' Such was the complete
uprooting of the ancient tenantry or clansmen from their original
holdings, that, during the survey, orders of parliament were issued to
bring back individuals from Connaught to point out the boundaries of
parishes in Munster. It cannot be imputed among the sins so freely
laid to the historical account of the native legislature, that
an Irish parliament had any share in sanctioning this universal
spoliation. Cromwell anticipated the union of the kingdoms by 150
years, when he summoned, in 1653, that assembly over which 'Praise-God
Barebones' presided; members for Ireland and Scotland sat on the same
benches with the commons of England. Oliver's first deputy in the
government of Ireland was his son-in-law Fleetwood, who had married
the widow of Ireton; but his real representative was his fourth son
Henry Cromwell, commander-in-chief of the army. In 1657, the title of
lord deputy was transferred from Fleetwood to Henry, who united the
supreme civil and military authority in his own person until the eve
of the restoration, of which he became an active partisan. We may thus
properly embrace the five years of the Protectorate as a period of
Henry Cromwell's administration.

In the absence of a parliament, the government of Ireland was vested
in the deputy, the commander-in-chief, and four commissioners, Ludlow,
Corbett, Jones, and Weaver. There was, moreover, a high court of
justice, which perambulated the kingdom, and exercised an absolute
authority over life and property greater than even Strafford's Court
of Star Chamber had pretended to. Over this court presided Lord
Lowther, assisted by Mr. Justice Donnellan, by Cooke, solicitor to the
parliament on the trial of King Charles, and the regicide Reynolds.
By this court, Sir Phelim O'Neill, Viscount Mayo, and Colonels O'Toole
and Bagnall were condemned and executed; children of both sexes were
captured by thousands, and sold as slaves to the tobacco-planters of
Virginia and the West Indies. Sir William Petty states that 6,000 boys
and girls were sent to those islands. The number, of all ages, thus
transported, was estimated at 100,000 souls. As to the 'swordsmen'
who had been trained to fighting, Petty, in his _Political Anatomy_,
records that 'the chiefest and most eminentest of the nobility and
many of the gentry had taken conditions from the King of Spain,
and had transported 40,000 of the most active, spirited men, most
acquainted with the dange