uncultivated for the most part, the English and Scotch “undertakers,” or settlers, for prudence’ sake, rather than from liberal motives, practically made this tyrannical requirement a dead letter. But the Catholic tillers of the soil were driven from the fertile plains and forced to cultivate miserable patches of land in the bogs or on the mountains. When these became in any degree valuable, an exorbitant “rent” was charged, and the poor Catholics, utterly unable to pay it, were again compelled to move to some even more unpromising location, where the same procedure again and again produced the same wretched result. It was thus that the ancient Irish clans, and families, were actually robbed, in spite of solemn treaties and royal pledges, of their rightful inheritance, and that strangers and “soulless corporations” became lords of their soil. It was the beginning, in Ulster at least, of that system of “felonious landlordism” which is the curse of all Ireland, in spite of recent remedial measures, even in this day. So, too, began that English garrison in Ireland—pitting race against race and creed against creed—which has divided, distracted, and demoralized the Irish nation ever since. The “Plantation of Ulster” was the most fatal measure ever carried into effect by English policy in Ireland. Some of the Irish princes did not long survive their exile. From France they had proceeded to Rome and were very kindly received by the Pontiff, who placed residences commensurate with their rank and fame at their disposal. Roderick O’Donnell died in the Eternal City in July, 1608. McGuire died at Genoa, while en route to Spain in August, and, in September, Cathbar O’Donnell also passed away, and was laid in the same grave with his gallant brother, on St. Peter’s Hill. (McGee.) O’Neill’s fate was sadder still. The historian just quoted says of him: “He survived his comrades as he did his fortunes, and, like another Belisarius, blind and old, and a pensioner on the bounty of strangers, he lived on eight weary years in Rome.” Death came to his relief, according to a historian of his own period, in 1616, when he must have been over seventy years of age. He sleeps his last sleep amid the consecrated dust of ages, beneath the flagstones of the convent of St. Isidore; and there, in the words of the Irish orator and American general, Meagher, “the fiery hand that rent the ensign of St. George on the plains of Ulster has mouldered into dust.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ BOOK III RECORDING THE DOINGS OF THE ENGLISH AND IRISH, IN IRELAND, FROM THE TIME OF JAMES I TO THE JACOBITE WARS IN THE DAYS OF JAMES II AND WILLIAM III ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER I Confiscations and Penal Laws—The Iron Rule of Lord Strafford