soldiers and adventurers were only to be
dispossessed in case of a sufficiency of reserved lands being found to
compensate them, it followed that the fewer of the original proprietors
that could prove their loyalty the better for the Government. At the
first sitting of the Court of Claims the vast majority of those whose
cases were tried were able thus to prove their innocence; and as all
these had a claim to be reinstated, great alarm was felt, and a clamour
of indignation arose from the new proprietors, at which the Government,
taking alarm, made short work of many of the remaining claims, whereupon
a fresh, and certainly not less reasonable, clamour was raised upon the
other side.

The end of the long-drawn struggle may be stated in a few words. The
soldiers, adventures, and debenture holders agreed at length to accept
two-thirds of their land, and to give up the other third, and on this
arrangement, by slow degrees, the country settled down. As a net result
of the whole settlement we find that, whereas before '41 the Irish Roman
Catholics had held two-thirds of the good land and all the waste, after
the Restoration they held only one-third in all, and this, too, after
more than two millions of acres previously forfeited had been
restored to them.

XLII.

OPPRESSION AND COUNTER OPPRESSION.

No class of the community suffered more severely from the effects of the
Restoration than the Presbyterians of Ulster. The church party which had
returned to Ireland upon the crest of the new wave signalized its return
by a violent outburst of intolerance directed not so much against the
Papists as the Nonconformists. Of the 300,000 Protestants, which was
roughly speaking the number calculated to be at that time in Ireland,
fully a third were Presbyterians, another 100,000 being made up of
Puritans and other Nonconformists, leaving only one-third Churchmen.
Against the two former, but especially against the Presbyterians, the
terrors of the law were now put in force. A new Act of Uniformity was
passed, and armed with this, the bishops with Bramhall, the Primate, at
their head, insisted upon an acceptance of the Prayer-book being
enforced upon all who were permitted to hold any benefice, or to teach
or preach in any church or public place.

The result was that the Presbyterians were driven away in crowds from
Ireland. Out of seventy ministers in Ulster, only eight accepted the
terms and were ordained; all the remainder w