This was the pattern [der ganze Grundriss] for all subsequent confiscations under Elizabeth and James. The Irish were denied all rights against the Anglo-Irish of the Pale, with resistance treated as rebellion. That sort of thing became usual. By Acts in the 3rd and 4th years of the reign of Philip and Mary, c. 1 and 2, the Lord Deputy, the Earl of Sussex, was endowed with full power and authority ... to give and to grant to all and every Their Majesties subjects, English or Irish ...at his election and pleasure, such estates in fee simple, fee tail,259 leases for term of years, life or lives in these two counties as for the more sure planting or strength of the countries with good subjects shall be thought unto his wisdom and discretion meet and convenient (Murphy, p. 256). Tyrone s rebellion, among other things, against religious persecution: he and other lords of Ulster entered into a secret combination, about this time, that they would defend the Roman Catholic religion ... that they would suffer no sheriffs nor garrisons to be within the compass of their territories, and that they would ... jointly resist all invasions of the English (Camden). The conduct of Deputy Mountjoy in this war is described by Camden: He made incursions on all sides, spoiled the corn, burnt all the houses and villages that could be found, and did so gall the rebels, that, pent in with garrisons and streightened more and more every day, they were reduced to live like wild beasts, skulking up and down the woods and deserts (Murphy, p. 251). See Holinshed Chronicles (p. 460) on how Ireland is laid waste in this war. Half the population is said to have been done in. According to the returns for 1602 by John Tyrrell, the Mayor of Dublin, prices there climbed: wheat from 36/- to 180/- the quarter, barley malt from 10/- to 43/- and oat malt from 5/- to 22/- the barrel, peas from 5/- to 40/- the peck, oats from 3/4 to 20/the barrel, beef from 26/8 to 160/- the carcass, mutton ditto from 3/- to 26/-, veal ditto from 10/- to 29/-, lamb from 1/- to 6/- , and a pig from 8/- to 30/- (Leland, Vol. II, p. 422). Desmond had estates confiscated in all counties of Munster except Clare, and also in Dublin. They were worth 7,000 per annum. Irish Parliament of 1586 expropriated 140 landowners by confiscation in Munster alone under the Act of the 28th year of Elizabeth s reign, c. 7 and 8. McGeoghegan lists the names of the grantees of Desmond s estates, with some families still nearly all in possession until 1847 (? probably cum grano salis). The annual Crown rent on these estates was 2d to 3d per acre, with no indigenous Irish admitted as tenants and the government undertaking to keep adequate garrisons. Neither provision was observed. Some estates were abandoned by the grantees and reoccupied by the Irish. Many of the undertakers stayed in England and appointed agents, who were ignorant, negligent, and corrupt (Leland, Vol. III). Surrenders of Estates and Regrants (see Davies, 7b260). These followed the pronouncement of tanistry and gavelkind as unlawful by the Court of King s Bench in the Hilary Term in the third year of the reign of James I. A Royal Proclamation stipulated surrender of estates and regrant under new valid titles. Most Irish chiefs came forward to receive incontestable title at last, but this was made conditional on their giving up the clan relationship in favour of the English landlord-tenant relationship (Murphy, p. 261). This in 1605 (see Chronology ). Plantation of Ulster. According to Leland, Irish undertenants and servants were tacitly exempted from the Oath of Supremacy, whereas all the other planters were compelled to take it. Carte says that all Irish settlers, especially natives, who were allowed part of their land, were exempted, but this was irrelevant because trial for refusing to take the Oath was impracticable. The Scottish Presbyterians in Ulster also resisted taking the Oath of Supremacy, and this was suffered by the authorities (Murphy, p. 266). That may have been useful for the Irish as well. Carte estimates the number of English settlers in Ulster in 1641 at 20,000 and of Scottish settlers at 100,000 (Life of Ormonde, Vol. I, p. 177). Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy, was rewarded for his services in this plantation with the territory of Innoshowen(?) and all the lands possessed by O'Dogherty, a tract of country far exceeding the allotments generally made to northern undertakers (Leland, Vol. II, p. 438). As early as 1633 these estates were valued at 10,000 per annum (Strafford s State Letters, Vol. II, p. 294). Chichester was the ancestor of Marquis of Donegal, who would have 300,000 per annum for his Belfast estate alone, if another of his ancestors had not surrendered it to others under long leases (Murphy, p. 265). The plantation of Ulster culminated the first period, with a new means discovered for confiscation: defective titles. This is effective under James and Charles, until Cromwell renews the invasion. See