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 Cork one-tenth of the total area was in the hands of Catholics.

In considering the effects of confiscation in Ireland it is important to remember that except at the Plantation of Ulster there was no removal of the actual tillers of the soil. The vast majority of this class had had under the clan system only a semi-servile status. Under the lords of Anglo-Norman descent the lot of the "churls" was little better. It is quite probable, if not actually certain, that the lot of the tillers of the soil was actually improved—except in the case of Ulster—when the free clansmen, the ruling aristocracy, lost their lands.

We must be careful, of course, to except from this statement the poorer clansmen who held but