Cromwell's Settlement of Ireland

Cromwell and his agents did their cruel work in Ireland thoroughly. Not only were the country districts of the three fertile provinces cleared of their inhabitants, but the fortified and sea-coast towns were treated in the same way. The once prosperous, thriving ports ceased to be busy with trade, or crowded with shipping. The Irish merchants of Cork, Waterford, Galway, and other sea-coast towns, abandoned them and transferred their business to foreign countries. The emporiums of Kilkenny and Tipperary were deserted and the market-towns of the interior were silent and desolate. All was now ready to replant the provinces with new settlers, and so, if possible, to make an English country of Ireland. Surveyors were sent through the provinces to make measurements of the deserted domains. Agents visited them to deckle upon their value, put a price on them, and divide them off into new allotments. All the towns, certain of the church domains, and the four counties of Dublin, Cork, Carlow, and Kildare, were set off, to be held for the benefit of the government. The rest was disposed of to new English settlers; some of whom were now called, not as formerly, undertakers, but, from their having lent or "adventured" money to the king, "adventurers."

There were two classes of men to whom Cromwell felt himself indebted. He had received large advances of money, and the adventurers who had thus become his creditors demanded liberal grants of Irish land in payment. But still more was Cromwell indebted to his soldiers, who had not only completed for him the conquest of Ireland, but had not received their pay. It was with the grim Ironsides, mainly, that he resolved to plant the island. To the adventurers, who had advanced some £360,000, were given up the halves of ten counties in Ulster, Leinster, and Munster; while the arrears of the soldiers' pay, amounting to £1,500,000, were satisfied by the other halves of these counties, and eight other counties in addition. The land was divided up into parcels; and the regiments, one after another, drew lots for the choice of location. Then the men of the regiments again drew lots, to see which should have the privilege of selecting his own plot in the district devoted to his regiment. After the lands had thus been divided off, each regiment was marched upon its domains and disbanded; and the men took possession, one by one, of their pieces of land.

It took several years to complete this new settlement of Ireland. Meanwhile many of the soldiers to whom lots were given were glad to sell them out for small sums, either to their officers, who desired larger estates, or to the land-brokers who soon swarmed through the country. When Cromwell's plan had been fully carried out, the land of Ireland was found to be divided up as follows. In all, there were about ten millions of Irish acres in the island. Of these, the native Irish occupied about three millions, for the most part in the unfruitful province of Connaught. The Protestant church held about three hundred thousand acres. The planters, established by Elizabeth and James, had some two millions of acres; and over five millions of acres—at least one-half the island—had been seized by Cromwell, and handed over to his adherents. But the new settlers were not to be allowed to till their just-acquired possessions in any greater peace than the old settlers.

Many of the ousted Irish, some of whom were of good family and had been even rich and titled, refused to leave their native neighborhood, and began to lead a wild life in the woods and bogs. These Tories did not let the intruders rest. They made raids upon the fields, and destroyed the ripening grain and potatoes. They seized and drove away the cattle, sheep, and pigs. In many places, the settlers were tormented out of their wits by these hardy outlaws.

Nor were the Irish outlaws the only enemies of the settlers. Large numbers of Catholic priests still infested the country, though they were all under sentence of banishment. They were resolved at all hazards to keep alive their religion among the persecuted race; and, always in danger of death itself, they led their pious services in whatever out-of-the-way place they could secretly gather their poverty-stricken flocks together. They were mercilessly hunted down; and, when they were arrested, they were forthwith sent beyond seas, or put to death without so much as a trial. Another plague which worried the settlers was the wolves, which continually prowled about the settlements, devoured the sheep, and endangered the lives of the farmers. "We have now three burdensome beasts to destroy," said one who lived at that time; the first is a wolf, the second a priest, and the third a Tory." A price was set upon the head of each of these "burdensome beasts." The head of a priest or a wolf was worth five pounds, while that of a Tory was worth twenty pounds.

