some fraudulent transactions for the benefit
of the natives who were 'loath to leave.' The officers in various
counties got general orders giving dispensations from the necessity
of planting with English tenants, and liberty to take Irish, provided
they were not proprietors or swordsmen. But the proprietors who had
established friendships with their conquerors secretly became tenants
under them to parts of their former estates, ensuring thereby the
connivance of their new landlords against their transplantation. On
June 1, 1655, the commissioners for the affairs of Ireland (Fleetwood,
lord deputy, one of them), being then at Limerick, discovered this
fraud, and issued a peremptory order revoking all former dispensations
for English proprietors to plant with Irish tenants; and they enjoined
upon the governor of Limerick and all other officers the removing of
the proprietors thus sheltered and their families into Connaught, on
or before that day three weeks. But, happily, says Mr. Prendergast,
all penal laws against a nation are difficult of execution. The
officers still connived with many of the poor Irish gentry and
sheltered them, which caused Fleetwood, then commander of the
parliament forces in Ireland, upon his return to Dublin, and within a
fortnight after the prescribed limit for their removal was expired,
to thunder forth from Dublin Castle a severe reprimand to all
officers thus offending. Their neglect to search for and apprehend
the transplantable proprietors was denounced as a great dishonour and
breach of discipline of the army; and their entertaining any of them
as tenants was declared a hindrance to the planting of Ireland with
English Protestants. 'I do therefore,' the order continued, 'hereby
order and declare, that if any officer or soldier under my command
shall offend by neglect of his duty in searching for and apprehending
all such persons as by the declaration of November 30, 1654, are
to transplant themselves into Connaught; or by entertaining them as
tenants on his lands, or as servants under him, he shall be punished
by the articles of war as negligent of his duty, according to the
demerit of such his neglect.'

The English parliament resolved to clear out the population of all
the principal cities and seaport towns, though nearly all founded and
inhabited by Danes or English, and men of English descent. In order to
raise funds for the war, the following towns were offered to English
merchants f