Page:Confiscation in Irish history.djvu/53

 to surrender, in return for a pension, his life interest in his lands.

Thus, four counties stood at the disposal of the Crown. Now, immediately after the departure of the Earls the Deputy had declared to the inhabitants of these counties that they would be no losers by the attainder of the fugitives, and that every man was to be confirmed in his own. At this period no great plantation appears to have been contemplated; the demesne lands of the chiefs would have supplied room for a certain number of settlers, leaving those Irish who claimed freeholds undisturbed. And to convict the Earls of treason juries of natives were summoned whom the Crown for its own purposes found it convenient to consider as freeholders.

But, when after O'Dogherty's rising the idea of a great plantation took shape, this promise of the Deputy's was ignored, and to override the just rights of the natives a most ingenious argument was brought forward. If, said the Crown lawyers, the mass of the inhabitants of the four counties were—as O'Donnell and O'Neill had asserted—mere tenants-at-will there was no more to be said: plainly they had no rights. But if on the other hand, as O'Cahane and many of the chief men of the O'Neills had contended, and as Sir John