sovereign in France, making no claim to the benefits of the capitulation.
If now, considering the results of the two Irish Acts, the Resumption Act, and the Articles, we try to estimate the area still left in the hands of Catholics, it would seem, making all allowance for the estates of minors, etc., for persons acquitted by partial juries, for under measurements, and all other sources of error, that this area cannot have exceeded, if it reached, a million English acres of profitable land.[1] The aim of the Penal Laws was to secure that this area should never be increased, and should if possible be diminished.
The Cromwellian confiscation and the proceedings at the Restoration had swept away the great bulk of the lesser Catholic landowners. Now, under William, of the great men who had recovered at the Restoration a large number lost everything and, following their King to France, disappeared from Irish history.
"Wild geese rising on clamorous wing.
To follow the flight of an alien king······Ended the roll of the great
And famous leaders of armies,
The shining lamps of the Gael,
Who wrestled awhile with fate
And broke the battle on foemen,
Ere the end left widowed Eire
Lone with her desolate wail."
- ↑ 616,000 restored by the Articles, or by Royal pardon: then the estates of minors, etc., of those excepted from the Outlawries Bill (of whom some were Protestants), and claims, such as those of the Kenmare minors, allowed by the Court set up under the Resumption Act, and the estates of persons acquitted or never indicted would have to make up the balance. We might add about 350,000 acres for "unprofitable land."
