Lecture Seven (Part 2)  Wednesday 2nd March

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The Restoration Land Settlement

The Duke of Ormond likened the restoration of Charles II to  the resurrection;

‘When God beyond our hope took us all from banishment, dispersion, and out of the lowest and most comfortless degree of despair, and restored us to our country, to our fortune and to our friends’.

As we will see the restoration of the King in 1660 held out hope to the many Catholic landowners who had lost their land that they too would be restored to their lands.

In December 1659 certain officers in Ireland staged a coup d’etat which gave them effective control over the army. The majority of these were protestant settlers who had been domiciled in Ireland prior to the rebellion’s outbreak in 1641 (Ancient Protestants). They took the castle of Dublin in a bloodless coup and the garrisons of the provinces were also secured.

The choice faced by the settlers in Ireland was that they could support the move for a free parliament which would lead to the restoration of the king or they could support those opposed to this who were in the minority and consisted mainly of those who had been actively involved in the trial and execution of the king. These were known as the Regicides and for them, restoration of monarchy would prove very dangerous.

A council of army officers summoned a convention to meet in Dublin to discuss matters. They resolved to request Charles II to return, begged his forgiveness, asked for a general indemnity and the payment of any arrears of pay owed to them.

While this was taking place some Ancient Protestant settlers sent emissaries to the king requesting him to come to Ireland where he would be warmly welcome and restored to his throne. The king, on advice of his commissioners, was advised to await events in England first.

England then declared that they wanted him restored and shortly thereafter he was proclaimed king in both England and Ireland.

In Ireland this was welcomed by both Protestant and Catholics as the king’s restoration seemed to promise to many, the restoration of their lands because out of the three kingdoms Ireland had proven itself to be the most loyal.     

There was much celebration in Dublin and was described by a contemporary;

‘This day hath been a joyful day to all honest hearts. The day providing so rainy that the show was the less, the lords justices and the council went to

The restoration celebrations in Dublin were, by all, accounts, well attended and there was great celebration among the people. Christchurch with the bishops and the rest of the nobility in state and gentry. The lord primate preached after 31 great guns went off three times … bells ringing, guns roaring, trumpets sounding, and all for God bless king Charles the Second (whom God preserve), great bonfires, much fireworks, I am not able to express our joy’.

Once the celebrations had died down their evolved  a massive scramble for Irish land that has come to be termed ‘The Restoration Land Settlement’ and was to remain a major issue in Irish affairs for  many years thereafter.

The word scramble is aptly used because that is exactly what occurred. It was a scramble because the various pieces of legislation that were implemented to affect the Restoration Land Settlement were often contradictory and this was further compounded by the fact that the King often gave letters patent directly to Catholic petitioners for the restoration of their estates outside of the legislation.

The Restoration Land Settlement was based on three pieces of legislation;

(1)       His Majesties Gracious Declaration for the Settlement of Ireland (November 1660)

(2)       An Act  for the better execution of his Majesties gracious declaration for the settlement of his kingdom of  Ireland and satisfaction of the several interests of adventurers, soldiers and other his subjects there, September1662.

(3)       An Act for the explaining of some doubts arising upon an act for the better execution of his Majesties gracious declaration for the settlement of his Kingdom of Ireland, and satisfaction of the several interests of adventurers, soldiers, and other his subjects there, and for making some alterations of and additions unto the said act, for the more speedy and effectual settlement of the said Kingdom.

As happened so many times before members of all the interested parties proceeded to England to plead their case.

The Catholics, especially the Old English, many of whom had gone into exile with the king and had fought with him there, expected to be rewarded for their loyalty by been  restored to what they had lost.

The Protestants, especially those who had benefited from the land confiscations of the 1650s wanted to retain what they had got. The interaction between these polarities was the driving forces of the restoration land settlement.

