"of Ulster as forfeited to the crown; and James proceeded to fill it with English and Scotch adven"turers." It is observable, that the rebellion of Tyrone was never proved by reasonable evidence. In his letter to sir Hercules Langrish*, Mr. Burke observes, that "these plots and conspiracies were "never proved upon their supposed authors." The question of Harris,-If Tyrone and Tyrconnel(his associate in the supposed rebellion),—were not guilty, why did they fly?—is not so overwhelming as it has been represented. They might have feared that justice would not have been done them; or that it would be done them in the manner, in which it was done to the Byrnes, in the case which we shall afterwards have occasion to mention. The confiscation of Tyrone's property,―(and the same may be said of every confiscation in the reign of queen Elizabeth),—was attended with this remarkable circumstance, that the crown seized, not only the demesnes and seignorial right of the offender, but dispossessed all his tenants and subtenants of their lands, and parcelled them out among strangers. In the rebellion of Desmond, his estates were found, on a loose survey, to contain 511,456, Irish acres. Elizabeth seized the whole, and granted them to her favourites ;-and special directions were given," says sir Richard Cox, "that the grantees should not suffer any la"bourer, that would not take the oath of supre 66 macy;"-in others words, "any roman-catholic, "-to dwell upon their land." It has been happy Page 13. "for mankind, that instances of similar directions "do not occur, frequently, in history." Through the remainder of the reign of James, this transference of property was systematically continued. On the pretence of its being necessary for the improvement of the country, or the security of government, he seized large territories in the province of Leinster, which lay on the sea coast between Dublin and Waterford, and some, which lay between the river Arklow and the river Slane, in Wexford. On the same pretence, he directed sir Arthur Chichester, the lord deputy, to survey the counties of Leitrim and Longford, and large portions of land in the King and Queen's counties and Westmeath; all possessed, at that time, by the ancient Irish ;--and to inquire, by what titles they were held. It was discovered, that they had been seized by different English adventurers, in the reign of Henry the second; had been regained by the families of the ancient owners, in the wars between the houses of York and Lancaster; and had, from that time, been quietly and uninterruptedly enjoyed by them and their descendants. On this statement, the juries found that all the titles to them were defective, and that the whole property belonged to the king. A general inquiry into all defective titles was then instituted. It is a received maxim of all nations governed by law, that possession constitutes right against all, who cannot establish a worthier claim. To this rule, the commissioners of the crown paid no attention. Wherever the grant could not be produced, or, when it was proved, if no descent or conveyance recognizing it could be proved, the land was immediately adjudged to the crown.As all grants between the first of Edward the second, and the tenth of Henry the seventh, had been resumed, every title under them, notwithstanding the subsequent uninterrupted possession, was declared defective. Industry and ingenuity were exerted, to the utmost, to discover defects in the title of the possessor. "Every person," says Mr. Carte*, "was at work "on finding out flaws in people's titles to their " estates:" "Nor were there wanting," says Leland . "proofs of the most iniquitous practices of "hardened cruelty, of vile perjury, and scandalous “subornation, to despoil the fair and unoffending "proprietor of the inheritance."-In the case of the Byrnes, mentioned by Mr. Carte ‡, “a brother, "unwilling to give evidence against his two bro"thers, was miserably tortured, put naked on a burning gridiron; then on a brandiron, and "burnt with gunpowder under his buttocks and flanks, and at last suffered the strappado till he was forced to accuse them." At length, James threatened the whole province of Connaught. That province with the whole county of Clare, had surrendered to queen Elizabeth, and been newly granted out by her. The grantees having neglected to enrol the grants in the • Life of Ormond, vol. i. p. 27. manner prescribed, James accepted surrenders of them and issued new grants; the grantees immediately lodged them in the court of chancery for enrolment, and paid the fees. The officers received the money, but did not enrol the grants; the titles of the grantees were again found to be defective, and the king was proceeding to avail himself of the defect, when he was prevented by death. What intelligent reader, who peruses the accounts of these extensive and cruel confiscations, is not astonished at the inaccurate view of them, which Hume has inserted in his History, and at the reflection with which he concludes it*: "Such "were the arts, by which James introduced hu"manity and justice among the Irish, who had "ever been buried in the most profound barbarism. "Noble cares! much superior to the vain and cri"minal glory of conquest; but requiring ages of perseverance and attention to perfect what had "been so happily begun." Subsequent pages of these Memoirs will show, that, fatally for Ireland, the English government did persevere during centuries, in the system thus eulogized by Hume. LXXX. 6. State of the Irish Catholics in the reign of Charles It must be observed, that the extensive spoliations of property, which have been mentioned, were not the only grievance of which the Irish com* • Chapter xlvi. plained. The statutes of supremacy and uniformity had deprived almost all the ecclesiastics in the kingdom of their benefices, and thus reduced them to poverty: the statute of uniformity subjected every Irishman to a fine of twelve pence for every Sunday on which he absented himself from the protestant church. For refusing the oath of supremacy, numbers were fined and imprisoned; and the penalty imposed for absence from church, which even in these days of national wealth and prosperity, would be severely felt by the lower class of English, was often exacted with rigour. From the beginning of the reign of Charles the first, till 1626, the sufferings of the Irish catholics seem to have been on the increase: then, the urgency of his majesty's affairs, on account of his double war with France and Spain, and the refusal of the commons to grant him the necessary supplies for carrying them on, made him look to Ireland. The catholics gave him the most unequivocal assurances of their loyalty and instant readiness to devote their lives and fortunes to his service. All they claimed in return was a toleration of their religion, an exemption from some unwarrantable exactions of the temporal and ecclesiastical courts, and to have their titles to their possessions quieted. These the monarch was willing to concede, but the protestant prelates of Ireland denounced the vengeance of God against the concession. The primate Usher, and eleven of the bishops, signed what they termed "the judgment of divers of the "archbishops and bishops of Ireland, on the toler |