*

1651. Connaught. the county of Clare, the city of Limerick, and town of Galway,was either in the possession or under the contribution of the regicides. Connaught and Clare werefor the most part waste. The King had invested the Queen and his brother the Duke of York, then at Paris, with full powers to treat with the Duke of Lorrain, and with their approbation, and the strong recommendation even of Ormond, that treaty was entered upon. It failed, however, in its execution, and Clanricarde, no longer able to support the troops he could command, threw himself into the town of Carrick, where, " being encompassed," says Ludlow, by our men on all sides, he submitted, and obtained liberty to transport himself with 3,000 men to any "foreign country in friendship with the commonwealth, within the space of three months." In the year 1652, Clanricarde left Ireland, carrying with him the royal authority, says Borlase,† and within a twelvemonth after, Mortagh O'Bryen, the last of "the Irish commanders, submitted to the parliament "on the usual terms of transportation, by the favor "of which 27,000 men had been that year sent "away." War, andi ts baleful consequences, famine and pestilence, had so reduced the population of that

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Lud. Mem. 408. This method of clearing the country of its military strength, which the regicides despaired of gaining over to their party, had been so successfully practised by the Cromwellians, that Dalrymple (Mem. Vol. I. 267), says "Cromwell, in order to get free of his enemies, did not scruple to transport 40,000 Irish from their own country."

Bol. Ir. Reb.

unfortunate country *, that, according to Clarendon, 1653. Cromwell's council seriously thought of the utter ex-` tirpation of the whole nation. But, finding more difficulty in the execution of this sanguinary project, than they were at first aware of, and sensible that it would carry with it somewhat of horror, they devised the following expedient of transplantation, which they called an Act of Grace. The whole native population of Ireland, that professed the religion of their ancestors, were driven in herds into Connaught and Clare, then a desolated waste, and a proclamation was published, that if, after the first of March, 1654, any Irish catholic, man, woman, or child, should be found in any other part of the kingdom, they might be killed by any person, who should meet them, without charge or trial. Arbitrary allotments of these wasted lands were made, though some attention were pretended to be had to the proportion of the possesions of which individuals had been elsewhere divested; but the merciful donative was fettered with an insidious obligation, of releasing and renouncing for themselves and their representatives for ever, whatever estates and property they or their ancestors had possessed. Thus were these scanty wrecks of the native Irish made martyrs to royalty, and penned up like hunted beasts in the devastated wilds of Connaught, hardly existing in the gregarious and promiscuous possession and cultivation of the soil, without the means of

*Borlase says, that in the summer of 1650, 17,000 persons died of the plague in Dublin.

1653. acquiring live or dead stock, and wanting even the necessary utensils of husbandry. This tyrannical

appropriation of the soil of Connaught and Clare, went to divest the possessors of their inheritances, as much as if their estates had been situated without the precincts of this proscription. It is singular, that this atrocious conduct of Cromwell should have been represented as necessary or useful policy, to be gratefully supported and commended by authors of respectability, from the days of the restored monarch Charles II. down to the most prominent engine of the late Union, the Earl of Clare *.

It might be more orderly to reserve observations upon the conduct of Charles II. towards his Irish subjects, with reference to their forfeited estates, to the ensuing chapter. It cannot, however, be irrelevant to the severity and injustice of Cromwell towards the Irish, to notice the speech of Lord Clare in the Irish house of peers on the 10th of February, 1800, in recommending the Union. He did not scruple to assert, that it would have been an act of gross injustice on the part of the King to have overlooked the interest of Cromwell's soldiers and adventurers, who had been put into possession of the confiscated lands in Ireland. And on the same occasion that affected patriot drew the following picture of his

Country:

"After a fierce and bloody contest for eleven years, in which the face of the whole island was desolated, and its population nearly extinguished by war, pestilence and famine, the insurgents were subdued, and suffered all the calamities which could be inflicted on the vanquished party in a long contested civil war. This was a civil war of extermination. Cromwell's first act was to collect all the native Irish, who had survived the general deso. lation and remained in the country, and to transplant them into the province of Connaught, which had been depopulated and

protector.

The assumption by Cromwell of the sole authority 1654. of Protector of the commonwealth of England, Cromwell Scotland, and Ireland, with a council of twenty-one, Its effect on produced little change in the administration of the Ireland. affairs of Ireland. Ludlow opposed the proclamation of the protectorate. It was carried through the interest of Fleetwood only by one voice. Ludlow never would sign the orders for the proclamation, and he quitted

laid waste in the progress of the rebellion. They were ordered to retire thither by a certain day, and forbidden to repass the Shannon on pain of death: and this sentence of deportation was rigidly enforced until the restoration. Their ancient possessions were seized and given ap to the conquerors, as were the possessions of every man, who had taken a part in the rebellion, or followed the fortune of the King after the murder of Charles I. This whole fund was distributed amongst the officers and soldiers of Cromwell's army, in satisfaction of the arrears of their pay, and amongst the adventurers, who had advanced money to defray the expenses of the war. And thus a new colony of new settlers, composed of all the various sects which then infested England, independents, anabaptists, seceders, brownists, socinians, millenarians, and dissenters of every description, many of them infected with the leaven of democracy, poured into Ireland, and were put into possession of the ancient inheritance of its inhabitants."

* William Sampson, esq. published at New York, in 1807, some very interesting memoirs and original letters relating to the latter troubles in Ireland, together with a short sketch of the History of Ireland, in octavo. He has thus compendiously and impartially spoken of Cromwell, p. 319: "Never was this title of Protector more undeserved, at least in Ireland. His hatred to the Irish was threefold. He hated them from bigotry, because they did not seek the Lord. He hated them because they were loyal to that King, whose head he cut off. And he hated them because they had commodious seats for habitations.”

1654, the city, when it was made, at the end of a fortnight's contest among the commissioners, and resolved to hold his own military authority of lieutenant-general of the horse, which he had received from the parliament, till it should be taken from him by force. Ireland was, in fact, the fund which the leaders of the regicide party looked to, as the immediate and most sure source of remuneration and emolument. According to Clarendon, Cromwell had reserved to himself a large slice of the province of Munster, including the whole county of Tipperary, as a demesne for the state, in which no adventurer or soldier was to have an assignment. According to a proposal made by Broghill, in council, a survey of the whole country was made: the best land was rated at four shillings, and some only at a penny, per acre. Upon the surface of the country thus appraised, the soldiers drew lots for the portions to be assigned them in lieu of the arrears of their pay. Enormous abuses were committed by having whole baronies surveyed in gross, and then employing their own surveyors to make admeasurements, that were conclusive. The persons, who had been the most conspicuously instrumental in the murder of the King, were most favored in these allotments. It was arbitrary in the surveyors to report lands unprofitable, and such were thrown gratis into the allotment. The lands distributed amongst the soldiers, which were returned as unprofitable into the surveyors' office amounted to 605,670 Irish acres *.

* The Irish exceeds the English acre by one-fifth, Lord An-.