for want of English, who come not over in so great numbers as are requisite.  ’Tis sure that no Englishman in Ireland knows what his children may be as things are now; they cannot well live in the country without growing Irish; for none take such care as Sir Jerome Alexander [second justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland from 1661 to his death in 1670], who left his estate to his daughter, but made the gift void if she married any Irishman;’ Sir Jerome including in this term ’any lord of Ireland, any archbishop, bishop, prelate, any baronet, knight, esquire, or gentleman of Irish extraction or descent, born and bred in Ireland, or having his relations and means of subsistence there,’ and expressly, of course, any ’Papist.’—­’True Way to render Ireland happy and secure; or, a Discourse, wherein ’tis shown that ’tis the interest both of England and Ireland to encourage foreign Protestants to plant in Ireland; in a letter to the Hon. Robert Molesworth.’[1]

[Footnote 1:  Cromwellian Settlement, p.130.]

The impossibility of getting a sufficient number of settlers from England to cultivate the land, produce food, and render the estates worth holding, led to some fraudulent transactions for the benefit of the natives who were ‘loath to leave.’  The officers in various counties got general orders giving dispensations from the necessity of planting with English tenants, and liberty to take Irish, provided they were not proprietors or swordsmen.  But the proprietors who had established friendships with their conquerors secretly became tenants under them to parts of their former estates, ensuring thereby the connivance of their new landlords against their transplantation.  On June 1, 1655, the commissioners for the affairs of Ireland (Fleetwood, lord deputy, one of them), being then at Limerick, discovered this fraud, and issued a peremptory order revoking all former dispensations for English proprietors to plant with Irish tenants; and they enjoined upon the governor of Limerick and all other officers the removing of the proprietors thus sheltered and their families into Connaught, on or before that day three weeks.  But, happily, says Mr. Prendergast, all penal laws against a nation are difficult of execution.  The officers still connived with many of the poor Irish gentry and sheltered them, which caused Fleetwood, then commander of the parliament forces in Ireland, upon his return to Dublin, and within a fortnight after the prescribed limit for their removal was expired, to thunder forth from Dublin Castle a severe reprimand to all officers thus offending.  Their neglect to search for and apprehend the transplantable proprietors was denounced as a great dishonour and breach of discipline of the army; and their entertaining any of them as tenants was declared a hindrance to the planting of Ireland with English Protestants.  ‘I do therefore,’ the order continued, ’hereby order and declare, that if any officer or soldier under my command shall offend by neglect of his duty in searching for and apprehending all such persons as by the declaration of November 30, 1654, are to transplant themselves into Connaught; or by entertaining them as tenants on his lands, or as servants under him, he shall be punished by the articles of war as negligent of his duty, according to the demerit of such his neglect.’