First lots were drawn to decide in which province each regiment should take its lands. Then the particular county was decided in like way, and the special baronies in it. Then each company received its portion by lot, and finally each individual received as much of the land thus assigned to his company as would wipe off the arrears of pay due to him. The rate for County Cork, for instance, was 1000 acres for every £800 due. But a thousand acres in the Kerry mountains were only valued at £250, while in the Golden Vale of Tipperary they were valued at £1,100. Lands in Dublin were valued at £1,500, and in Kildare and Meath at £1,300 per thousand acres. Such lands as were over after satisfying the adventurers and soldiers were given to eminent friends of the republican cause in parliament and in particular to the regicides, i.e., those persons who had sentenced Charles I. to death. They were seventy in number and got about 120,000 acres of some of the best lands in Ireland.
To sum up. There are in Ireland twenty millions of English acres. Of these nine millions were left to the former owners, Protestants who had either proved Good Affection to the parliament, or had redeemed their estates by fines.[1]
The remaining eleven millions were confiscated. Of these about half a million belonged to loyalist
- ↑ These nine million acres comprised first the great estates of certain of the old Irish or old English lords who had become Protestants such as the Earls of Thomond and Barrymore and the Lord of Kerry (Lord Lansdowne's ancestor) and secondly the greater part of the lands confiscated or purchased under the Tudors and James I. We may perhaps estimate the total area of those confiscations at something under 8,000,000 acres.
