ellor of Ireland, the Right Hon. Thomas O'Hagan,--the first
Catholic chancellor since the Revolution. Descended from the O'Hagans,
who were hereditary justiciaries and secretaries to the O'Neill, he
is, by universal consent, one of the ablest and most accomplished
judges that ever adorned the Irish Bench. His ancestors were involved
in the fortunes of Tyrone. How strange that the representative of the
judicial and literary clan of ancient Ulster should now be the head of
the Irish magistracy!]

[Footnote 1: Meehan, p.317.]

CHAPTER X.

THE PLANTATION OF ULSTER.

In the account which the lord deputy gave of the flight of Tyrone
and Tyrconnel, he referred to the mistake that had been committed in
making these men proprietary lords of so large a territory, '_without
regard to the poor freeholders' rights, or of his majesty's service,
or the commonwealths, that are so much interested in the honest
liberty of that sort of men_.' And he considered it a providential
circumstance that the king had now an opportunity of repairing that
error, and of relieving the natives from the exactions and tyranny of
their former barbarous lords. How far this change was a benefit to
the honest freeholders and the labouring classes may be seen from the
reports of Sir Toby Caulfield to the lord deputy, as to his dealings
with those people. He complains of his ill success in the prosecution
of the wood-kerne. He had done his best, and all had turned to
nothing. When the news of the plantation came, he had no hope at all,
for the people then said it would be many of their cases to become
wood-kerne themselves out of necessity, 'no other means being left for
them to keep being in this world than to live as long as they could
by scrambling.' They hoped, however, that so much of the summer being
spent before the commissioners came down, 'so great cruelty would not
be showed as to remove them upon the edge of winter from their
houses, and in the very season when they were employed in making their
harvest. They held discourse among themselves, that if this course had
been taken with them in war time, it had had some colour of justice;
but being pardoned, and their land given them, and they having lived
under law ever since, and being ready to submit themselves to the
mercy of the law, for any offence they can be charged withal, since
their pardoning, they conclude it to be the greatest cruelty that was
ever inflicted upon any people.'