Protestants such as Lords Ormond, Inchiquin and Roscommon. The other ten and a half millions belonged in 1641 to Catholics. But of these about three millions were unprofitable lands, i.e., mountain, bog, copse wood, so that in 1641 the Catholics in Ireland owned about seven and a half millior. acres of good land.[1]
Of this land we have seen that over eleven hundred thousand English acres of profitable lands were assigned in Connaught and Clare to certain comparatively "innocent" Catholics instead of their former estates. They also got the unprofitable lands adjoining or intermixed with the profitable ones they received.
Therefore about six and a half million acres of profitable land were divided up among the Cromwellians.
What were the results of this great transfer of property? Thirty-four thousand of the most vigorous of the Irish took service on the Continent, in Spain and other Catholic lands. The merchants who had made Galway the second port in the British Islands, and those who had for long been the source of the prosperity of Waterford and Kilkenny settled in France or in the Spanish dominions.
Many of their descendants flourished exceedingly in the wide lands where the Spanish flag flew.
Those of Waterford, at the Restoration, peti-
- ↑ This is Hardinge's estimate, which quite disagrees with Petty, who assigns to the Catholics in 1641 two-thirds of the profitable lands in Ireland. Dr. Bonn follows Petty. But Hardinge declares that he made his estimate from the actual figures in the Books of Survey and Distribution, and the Down Survey.
