Cromwell in Ireland
of slaughter is still to be read, thanks to the labour of Mr. Prendergast, and in it we find not only the name of "Oliver Cromwell, member of ye house," but of Elizabeth Austrey, servant to Mr. Cromwell, and a great number of the names of those men who eight years later were to become infamous as the signers of the death warrant of the King.
Nor was the security for the money advanced to be left for later prisage of war. The "two million five hundred thousand acres of profitable land, free from bogs, woods, and mountains," which were at once declared forfeited, did not content that veteran pillager, the first Lord Cork, who had begun his work of acquisition and confiscation more than fifty years earlier. We find this old filibuster writing to Speaker Bulstrode Whitlock in August, 1642, informing the House of Commons that he, Lord Cork, "has already held sessions in the counties of Cork and Waterford, and that, beyond the expectation of all men, he has indicted the following" (then follow the names of a dozen Irish Earls and Lords), "together with all other baronets, knights, esquires, gentlemen, freeholders and Popish priests—in number about eleven hundred—that either dwell in, or have done any rebellious act in these two counties." Mark the "dwell in." The
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