adherents, covering half of three counties, and amounting to half a million acres, were confiscated and divided among English "planters." As a matter of fact the three counties of Cork, Kerry, and Limerick have an area of over 3,600,000 acres, and of this extent at the outside 400,000 English acres were finally confiscated.[1]
The whole question of the actual extent of the Desmond estates, their claims and their title to the lands which they either held or claimed is an intricate one, and would be a subject worthy of investigation. Here we may say that through royal grant, or as heirs of the De Cogan moiety of the "Kingdom of Cork" or by purchase or marriage the Earls held central Kerry, the Baronies of Kerrycurrihy, Imokilly, Kinnatalloon, and other large territories in Cork, most of Limerick west of the Maigue, and large tracts east of that river, the western baronies of Waterford, and several manors in Tipperary. In addition they put forward claims more or less well founded to supremacy over the native Irish clans who under the two great branches of the MacCarthy house, MacCarthy Mór, and MacCarthy Reagh, held all west Cork and south Kerry, as well as to the lordship over some of the "degenerate" Anglo-Norman families in these counties and in Limerick.
If we go back to the flourishing days of the Anglo-Norman colony in the reigns of Edward I. and Edward II. we find these possessions divided
- ↑ Dr. Bonn puts it that 577,000 acres wore held at first to have fallen to the Crown, and that of these finally only 200,000 acres were confiscated. He does not say whether these were Irish or English acres. If Irish the figure would be over 320,000 English acres. But in the loose calculations of those days we must always allow for under estimates.