The Protestant partly clearly had the advantage as it had adopted a policy of imprisoning many influential Catholics as they returned from exile. The author of the ‘Case of the Roman Catholics of Ireland’ outlines the difficulties faced by Catholics:

‘Thus active were the Cromwellians in Ireland and their agents in England, while the Irish nobility and gentry were gaping after liberty and endeavouring to get out of the filthy dungeons they had been thrown into. As soon as they were released, they appointed agents to pursue the interest of the nation at court, but these were so ill provided and so poorly supplied that they had not their very charges borne. This indignity of the Irish agents left nor fervour in their negotiation, and it opened a way for as many of the nation about court as were anything active to take upon themselves that quality without any not able to stand their ground in any antechamber of the Court before the purse-proud conventionalists, who were continually feasting and washing white noth themselves and their interest with the best of liqueurs, while the others were striving to give a sweet relish to their cause by the long train of their loyal services and sufferings’.

The picture that is emerging is that the Catholics at court were so poor that they had no money to feed themselves never mind to buy favours and to offer bribes. In total contrast the protestant settlers had a lot of money to throw about buying favours and such like.

            The King, for his part, was faced with the difficulty of wanting to reward the loyal Catholics of Ireland while at the same time maintaining the settlement that had occurred in the 1650s.

            It would seem that the king was somehow tricked by the protestants who provided him with an estimate of lands in Ireland which seemed to indicate that there was enough land available to satisfy both of these groups.

Consequently, in November 1660  the king brought out his Gracious Declaration for the Settlement of Ireland.

This was a very lengthy document in which the adventurers and soldiers were to be confirmed in their possessions that they held on 7 May 1659, with the exception of the following.

(a)     Any lands that they had gotten illegally.

(b)     Any church lands that they held (these were to be restored immediately).

(c)     Any of them who were excepted from an Act of Indemnity

(d)     If they had gotten lands of any Catholic who was deprived only on the grounds of their religion.

Catholics were to be restored to their lands if;

(a)     They had adhered to the Ormonde peace of 1648-49

(b)     they had served with the King on the continent (known as ensign men).

(c)      They had been deprived of their lands only on account of their religion

The Protestant Royalist Officers (known as 1649 Officers) who had served the king prior to 5^th June 1649, were to receive compensation for their royalist service in Ireland.

These were to get all the undisposed land in the counties of Donegal, Wicklow, Longford and Wicklow, the lands within the mile-line and all houses within corporate towns.

            Thirty six commissioners were appointed to carry out the king’s declaration. All of these were protestants and all had a vested interest in what was happening as most of them had gotten land during the commonwealth period in Ireland.

They had little interest in changing the status quo and they were glad when legal minds informed them that this declaration was not a legal way to settle, dispose or restore landed estates. Consequently a parliament was called in Ireland to take the clauses of the declaration and make it into an act of Parliament. However, before anything could be introduced into the Irish parliament it had to be first approved by the Privy Council in England.

            Once again representatives of all the interest groups flocked to the court to plead their cases to have provisos inserted in the forthcoming act granting them favours (i.e. the retention of land they had got or the restoration of land they had lost). The complexities was described by a contemporary;

There are two important matters at which the whole frame of the declaration, now made into a law, points. The one is the restoration of the old proprietor to his just rights, the other the satisfying of the just demands of the adventurers and soldiers. The chief thing here is to get the innocency of the one and the just claims of the other established in a trustworthy manner.

The government was faced with a dilemma as to how to satisfy both interest groups. The  Catholics pleaded solemn treaties, the plighted word of two kings and their eminent service and sufferings in the King’s cause. Protestants were armed, held all the garrisons and all the administrative positions in Ireland so how was the king to proceed? The result was the passing into law An Act  for the better execution of his Majesties gracious  declaration for the settlement of his kingdom of  Ireland and satisfaction of the several interests of adventurers, soldiers and other his subjects there, September 1662. (sometimes called the Act of Settlement of 1662) This Act can be seen as the statutory version, with the major addition of a preamble, of the so called Gracious Declaration of 1660.

            The execution of this Act was entrusted go 7 commissioners who were to implement the clauses of the Act through a special court that was to be convened.

