s not exceeding forty
thousand pounds in amount for the payment of the forces, and to imprison or
discharge any person, or remove him from his dwelling into any other place
or country, or permit him to return to his dwelling, as they should see
cause for the advantage of the commonwealth.[1]

I. One of the first cares of the commissioners was to satisfy the claims of
vengeance. In the year 1644 the Catholic nobility had petitioned the
king that an inquiry might be made into the murders alleged to have been
perpetrated on each side in Ireland, and that justice might be executed on
the offenders without distinction of country or religion. To the conquerors
it appeared more expedient to confine the inquiry to one party; and a high
court of justice was established to try Catholics charged with having shed
the blood of any Protestant out of battle since the commencement of the
rebellion in 1641. Donnelan, a native, was appointed president, with
commissary-general Reynolds, and Cook, who had acted as solicitor at the
trial of Charles I., for his assessors. The court sat in great state at
Kilkenny, and thence made its circuit through the island by Waterford,
Cork, Dublin, and other places. Of the justice of its proceedings we have
not the means of forming a satisfactory notion; but the cry for blood was
too violent, the passions of men were too much excited, and the forms of
proceeding too summary to allow the judges to weigh with cool and cautious
discrimination the different cases which came before them. Lords Muskerry
and Clanmaliere, with Maccarthy Reagh, whether they owed it to their
innocence or to the influence of

[Footnote 1: Journals, Aug. 34.]

friends, had the good fortune to be acquitted; the mother of Colonel
Fitzpatric was burnt; Lord Mayo, colonels Tool, Bagnal, and about two
hundred more, suffered death by the axe or by the halter. It was, however,
remarkable, that the greatest deficiency of proof occurred in the province
where the principal massacres were said to have been committed. Of the
men of Ulster, Sir Phelim O'Neil is the only one whose conviction, and
execution, have been recorded.[1]

II. Cromwell had not been long in the island before he discovered that
it was impossible to accomplish the original design of extirpating the
Catholic population; and he therefore adopted the expedient of allowing
their leaders to expatriate themselves with a portion of their countrymen,
by entering into the service