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The Adventurers demand a
Settlement - Particulars of their Demands - The Commonwealth appeal to
them to colonize - They refuse and make Fresh Demands - A Lottery
established in London to satisfy their Claims - Particulars of the
Settlement - Connaught reserved for the Irish - The Plantation and
Ulster - Attempt to transplant the Presbyterians of Antrim and Down -
Transplantation or Transportation - Henry Cromwell, Lord Deputy - Death
of Oliver Cromwell and Succession of Richard.
The Adventurers, as the
subscribers for the debenture
bonds issued under the Act of March, 1642, were called, had,
as we have seen, a claim to over one million acres for the
money advanced for putting down the rebellion, and by the
Act referred to and subsequent Acts and ordinances, commonly called "The
Acts of Subscription", lands to satisfy
the Adventurers must be apportioned before the rest of the
country could be disposed of to the army. The Adventurers
had been very urgent during the whole course of the war
that lands should be assigned to them; the Commissioners
in Ireland therefore resolved to set about the scheme of
colonization as speedily as possible.
The amount claimed by the
Adventurers amounted to
£294,095, being £281,812 for original advances and £12,283
under the ordinance of 1643. To satisfy this claim it was
necessary to assign 1,038,234 acres. For this purpose it was
suggested that an allotment of land should be made in each
of the four provinces, and certain counties were selected
which, according to the divisions then existing, were Cavan,
Fermanagh, Donegal, and Monaghan in Ulster; Kilkenny,
Longford, Carlow, Wexford, and Westmeath in Leinster;
Limerick and Kerry in Munster; and Clare, Galway, Leitrim,
and Sligo in Connaught. It was also proposed to make a
permanent Pale between the Boyne and Barrow, with a strong
garrison in Wicklow and another in the south between the
Blackwater and the Suir. Having agreed on these matters,
the Commissions called upon the Adventurers to attend a
Committee of Parliament on the 3Oth of January, 1652, with
a view to a speedy Plantation.
To this the Adventurers
raised many objections, stating
that no plan was proposed for their security, that the war was
not over, and that the " Tories" were still to be found in great
numbers a menace to life and property. They demanded
that instead of the lands it was proposed should be allotted
to them they should be given a choice of certain portions of
Munster and of Leinster, and that they should be granted
the city of Waterford. On these points they showed a decided
front, and were not to be reasoned with concerning what they
deemed their just demands.
The Act of Settlement
being of itself only a preliminary
step to further legislation, the Commissioners, at the close of
1652, urged upon the somewhat lethargic Long Parliament
the advisability of dispatch. "The two great businesses",
they wrote early in 1653, "which now lie before us are how to
lessen your charge and how to plant the country, but neither
of these can be done to any effect till we do hear your pleasure
about the Bill before you for giving satisfaction to the Adventurers and
also to satisfy the arrears of the soldiers."
Between the expulsion of
the Long Parliament, on 20th
April, 1653, and the Assembly which constituted itself the
Parliament which will be associated during all time with the
unco guid Praise-God Barebone Cromwell was supreme,
and matters with regard to the proposed distribution of confiscated
lands were accelerated. A lottery was appointed, as the
Act required, to be held in Grocers' Hall, London, on the
20th of July, the drawing to commence at eight o'clock in
the morning. No one lot was to exceed £10,000. Connaught
was excluded, and the total to be provided for in the other
three provinces was £360,000. This amount was divided
into three lots, of which £45,000 was to be satisfied in Ulster,
£205,000 in Leinster, and £10,000 in Munster; and the
moiety of ten counties was charged with their payment
Antrim, Armagh, and Down in Ulster; Meath, Westmeath,
King's County, and Queen's County in Leinster; and Tipperary, Limerick,
and Waterford in Munster. The Government reserved to itself towns,
church lands, and tithes; the
Established Church, hierarchy and all, having been abolished.
The four counties of Cork, Carlow, Dublin, and Kildare were
also reserved.
Lots were drawn first to
ascertain in which province each
Adventurer should be satisfied; secondly, to ascertain in
which of the ten counties each Adventurer was to receive his
land, lots in the aggregate not to exceed in Westmeath
£70,000, in Tipperary £60,000, in Meath £55,000, in King's
and Queen's Counties £40,000 each, in Limerick £30,000,
in Waterford £20,000, and in Antrim, Armagh, and Down
£15,000 each. In order to encourage the Adventurers and
inspire them with confidence, it was proposed that their
holdings should be in juxtaposition to those held by military
planters; accordingly instructions were issued to the Com-
missions "to divide all the forfeited lands, meadow, arable,
and profitable pasture with the woods and bogs and barren
mountains thereunto respectively belonging into two equal
moities", one to pay the Adventurers' and the other the
army's arrears. The ten counties mentioned were to be
divided, each county by baronies, into two moieties, as equally
as might be, without dividing any barony. A lot was then
to be drawn by the Adventurers, and by some officer appointed
by the Lord-General Cromwell on behalf of the soldiery, to
ascertain which baronies in the ten counties should be for the
former and which for the latter.
The rest of Ireland, with
the exception of Con naught, was
to be set out amongst the officers and soldiers in payment
of their arrears, which amounted to £550,000, and to satisfy
debts of money or provisions due for supplies advanced to the
army of the Commonwealth amounting to £750,000. The five
western counties of Connaught, which are nearly severed by
the Shannon from the rest of the kingdom, and form a principality not
unlike that of Wales, being reserved and appointed
for "the home of the Irish race", all English and Protestants
having lands there, who desired to remove out of the province
into those inhabited by their fellow-countrymen, were granted
estates in the English parts, of equal value, in exchange.
