what followed. He compelled Ireland to pay subsidies to the amount of £200,000 in 1634, and imposed £100,000 more in the succeeding year. He carried the war of wholesale confiscation into Connaught, and compelled grand juries, specially “packed” for the work, to give the King of England title to the three great counties of Mayo, Sligo, and Roscommon. The grand jury of Galway County refused to return such a verdict. They were summoned to the court of the Castle Chamber in Dublin, and sentenced to pay a fine of £4,000 each to the crown. The sheriff who empaneled them was fined £1,000. (McGee.) The very lawyers who pleaded for the actual proprietors were stripped of their gowns; “the sheriff died in prison and the work of spoliation proceeded.” (_Ibid._) Similar, if not quite so general, robberies went on in Kildare, Kilkenny, Cork, and other counties. It must be said, however, that Strafford was, in a manner, impartial, and robbed, his master granting full approval, without distinction of creed. We can not help feeling thankful that the London companies which swallowed, in the reign of King James, the lands of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, were compelled by “Black Tom,” as the earl was nicknamed, to pay £70,000 “for the use of the king.” Out of all this plunder, and much more beside, Strafford was enabled to maintain in Ireland 10,000 infantry and 1,000 excellently equipped horse, “for the service of his royal master.” When this great robber visited London in 1639, fresh from his crimes in Ireland, the king, on whom so much ill-deserved sympathy has been wasted, assured him, in person, that his actions in Ireland had his (Charles’) “most cordial approval” (McGee), and even urged the earl to “proceed fearlessly in the same course.” To still further mark his approbation of Strafford’s policy, the king promoted him to the rank of Viceroy of Ireland. Strafford took the king at his word and did proceed so fearlessly in Ireland that his name of terror has been overshadowed in that country by only one other—that of Oliver Cromwell. Every Parliament called to meet by the tyrant in the conquered country—for so the earl regarded Ireland—was used simply as an instrument wherewith to extort still more tribute from the impoverished Irish people. This terrible despot, having accomplished his deadly mission in Ireland, returned to England and there, as before, became chief adviser to the weak and wicked monarch. He counseled the latter to ignore, as far as he dared, the action of Parliament, and was imprudent enough to remark that he (Strafford) had an army in Ireland to support the royal will. He was, soon afterward, impeached by the House of Commons, led by stern John Pym, for treasonable acts in seeking to change the constitutional form of the English Government. This method of procedure was abandoned, however, and Parliament passed a bill of attainder, to which the “false, fleeting, perjured” Charles, frightened