into certain reserved lands set
apart for them.

The person who took the most prominent part in this undertaking was the
well-known Sir John Davis, a distinguished lawyer and writer, who has
himself left us a minute account of his own and his colleagues'
proceedings. That those proceedings should have aroused some slight
excitement and dismay amongst the dispossessed owners was not, perhaps,
astonishing, even to those engaged in it. In some instances, the
proprietors even went the length of bringing lawyers from Dublin, to
prove that their estates could not legally be forfeited through the
attainder of the earls, and to plead, moreover, the king's recent
proclamation which undertook to secure to the inhabitants their
possessions. In reply to this, Sir John Davis and the other
commissioners issued another proclamation. "We published," he says, "by
proclamation in each county, what lands were to be granted to British
undertakers, what to servitors, and what to natives, to the end that the
natives should remove from the precincts allotted to the Britons,
whereupon a clear plantation is to be made of English and Scottish
without Irish." With regard to the rights of the king he is still more
emphatic. "Not only," he says, "his Majesty may take this course
lawfully, but he is bound in conscience to do so."

These arguments, and probably still more the evident uselessness of any
resistance, seem to have had their effect. The discomfited owners
submitted sullenly, and withdrew to the tracts allotted to them. In Sir
John Davis' own neat and incisive words, "The natives seemed not
unsatisfied in reason, though they remained in their passions
discontented, being grieved to leave their possessions to strangers,
which they had so long after their manner enjoyed."

[Illustration: DOORWAY OF ST. CAEMIN'S CHURCH, INISMAIN, ARAN ISLES.]

XXXII.

THE FIRST CONTESTED ELECTION.

In 1613, it was resolved by the Government to summon an Irish
Parliament, for the purpose of giving legality to their recent
proceedings in Ulster, and also to pass an Act of formal attainder upon
the two exiled earls.

The great difficulty felt by the executive was how to secure an adequate
Protestant majority. Even after the recent large introduction of
Protestants the great mass of the freeholders, and nearly all the
burgesses in the towns were still Roman Catholics. In the Upper House,
indeed, the nineteen Protestant bishops and five temporal lord