Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/47

 appropriated to the use of the Commonwealth, and also the estates of all proprietors who, having lived in Ireland during the recent troubles, could not prove that they had shown 'constant good affection.' This meant in practice the confiscation of the estates of all the heads of the ancient Roman Catholic native population, and of most of the old Anglo-Irish nobility, some Roman Catholics, some Anglican Churchmen, but all more or less involved in resistance to the Commonwealth, with but few exceptions. They were bidden to migrate across the Shannon into Connaught, unless they preferred to go abroad, which by a liberal system of subsidies they were encouraged to do. Dr. Petty calculated that 34,000 of the best fighting population—the chiefs and the 'swordsmen'—had accepted the alternative and had fled the country:

The Presbyterians in Ulster and the English merchants in the walled towns, who mostly belonged to that religious connection, fared little better than the Roman Catholic landowners. They were indeed the ancient enemies of prelacy, but their sympathies were known to have been with the Scotch army, which the Independents had recently defeated at Dunbar and destroyed at Worcester. They were, therefore, ordered to make way in favour of the victors. Thus the whole of the upper and middle classes of Ireland were crushed in a common ruin. So entirely had the original inhabitants, except the poorest, been driven out of Dublin, that it was next to impossible to find a Roman Catholic physician or even a Roman Catholic midwife, and Dr. Petty with other medical men was ordered 'to consider of the evil and propose a remedy.'

With a view to the distribution of the forfeited lands to the creditors of the State, a survey and measurement was contemplated by the Act. The debt due to the 'adventurers' was primarily charged on the forfeited lands in the moieties