Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/188

176 augmentation of poor bishopricks, did likewise endow many parishes with glebes for the incumbents, whereof a good number escaped the depredations of 1641 and 1688. These lands, when they were granted by king James, consisted mostly of woody ground, wherewith those parts of this island were then overrun. This is well known, universally allowed, and by some in part remembered; the rest being, in some places, not stubbed out to this day. And the value of the lands was consequently very inconsiderable, till Scotch colonies came over in swarms upon great encouragement to make them habitable; at least for such a race of strong bodied people, who came hither from their own bleak barren highlands, as it were into a Paradise; who soon were able to get straw for their bedding, instead of a bundle of heath spread on the ground, and sprinkled with water. Here, by degrees, they acquired some degree of politeness and civility, from such neighbouring Irish as we were still left after Tyrone's last rebellion, and are since grown almost entire possessors of the north. Thus, at length, the woods being rooted up, the land was brought in, and tilled, and the glebes which could not before yield twopence an acre, are equal to the best, sometimes affording the minister a good demesne, and some land to let.

These wars and desolations in their natural consequences, were likewise the cause of another effect, I mean that of uniting several parishes under one incumbent. For, as the lands were of little value by the want of inhabitants to cultivate them, and many of the churches levelled to the ground, particularly by the fanatick zeal of those rebellious saints who murdered their king, destroyed the church, and overthrew