The predisposing cause, why the Ulster Irish were ready for rebellion was the misery the native inhabitants endured since the Plantation of the six forfeited counties, some thirty odd years before. Even the remnants of the estates allowed them by the Crown were filched from them by the greed and cunning of unscrupulous Commissioners, who enriched themselves on the ruin of the Irish. Prendergast (_Cromwellian Settlement_, pp. 49-50,) thus describes the condition of the old Irish nobility and gentry then:--"Little they (the Planters, who got the forfeited estates) thought or cared how the ancient owner, dispossessed of his lands, must grieve as he turned from the sight of the prosperous stranger to his pining family; daughters, without prospect of preferment in marriage; sons, without fit companions, walking up and down the country with their horses and greyhounds, coshering on the Irish, drinking and gaming and ready for any rebellion; most of his high-born friends wandering in poverty in France and Spain, or enlisted in their armies." The immediate cause of the Rebellion is thus stated:--"A letter was intercepted coming from Scotland to one Freeman of Antrim giving an account that a Covenanting army was ready to come to Ireland under General Lesly, to extirpate the Roman Catholics of Ulster, and leave the Scots in possession of that province; that resolutions to that effect had been taken at their private meetings, as well as to levy heavy fines on such as would not appear at their kirk for the first and second Sunday, and on failure the third, to hang at their own doors without mercy, such as remained obstinate" (Carte's _Ormond_, Vol. I., p. 160). This notion prevailed universally amongst the rebels, and was chiefly insisted on by them as one of the principal reasons of their taking up arms.