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XXVIII

structions to these commissioners, the qualifications CHA P. required for the ascertaining of innocence were so severely stated, that hardly any of the Irish catholics could expect a sentence of acquittal. With exception of the inhabitants of Cork and Youghal, who had been driven into the quarters of the rebels by force, no catholic was to be accounted innocent who had enjoyed his property in these quarters at or before the cessation of 1643; who had entered into the Irish confederacy before the peace of 1648; who had at any time adhered to the nuncio or papal power, in opposition to the royal authority; who, after excommunication for his loyalty, had owned himself guilty and received absolution; who derived the title to his estate from any person guilty of these crimes ; who had acknowledged his concurrence in the rebellion by claiming his estate on the articles of peace; who, residing in the English quarters, had held correspondence with the rebels; who before the peace of 1646, or of 1648, had sitten in any councils of the confederates; who had acted in any commission derived from them; who had employed agents to treat with any foreign papal power for the sending of troops into this kingdom; who had been employed in such negociations; or who had harrassed the country, as a wood-kern, or tory, before the marquis of Clanricarde's departure from Ireland. The first of these cases was very severe, as the lords justices, in the beginning of the rebellion, had forced many from Dublin to the protection of the insurgents: but the place of residence was asserted to be the only criterion, after a lapse of so many years, to deterVOL. II.

mine

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CHAP. mine the guilt or innocence of numbers, against whom particular acts could not be proved; and the new English colonists detested all ideas of mitigation, extending their hatred of the old Irish even to the native protestants of the country.

A parlia

ment.

1661.

A parliament, by which the declaration of settlement was to be canvassed, and formed into a law, was convened in the year 1661. As the soldiers and adventurers kept possession of their lands, and of their interests in the corporations, men of their party, with few of the most violent puritans, and no catholics, composed the lower house. Both houses concurred in a declaration in favour of the liturgy and established government of the church, and a censure of the covenant and of oaths of association. The upper house also, but not without some difficulty, was persuaded to join the lower in an address to the lords justices to order the courts of law to be for some time shut, to prevent the reversal of outlawries, and the ejectment of adventurers or soldiers, before their present title should be adjusted by a statute. Disappointed in two attempts for a perpetual exclusion by law of catholics from their house, the commons raised alarms of conspiracies, said to be plotted among these religionists; but, with their utmost industry, were unable to produce any material discoveries of that nature. The commons contended for an exact enforcement of the declaration of settlement, and the passing of it into a law without alteration; but they were opposed by the lords, among whom were many of ancient Irish or English race, particularly the earl of Kildare, with the proxy of Ormond,

now

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now created a duke. They discovered various mal- CHAP. practices in the court of claims; numbers of widows claiming their jointures on evidently legal grounds, without a single instance of restoration; orders from the king for the restitution of their estates to particular persons eluded by the commissioners, under pretence of their not being able to find reprisals for the present possessors; and the lands allotted for reprisals given clandestinely by the commissioners to their own friends under the notion of cautionary reprisals, or, as they were termed in law, de bene esse. The lords resolved to address the king for a revocation of these illicit grants, and for a defalcation from the claims of adventurers.

The long parliament, engaged in civil war against Charles the first, had, for the raising of money, published what was termed the doubling ordinance, which imported that, whoever should advance one fourth part more than his original adventure, should have the whole doubled on account, and should receive lands in Ireland for the doubled sum, in the same manner as if the whole doubled sum had been really paid; and that, if the adventurer should refuse to advance this fourth, any other person, on the payment of it, should reap the same advantage, deducting only the original money, paid by the first adventurer. As this was only an ordinance of parliament, not confirmed by the royal assent; and as the money thus raised had not been applied to the service of Ireland, the king agreed to the propriety of satisfying the adventurers on this ordinance for no more money than they had really advanced. A

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CHAP. clause for this purpose was inserted in the heads of a bill of settlement, which after many contests, modifications, and delays, was transmitted to England by three lords commissioned by the council, while agents from each house of parliament were sent to salicit the immediate passing of the bill by his Majesty.

London.

1662.

cause.

To London repaired agents from the interested Debates in parties in Ireland. The adventurers raised considerable sums of money to procure supporters of their The catholics had no money, no friends but the duke of Ormond, and so little prudence as to treat this nobleman as an enemy, and to plead their cause in so offensive a manner as to defeat their own purpose. They chose for their advocate colonel Richard Talbot, a man vain and violent, who in the Netherlands had acquired the favour of the duke of York. Instead of what Ormond would have recommended, a modest extenuation of their offences, an humble submission to the king's mercy, and a declaration of their wishes to live amicably in future with their fellow-subjects, they pleaded the justice of their cause, their merits, and superior right to the royal favour. Talbot, in an expostulation with Ormond, whom he suspected to be not favourable to the catholics, acted in so violent and indecent a manner, that he was committed to the tower, and not released without an humble submission.

The intemperance of the catholics, who reproached indiscriminately their opponents as rebels and regicides, provoked a severe scrutiny into their own conduct. The original paper of instructions

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instructions given by the supreme council of the CHA Irish confederates to the bishop of Ferns and Sir Nicholas Plunket, their agents to the papal court, a draft of instructions to their deputies in France and Spain, and a copy of the excommunication published at Jamestown, were all procured, by which was demonstrated that the agents had been commissioned to make a tender of the kingdom to the pope, and, if he should decline it, to any other catholic prince. Plunket, who had received his knighthood from the sovereign pontiff, and now pleaded as an agent for the Irish catholics, was obliged to acknowledge his own signature affixed to the instructions sent to the papal court, and his own writing in which the others were drawn. The king and council were enraged: an order was made that no farther petition or address should be received from the Roman catholics of Ireland, as they had been already fully heard; and that Sir Nicholas Plunket should forbear to come into his Majesty's presence or appear at court.

1662.

To Ormond, constituted lord lieutenant, a present д& of setof thirty thousand pounds was voted by the Irish tlement, parliament; and his son, lord Ossory, was called by writ to the house of peers. This new chief governor, soon after his arrival in Ireland, gave the royal assent, among other acts, to the bill of settlement, and to a bill for the abolition of the court of wards, the advantages lost by which abolition were compensated to the crown by a tax on chimnies and hearths. To prevent the execution of some provisos in the act of settlement, regarded as unjust by Ormond, a clause

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