Restoration in Ireland

Restoration

Charles II, already King of Scotland, was proclaimed King in Dublin in May 1660. The King was requested to appoint judges to the courts and call a Parliament of Protestant peers and Commons. The Church of Ireland was requested to be re-established.

The restoration led Catholics to look forward to toleration and land recovery. Confederate Catholics protested their loyalty. Many had shared Charles II’s exile and fought with him on the continent. However, the Protestant army officers who had served the Commonwealth and joined in calling for the King’s return were determined to keep the estates acquired. However, the claims were incompatible.

The Duke of Ormond was viceroy through most of Charles II’s reign through two long terms of office. The Duke of Ormond was a Protestant head of an old English family with many members as Catholics. Although he appeared well-positioned to compromise between key interests in the country, he met some resistance at the English court.

Cromwellian Confiscation

The land question remained a major preoccupation. Cromwellians and Catholics pleaded loyalty to the Crown under the terms of the peace agreement of 1649, and large numbers of individuals petitioned for the return of their lands.

Soldiers and adventurers, other than those who had been refused pardon, kept what they had as of 1659, accepting lands of innocent papists. If they had to give up land, they were to be reprised for the land elsewhere.

Protestants who had fought in the royal forces before 1649 were to obtain whatever land had not been disposed of in the mile along the coasts of Connacht and Clare, in the counties of Donegal, Leitrim, Longford, and Wicklow, and in corporate towns. Certain persons who had followed the King into exile were offered better terms.

The Londonderry plantation land, which had been forfeited to the Crown in 1635 and reconfirmed by Cromwellian charter, was granted a fresh charter in 1662 to the city.

Commission

The King’s declaration in 1660 declared the settlement of the Irish land question as above.  A commission of 36 members was appointed to carry out and give effect to the declaration. A court ruling held that an Act of Parliament was necessary to do so.

Protestants were in a dominant position in Parliament. The number of Catholic lords in the House of Lords had been diminished significantly by being declared outlawed following 1641.

The ultimate bill was strongly anti-Catholic and vested in the Crown. The entire lands in the Cromwellian confiscation, except church lands and lands of so-called innocents (those innocent of participation in the rebellion), were subject to immediate claims to their land. In the case of corporate towns, the innocent papists were to obtain equivalent land in the neighbourhood.

The Act was executed by commissioners who were referred to as a court of claims. The period for claims was limited to 12 months. Most claims were admitted despite restrictive interpretations of the expression “innocent papists.”

566 decrees of innocence were awarded to Catholics and 141 to Protestants through political intervention and other means. Some who had in fact participated in the Confederacy were declared innocent.

Commission Outworking

There was not ultimately enough land to satisfy the court’s decrees. A further Act of Explanation was passed in 1665. Most soldiers and adventurers were obliged to surrender a third of their holdings, which was used to provide land for Protestants who had to make way for Catholics in turn due to the number of innocence declarations granted by the court of claims. These were largely confirmed.

The Act specified the number of Catholics who were to be restored. A further court of claims was appointed to administer the Act of Explanation, comprising five members. It led to a significant exchange of land in Leinster and Munster, with some Catholics recovering former property but Protestant owners still dominant.

In 1675, commissioners were appointed to decide cases of transplanters to Connacht. Some Catholic families and others who had not promised to remain there recovered their original estates. There was an appointment of a Commissioner or court of grace which confirmed effective titles for payment of money.

The ultimate decision was that the share of land held by Catholics was reduced from three-fifths to one-fifth. Some recovered large estates under the settlement, while others recovered nothing. Many of the old English nobility recovered a significant proportion of their lands.