To carry out the work an elaborate machinery was set up. All who claimed lands were to proceed to Loughrea where commissioners for this purpose were to give them temporary allotments for their support, until another body of commissioners sitting at Athlone should have time to try each individual case, and decide whether the claimant was to receive lands to one-third or two-thirds of the value of his former estate.
As practically the whole nation, Catholic and Protestant had been in arms against the Parliament, it was held to be the simplest plan to consider every man guilty, and his estate forfeited, until he proved the contrary. This is the special feature which distinguishes this confiscation from all others. It was not necessary that the government should prove guilt; it was necessary that the landowner should prove innocence.
Accordingly practically every landowner was required to show cause why his estate should not be seized, or why, if it had been seized into the hands of the government he should recover it.[1]
There were of course some great Protestant landowners as Lord Barrymore in Cork, Lord Kerry, and Lord Thomond who, as was well known to everyone, were Protestants and had either fought for the parliament, or else had been absent from Ireland during the war. They no doubt got back their estates as a matter of course. But for the others, they had first to prove that they
- ↑ So the Kilkenny estates of Wandesforde, son of the Master of the Rolls who in Strafford's time had ousted the O'Brennans of Idough were sequestrated until he obtained a decree of "good affection." Prendergast, p. 135.So also Lord Meath had great trouble in recovering his property.
