right of all "meere English" who had rights before the 20th of Henry VIII.
This Act seems to have altogether ignored the rights of Hugh O'Neill, Baron of Dungannon, son of Matthew, to whatever had been granted to Con. Furthermore, it avoided the difficult question as to what lands had belonged to Shane and other chiefs, and what had belonged to the clansmen, by confiscating everything except the church lands in the countries named. At a later date we shall see what advantage was taken by James the First's lawyers of the sweeping provisions of this Act.
The government soon made it known that it did not intend to take any steps to interfere with the lands of the Irish who had submitted. Turlough Lynagh O'Neill, who had been chosen by the clan as Shane's successor, was received into favour, together with all the other chiefs who, more or less on compulsion, had followed Shane.
In spite of this pacific policy advantage was taken of the Act to try some experiments in actual J confiscation and colonisation in Ulster. Grants of portions of the lands east of the Bann and Lough Neagh were made first to a certain Smith, then to Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex. But these attempts at confiscation, after much labours, and atrocities almost past belief, ended in the death or ruin of the grantees, and so need not be dwelt on here.[1]
- ↑ See in this connection the tale of the murder of Sir Brian MacPhelim O'Neill, of Clandeboye, his wife, and his followers—"young men and maidens" and of the six hundred women and children of the MacDonnells slain in Rathlin Island as told by the Four Masters and by Froude in his Reign of Elizabeth. There was also a grant of part of Co. Armagh to a certain Chatterton, which proved equally ineffectual.
