Case of Galway.
A desolate city.
It was originally meant to give all the forfeited lands in Connaught and Clare to the transplanted, reserving the towns and garrisons with some space about them and a strip four miles wide all along the coast. In the end Sligo and Leitrim were withdrawn, and the coast reserve was narrowed to one mile. The amount of land was insufficient, and there must have been great hardship, for the Government had no machinery for giving quiet possession if there was any opposition from neighbouring proprietors or rival claimants. It was a tradition of Irish government to apprehend a Spanish invasion, and it was for that reason that a belt of English settlers round the coast was contemplated, but nothing seems to have come of it. Innisbofin was, however, strengthened and garrisoned, and the Papist inhabitants ordered to leave the town of Galway, where it was proposed to plant a colony from Gloucester as a reward for its resistance to Charles I., and from Liverpool to compensate it for losses during the war. But the inhabitants of those towns were not tempted any more than those of Bristol had been in the case of Waterford. ‘Poor Galway,’ wrote a clergyman in 1657, ‘sitteth in the dust and no eye pitieth her. Her merchants were princes and great among the nations, but now the city which was full of people is solitary and very desolate.’ There was talk, but only talk, of introducing a colony of Protestant Dutch. The old citizens were to receive full value for their property and the settlers to give ten years’ purchase. As the latter did not come, probably the compensation was not paid, and so the people lingered on or returned after a brief absence. In November 1655 Henry Cromwell reported that all the Irish had been cleared out of Galway, yet as late as August 1659, after he had left Ireland, a fresh order was made to expel ‘all the Irish Papists.’ The old trade with Spain, which had been interrupted by the long war, did not return, and Galway never recovered its old prosperity. In 1650 a householder had welcomed Lady Fanshawe ‘to this desolate city, where you now see the street grown over with grass, once the finest little city in the world’; and so it remained for years.[276]
Difficulties with the towns.
Workmen allowed to remain.
Character of English settlers.
The priests not all expelled.
By the ordinance of July 14, 1643, with a view to encourage merchants, Galway, with 10,000 acres of land round it, had been offered for a price of 7500l. and a rent of 520l., but the town did not come into the power of Parliament for many years, and nothing was done. Similar offers with the same result were made in the cases of Limerick, Waterford, and Wexford. As the towns were gradually won, frequent orders were given for the expulsion of the old inhabitants who adhered to Rome, and who came within the scope of the Act of Settlement. But here, as in the country, it was found impossible really to carry out the clearance effectually. Artificers and workmen could not be done without, since none came from England, and many of them remained, though no doubt the houses of a better class were left empty. When Inchiquin expelled the Roman Catholics from Cork in 1644, three thousand houses were without tenants, and as many in Youghal. The soldiers who were short of fuel warmed themselves with everything that would burn, and Ormonde about the same time had to forbid the practice in Dublin on pain of death. In March 1657 it is clear that the work of depopulation had not been done, for an order was then made ‘that all Popish Recusants, as well proprietors as others, whose habitation is in any port-towns, walled towns, or garrisons,’ who had not professed Protestantism before the cessation of 1643 and ever since, should remove with their families at least two miles from any such place. In 1650 some ministers and others in New England proposed to colonise, being tempted by the offer of houses and land at Wexford at one-tenth of their value before the war. Thousands were ready to come if encouraged, being ‘exiles through the tyranny of episcopacy for no other offence but professing that truth, which (through mercy), is now acknowledged.’ This apparently came to nothing. Those English who were attracted to Irish towns by the prospect of getting houses rent-free, were often without capital, and in no condition to establish a flourishing commerce. But all the Protestant settlers were not of this class, for Charles II.’s declaration in 1660 set forth that they had made improvements at their own charge, ‘and brought trade and manufacture into that our kingdom, and by their settlement there do not a little contribute to the peace and settlement of that country.’ In any case much of the work was probably done by the old inhabitants, for if they had not remained in considerable numbers, priests and friars would not daily have risked their lives in Irish towns.[277]
Proposed transplantation of Presbyterians.
The scheme is not carried out.