on the English treasury. In return for this voluntary gift, the King issued certain instructions to Lord Falkland, then Deputy of Ireland, and his Council. These instructions, or Graces, as they came to be called, consisted of fifty-one heads, one of which was, that in the next Parliament an Act should be passed limiting the King's title to sixty years. These Graces were not absolute; they were merely directions to the Irish Council as to the course to be observed if its members should consider the Graces necessary for the welfare of the country. That they were not absolute is shown by the conduct of the Irish Commons themselves. In 1634, six years after they had been sent over to Ireland, the Commons presented a petition to the King, in which they prayed that the Graces might be revised; that some of them should be passed as laws; others be continued as instructions to the local government; others be altered; and some utterly abolished. They even suggested that, at the time the Graces were granted, the King had been misled by the agents. "Howsoever," they said, "those Instructions did then pass your royal signature upon the information you then received from those Agents, yet we humbly crave leave upon good grounds to disadvise some parts of them, as not consisting with the furtherance of your service and the good of your kingdom: reasons, which we hope in your princely judgment will be found a just qualification of our boldness, wherein we beseech you to give us leave to inform you that, at the time, your Deputy and Council here were unconsulted with in those particulars, whence it came to pass that you were not then fully informed; and therefore as well in common justice to right yourself and your crown when you have been fully informed, as in reason of State for the public good of your kingdom, which may otherwise be extremely prejudiced, we conceive that it is in no degree

unsuitable to your greatness and wisdom to retrench those Graces in such parts of them as are found inconvenient for your service in the happy Government of your kingdom".1 Upon this petition, the advice of Strafford and his councillors-one of whom was Lord Cork, who, as the most successful land acquirer that Ireland had ever seen, was deeply interested in the question-was, that the grant of the sixty years' limitation should be suspended until the Commission for remedying defective titles had been completed. "We may not therefore in any sort advise that this may pass for a law, and the rather, in regard the benefit thereby expected by the people, shall be conveyed to them in another way of less prevention to the future public good of the kingdom in general than the law desired, namely, by your Majesty's commission of Grace for confirmation of defective titles, which now will resettle all men's estates after the distempers and disturbances which they have endured by the late rebellions here . . . and yet, nevertheless, after this commission . . . whereby this kingdom may in some degree be brought nearer to the condition of England . . . so may it then also have that law which is now desired, if your Majesty in your wisdom shall so think fit". Though Strafford and his Council advised that this Grace should be suspended for the present, they obtained from the King a far better and more immediate security against the claims of the Crown for the Irish proprietors. In the first Parliament which met after the issuing of the Graces, a statute was passed enacting that all patents and grants under the Commission for defective titles should conclude and bind the King and his successors. In a subsequent session of the same Parlia

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1 The petition, with the comments of the Irish Council, is given in Knowler, Letters and Despatches of Strafford, ii., p. 312.

2 Ib., p. 320.

$ 10 Chas. I., c. 3.

ment another Act was passed confirming the former, curing every possible defect in the patents, and directing that they should be most strictly construed for the grantees and against the King. Finally a third Act was passed in 1639 confirming the two preceding. These three Acts were passed during the administration of Strafford.

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2

The second charge is that Strafford devised and adopted the project of making a plantation in Connaught similar to that of Ulster, and of confiscating all the titles in the former province. The writer who makes such an assertion cannot have studied the letters and despatches of that statesman, or investigated the subject for himself. Strafford did indeed propose a plantation in Connaught, but of a very different kind, and far less extensive than that of Ulster, and no man's just title or patent was to be questioned thereby. As Strafford told the Roscommon jury, the King's "Great Seal was his public faith, and should be kept sacred in all things "4 Connaught con

