Adventurers. Grocers’ Hall committee.
A lottery for Ireland.
The ‘’49 officers.’
Cromwell handed over the supreme authority to the new assembly, which by a majority voted itself a Parliament, but he and his Council of State had already begun to take action on the Act of Settlement. Methusaleh Turner, linen-draper of London, and eight other persons were appointed to meet at Grocers’ Hall, on June 20, at eight o’clock in the morning, and there hold a lottery to decide upon the Adventurers’ claims. No one lot was to exceed 10,000l., Connaught was excluded, and the total to be provided for in the other three provinces was 360,000l. One penny in the pound was to be deducted for expenses. Two days after the lottery began a commission was given to Fleetwood, Ludlow, Corbet, and Jones, declaring the war ended and empowering them to administer the Acts and ordinances concerning the Adventurers, and to make a survey for the purpose of all forfeited lands in Ireland. They were instructed first to take in hand ten counties, namely Limerick, Tipperary, and Waterford in Munster, King’s and Queen’s Counties, Meath, and Westmeath in Leinster, Down, Antrim and Armagh in Ulster, ‘and to divide all the forfeited lands, meadow, arable, and profitable pasture with the woods and bogs and barren mountains thereunto respectively belonging into two equal moieties’ of which one was intended for the Adventurers and the other for the soldiers’ arrears. Louth was then to be surveyed separately. The counties of Dublin, Cork, Kildare, and Carlow were specially reserved, and the Commissioners were authorised to assign any five counties not hitherto named to pay arrears accrued since June 5, 1649, of soldiers to be disbanded. All grants made by ‘any Act, ordinance, or order of Parliament’ since November 1, 1641, were excluded from survey, and the manor of Blarney was specially excepted. Blarney, which was part of Muskerry’s great estate, fell to Broghill’s share, and we may infer that his advice was much followed in all matters connected with the settlement.[262]
Satisfaction of the army.
Orders to transplant. Penalties for disobedience.
Exemption for loyal Protestants.
When the commission and instructions reached Dublin, the Commissioners there had begun to negotiate with the officers as to who should be disbanded and how their arrears should be satisfied ‘until the supreme authority of the Commonwealth were convened.’ The army were not pleased when they heard that their satisfaction was to be limited to five counties and to those who had served since June 1649. Those who had been longest in the Parliamentary service seemed to have greater claims, and they had certainly greater arrears due. It became necessary to issue further instructions as to the transplantation contemplated by the Act of Settlement. The Commissioners in Ireland were to announce publicly that parts of Ireland would be planted with English and Protestants for their security, and ‘to the end that all persons who have right to articles or to any favour and mercy held forth by any of the qualifications in the said Act, may enjoy the benefit intended unto them, and every of them respectively.’ These words at once excluded all who were excepted from pardon for life and estate by the first five clauses: their lives might for the most part not be in much danger, but their property was gone. All who had claims were ordered to transplant into Connaught and Clare before May 1, 1654, there to receive such portions of land as their qualifications entitled them to. All who were found east of the Shannon after that day without licence from the Government were to be ‘reputed spies and enemies, and for the same offence suffer death,’ but a little later it was ordered that the capital penalty should not be inflicted without special order from the Lord Deputy and Council. All who removed in time were to be pardoned for every offence except murder; but they were not to possess arms nor to reside in any town without licence, on penalty of death by martial law. Ecclesiastical persons in Roman orders were not to be ‘pardoned, tolerated, or admitted.’ The obligation to transplant was not extended to Protestants who did not adhere to or join the rebels before September 15, 1643, nor to any woman married to an English Protestant before December 2, 1650, on condition of renouncing Popery and professing Protestantism. Boys under fourteen and girls under twelve were allowed to remain among the English as servants, their masters undertaking to train them ‘in the true Protestant religion.’ Protestants, whether English or Irish, who had land in Connaught or Clare, and had ‘constantly adhered to the English against the rebels,’ might on application receive an equivalent in one of the English counties. All transplantable persons were to be gone before May 1, 1654, and within two months of receiving their allotments, which were only provisional pending a regular survey. On September 12, 1653, these instructions were transmitted by the Commissioners to their officers in every part of Ireland, with directions to make them public.[263]
The Act of Satisfaction, Sept. 27, 1653.
Declaration of the Irish Government, Oct. 14, 1653.