Yet the number of those who actually suffered death was not very great. No one was, as I have stated, executed under clause one. In Ulster it has been said that the only execution for murder was that of Sir Phelim O'Neill, the leader of the rising. In the other provinces somewhat over two hundred persons were put to death.
The trials, as the law was administered in those days, were not flagrantly unfair, and where there were cases of unjust condemnations, unjust even by the standards of that age, the victims were mostly from the upper ranks of society. Thus Lord Mayo, and Colonel Bagenal, head of a family of Elizabethan planters, were both held at the Restoration to have been unjustly condemned. So, too, the evidence against Lady Roche of Fermoy, and the aged Mrs. Fitzpatrick a near relation of the Lord of Upper Ossory, who were hanged, or according to some accounts burned to death, seems to have been of the flimsiest character. Among people of meaner rank the number of acquittals was fairly high.
There remained three or four more classes of comparatively "innocent" Irish, and it was these and these alone who were allowed to fall back on Connaught as an alternative to a less damp but warmer climate.
First of all there were those who, not having joined the war before November 10th, 1642, had at any time served against the parliament as colonel or in any higher rank, or as governor of any castle or fort. They were to be banished for life, and their estates confiscated. But their wives and children were to receive lands to the value of one-
