admixture of old English amongst them, showed great pertinacity in pushing their complaints. Chichester on his side was equally pertinacious. The resources of a superior civilisation were called into play; and by false measurements one-half of the whole country was set apart for the Undertakers, instead of one-fourth.
But the Irish prevailed so far as to have the lands resurveyed by the King's surveyor general. In March, 1618, the fraud was discovered and room was found to give freehold estates to eighty more of the old inhabitants. Three-quarters of the territory, less the area set apart to satisfy the claims of the Queen's footman, Esmonde, Masterson, &c. was exactly distributed to the natives, making choice of the chief of every sept and others found by the general office to have been proprietors, freeholders of less than 80 or 100 acres not being included in the distribution as not good for themselves.[1]
In this way while 150 of the chief inhabitants obtained estates good in law, all the smaller landowners were deprived of everything. They numbered certainly 290, possibly over 500. Two hundred of them proceeded to Dublin to urge their claims in person. They even pleaded for consideration on the ground that their ancestors had first brought the English over! For answer they were thrown into prison, and the Deputy St. John proposed to transport some of them to the new colony of Virginia: a short and cheap method of dealing with Irish landlords which might commend itself to modern Chancellors of the Exchequer.
- ↑ Cal. St. Paps., 1620, p. 303.
