Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/185

] complaints heard at Whitehall. Laud, who was acting as outrageously himself in England, informed Wentworth of it, and even hinted more caution, observing that if he could find a way to do all those great services without raising so many storms, it would be excellently well thought of. But Wentworth was as little disposed to avoid storms as his adviser himself, he proceeded in the same autocratic style both towards the public and individuals. It had been the original intention to return to the proprietors three-fourths of their lands, and retain one-fourth for the crown, amounting to about one hundred and twenty thousand acres, which were to be planted with Englishmen, on condition of yielding a large annual income to the crown. But now it was resolved to retain a full half of Galway as a punishment of its obstinacy, and Wentworth was proceeding with the necessary measurements, when his career proved at an end.



The individual acts of injustice which he perpetrated, were done at the suggestion of his profligate desires or personal revenge, with the most unabashed hardihood. He had seduced the daughter of Loftus, the lord chancellor of Ireland, wife of Sir John Gifford, and wanted to confer a good post on her relative. Sir Adam Loftus. Such an opportunity soon occurred by an inadvertent expression of lord Mountmorris, vice-treasurer of Ireland. It happened one day that Annesley, a lieutenant in the army, accidentally set a stool on the foot of the lord deputy, when he was suffering from the gout. This lieutenant Annesley had some time before been carried in a paroxysm