coast and the
Shannon, was to be given to the soldiery to plant. Thus, any Irishman
who attempted to escape, would be sure of instant capture and execution.

The Government, as it has been already remarked, reserved the best part
of the land for themselves. They secured the towns, church-lands, and
tithes, and abolished the Protestant Church, with all its officers,
which had been so recently declared the religion of the country. A
"Church of Christ" was now the established religion, and a Mr. Thomas
Hicks was approved by the "Church of Christ" meeting at Chichester
House, as one fully qualified to preach and dispense the Gospel as often
as the Lord should enable him, and in such places as the Lord should
make his ministry most effectual. The Parliament also reserved for
themselves the counties of Dublin, Kildare, Carlow, and Cork; and from
these lands and the church property they were to enrich themselves, and,
with what they could spare, to reward the leading regicides and rebels.
The adventurers were next provided for. They claimed L960,000. This was
divided into three lots, to be paid in lands in Munster, Leinster, and
Ulster. All these were to be drawn by lot; and a lottery was held at
Grocers' Hall, London, which commenced at eight o'clock in the morning,
on the 20th of July, 1653, at which time and place men who professed the
advancement of the Christian religion to be the business of their lives,
openly and flagrantly violated the most solemn and explicit commands of
that very belief which they declared themselves so zealous in upholding.
The soldiers and officers were to obtain whatever was left after the
adventurers had been satisfied.

A book was written by a Franciscan father, called _Threnodia
Hiberno-Catholica, sive Planctus Universalis totius Cleri et Populi
Regni Hiberniae_,[495] in which the writer states he had heard a great
Protestant statesman give three reasons why this transplantation was
confined to the gentry, and why the poor, who had not been either
transported or hanged, were allowed to remain: (1) because the English
wanted them to till the ground; (2) they hoped they would become
Protestants when deprived of their priests; (3) because the settlers
required servants, or else they should have worked for themselves.

But the fatal day at length arrived, and those who had dared to linger,
or to hope that so cruel a sentence would not be finally executed, were
at once undeceived. The commission