Whether Charles ever really intended to keep faith with the Irish can never be ascertained. The Protestant leaders, Coote, Orrery and others, implacable enemies of the Irish, had made it a condition in negotiating with the King for his restoration, that they should keep the lands they had acquired in Ireland.
The King, from Breda in April 1660, promised this, thus giving, as Lord Chancellor Eustace wrote to Ormond, the estates of those who had fought for him to those who had fought against him.[1]
In November 1660 the King published a Declaration for the Settlement of Ireland. The gist of this document was that the Cromwellians were to keep what they had got; that a new class of Protestants was to be provided for out of Irish land, namely Royalist Protestant officers who had served the King before June 5th, 1649[2]; and that those Irish who had been deprived of their lands merely on the score of their religion or of their attachment to the King, as well as those who were entitled to the benefits of the peaces of 1648 and 1649 were to be restored to what they had lost.
The only drawback to a settlement on these lines was, as Ormond cynically pointed out, that it would be necessary to discover a new Ireland, for the old would not serve to satisfy these engagements.[3]
According to the King's declaration three
