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 THE CROMWELLIAN CONFISCATION

Confiscations based on legal quibbles, religious disabilities, the fear that the government might yield to the fanatical party in England and Scotland which clamoured for the extirpation of Catholicism, the example of the successful rebellion of the Scottish Covenanters, all led up to the great upheaval of 1641. The revolt, at first confined to the old Irish in Ulster, rapidly spread until it covered the whole island. It brought in its train a confiscation far more extensive than any which had gone before, that which is associated with the name of Cromwell.

This confiscation, the most sweeping, perhaps, that modern ages have seen, as it was the most complete has been also that which has left most impression on the popular memory. Legend has fixed on Cromwell and attributed to him the saying that he gave the Irish leave to choose between Hell or Connaught. And out of this has grown another legend, an idea widespread among politicians, that, namely, which represents him as attempting to root out from the soil of three-fourths of Ireland the whole mass of the Irish people.