titles were again called into question. He
swept down in person into the province, with the commissioners of
plantations at his heels; discovered, to his own complete satisfaction,
that _all_ the titles of all the five western counties were defective,
and that, as a natural consequence, all lapsed to the Crown. The juries
of Mayo, Sligo, and Roscommon were overawed into submission, but the
Galway jury were obstinate, and refused to dispossess the proprietors.
Wentworth thereupon took them back with him to Dublin, summoned them
before the Court of the Castle Chamber, where they were sentenced to pay
a fine of L4,000 each, and the sheriff L1000, and to remain in prison
until they had done so. The unfortunate sheriff died in prison. Lord
Clanricarde, the principal Galway landlord, died also shortly
afterwards, of anxiety and mortification. The others submitted, and were
let off by the triumphant deputy with the surrender, in some cases, of
large portions of their estates, in others of heavy fines.

By these means, and others too long to enter into here, he contrived to
raise the annual Irish revenue to a surplus of L60,000, with part of
which he proceeded to set on foot and equip an army for the king of
10,000 foot and 1,000 horse, ready to be marched at a moment's notice.
This part of the programme was intended as a menace less against Ireland
than England. Charles was to be absolute in both islands, and, to be so,
his Irish subjects were to help him to coerce his English ones.

Let us, however, be just. Strafford was a born tyrant--worse, he was the
champion of an absolutism of the most odious type conceivable, one
which, if successful, would have been a death-blow to English liberty.
But he was also a born ruler. No petty tyrants flourished under his
sway. His hand was like iron upon the plunderers, the pluralists, the
fraudulent officials, gorged with their ill-gotten booty. What he did,
too, he did well. If he struck, he could also protect. He ruthlessly
suppressed the infant woollen trade, believing that it might in time
come to be a rival to the English one, but he was the founder of the
linen trade, and imported Flemish weavers to teach it, and the best
flax-seed to sow in the fields. He cleared the sea of the pirates who
swarmed along the coasts, and had recently burnt the houses and carried
off the inhabitants of several villages. The king's authority once
secured he was anxious to secure to the mass of the peopl