Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/251

STATE O* IRELAND. 231 for the Crown. The whole of the immense territory which would thus be acquired these ambitious gentle- men undertook at their own charges to occupy, in the teeth of their Irish owners, to cultivate the land, to build towns, forts, and castles, to fish the seas and rivers, to make roads and establish harbours, and to pay a fixed revenue to the Queen after the third year of their tenure. They proposed to transport from their own neighbourhoods a sufficient number of craftsmen, artificers, and labourers to enable them to make good their ground. The chiefs they would drive away or kill : the poor Irish, even ' the wildest and idlest/ they hoped to compel into ' obedience and civility/ If the Irish nature proved incorrigible, ' they would through idleness offend to die/ The scandal and burden of the Southern Provinces would then be brought to an end. Priests would no longer haunt the churches, the countries possessed by rebels would be in- habited by natural Englishmen ; and Kinsale, Yalentia, Dingle, through which the Spaniards and the French supplied the insurgents with arms, would be^ closed against them and their machinations. The English settlers would have the fish, ' wherein those seas were very fortunate;' and ' the strangers who now sold fish to the country people would be driven to buy for their own markets, to the great enriching of good subjects/ Her Majesty would be spared her present expense, and would be strengthened in the command of the Channel ; while the adventurers asked nothing but the grant, undertaking to do the rest themselves, requiring only