questions of right or wrong, it generally suited the Crown better to recognise the clansmen as landowners. By following this policy a great amount of isolated confiscation took place all over the island, although nowhere except in Munster was there any confiscation on a sweeping scale.[1] And it is to be noted that, modern writers notwithstanding, there was a very considerable degree of leniency shown by the Crown even in the case of landowners who actually died in rebellion. Their lands were often granted to their sons or other immediate relatives.
To quote only one instance. When Donnell O'Sullivan Bere fled to Spain after his great march from Dunboy to Leitrim, his territory was not confiscated. The lordship of Bere, with the castles, lands, and rights attached to it, was handed over to Donnell's uncle, Sir Owen of Bantry, or rather to Sir Owen's son, another Owen. And we happen to have a list of the freeholders of Bere and Bantry made before the rebellion from which the remarkable fact appears that practically none of these were dispossessed, since in 1641 their representatives still appear as in possession.[2] This is entirely at variance with popular
- ↑ The Cal. Pal. Rolls, Jas. I., p. 115, gives a list of about seventy O'Byrnes whose estates, all mentioned by name, and mostly very small, some being only of two or three acres, were forfeited during the insurrections of Baltinglass and Tyrone.
- ↑ For Bere and Bantry the Calendar of State Papers, 1586—8, give details of the controversy between Donnell, and his uncle Sir Owen, lord of these countries by Irish law. Morrin Calendar of Patent Rolls, Eliz., 1594, gives the division of the lordship between them. The grant to Sir Owen, Cal. Pat. Rolls, IX., Jas. I., and the Down Survey and Books of Survey and Distribution show the state of these districts under the Stuarts.
