Above all we must date from this period the destruction of the smaller men who had formed a veritable peasant proprietary west of the Shannon, and in some other Irish districts such as the Cork barony of Carbery. With them vanished too almost all the smaller gentry, owners of from two to five hundred acres, who abounded in the Anglo-Norman districts such as Kilkenny, South Wexford and South Tipperary.
Of the great men, too, though some such as Ormond, Clancarthy and Clanrickard actually increased their revenues, numbers were completely ruined. In Cork Mac Carthy Reagh, O'Sullivan Bere, Mac Donough Mac Carthy of Duhallow lost every acre of their immense possessions. A similar fate befell Viscount Magennis of Iveagh in Ulster, Lord Clanmalier in Leinster, and O'Conor Don and O'Conor Sligo in Connaught.
In all Ulster some writers have asserted that only three of the dispossessed Irish landowners were restored, Lord Antrim, Sir Henry O'Neill, and Daniel O'Neill, this last a Protestant. In reality a few more got back.[1] But sometimes restoration was but nominal. Lord Massereene kept his grip on Daniel O'Neill's estate until the latter's death. He clung to Sir Henry O'Neill's lands until 1666, and only relinquished them in return for ample compensation in Dublin and Louth. The Connaught innocents could not recover their lands until such transplanted persons
- ↑ e.g. Phelimy Magennis (Cal. St. Paps, 1669—70, p. 486), Con Magennis (Cal. St. Paps., 1663, p. 308), Patrick Russell (he had been left undisturbed by Cromwell), ibid. Furthermore the sons of a certain Manus Magennis who had been absent in Sweeden during the troubles held their father's property after the Restoration (Atkinson: An Ulster Parish).