extracts from Carte, 2a,b. Another effective pretext for confiscation was that old Crown rents, long forgotten by Crown and landowners, were still due from many estates. These were now pulled out and, wherever unpaid, the estate was forfeited. No receipts existed, and that was enough (Murphy, p. 269). Concerning the attempt to confiscate Connaught (see Chronology, and O'Conor, The History of the Irish Catholics), recall James s dirty trick [sch ne Schweinerei]: When the people of Connaught surrendered their titles to a specially appointed Royal Commission in 1616 and had these reconveyed by new patents, they paying 3,000 for their enrolment in Chancery, the titles were not registered. A new commission was named on this pretext in 1623 to declare them null and void by reason of deliberate default, an oversight that depended not on the landowners but the government. (See Carte, Life of Ormonde, Vol. I, pp. 47 and 48.) In the meantime, James died. A Court of Wards for Ireland was established in 1614. Carte avers in The Life of Ormonde, Vol. I, p. 517, that no lawful basis existed for it as in England, being meant to bring up Catholic heirs in the Protestant religion and English customs. Its president was the good Sir William Parsons, who had helped plan it. Strafford wrote the English Secretary of State on December 16, 1634, that in his Irish Parliament the Protestants are the majority, and this may be of great use to confirm and settle His Majesty s title to the Plantations of Connaught and Ormond; for this you may be sure of, all the Protestants are for Plantations, all the others are against them; so as these, being the great number, you can want no help they can give you therein. Nay, in case there be no title to be made good to these countries in the Crown, yet should not I despair, forth of reasons of state, and for the strength and security of the Kingdom, to have them passed to the King by an immediate Act of Parliament (State Letters, Vol. I, p. 353). Outside Connaught, too, money was extorted continuously on pain of inquiry into titles. The O'Byrnes of Wicklow, for example, twice paid 15,000 to preserve a portion of their estates, while the City of London paid 70,000 to prevent confiscation of its plantations in Colrain and Derry for alleged breach of covenant (Leland, Vol. III, p. 40). The Court of High Commission [the Irish Star Chamber] established by Wentworth in the year 1633, after the English model, with the same formality and the same tremendous powers (Leland, Vol. III, p. 29), and this naturally without Parliament s consent in order to bring the people here to a conformity in religion, and, in the way to that, raise, perhaps, a good revenue to the Crown (January 31, 1633, State Letters, Vol. I, p. 188). The Court saw to it that all newly-appointed officials, doctors, barristers, etc., and all those who sued out livery of their estates should take the Oath of Supremacy, which, as McAuley observed, was a religious inquisition where that of the Star Chamber was political. . Then the Castle Chamber, called Star Chamber as in England, which, Lord Deputy Chichester said, was the proper court to punish jurors who will not find a verdict for the King upon good evidence (oft-quoted passage from Desiderata Curiosa Hibernicae, Vol. I, p. 262). It is said therein [(in the Remonstrance of Trim) the agents complain] that the penalties there employed consisted in imprisonment and loss of ears and fines, pillory, boring through the tongue, marking on the forehead with an iron and other infamous punishments, as this is also indicated in the indictment of Strafford (Murphy, p. 279). When Strafford went to Connaught in 1635, he took with him 4,000 horse as good lookers on, while the plantations were settling (Strafford, State Letters, Vol. I, p. 454). In Galway he imposed fines not only on the jury that would not find a verdict for the King, but also the sheriff for returning so insufficient, indeed, we conceive, so packed a jury, in 1,000 to His Majesty (August 1635, Vol. I, p. 451). As, by the 28th Act of Henry VIII, c. 5, 6 and 13, all recourse to the Pope s jurisdiction was prohibited and all Irish came under the Protestant ecclesiastical courts, whose verdict could be appealed against to the King alone. They took cognizance to all marriages, baptisms, burials, wills, and administrations, and punished recusants for not going to church under the 2nd Act of Elizabeth, c. 2, and also collected the tithes. Bishop Burnet (Life of Dr. Bedel, Bishop of Kilmore, p. 89) said these courts were often managed by a chancellor that bought his place and so thought he had a right to all the profits he could make out of it. And their whole business seemed to be nothing but oppression and extortion.... The officers of the court thought they had a sort of right to oppress the natives and that all was well got that was wrung from them ... they made it their business to draw people into trouble by vexatious suits, and to hold them so long