the estates of all were forfeited except in those cases where the owners made special terms for themselves by a timely submission, or were minors or persons otherwise incapable of incurring the penalties for treason, or were acquitted by partial juries. So that it would appear that at the accession of James II. only at the outside one-seventh or one-eighth of the total area of the island remained in the possession of Catholics.[1] If this is so it shows that Petty's figures do not deserve the credit which is generally given to them.
But the broad results of the Restoration settlement can be more easily arrived at. It involved the ruin of the great mass of the old proprietors. Those who recovered their estates were in general the great men, magnates such as the Marquis of Antrim, the Earls of Clancarthy and Clanrickard, the lords of the Pale, or else the citizens of the five loyal towns. The lesser men were deprived of everything.
In the barony of Carbery there were about 400 landowners in 1641; the Books of Survey and Distribution show that scarcely ten of them held any land after the Restoration. In Kerry there had been over 540 Catholic landowners; hardly any recovered. In the Wexford Barony of Forth there had been 125 Catholic landlords, all of old English descent: not a single one survived the storm.[2]
- ↑ It is possible that the Report re forfeitures omitted some lands secured to their owners by arrangement with the King. The Abercorn estates, for instance, do not seem to be included. And the Commissioners complain that since no inquiries into forfeitures were held in Connaught until 1695 many persons really guilty were acquitted by juries composed of persons within the articles of Limerick.
- ↑ These figures are from "Forfeiting Proprietors Listed" in Hart's Irish Landed Gentry when Cromwell came to Ireland; the list is signed Christopher Gough and dates from 1657.
