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

sit at his residence in Portumna. He had a body of troops as good lookers-on, and he charged the jury vehemently. 'Nevertheless,' he says, 'they most obstinately refused to find for his majesty, though we endeavoured to satisfy them several ways beyond any we had taken in any of the other three counties.' Enraged at this resistance, he resolved to make Galway an example to frighten all Ireland. He fined the sheriff £1000 for returning a 'packed jury,' and the jurors he fined £4000 each, and cast them and the sheriff into prison in Dublin until they should pay the fines and acknowledge their offence on their knees. One juror had been fined £500 for pulling a brother juror by the sleeve. The sheriff

died in prison, and Clanricarde soon after died of mortification under the persecution he endured. The Catholic lawyers who presumed to plead against the king's title he excluded from the bar, by causing the oath of supremacy to be administered to them. He required as the condition on which he would accept the submission of the landowners, that the jury should acknowledge that they gave a verdict contrary to their oaths."

The individual acts of injustice which were perpetrated by this man were accompanied by the most profligate indulgence. He was besides cruelly vindictive, and spared none who had in the least degree offended him. One day, in a paroxysm of rage at some venial fault, he soundly caned a young lieutenant, Annersley by name. Soon after this Annersley

accidentally set a stool on the foot of the Lord Deputy when he was suffering from the gout. Mountnorris, an officer in the army, hearing the incident mentioned, said: "Perhaps Annersley did it as his revenge for the caning; but he has a brother who would not have taken such a revenge!" This being repeated to Wentworth, he treated the observation as a suggestion to Annersley to perpetrate some outrage; and though he dissembled his resentment for some time, he then accused Mountnorris of mutiny, founded on this expression. Wentworth attended the court-martial to overawe its proceedings, and obtained a sentence of death against Mountnorris. The sentence was too atrocious to be carried into execution, but it served Wentworth's purpose, who cashiered Mountnorris, and gave the office, which he held as treasurer, to Sir Adam Loftus. Much as the Irish had suffered before, this most lawless act excited a loud murmur of indignation throughout Ireland; but Wentworth had secured himself from any censure from the king by handing him six thousand pounds as the price of the transfer.

The unscrupulous tyranny of Wentworth aroused the resentment of the Irish to so great an extent that it was thought necessary for his safety that he should come to England; but he soon returned to the scene of his tyrannies to hasten the terrible catastrophe which was to put an end to them. While in England he was employed in command of a section of the army sent against the Scots, whom he was "ready to put down by force of arms." Over them, however, he gained no particular advantage; but he was well rewarded, being created Baron Raby and Earl of Strafford. As Earl of Strafford we shall have to refer more at length to the man in another of our Stories; his earlship altered him not at all to the Irish when he returned to them. Their complaints were heard in the English Parliament, and not without satisfaction, for the Earl had rendered himself singularly obnoxious, and he was blamed for much of the king's bad policy. Being recalled to England by his majesty, he was impeached in Parliament-brought to trial on a charge of high treason, condemned, and executed. The alarmed king, who saw the coming storm, allowed the man to perish whose chief fault had been excess of loyalty.

Strafford-better known in Ireland as Wentworth-had there sown the seeds of a deadly harvest. When his iron rule was removed, and was succeeded by weak and inefficient government, the pent-up passions of the Catholics burst forth. There were but three or four thousand soldiers scattered over the country-the Protestant settlers were at the mercy of