tion of the Court of Wards, several of the great houses, Ormond and Kildare, Thomond and Barrymore, Kerry and Howth and Inchiquin—to name the most prominent—had conformed to the Established Church, yet the great bulk of the nobility and gentry, both old Irish and old English, had remained faithful to Rome.
In the eighteenth century the bolder spirits emigrated; of those landowners who remained behind sooner or later the great majority accepted the dominant Creed. Antrim and Clanrickard, the later house of Ormond, the five lesser peers of the Butlers, the O'Neills of Clandeboy, the Mac Carthy Mors, the Mac Morrough Kavanaghs are some of the outstanding names.[1] It is curious that among the few who held to the older faith are three or four of the "lords of the Pale" and the "undertaker" family of the Brownes of Killarney, Earls of Kenmare.
After seventy years the rigour of the laws was relaxed. Catholics were allowed first to acquire lands on lease, and finally full rights to the acquisition of landed property. Yet when Wakefield wrote his Account of Ireland in 1811 or 1812 he found seven counties with not a single considerable Catholic landed proprietor, among them being Clare. In twenty-one other counties he finds something over sixty: and he says that in Galway one-third, in Kerry one-fourth, and in
- ↑ The head of the last-named family had only just "turned" when Wakefield wrote.According to Bonn, thirty-six landlords became Protestants between 1703 and 1709, and one hundred and fifty between 1709 and 1719. He quotes the Carte papers. Between 1703 and 1788 there were 4,800 converts. (Ibid, Vol. II., p. 176).