3 Lecky, ii., pp. 116-118.

1 10 Chas. I., session 3, c. 2. 2 15 Chas. I., c. 6. Speaking of the Commission which was sent into Connaught, Mr. Lecky says, in his rhetorical way: "In county after county the terrified juries brought in the verdict that was required". It is to be regretted that any respectable author should have put his hand to such a statement. The Commission sat in four counties. In Roscommon, Sligo and Mayo it was welcomed by the juries, which were composed of gentlemen of the best estates and understandings". In Galway, a jury, consisting of the friends, dependants, and steward of Lord Clanrickard, refused to find the King's title, upon pretence that Henry II. had not conquered Ireland, but merely received the submission of its inhabitants, though by the Irish Act of 10 Henry VII., c. 15, Connaught was annexed to the Crown. Mr. Lecky does not appear to have known that Lord Tunbridge, Clanrickard's son, acknowledged to Charles I. that the Galway jury had met with the express intention of defeating the King's title [Knowler, i., p. 476]; nor that the same nobleman, on the death of his father, sent to Strafford a letter of attorney "signed by 175 of the best quality of the county," voluntarily acknowledging the King's title. "I leave it to your Lordship's better judgment," he wrote, "to consider whether this free and voluntary surrender by the body of the

tained upwards of 4,300,000 acres.

1

In that province

much land had been concealed or unjustly detained from the Crown; many tenures in capite had been suppressed and the dues on them withheld; and many estates had been seized by the strong hand during and after the Insurrection, 1595-1603. In some cases, as in that of Lord Wilmot, President of Connaught, the King's lands and rents had been fraudulently alienated for private gain. Of the 4,300,000 acres in Connaught, Strafford hoped to recover only 120,000. From the plantation were to be excepted the whole county of Leitrim, Church lands, and all estates held under letters-patent from the Crown, or under conveyances from Richard de Burgo and his heirs, who in the fourteenth century were possessed of twenty-five of the thirty cantreds which made up the whole of Connaught. These exceptions and limitations, together with the small proportion which Strafford expected to recover for the Crown, enable us to estimate the exaggeration with which this proposed plantation has been described. That no man's freehold was invaded by Strafford's government, and no just title set aside, we have

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whole county doth not as highly import the service as to have it found by a jury."-Knowler, ii., p. 35.

1 See "Wilmot's Confession to the King" [Knowler, i., p. 477]. Lord Wilmot was brought to book by Strafford for robbing the King, as Lord Cork was for appropriating the lands of the Church.

Not only exaggeration, but mere confusion. Mr. Lecky, treating of the Connaught plantation, says that "a grant of four shillings in the pound was given to the Chief Justice and Chief Baron out of the first yearly rent upon the commissions of defective titles". The Commission for Defective Titles had nothing whatever to do with the plantation of Connaught. It was the most popular measure ever proposed in Ireland. The judges attached to it did not decide on the validity of titles, or on the amount of the composition to be made respecting them. See "Answer of the Judges to the Questions proposed to them by the Irish Parliament," Nalson, ii., p. 575.

both positive and negative evidence of the greatest value. In 1640, six years after Strafford had sent his Commission into Connaught, the Irish Commons-before their fatal alliance with the English Opposition-returned thanks to the King for having appointed Strafford to the government of the kingdom, "who by his great care and travail of body and mind, sincere and upright administration of justice without partiality, increase of your Majesty's revenue without the least hurt or grievance to any your Majesty's well disposed and loving subjects, and our great comfort and security by the large and ample benefits which we have received and hope to receive by Your Majesty's Commission of Grace for remedy of defective titles, procured hither by his Lordship

In

for this your tender care over us, showed by the deputing and supporting so good a Governor, we acknowledge ourselves more bound than we can with tongue or pen express." "1 November, 1640, the same body presented, in Strafford's absence, to his deputy a Remonstrance of Grievances, consisting of sixteen heads, which was made use of on Strafford's trial.2 In this there is not a word about the. plantation of Connaught, though they complain that the plantation in the county of Londonderry had been weakened. Nor is there any mention of Connaught in the Protestation against Strafford and his his Government, which they made in February, 1641.3 Every charge, which the managers of his Impeachment could collect, was urged against him, and every Act of his Irish Administration ripped up, yet in the Eighteen Articles which refer to his Irish Government there is no mention of the

1 Preamble to Act, 15 Charles I., c. 13.

2 Journals of the Irish Commons, i., p. 162. Rushworth, viii., p. 11. 3" Protestation against the Earl of Strafford and his Government," Ib., i., p. 176.