influence to secure an early hearing, and without money to support them while waiting trial. Of this class it is to be feared that most of them perished of want, or sank into the ranks of the peasantry.
Clarendon says that in the proceedings of the Court of Claims there were such forgeries and perjuries as were never heard of among Christians; but he adds that in this respect the English were as bad as the Irish.[1]
Petty asserts that of those decreed innocent not one in twenty really was so. But, as is often the case, Petty's statement will not bear examination. The innocence of the citizens of Dublin, Cork, etc. was notorious; there were special clauses in their favour in the Act itself. In their case the decree can only have been a mere formality to be granted as soon as the claimant had established his identity. Minors and persons who had been active from the beginning on the royal side were in exactly the same case. And the more confident of his case, and the more able to secure powerful patronage a claimant was, the more he would be anxious to get a hearing and the more capable of securing it.
In spite of the representations of the Commissioners the time for hearing claims to innocence was not extended. They could not for various reasons depending on technicalities in the Act proceed to hear the claims of the ensignmen and those who came under the articles of peace; none of these
- ↑ See also Cal. St. Paps., 1664, p. 508, for allegations against Cromwellian witnesses of wholesale perjury.
