Page:Confiscation in Irish history.djvu/158

 But the policy advocated by Gookin prevailed. After much debate it was ordered that only landowners and those who had actually borne arms were to be transplanted. Landowners included not only landlords and all those, their heirs, who might become landlords, but those tenants who held leases for seven years or upwards. Among swordsmen, or those who had actually borne arms, were counted all militiamen, those who had kept watch and ward, even if pressed or forced, those who had mustered at rendezvous, even if they had never actually served in the field.

But as a matter of fact this last part of the order was never fully carried out, at least as a rule. Practically the vast majority of the lower orders were left on this side of the Shannon, though they were as a rule forbidden to dwell in any walled town—only forty-three were allowed to remain in Clonmel, only forty in Kilkenny, and these only to be licensed for a short period—and only landowners, their families and such of their tenants as chose to accompany them were forced to move into Connaught and Clare.

In fact after a time the policy of the government seems to have tended rather to prevent the mass of the peasantry from removing across the Shannon. At least we are told in an account of the Wexford barony of Forth, compiled after the Restoration, apparently for Sir William Petty, that the Cromwellians had not banished or transplanted the commonalty or plebeian natives in that barony in the hope that the expelled loyal gentle-