slaughters of Herod, has kept a reckoning of the crime that in that hour so notably likened Ireland to Rachel weeping for her children. But there was another army-other of the expatriated-of whom we are not to lose sight, the "Irish Swordmen," so called in the European writings of the time; the Irish regiments. who elected to go into exile, preferring to "roam Where freedom and their God might lead," rather than be bondsman under a bigot-yoke at home. "Foreign nations were apprised by the Kilkenny Articles that the Irish were to be allowed to engage in the service of any state in amity with the Commonwealth. The valor of the Irish soldier was well known abroad. From the time of the Munster plantation by Queen Elizabeth, numerous exiles had taken service in the Spanish army. There were Irish regiments serving in the Low Countries. The prince of Orange declared they were born soldiers;' and Henry the Fourth of France publicly called Hugh O'Neill the third soldier of the age,' and he said there was no nation made better troops than the Irish when drilled. Agents from the King of Spain, the King of Poland, and the Prince de Condé, were now contending for the services of Irish troops. Don Ricardo White, in May, 1652, shipped seven thousand in batches from Waterford, Kinsale, Galway, Limerick, and Bantry, for the King of Spain. Colonel Christopher Mayo got liberty in September, 1652, to beat his drums to raise three thousand for the same king. Lord Muskerry took five thousand to the King of Poland. In July, 1654, three thousand five hundred, commanded by Colonel Edmund Droyer, went to serve the Prince de Condé. Sir Walter Dungan and others got liberty to beat their drums in different garrisons, to a rallying of their men that laid down arms with them in order to a rendezvous, and to depart for Spain. They got permission to march their men together to the different ports, their pipers perhaps playing Ha til, Ha til, Ha til, mi tulidh'- We return, we return no more!* *The tune with which the departing Highlanders usually bid farewell to their native shores."--Preface to Sir Walter Scott's Legend of Montrose, Between 1661 and 1664, thirty-four thousand (of whom few ever saw their loved native land again) were transported into foreign parts." While the roads to Connaught were as I have described witnessing a stream of hapless fugitives-prisoners rather, plodding wearily to their dungeon and grave-a singular scene was going on in London. At an office or bureau appointed for the purpose by government, a lottery was held, whereat the farms, houses, and estates from which the owners had thus been driven, were being "drawn" by or on behalf of the soldiers and officers of the army, and the "adventurers -i. c. petty shopkeepers in London, and others who had lent money for the war on the Irish. The mode of conducting the lottery or drawing was regulated by public ordinance. Not unfrequently a vulgar and illiterate trooper "drew" the mansion and estate of an Irish nobleman, who was glad to accept permission to inhabit, for a few weeks merely, the stable or the cowshed with his lady and children, pending their setting out for Connaught ! This same lottery was the "settlement" (varied a little by further confiscations to the same end forty years subsequently) by which the now existing landed proprietary was "planted" upon Ireland. Between a proprietary thus planted and the bulk of the population, as well as the tenantry under them, it is not to be marvelled that feelings the reverse of cordial prevailed. From the first they scowled at each other. The plundered and trampled people despised and hated the "Cromwellian brood," as they were called, never regarding them as more than vulgar and violent usurpers of other men's estates. The Cromwellians, on the other hand, feared and hated the serf-peasantry, whose secret sentiments and desires of hostility they well knew. Nothing. but the fusing spirit of nationality obliterates such feelings as these; but no such spirit was allowed to fuse the Cromwellian "landlords" and the Irish tenantry. The former were taught + See the case of the then proprietor of the magnificent place now called Woodlands County Dublin.-Crom. Set. Ire. to consider themselves as a foreign garrison, endowed to watch and keep down, and levy a land-tribute off the native tillers of the soil; moreover "the salt of the land," the "elect of the Lord," the ruling class, alone entitled to be ranked as saints or citizens. So they looked to and leaned all on England, without whom they thought they must be massacred. "Aliens in race, in language, and in religion," they had not one tie in common with the subject population; and so both classes unhappily grew up to be what they remain very much in our own day-more of taskmasters and bondsmen than landlords and tenants. LXI. HOW KING CHARLES THE SECOND CAME BACK ON A COMPROMISE. HOW A NEW MASSACRE STORY WAS SET TO WORK. THE MARTYRDOM OF PRIMATE PLUNKETT. OSSESSED or supreme power, Cromwell by a bold stroke of usurpation, now changed the republic to what he called a "protectorate," with himself as 66 Protector;" in other words, a kingdom with Oliver as king, vice Charles, decapitated. This coup d'état completely disgusted the sincere republicans of the Pym and Ludlow school; and on the death of the iron-willed Protector, 3d September, 1658, the whole structure set up by the revolution on the ruins of the monarchy in England tottered and fell. Communication had been opened with the second Charles, a worthless, empty-headed creature, and it was made clear to him, that if he would only undertake not to disturb too much the "vested interests" created during the revolution—that is, if he would undertake to let the "settlement of property" (as they were pleased to call their stealing of other men's estates) alone-his return to the throne might be made easy. Charles was delighted. This proposal only asked of him to sacrifice his friends, now no longer powerful, since they had lost all in his behalf. He acquiesced, and the monarchy was restored. The Irish nobility and gentry, native and Anglo-Irish, who |