time be passed, yet it is plain their right is served" (query saved?) "and preserved by the Act as there is no negative word in the Act to forbid the hearing or determination of them after the day limited is passed."
Ormond in preparing the new draft did not think it proper to insert a clause for the relief of the unheard innocents: he proposed that the Lord Lieutenant and the Irish Council should have power to declare persons innocent and to restore them; acting, however, strictly in conformity with the conditions laid down in the Act of Settlement. This proposal was rejected by the English Privy Council.[1]
This body took the Bill into consideration in November, 1663, and allowed a hearing to the agents of all the various interests. If the draft before them had any clauses in favour of innocents or article men such clauses were soon dropped. They were absolutely against the Protestant interest. And they were not looked on with favour by the chief men of the Catholic party, mostly in the class of "nominees," restorable therefore only after the Cromwellian possessor should be reprised, and outside the category of innocents. Innocents were to be restored before reprisal; then the persons removed to make way for them were to be reprised; then, and only then, were reprisals to be sought for to permit of the removal of the soldiers and undertakers from the lands of the nominees. And so, as we are told by Sir Heneage Finch, the great men among the Catholics threw over their less influential countr3mien, and made no real effort to secure an extension of the periods.
- ↑ Carte, Vol. II., p. 298.
