But the Irish did not tamely submit to any encroachment on their lands.[1] Insurrection followed insurrection—eighteen separate risings are counted between Sussex's first plantation and the death of Elizabeth. Again and again the O'Mores expelled the colonists, broke down the forts, and raided far and wide into the adjoining lands. But the power of the state, helped as it was by jealous neighbours, proved too strong in the end. After half a century of warfare, carried on with the most barbarous cruelty, the remnant of the free clans of Leix, less than three hundred persons all told, were transplanted into Kerry, where Patrick Crosby, the descendant, if we are to believe Irish accounts, of O'More's harper, who had risen on the ruins of his former masters, undertook to give them lands on an estate which he had acquired near Tarbert. Of the O'Conors, most of the chief perished in these wars, a few retained some portions of their former territory.
The new settlers, though reputed English, were often, it must be remembered "mere" English of the Pale. Many, if not most of them, were Catholics. As such their sons or grandsons took part in the wars of 1641—51 on the side of the Confederate Irish, and were duly, as Irish Papists, deprived of their estates by Cromwell.
The reign of Elizabeth is marked by two confiscations on a great scale. The first, that which followed on the death of Shane O'Neill, was only a confiscation on paper, but, on account of its
- ↑ The conditions imposed on the Irish grantees were indeed of such a nature that it would have been almost impossible for them to keep them faithfully.
