After the Flight of the Earls and the Plantation of Ulster the situation changed. Sway had forsaken the Gael, and a Parliament which native chiefs might control was no longer to be feared. As for the mass of the people, if the manufacture of a majority were attended to with foresight the Deputy knew they could easily be mastered. Conquered Ireland was now shired and sheriffed, with 17 new counties added. In the previous Parliament of Elizabeth only fifteen counties were represented. The drawback that the greater part of the inhabitants of the island were Catholics was one which called for circumspection lest a majority of their representatives should belong to that “damnable superstition.” It had become a cardinal part of State policy that the handful of imported Protestants should control everything, and arrangements were made accordingly. In 1612 the King agreed that a Parliament should be summoned for the following year, and the Deputy was to see to it that the Planters should be enabled to outvote the natives. When Henry VIII. shired Wales, and admitted its representatives to a voice at Westminster, a different spirit prevailed. No trickery was practised on the Cymri; but in Ireland King James issued charters to 40 hamlets whereby sham “Corporations” exclusively Protestant, returning two members each, were set up at various cross-roads. In the quaint language of the day:—“They were erected in places that constantly pass the rank of the poor villages in the poorest country in Christendom.” Bunches of “freemen,” numbering a dozen or a score, were named in each charter to elect a brace of representatives, and thus at a stroke 80 reliable Protestants were secured. The sheriffs did the rest. In 1613 by this strategy a Protestant majority of 28 was created in the House of Commons of a country where the Catholics were twenty to one. To mark the King’s approval of Chichester’s courses he was made a peer and highly commended.