of October, 1641, forfeited … and they hereby are from the said 23rd day of October vested and settled in the real and actual possession and seizin of your Majestie, your heires and successors, without any office or inquisition thereof found, or hereafter to be found, notwithstanding that the persons who were the former proprietors, or reputed proprietors of the said estates, or anie of them, are not hereby, or have not been heretofore attainted for and by reason of the said most hainous and unnatural rebellion and war."
In other words the fact that the Cromwellians had dispossessed anyone of his estate was to be taken as proof that the dispossessed one was a rebel, and was to vest his estate in the Crown.
Yet, in spite of this unpromising preamble, the Act itself, in appearance at least, was not so very unfavourable to the Irish. From the vesting clauses were excepted the estates of all innocent Protestants and Papists, and that irrespective of whether they had recognised the usurping government and sued out decrees in Connaught and Clare. They were to be restored to all their former estates.[1]
Further the Act confirmed to the Irish the benefits of the peace of 1648. But here a distinction was made. Such of them as had taken lands west of the Shannon in lieu of a proportion of their former properties were to keep the lands thus acquired, and to forfeit all claim to their original properties. But those of them who had never
- ↑ This part of the Act has often been wrongly quoted as if it extended only to those innocents who had never taken lands from the Commonwealth.
