Page:Confiscation in Irish history.djvu/243

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JACOBITES AND WILLIAMITES
231

conditions of the Articles of Limerick especially as interpreted by the Act professing to confirm them. The Earl of Clancarthy, owner of nearly the whole barony of Muskerry, was taken prisoner at the surrender of Cork. He was therefore not within the Articles, and his vast estate, valued soon after at £60,000 a year was forfeited.[1] At the surrender of Cork no terms were made for the lands of the citizens, and so the old loyalist families Copingers, Sarsfields, etc. finally lost the lands which they had recovered with so much difficulty at the Restoration. Robert Grace of Courtstown, owner of an immense estate in Kilkenny, was included in the Articles. But he died soon after, and in 1701 it was discovered that his elder son Oliver had died in France nine days after Robert's decease. As this was after the Articles had been signed, and as his name had not been included in the fourth Article, the estate was forfeited; although for ten years it had been held by John younger son of Robert.[2] Daniel O'Brien, Viscount Clare,[3] to whose grandfather James I. had granted about one-half of the MacMahon territory of West Corcabaskin, had not only recovered his ancestral property at the Restoration, but had also got possession of the properties of several other persons.[4] His Clare estate was estimated at over eighty-four thousand English acres. He died in 1690. His sons followed the fortunes of their

  1. This is Archbishop Boulter's estimate in 1735.
  2. The Grace estate was over 32,000 acres.
  3. Daniel O'Brien, first Viscount Clare, was a younger son of Conor, third Earl of Thomond.
  4. In his will, made in 1690, he mentions that he had got the estates of others in his "proviso" and desires that they should be given back to the rightful owners.