The principles of this act were; the vesting in the king, as trustee for the purpose of the act, of all land confiscated since 23 October 1641 (with the exception of Church land);  the general confirmation to the adventurers and cromwellian soldiers of the land hey held on May 7, 1659; and the restoration of various classes of dispossessed proprietors as follows;

(1)  Innocents (those deprived of their estates only on account of their religion). They had to prove their innocence in a court of claims.

(2)  Catholic Nominees (56 individual Catholics marked by the king as meriting special favour). These were individually named in the legislation.

(3)  Catholic Ensign men (221 individual Catholics who had served under the King’s ensigns on the continent during his exile).

(4)  Catholic Article men  (Confederates who accepted the peace of 1648-9)

The Innocents were to be restored to their estates immediately once their innocence had been proven in a special court. Nominees and Ensign men had to wait until the Adventurer or soldier who had gotten these estates were reprised with a similar sized estate elsewhere. Preference was only to be given to those who had not taken any lands in Connacht during the transplantation policies. Articlemen who had remained in Ireland and who had taken out lands in Connacht were to forfeit all claims but articlemen who had fought under the Kings ensigns on the continent were to get preference.

            The Protestants, for their part, initially seemed to be satisfied with the Act because it seemed to confirm them in the estates that they held on the eve of the restoration. There was also about 226 clauses appended to the act containing special provisions for about 400 people. Whereas these clauses were called instructions to the commissioners they were, in effect, private bills inserted in the act designed to protect the property or to have property restored to influential courtiers, including some Old English landowners.

Other clauses were there to block the restoration of any Catholic who had;

Been in rebellion before the truce of  1643;

 Had lived in rebel quarters at any time;

Had belonged to the Catholic confederacy before the peace treaty of  1649;

Had adhered to the party of the Papal Nuncio;

Had corresponded (while in royalist quarters) with the rebels. 

By far the biggest threat to the Protestant settlement was the first Court of Claims that was set up in January 1663 to hear Catholic claims as to why they should be restored to their land.

To the dispossessed Catholics then the value of a decree of innocence thus became immediately apparent, deriving from the principle that his estate had never been legally forfeited. The only place that they could get these decrees was to appear before a special court what was to hear their claims.

The Court of Claims, as it became known, was very slow to open. No matter that the commissioners who were to operate the court came to Ireland in July 1662, they did not

open its doors at the King’s Inns Dublin until 13^th January 1663. By 21 August, 1663, the final day of the hearings, the commissioners had awarded about 830 decrees of which only 115 were nocent (or guilty and, therefore not innocent to be restored).

Because all the confiscated land since 1641 had been vested in the king under the act of settlement, it could only be divested by a decree of the court of claims. Consequently Protestants who had had their land confiscated by the Cromwellians also appeared before the court and some 150 decrees of innocence were awarded to Protestants.

These cases, when they came up seemed only a formality and it was only when a question arose concerning the validity of a person’s claim to be a protestant, that the case was prolonged. This usually involved  claimants whose immediate ancestors had been Catholic and who were attempting to claim as Protestants.

The first court of claims was seen by many Protestants as a direct threat to the estates they had been granted because any Catholic who was declared innocent in this court was supposed to have been restored to their estates.

The Commissioners of the court therefore went to great lengths to forewarn protestants if particular claims of innocence was going to endanger their property. In early 1663, for example, they published a catalogue of all the claimants to innocency in the city and county of Dublin.

            A major problem of the remit of the court was that they could only sit and judge the innocence OR nocent of the claimants; they were not able by law to make any decisions as to actual land title. The people who had been granted land during the Commonwealth period had to appear before the court as defendants (while the Catholic claimants were plaintiffs). So the defendants  in most cases, challenged not only the claim to innocence but also the land title of the plaintiffs.

When this occurred the plaintiff was awarded a decree of innocence ‘at large’ whereby they were left to law to sort out the issues of the land title (they had to establish proof to their land titles in the ordinary courts).

When it did not occur plaintiffs who had been awarded a decree of innocence were supposed to be given immediate possession of their estates but there are many examples where the occupier refused to deliver up the estate to them.

