[25] Irish Commons Journals, May-July 1662. Orrery to Ormonde, May 17 and June 20, in his State Letters, i. 111, 123. The Bill of Settlement passed the Lords on May 30, 1662, without a dissentient voice. Forty-one peers were considered present, but of these twenty-three were proxies. Those who actually attended were three Archbishops; three Earls, Kildare, Roscommon, and Donegal; three Viscounts, Conway, Baltinglas, and Massereene; seven Bishops; two Barons, Caulfield and Colooney—Irish Lords Journal.
[26] Carte’s Ormonde, ii. 257. Clarendon’s letter of July 17 in his Life by Lister, iii. 208.
[27] Carte’s Ormonde, ii. 272. Burnet, ii. 99. Clarendon State Papers, iii. 81 (supplement). The letter in which Ormonde explained the State of the Land Question to Bennet when the Court of Claims had just ceased to give decrees is printed as an appendix.
[28] Lord Roscommon, the poet, made an eloquent speech for Clanmalier in the Irish House of Lords. The intrigues about this property may be followed in the Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, 1662-5, but the letters are too numerous to cite separately. That from Lord Aungier, calendared at April 2, 1662, must, I think, belong to 1663. Aungier, who possessed some of the land as an Adventurer, says all the Commissioners favoured Bennet: he was himself protected by law. Act of Explanation, sections 78 and 79. Dunlop’s Ireland under the Commonwealth, i. 154.
[CHAPTER XLII]
COURT OF CLAIMS AND ACT OF EXPLANATION, 1662-1665
The Court of Claims.
While Ormonde was on his way to Ireland the King appointed seven Commissioners for carrying out the Bill of Settlement as soon as it should become an Act. Great care was taken in choosing these, and Clarendon assures us that it would have been impossible to get fitter men. The first named was Henry Coventry, well known in the history of the time. Sir Edward Dering of Kent, a very good man of business, was second. The third was Sir Richard Rainsford, serjeant-at-law and afterwards a judge in England. Sir Thomas Beverley, one of the King’s remembrancers, was the fourth. Sir Edward Smith, Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas, came next, and was followed by Colonel Edward Cooke. The last named was Winston Churchill, father of the great Duke of Marlborough. Coventry was too useful at Court to be left long in Ireland, and after a few months he was recalled and replaced by the Surveyor-General Sir Alan Brodrick. Before the Commissioners could sit to hear claims of innocence, rules of procedure had to be made and a vast amount of preliminary work done. Petty’s Down Survey was used for the purposes of the settlement, his cousin John acting as Brodrick’s deputy. The Court of Claims was formally opened on September 20, its powers under the Act of Settlement and an amending Act being limited to one year from that date. The Lord Lieutenant was empowered by the Instructions to issue subsidiary commissions, and one to enquire into the value of estates restorable or reprisable was issued to independent persons, and another to Anglesey, Sankey and others, in conjunction with Coventry and his colleagues, to investigate frauds and irregularities in the distribution of lands beyond Shannon under the Cromwellian Government.[29]
Innocents and Nocents.
The Commons dissatisfied.