ister kingdoms. The work of conquest had been continued
by Ireton, and completed after his death by General Ludlow, as
mercilessly as it had begun. Thousands perished by famine or the sword.
Shipload after shipload of those who surrendered were sent over sea for
sale into forced labour in Jamaica and the West Indies. More than forty
thousand of the beaten Catholics were permitted to enlist for foreign
service, and found a refuge in exile under the banners of France and
Spain. The work of settlement, which was undertaken by Henry Cromwell,
the younger and abler of the Protector's sons, turned out to be even
more terrible than the work of the sword. It took as its model the
Colonization of Ulster, the fatal measure which had destroyed all hope
of a united Ireland, and had brought inevitably in its train the revolt
and the war. The people were divided into classes in the order of their
assumed guilt. All who after trial were proved to have personally taken
part in the "massacre" were sentenced to banishment or death. The
general amnesty which freed "those of the meaner sort" from all question
on other scores was far from extending to the landowners. Catholic
proprietors who had shown no goodwill to the Parliament, even though
they had taken no part in the war, were punished by the forfeiture of a
third of their estates. All who had borne arms were held to have
forfeited the whole, and driven into Connaught, where fresh estates were
carved out for them from the lands of the native clans. No such doom had
ever fallen on a nation in modern times as fell upon Ireland in its new
settlement. Among the bitter memories which part Ireland from England
the memory of the bloodshed and confiscation which the Puritans wrought
remains the bitterest; and the worst curse an Irish peasant can hurl at
his enemy is "the curse of Cromwell." But pitiless as the Protector's
policy was, it was successful in the ends at which it aimed. The whole
native population lay helpless and crushed. Peace and order were
restored, and a large incoming of Protestant settlers from England and
Scotland brought a new prosperity to the wasted country. Above all, the
legislative union which had been brought about with Scotland was now
carried out with Ireland, and thirty seats were allotted to its
representatives in the general Parliament.

[Sidenote: Settlement of England.]

In England Cromwell dealt with the Royalists as irreconcileable enemies;
but in every ot