Sheriffs, who were supposed to assist them in the recovery of their estate more often than not sided with the Cromwellian occupier and refused to put innocents in possession unless they had decrees from the civil courts.

When the court stopped hearing cases there were still many thousands of Catholics who had put in claims but who were not going to be heard and complaints about this went on for many decades.

Difficulties soon arose over the execution of the court’s decrees and of the king’s orders in relation to particular favoured individuals.

It became evident that there was not going to be enough land for reprisals and it was obvious that there were so many contradictions in the Act that further legislation was going to be needed to sort it out.

After much negotiation this took the form of an Act of explanation, passed in 1665. The full title of the act was An Act for the explaining of some doubts arising upon an act for the better execution of his Majesties gracious declaration for the settlement of his Kingdom of Ireland, and satisfaction of the several interests of adventurers, soldiers, and other his subjects there, and for making some alterations of and additions unto the said act, for the more speedy and effectual settlement of the said Kingdom.

What this act implied was that once again all the land confiscated since 1641 was to be vested in the king, except church land and lands belonging to those who had been declared innocent in the first court of claims and who had managed to get their lands back. Those declare innocent but who were still awaiting to take possession of their estates were to be left to the common law courts to be restored..

Adventurers and soldiers were to give up one third of the estates that had been granted to them and this land was going to be used to restore the Catholics whom the king or the courts wanted to restore. It was becoming ever more evident that the best way to handle the restoration of favoured Catholics was not to leave them to the courts but to nominate them and many of them were individually nominated  in the act of explanation. 54 Catholics were nominated to be restored to their original estates, but only after the cromwellian occupants of their estates was granted a reprisal of lands elsewhere.

A second court of claims was called into being in January 1666 to give rulings on the act of explanation.

There was so many conflicting clauses in the Explanation Act that somebody published an index to both the acts to highlight this  

Everybody who had gotten lands in the cromwellian period were to submit  their claims to the court which would then ensure that one third was deducted from these estates. Any who remained in possession of an estate belonging to a person declared innocent in the first court of claims was to give an account why they were still in possession. The 54 nominees were to submit details of the estates to which they were to be restored to.

This second court of claims rose at midnight on 2 January 1669 and so the work of the restoration land settlement was brought to a conclusion.

Statistics/conclusions of the period

          Attempts to tabulate the land settlement were begun by Sir William Petty who was a contemporary to the proceedings  and who was responsible for  surveying the land of Ireland between 1655 and 1657. In  the late restoration period he hypothesized that  the Catholics emerged from the revolutionary period with less than a third (2,280,000 acres) of the ‘good land of Ireland’.  Petty remained the accepted authority, statistically speaking, until early last century when W.F.T. Butler challenged his conclusions and suggested that Catholics retained only one seventh of Ireland’s  land (1,110,000 acres). Writing in the 1950s J.G. Simms, in a study of the Williamite land settlement (1689-1703), questioned Butler’s findings and concluded that the Protestant share of Irish land increased from the 41 per cent which they held in 1641 to a massive 78 per cent by 1688. 

          The following table based on a data base I have constructed.

TABLE 1

There were a total of 9,084,111 acres that were surveyed and recorded in the various surveys of the  1650s. In 1641 Catholics held 66% of the land and, by the 1680s only 29% of the land was in their hands. It would seem then that both Butler and Simms were way off the mark and that Petty, a contemporary to the period, was not that far away when he held that Catholics emerged with less that a third of the land.

J.G. Simms, held that the Protestant share of Irish land was 41% in 1641 and that this figure had risen to 78% by 1688.  As we can see from the table, both these figures are incorrect. Interestingly enough however, it seems that both his figures are deficient by exactly 11%

This table also provides answers to many other pertinent questions that have only been guessed at. Of particular note is that the landholding situation was virtually reversed along sectarian lines between the two periods. For example the Protestants, who held 30% of the land in 1641 emerged with 67% of the land in the Restoration period; almost exactly the portion held by Catholics in 1641. Similarly, the percentage of land retained by Catholics in the Restoration period (29%) almost mirrored that of what the Protestants had held (30%) in 1641.

