Page:Confiscation in Irish history.djvu/31

 grant to De Courcy, and the subsequent devolution of the earldom of Ulster through the Mortimers to the Crown. Incidentally it makes the quite untrue statement that the Act of Absentees vested in the Crown the earldoms of Ulster and Leinster.

Then, having to the satisfaction of the faithful commons proved that Ulster belonged to the Crown, it with curious want of logic proceeds to enact that Tyrone, Clandeboye, O'Cahan's country, the Route, the Glynnes, Iveagh, Orior, the Fews, Mac Mahon's, Mac Kenna's and Mac Cann's countries shall all be vested in the Crown, thus tacitly excluding Tirconnell and Fermanagh. The truth seems to be that Elizabethan lawyers had not yet arrived at that total disregard for the equitable rights of the Irish that marked those of the Stuart period. They seem to have felt the injustice of attempting to deprive the Irish on a mere legal quibble of those lands which they had held without question since the days of Henry II. Hence the enacting part confined itself to confiscating the lands of those Irish who had actually been in rebellion under Shane.

Furthermore, since many of the lesser chiefs of Ulster had manifestly followed Shane only on compulsion, the Queen is prayed to deal leniently with the survivors, and to grant to them such portions of their said several countries to live on by English tenure "as to your Majesty may seem good and convenient." Finally, the Act saves the