It was originally meant to give all the forfeited lands in Connaught and Clare to the transplanted, reserving the towns and garrisons with some space about them and a strip four miles wide all along the coast. In the end Sligo and Leitrim were withdrawn, and the coast reserve was narrowed to one mile. The amount of land was insufficient, and there must have been great hardship, for the Government had no machinery for giving quiet possession if there was any opposition from neighbouring proprietors or rival claimants. It was a tradition of Irish government to apprehend a Spanish invasion, and it was for that reason that a belt of English settlers round the coast was contemplated, but nothing seems to have come of it. Innisbofin was, however, strengthened and garrisoned, and the Papist inhabitants ordered to leave the town of Galway, where it was proposed to plant a colony from Gloucester as a reward for its resistance to Charles I., and from Liverpool to compensate it for losses during the war. But the inhabitants of those towns were not tempted any more than those of Bristol had been in the case of Waterford. 'Poor Galway,' wrote a clergyman in 1657, 'sitteth in the dust and no eye pitieth her. Her merchants were princes and great among the nations, but now the city which was full of people is solitary and very desolate.' There was talk, but only talk, of introducing a colony of Protestant Dutch. The old citizens were to receive full value for their property and the settlers to give ten years' purchase. As the latter did not come, probably the compensation was not paid, and so the people lingered on or returned after a brief absence. In November 1655 Henry Cromwell reported that all the Irish had been cleared out of Galway, yet as late as August 1659, after he had left Ireland, a fresh order was made to expel 'all the Irish Papists.' The old trade with Spain, which had been interrupted by the long war, did not return, and Galway never recovered its old prosperity. In 1650 a householder had welcomed Lady Fanshawe 'to this desolate city, where you now see the street grown over with grass, once the finest little city in the world'; and so it remained for years.[276] [Sidenote: Difficulties with the towns.] [Sidenote: Workmen allowed to remain.] [Sidenote: Character of English settlers.] [Sidenote: The priests not all expelled.]