Above : Painting Of Hugh O’Neill

When the news of the intended confiscations came to the ears of the Irish whose lands lay within the counties to be planted, it was to them ” as a sentence of death.” The fiat, however, had gone forth against them; no justice, much less mercy, was accorded them. In vain they employed lawyers to plead their cause before the Royal Commission ; the decisions were almost always against them. It mattered little that, in order to justify many of the confiscations, the most absurd pleas had to be resorted to.