he had been counted a Catholic his lands were given out to Cromwell's soldiers in due course, and his profession of Protestantism was not enough to recover them.[1]
Off he had to go to Connaught like any other mere Irishman in 1654, and not until 1657 was he able to get his case brought before Oliver Cromwell himself, who on account of the usefulness of his grandfather the poet's writings touching the reduction of the Irish to civility, ordered the restoration of his estate.[2]
And Spencer's case was not singular. The sons of those who under Elizabeth had been the greediest plunderers of the Irish were now packed off to Connaught on the charge of being Irish Papists.[3]
The fate of the inhabitants of Cork is particularly curious. The citizens of Cork, and the townsmen of Youghal and Kinsale were proud of their unblemished English or at least Danish descent. Not only did the law up to the time of James I. forbid marriages between the English and the Irish, but in all the towns local bye-laws
- ↑ In the list of transplanted persons in the Ormond MSS. we find W. Spencer, late of Killcollman, "by virtue of an order of his Highness' Council." No acreage is given as assigned to him.
- ↑ Yet he does not seem to have been restored until the time of Chas. II. His property was set out in 1654 to Capt. Peter Courthorpe and others.Another of Spencer's grandsons, Hugoline, was also dispossessed of his property, and was restored as an "Innocent Papist" in Aug., 1663.
- ↑ Besides the Brownes of Kerry, the Bagenals of Carlow, the Wolverstons of Stillorgan, the Mastersons of Wexford lost their estates. In Limerick the Walshes of Abingdon, the Fittons of Any, the Rawleys or Raleighs, the Thorntons, and even a Cromwell or Cromwell all figure in the lists of forfeiting Irish Papists.
