dishonesty of individuals seeking for place and profit.
Sir William Petty perhaps gives the best summing up of the whole:—"But upon the playing of this game or match upon so great odds, the English won and have (among and besides other pretences) a gamester's right at least to their estates."
Let us sum up the final effects of these two Acts. In 1641 there were, at the lowest estimate, eight thousand Roman Catholic landowners in Ireland. Of these all except twenty-six were deprived of their property by Cromwell.[1] A certain number of the dispossessed received compensation west of the Shannon amounting to two-thirds or to one-third of their former holdings. We have seen that there is an official list extant from which it would appear that about two thousand persons were thus compensated.
Now if we come to the state of affairs after the execution of the Acts of Settlement and Explanation we find that between 500 and 540 Catholics were restored as innocents; and that, when the status of the transplantees to Connaught was finally regularised in 1677, 580 persons received letters patent. If we add to these the nominees in the two Acts; and such of the letterees and ensignmen as ultimately recovered some portion or all of their lands we cannot allow a grand total of Catholic landowners for all Ireland under Charles
- ↑ That is if we can believe Petty.