in that, for 3d. worth of the tithe of turf, they would be put to a 5 charge. In the graces, which never materialised, Protestant clergymen were to have been forbidden to keep private prisons of their own for spiritual offences, so that offenders should be committed to the King s public gaols (Murphy, p. 281). See Spenser, excerpt 51 about the Protestant clergy. Borlase and Parsons encouraged the rebellion everywhere. According to Lord Castlehaven s Memoirs, they said: The more rebels, the more confiscations. Leland (Vol. III, p. 166), too, observes that, as before, extensive forfeitures were the favourite object of the chief governors and their friends. By that time, the Irish Royalist army was to have been 50,000 strong through reinforcement from England and Scotland. See Carte, The Life of Ormonde, Vol. III, p. 61, for the instructions to the army. The motto of the Kilkenny Confederates was: Pro deo, pro rege, et patria Hibernia unanimes (for God, King and Ireland unanimous); so that is where the Prussians lifted it from! (Borlase, Irish Rebellion, p. 128). Petty (Political Anatomy of Ireland, Dublin edition of Petty s tracts, 1769, pp. 312-15) estimates that 112,000 British and 504,000 Irish inhabitants of Ireland died in the war of 1641-52. In 1653, soldiers debentures were sold at 4/- to 5/- in the pound, so that with 20/being the price [nominal] of two acres of land, and there being 8 million acres of good land in Ireland, all Ireland was purchasable for 1 million, though in 1641 it was worth 8 million. Petty estimates the value of livestock in Ireland in 1641 at 4 million, and in 1652 at less than 500,000, so that Dublin had to get meat from Wales. Corn was 12/- per barrel in 1641 and 50/- in 1652. Houses in Ireland worth 2 million in 1641, were worth less than 500,000 in 1653. Leland, too, admits in Vol. III, p. 171, that the favourite idea of both the Irish Government and the English Parliament (from 1642 onwards) was the utter extermination of all the Catholics of Ireland. See Lingard (History of England, Vol. VII, 4th ed., p. 102, Note) on the transportation of Irish as slaves to the West Indies (figures vary from 6,000 to 100,000). Of the 1,000 boys and 1,000 girls to be sent to Jamaica, the commissioners wrote in 1655: Although we must use force in taking them up, yet it is so much for their own good and likely to be of such great advantage to the public, that you may have such number of them as you shall think fit (Thurloe s Papers, Vol. IV, p. 23). By the first Act of Settlement, the forfeiture of two-thirds of their estates had been pronounced against those who had borne arms against the Parliament and one-third of their estates against those who had resided in Ireland any time from October 1, 1649, to March 1, 1650, and had not manifested their constant good affection to Parliament. The Parliament had power to give them, in lieu thereof, other lands to the proportion of value thereof. The second Act concerned resettlement (see Prendergast, Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, Book of Excerpts VII, 1a). Distribution of land to soldiers was limited to those who had served under Cromwell from 1649 (Murphy, p. 302). See Carte, Life of Ormonde, Vol. II, p. 301, about some cases of land surveying, especially by adventurers. According to Leland (Vol. III, p. 410), the Commissioners in Dublin and Athlone kept considerable domains for themselves. A plantation acre is equal to 1 acre, 2 roods, 19 perches, 5 yards, and 2 1/4 feet imperial statute measure, or 121 plantation acres may be taken as equal to 196 statute acres (Murphy, p. 302). On Forty-Nine officers see O'Conor and Notes. The Duke of York received a grant of all the lands held by the regicides who had been attainted. Provisors were persons in whose favour provisoes had been made by the Acts of Settlement and of Explanation.273 Nominees were the Catholics named by the King restored to their mansions and 2,000 acres contiguous. At that time the profitable lands of Ireland were estimated at two-thirds of all land, or 12,500,000 statute acres. Of the rest, considerable tracts were occupied without title by soldiers and adventurers. In 1675, the twelve and a half million acres of arable were distributed as follows: This table was compiled by Murphy; the figure of 3,900,000 acres was taken from the Account published by the Cromwellian proprietors and the rest on the basis of the Grace Manuscript quoted by Lingard and the Report of the Commissioners to the English House of Commons, December 15, 1699. It accords with Petty (Political Anatomy), who wrote: Of the whole 7,500,000 plantation acres of good land (in Ireland) the English and Protestants and the Church have this Christmas (1672) 5,140,000 (= 8,352,500 statute acres and the Irish have near half as much (Murphy, pp. 314 and 315). Compiled by Murphy on the basis of the Report of the Commissioners of the House of Commons (English) in December 1699.
History of Ireland. Preparatory Work. Engels 1870