By this "settlement" the
end at which the English
Adventurers had been aiming was accomplished. All, or
almost all, the land of the Irish in the three largest and
richest provinces was confiscated, and the province "which
rock and morass have doomed to a perpetual poverty, and
which was at this time almost desolated by famine and by
massacre", was assigned to the "mere Irish", who would,
it was hoped, at no distant date conform to the habits,
language, and religion of their conquerors. The new inhabitants were
there to congregate from all the other provinces
before the ist of May, 1654, under penalty of outlawry and
all its consequences; and when there they were not to appear
within two miles of the Shannon or four miles of the sea.
A rigorous passport system, to evade which was death without
form of trial, completed this settlement.
A proclamation was issued
on nth of October, 1652,
signed by Ludlow, John Jones, Corbet, and Weaver, stating
that "The Parliament of the Commonwealth of England
having by an act lately passed (entitled An Act for the
Settling of Ireland) declared that it is not their intention to
extirpate this whole nation, but that mercy and pardon for
life and estate be extended to all husbandmen, plowmen,
labourers, artificers, and others of the inferior sort, in such
manner as in and by the said Act is set forth: for the better
execution of the said Act, and that timely notice may be
given to all persons therein concerned, it is ordered that the
Governor and Commissioners of Revenue, or any two or
more of them, within every precinct in this nation, do cause
the said Act of Parliament with this present declaration to be
published and proclaimed in their respective precincts by
beat of drumme and sound of trumpett, on some markett day,
within tenn days after the same shall come unto them within
their respective precincts".
None of the inhabitants
of Cavan, Fermanagh, Tyrone,
or Donegal were transplanted to Leitrim, as it was held to be
too near Ulster, besides being full of fastnesses; and, as a
general rule, none of those inhabiting a district within ten
miles of the Shannon on one side were permitted to settle
near, or have lands assigned to them within the same distance
on the other side. Leitrim, however, became filled with the
Ulster creaghts. It was the first land they met with on entering
Connaught, and they drove their herds of cattle into its
mountains and valleys and depastured them, suffering less
probably from the transplantation than others, being accustomed to a
nomadic life and to pitch their frail temporary
dwellings where the pasture suited their herds.
In the case of the
soldiers the lands were either selected
by authority for them or divided by lot. The regiments were
kept together in bodies; the lot determined the situation of
individuals. "They were settled down regiment by regiment,
troop by troop, company by company, almost on the land
they had conquered." Thus, as Clarendon well says,
4 'Ireland was the great capital out of which all debts were
paid, all services rewarded, and all acts of bounty performed".
In Ulster the proximity
of the Presbyterian Royalists of
Down and Antrim to the Scottish Highlands was considered
dangerous, and the removal of them was contemplated. A
proclamation, dated 23rd May, 1653, against 260 persons was
issued, including Lord Montgomery of Ardes and Lord
Clandeboye. Sir Robert Adair and other leading Presbyterians were to be
sent to Tipperary; but though orders were
given for the transplantation nothing was done, Cromwell
becoming Protector in December: "he did not force any
engagement or promise upon people contrary to their conscience; knowing
that forced obligations of that kind will
bind no man".
The work of
transplantation was a slow process, and it
was thought that it might be accelerated by threats .of
transportation: "And whereas the children, grandchildren,
brothers, nephews, uncles, and next pretended heirs of the
persons attainted, do remain in the provinces of Leinster,
Ulster, and Munster, having little or no visible estates or
subsistence, but living only and coshering upon the common
sort of people who were tenants to or followers of the respective
ancestors of such persons, waiting an opportunity, as may
justly be supposed, to massacre and destroy the English who
as adventurers or souldiers, or their tenants, are set down to
plant upon the several lands and estates of the persons so
attainted ..." it was decided that they should be at once
transplanted or be shipped to the English plantations in
America. "No one*', says Clarendon, "was exported who
had not forfeited his life by rebellion; and it was the only
way to save them from utter destruction: for such was their
humour, that no English man or woman could stray a mile
from their homes, but they were found murdered or stripped
by the Irish, who lay in wait for them; so that the soldiers,
if they had been allowed to remain in the country, would
have risen upon them and totally destroyed them."
Fleetwood became Lord
Deputy in August, 1654, and in
the same year Henry Cromwell, the Protector's son, was
appointed to the Council in Ireland; but he did not visit the
country until July, 1655. Two years later, on the 11th of
November, he was appointed Lord Deputy, and governed the
country with wisdom and moderation. The period of his
rule was distinguished only by quiet and gradual progress,
and Ireland slowly advanced towards peace and prosperity.
In 1655 the corporation of London was again put in possession
of the county and city of Londonderry, which had been
granted them by James I, and had been violently torn from
them through the machination of Wentworth.
On the 3rd of September,
1658, Oliver Cromwell died, and
Richard, his son, was proclaimed Protector in Dublin on the
10th of October. Four days previously Henry had been
appointed Lord-Lieutenant by the new Protector. The death
of Oliver opened a field for fresh intrigues among all political
parties which still existed undiminished in zeal or animosity.
At first Richard received the strongest assurances of support
from Ireland, but it soon became evident that a great change
was impending, and the party out of power began to prepare
for it. |
