Cromwell in Ireland
of goodness and industry and ability to do gooa in every way." "You know," goes on Cromwell, "that to withdraw the pay is to let fall the lecture, for who goeth to warfare at his own cost?" Dr. Gardiner quotes this letter as proof that Cromwell had then in his mind only the spiritual welfare of his neighbours. "Pay," "warfare," "at his own cost." I confess I do not read the letter in the same spiritual sense. "Who goeth to war at his own cost?" Precisely. Star chamber, court of wards, ship money, church ritual, prelacy, accusation of the Five Members, prerogative, privilege, and the rest of it—these were but bubbles and surface-currents upon the deep stream of confiscation, by church spoliation and transference of wealth from one class to another, which ran beneath the plan, purpose, and prosecution of the strife. Let us see how this new explanation of the Puritan cry that "the Saints were to possess the earth" applies to the Irish war, upon which Cromwell was now about to enter.
Long before an English soldier set foot in Ireland to attempt the suppression of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, the edict of confiscation had gone forth from the English Parliament. Early in 1642, 2,500,000 acres of Irish land were declared forfeited, and were offered in London as
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