and known.' Otherwise they might be involved in hopeless litigation with Lord Cork and many others, who were not at all implicated in the rebellion. On April 17, one month before this answer was given, the general and field officers in Ireland, including Ludlow, Corbet, and Jones, met at Kilkenny, where they heard Dr. Jones's abstract of the depositions taken concerning murders committed during the rebellion. They were already inclined to think that some of the capitulations had been too lenient, and the reading of this terrible paper confirmed them. To many the facts were new, others, who had been in Ireland since 1641, had never known them in so concrete a form, and they feared that men at a distance might be moved through ignorance to lenity, 'which we have found no small temptation in ourselves ... and considering that so many murders have been committed that few of the former English were left undestroyed (especially men who had any particular knowledge of the massacre, and of those the greater part are since deceased) so that few of the rebels can be particularly discriminated by any evidence now to be produced, as the usual course of justice doth require, yet those barbarous, cruel murders having been so generally joined in and since justified by the whole nation, &c.' And they suggested to Parliament that 'in duty towards God, the great avenger of such villainies,' they should not delay to decide upon the 'qualifications and exceptions' desirable. The abstract of evidence which had so greatly impressed the officers accompanied their despatch, which was read in Parliament on May 18, and we may well believe that its effect was considerable in moulding legislation. In the interval between May and August the idea of transplantation took shape, and Connaught was left out of the area within which Adventurers and soldiers might seek their reward.[257] [Sidenote: Classification of Irish delinquents.] [Sidenote: Exceptions by name.] [Sidenote: First sketch of transplantation.] [Sidenote: Existing agreements to be observed.]