My data base will also be able to answer another importation statistical problem that has only being speculated upon since Sir William Petty and that is the number of Catholic landowners in Ireland in 1641. Petty himself first indicated that there were 3,000 Catholic landowners in Ireland in 1641. This remained the accepted figure until it was challenged by WFT Butler in his Confiscations in Irish History who indicated that the figure was at ‘least 8,000 and may have been as many as 10,000 or even 12,000’. Robert Simmington, the person responsible for publishing 3 volumes of the Book of Survey and Distribution analyzed this problem and could only conclude that the only way to resolve this problem was ‘through the careful examination county by county, of the Books of Survey and Distribution’. That is exactly what I have done. The following table 2 shows the number of landholders in Ireland, not only in 1641 but also in the Restoration period. 

 TABLE 2

Here it can be seen that Petty, W.H. Harding, and W.F.T. Butler were way off the mark. Petty’s estimate of 3,000 Catholic landowners was 3,756 less than there actually was in Ireland in 1641. Butler’s estimate of 8,000 was closer to the mark but was still out by 1,300 people.

This table also reveals other important statistics that we are looking at for the first time in history. By the middle of the Restoration period the number of Catholic landholders had decreased from 6,756 to only 1,353 in the period under review. Another very interesting statistic is that whereas there were no less than 1,042 Protestant landholders in 1641, by the 1660s that figure had only increased by a further 1,380 people. This is interesting because the Cromwellians intended to settle over 1,000 Adventurers and 30,000 soldiers on Irish land yet my statistics clearly show that there were only 1,380 more Protestant landholders in Ireland during the Restoration period than there had been in 1641. (I must point out, however, that the number of Protestant holders in 1641 is not as exact as I would like it. To obtain absolute certainty I would need to analyze and compare another set of the Books of Survey and Distribution – that of the Annesley set, which tends to give more information for Protestant landholdings in 1641).  

We are now beginning to come close to the question as to who benefited the most in the scramble for land so characteristic of the restoration land settlement. Before finally answering that however, let me delve deeper into the two tables already shown to see what was happening on a county level.

Table 4 shows the Protestant landholdings for each of the 32 counties of Ireland in both 1641 and the Restoration period.

TABLE 3

Table 4 shows the same information for Catholic landholdings.

TABLE 4

Another major question is the number of Acres that were forfeited in Ireland during the period. The absence of records for the Cromwellian period, when the land was confiscated, makes it almost impossible to know exactly how many acres were forfeited in Ireland. Table 5 shows the acreage that was initially forfeited and not restored to the original owners by the Restoration legislation.

TABLE 5

These islandwide figures can be broken down by County, Barony or parish. Table 6 gives the county breakdown.

TABLE 6

          During the seventeenth century, Ireland was transformed from a tribal, feudal kingdom into a recognizably ‘modern’ state. The forces of change that facilitated this were not all compressed into the decade 1649-59, but were also at work during the early and later decades of the century. The upheavals of the 1650s and 1660s significantly  accelerated the destruction of the ‘old order’,  making Ireland more receptive to  mercantilist ideas. In other words, what the ‘Cromwellian’ upheavals laid to rest was not so much Catholic landholding patterns, as  the last vestiges of Gaelic tradition and custom that had  prevented that society from  modernizing.

The failure of Cromwellian policy in Ireland to colonize large numbers of people on numerous small estates became a blueprint for a house that was never built. We can not see from the restoration land settlement statistics that a very much smaller number of people settled on much larger estates than was originally intended.

What group gained the most from this revolution in land tenure?  Without a doubt Protestant settlers who had been domiciled in Ireland prior to the rebellion gained most from the scramble for land so characteristic of the Restoration period. They did so by engaging in predatory speculation and this enabled them to acquire vast estates from soldiers and adventurers who were only to happy to hurry home to England with ready cash in their pockets. This landed power-base enabled the Old Protestant settlers to emerge into the ascendancy in Restoration Ireland.

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