The 'graces' promised by Charles I. in 1628 demonstrate the real wretchedness of the country to which they were deceitfully offered, and from which they were treacherously withdrawn. From them we learn that the Government soldiers were a terror to more than the king's enemies, that the king's rents were collected at the sword's point, and that numerous monopolies and oppressive taxes impoverished the country. There was little security for estates in any part of Ireland, and none at all for estates in Connaught. No man could sue out livery for his lands without first taking the oath of the royal supremacy. The soldiers enjoyed an immunity in the perpetration of even capital crimes, for the civil power could not touch them. Those who were married, or had their children baptized, by Roman Catholic priests, were liable to fine and censure. The Protestant bishops and clergy were in great favour and had enormous privileges. The patentees of dissolved religious houses claimed exemption from various assessments. The ministers of the Established Church were entitled to the aid of the Government in exacting reparation for clandestine exercises of spiritual jurisdiction by Roman Catholic priests, and actually appear to have kept private prisons of their own. They exacted tithes from Roman Catholics of everything titheable. The eels of the rivers and lakes, the fishes of the sea paid them toll. The dead furnished the mortuary fees to the 'alien church' in the shape of the best clothes which the wardrobe of the defunct afforded. The government of Wentworth, better known as the Earl of Strafford, is highly praised by high churchmen and admirers of Laud, but was execrated by the Irish, who failed to appreciate the mercies of his star-chamber court, or to recognise the justice of his fining juries who returned disagreeable verdicts. The list of grievances, transmitted by the Irish House of Peers in 1641 to the English Government, cannot be regarded as altogether visionary, for it was vouched by the names of lords, spiritual and temporal, whose attachment to the English interest was undoubted. The lord chancellor (Loftus), the archbishop of Dublin (Bulkeley), the bishops of Meath, Clogher, and Killala were no rebels, and yet they protested against the grievances inflicted on Ireland by the tyranny of Strafford. According to these contemporary witnesses, the Irish nobles had been taxed beyond all proportion to the English nobles; Irish peers had been sent to prison although not impeached of treason or any capital offence; the deputy had managed to keep all proxies of peers in the hands of his creatures, and thus to sway the Upper House to his will; the trade of the kingdom had been destroyed; and the 'graces' of 1628 had been denied to the nation, or clogged by provisoes which rendered them a mockery. And yet, in the face of such evidence of misery and misgovernment, the Archbishop of Dublin asserted in a charge to his clergy, that 'all contemporary writers