ic policy. He resolved to repeople a very
large section of southern Ireland by driving out the Roman Catholic
inhabitants and giving their lands to English and Scotch Protestants.
It seemed to him the only effectual way of overcoming the resistance
which that island made to English rule. By the use of military power,
backed up by an Act of Parliament, his generals forced the people to
leave their houses and emigrate to the province of Connaught on the
west coast. Part of that district was so barren and desolate that it
was said, "it had not water enough to drown a man, trees enough to
hang him, or earth enough to bury him." Thousands were compelled to
go into this dreary exile, and hundreds of families who refused were
shipped to the West Indies and sold to the planters as slaves for a
term of years,--a thing often done in that day with prisoners of war.

In Scotland also Prince Charles was looked upon as the legitimate
sovereign by a strong and influential party. He found in the brave
Montrose,[1] who was hanged for treason at Edinburgh, and in other
loyal supporters far better friends than he deserved. The Prince came
to Scotland (1650); while there, he was crowned and took the oath of
the Covenant (S438). It must have been a bitter pill for a man of his
free and easy temperament. But worse was to come, for the Scottish
Puritans made him sign a paper declaring that his father had been a
tyrant and that his mother was an idolater. No wonder the caricatures
of the day represented the Scots as holding the Prince's nose to a
grindstone. Later, Prince Charles rallied a small force to fight for
him, but it was utterly defeated at Dunbar (1650).

[1] See "The Execution of Montrose," in Aytoun's "Lays of the Scottish
Cavaliers." Prince Charles basely abandoned Montrose to his fate.

Twelve months afterward, on the anniversary of his defeat at Dunbar,
the Prince made a second attempt to obtain the crown. At the battle
of Worcester Cromwell again routed his forces and brought the war to
an end. Charles escaped in Shropshire, where he hid for a day in an
oak at Boscobel. After many narrow escapes he at length succeeded in
getting out of the country.

454. Cromwell expels Parliament.

Cromwell now urged the necessity of dissolving the "Rump Parliament"
(S450) and of electing a Parliament which should really represent the
nation, reform the laws, and pass a general act of pardon. In his
despatch to the House of