Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/81

 1660—1685

five and twenty years which followed the Restoration form, if not a very interesting or eventful, a very important epoch in the history of Ireland. When, after nearly twelve years of exile, Charles the Second ascended the throne of his father, he found the object at which English statesmen had for more than a century been aiming thoroughly and finally attained. In the three richest and most populous provinces of Ireland Protestant colonists were in possession of the lands which had been torn from the Catholic Celts. The work which had been diligently and systematically pursued by three successive sovereigns, had been completed with characteristic wisdom, energy, and cruelty by the great Protector. "The Cromwellian Settlement," says the ablest and most impartial of our modern historians, "is the foundation of that deep and lasting division between the proprietary and the tenants which is the chief cause of the political and 69