But after all these pains had been taken to subdue and suppress the Irish race, Cromwell's vast and harsh project was far from being completely successful. The national spirit of the Irish still resisted extermination. In no long time, the same process of the absorption of the intruding race by the native race which had always taken place before, again occurred. The settled English soldiers, though forbidden, under heavy penalties, to mingle and connect themselves with the native Irish, began to have dealings with them, to accept Irishmen as tenants, servants, and laborers, and to marry Irish girls. It is said that, within forty years after Cromwell's plantation of the three provinces, many children of the settlers could not speak a word of English; that all of their habits, traits, and sympathies were entirely Irish. Here and there the native Irish and the Anglo-Irish got back, by marriage or purchase, estates in the districts from which their fathers had been expelled. Thus it was that even the stern Ironsides became more and more Irish as years passed.

The restoration of the English monarchy in the person of Charles the Second (1660) aroused the hopes of two of the oppressed classes in Ireland. The royalists, who had stood stoutly by Charles the First, and who had suffered persecution, the seizure of their lands, and exile at the hands of Cromwell and his Puritan agents, hoped that the new king would reward them for their loyalty. They expected to get back their estates, and to be restored to their old power in Ireland. The Roman Catholic Irish, moreover, had learned that Charles the Second was favorably inclined to the members of their faith. They, too, looked forward to being protected in the exercise of their religion, and to having their lands given back to them. So confident, indeed, were the persecuted Irish of the royal favor, that as soon as they heard that the new king was seated on his throne, some of them rashly attempted to recover their lands by force. At the same time the Catholics besought Charles to return their estates to them, agreeing to pay the Cromwellian settlers a certain proportion of the rents for two years. But both the royalists and the Catholics were doomed to bitter disappointment.

Charles the Second, like all the Stuart kings of England, was faithless, and could not be trusted. He disregarded whatever obligations were distasteful to him, or were contrary to what he thought his own interests. He now resolved to conciliate, as far as he could, his father's old enemies, and to leave in the lurch his father's old friends. He made a pretense, indeed, of doing justice to the Irish who had been harshly and illegally deprived of their property. He caused a court to be established in Dublin (1663), to which all who claimed to have been unlawfully dispossessed of their lands might resort, and present their claims. It was declared that those who were innocent of having rebelled against English rule should have their estates restored to them. The Protestants took alarm at this, and a plot was soon formed to seize Dublin castle. But it soon turned out that the Protestants had little cause for alarm. All sorts of restrictions were put upon the new court; and every kind of legal device and trickery was used to reduce the successful claimants to as small a number as possible.

The Irish Parliament had met, two years before, for the first time tor twenty years. The House of Commons had contained a large majority of the Cromwellians, and a measure which confirmed the new settlers in their lands had been passed. Upon this act the Cromwellians rested their case. There existed, therefore, a bitter conflict between the law of Parliament, and the decisions of the court in favor of innocent claimants. So grave did the situation become, that the king at last insisted on a compromise. The Cromwellian settlers gave up one-third of the lands which they had obtained by the confiscations, and thus much was restored to the royalists; and the court which had been set up to satisfy the claims was abolished. But even now, the Irish Roman Catholics only held one-half the amount of land which they had held at the outbreak of the ten years' rebellion. They still owned but one-third of the island. The foreigner and the Protestant still held the other two-thirds. Of the seven millions of good, or "fat," acres in Ireland, the Protestants possessed five millions.

One of Charles the Second's first acts in regard to Ireland, was to restore to its old power the English church. The Episcopal bishops and clergy were restored to the sees and parishes, and the Puritan and Presbyterian ministers were summarily ejected. In many cases, they were fined, imprisoned, and banished for refusing to obey the new "act of uniformity." At the same time, Charles was really partial to the Catholics, and ordered his agents in Ireland to treat them gently. Under such protection, the priests and monks, who had been driven from their parishes, and in many cases from the island, by the Cromwellians, began to appear again, to hold their religious services, and to establish Catholic schools. The Catholics, indeed, now enjoyed a larger degree of freedom of worship than they had had for fifty years. The Presbyterians and Puritans in Ireland were now the only sects which felt the repressive hand of power.