Above : One Of Irish Clan Family Logo

The political organisation was based upon groups of various sizes from the family upwards. The family was the group consisting of the living parents and all their descendants. The fine* was a group related by blood within certain recognised degrees. The sept * was a larger group descended from common parents long since dead. All the members of a sept were nearly related, and in later times bore the same surname. The clan * or house was still larger. Clann means children, and the word therefore implied descent from one ancestor. The tribe * was made up of several septs or clans, and usually claimed, like the subordinate groups, to be descended from a common ancestor. The entire basis, therefore, was kinship. But as strangers were often adopted into all the groups, there was much admixture ; and the theory of common descent became in great measure a fiction except in the leading families.

Above : Picture Of Charles I

In the Declaration issued from Breda before his return to England, Charles had promised that, with certain exceptions—those, as it afterwards appeared, of the regicides who had signed Charles I*s death-warrant—none of his subjects, ” of what degree of guilt soever,” should find, that ” any crime whatsoever ” committed against either his father or himself should ” ever rise in judgment or be brought in question against any of them, to the least endangerment of them, either in their lives, liberties or estates.” This he guaranteed, ” upon the word of a King solemnly given.”

Above : Picture Of Charles II

On September 3rd, 1658, Oliver Cromwell died, and in the following May the army forced Richard, his incapable son, to resign the Protectorship.