would appear from a report of the Commissioners for executing the Act of Settlement after the Restoration that at least 168 loyal Protestant landlords, besides the Duke of Ormond, had their estates confiscated and that their properties amounted to close on 180,000 acres (over and above what had already been voluntarily restored to some of them by the Cromwellian grantees).
Those Catholics who could prove "Constant Good Affection" were apparently to retain their former estates.[1] But the clause was so worded and interpreted that they had to give proof of having actually rendered service to the parliament. This took away the estates of lunatics and minors, women, bedridden and crippled persons who were never engaged in the war or had never acted against the parliament. The mere fact of their having resided in Ireland between 1641 and 1650 caused them to forfeit their estates.[2]
Here, by a curious irony of fate, we meet the Elizabethan undertakers the Brownes of Cosh Maing and Ross O'Donoghue. The original Browne had been a zealous Protestant. But his son, disappointed in obtaining the hand of the heiress of the Earl of Clancarthy, fell back on the next most powerful family in Desmond, and married the daughter of O'Sullivan Mór. And
- ↑ So, too, any Catholics who could prove that they had been absent from Ireland during the whole of the specified period were to retain their estates.
- ↑ See the case of Lady Thurles an Englishwoman but a Catholic, mother of the Marquis of Ormonde, as set forth by Mr. Dunlop, Vol. II., p. 606. She had always helped the English to the best of her power, and had even assisted Cromwell himself; but the fact that she had continually resided in the Irish quarters prevented the judges from deciding that she had shown "constant good affection."
