and threatening he carried everything in the Star Chamber and the Parliament. One of the king's 'graces' was that sixty years' possession should give a title to an estate-a most reasonable demand, seeing that Ireland had been convulsed by rebellion, and that it was now necessary to give all possible security to property. But nothing would satisfy him and his tyrannical minister but the plunder and plantation of Connaught. Therefore, he resolved in 1635 to find what he called 'the King's just and honourable title to the estates of Connaught.'

"He began in the county of Roscommon, where he expected least opposition, and impudently told the landlords that he came to make them 'a civil and rich people.' He delivered an address to the jury full of insolence and threats, in effect telling them not to find for the king at their peril. The consequence was that they found the king's title 'without scruple or hesitation.' Sligo and Mayo followed the example of Roscommon, being assured that they would be allowed to purchase new titles at a low composition. The facility with which the work of spoliation was accomplished is accounted for when we know that the juries were carefully packed, that heavy punishment—indeed, certain ruin-hung over the refractory, and that the judges were largely bribed. Wentworth's own letters place this beyond a doubt. Your Majesty,' he says, in one of these, 'was graciously pleased, upon my humble advice, to bestow four shillings in the pound upon your Lord Chief Justice and Lord Chief Baron in this kingdom, out of the first yearly rent raised upon the commission of defective titles, which, upon observation, I find to be the best given money that ever was; for now they attend to it with a care and diligence such as it were their own privates; and most certain the gaining to themselves every four shillings, once paid, shall better your revenue for ever after at least five pounds!'

"In Galway, however, the spoliators met with determined opposition from the Earl of Clanricarde and the other proprietors. Wentworth wished that they would resist still more, that he might have a plea for entire confiscation. In order to provoke the earl he ordered the court to