Page:Confiscation in Irish history.djvu/73

 title ; and through family feuds and the encroachments of the English the power of the MacMurrough Kavanaghs was greatly diminished, and the various subordinate clans seem to have largely fallen away from their control.

In particular the inhabitants of the northern portion of Wexford had begun to adopt English ways, and several of the old English from the southern part of the county had acquired lands among them either by purchase or by force.

In 1609 the inhabitants of this district determined to take advantage of the Commission for Defective Titles, and to surrender their lands in order to have them regranted to them by the Crown. Leave was granted to make the surrenders, and the freeholders obtained three commissions to the King's escheator and others to enquire into their lands and to accept their surrenders. On two of these nothing was done. But on January 27, 1610, the surrenders were accepted. The time, however, limited by proclamation for surrender being then past, action was suspended because of the discovery in the mean-