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 These decrees apparently included innocent Protestants, and the number of these, as we know from a statement of the Commissioners, was 168.

Therefore about 540 Catholics, at the outside, were decreed innocent. It was notorious that there were numerous others whose claims had not been heard. The Commissioners themselves declared that they had heard the claims of all who had never taken lands west of the Shannon, and of one-sixth of those who had. If this is accurate there can have been at the outside only 1,500 claimants unheard. But Prendergast cites cases of claimants unheard though they had taken no lands from Cromwell. The Irish said the number of those unheard was 8000. Sir Heneage Finch, ordered in 1670 to report to the King on the whole matter, declares that over 4000 had not been heard. The exact numbers therefore cannot be determined. Many of those unheard, too, were persons whose innocence would have been hard to prove, and who therefore had not been eager to press their claims. But among them were numerous widows and orphans, persons without