widow of Ireton, but his real representative was his fourth son, Henry Cromwell, commander-in-chief of the army. In 1657, the title of Lord Deputy was transferred from Fleetwood to Henry, who united the supreme civil and military authority in his own person, until the eve of the Restoration, of which he became an active partisan. We may thus embrace the five years of the Protectorate as the period of Henry Cromwell’s administration.” High Courts of Justice were appointed for dealing with those who had been actively in arms, and many cruel executions resulted. Commissions were also appointed for the expatriation of the people, particularly the young. “Children under age, of both sexes, were captured by the thousands, and sold as slaves to the tobacco planters of Virginia and the West Indies. Secretary Thurloe informs Henry Cromwell that ‘the Council have authorized 1,000 girls, and as many youths, to be taken up for that purpose.’ Sir William Petty mentions 6,000 Irish boys and girls shipped to the West Indies. Some contemporary accounts make the total number of children and adults, so transported, 100,000 souls. To this decimation we may add 34,000 men of fighting age, who had permission to enter the armies of foreign powers at peace with the Commonwealth.” As there was no Irish Parliament called under Cromwell’s régime, the “government” of Ireland consisted, during that period, of the deputy, the commander-in-chief, and four commissioners—the Puritan leaders, Ludlow, Corbett, Jones, and Weaver—all of whom looked upon the Celtic-Catholic Irish, and, in fact, all classes of the Irish people, with bigoted hatred and insolent disdain. And these men had, until the Restoration, absolute dominion over the lives and liberty, the rights and properties of the nation they hated!