of foreign powers. This plan was followed
by his successors in the war, and was perfected by an act of parliament,
banishing all the Catholic officers. Each chieftain, when he surrendered,
stipulated for a certain number of men: every facility was furnished him
to complete his levy; and the exiles hastened to risk their lives in the
service of the Catholic powers who hired them; many in that of Spain,
others of France, others of Austria, and some of the republic of Venice.
Thus the obnoxious population was reduced by the number of thirty, perhaps
forty thousand able-bodied men; but it soon became a question how to
dispose of their wives and families, of the wives and families of those who
had perished by the ravages of disease and the casualties of war, and of
the multitudes who, chased from their homes and employments, were reduced
to a state of titter destitution. These at different times, to the amount
of several

[Footnote 1: Ludlow, ii. 2, 5, 8-11. Heath, 332, 333.]

thousands, were collected in bodies, driven on shipboard, and conveyed to
the West Indies.[1] Yet with all these drains on the one party, and the
continual accession of English and Scottish colonists on the other, the
Catholic was found to exceed the Protestant population in the proportion of
eight to one.[2] Cromwell, when he had reached the zenith of his power, had
recourse to a new expedient. He repeatedly solicited the fugitives, who, in
the reign of the late king, had settled in New England, to abandon their
plantations and accept of lands in Ireland. On their refusal, he made the
same offer to the Vaudois, the Protestants of Piedmont, but was equally
unsuccessful. They preferred their native valleys, though

[Footnote 1: According to Petty (p. 187), six thousand boys and women were
sent away. Lynch (Cambrensis Eversus, in fine) says that they were sold
for slaves. Bruodin, in his Propugnaculum (Pragae, anno 1660) numbers the
exiles at one hundred thousand. Ultra centum millia omnis sexus et aetatis,
e quibus aliquot millia in diversas Americae tabaccarias insulas relegata
sunt (p. 692). In a letter in my possession, written in 1656, it is said:
Catholicos pauperea plenis navibus mittunt in Barbados et insulas Americae.
Credo jam sexaginta millia abivisse. Expulsis enim ab initio in Hispaniam
et Belgium maritis, jam uxores et proles in Americam destinantur.--After
the conquest of Jamaica in 1655, the protector, that he might people it,
resolved