Ancestry/Genealogy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_Survey_and_Distribution

Books of Survey and Distribution were compiled around 1680 as the result of the wars of the mid-seventeenth century after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, when the English government needed reliable information on land ownership throughout Ireland to carry out its policy of land confiscation.

The books were used to impose the acreable rent called the Quit Rent, which was payable yearly on lands granted under terms of the Acts of Settlement and Explanation. It is possible to discover to whom, if anyone, the confiscated lands were granted so that we have a record of landowners for 1641 and 1680. As a result, it is possible to determine the amount of lands lost by the 1641 owners after the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and to discover the names of the new proprietors.

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https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Confiscation_in_Irish_history/Chapter_7

CHAPTER VII

JACOBITES AND WILLIAMITES

The dispossessed Irish, with characteristic optimism, did not abandon their hopes of redress, nor desist from their efforts to obtain it.[1] The persistency of Talbot and others of their agents prevailed so far that in 1670 the King ordered Sir Heneage Finch, the Solicitor General, to report on the alleged grievances done to the Irish by the Act of Explanation. The report, professing impartiality, is an excellent example of special pleading. It was easy to prove to the satisfaction of the King that he was not bound to keep the peace extorted from his father's and his own necessities in 1648. As to the unheard innocents. Finch, while admitting that there were over 4000 in this case, declared that many of them would have failed to prove their innocence, and that of those who could have done so most, if not all, had received from the usurper lands in Connaught, and so were not altogether destitute.[2] Both these statements are no doubt to a great extent true. So, too, would seem to be his charge against Talbot and the leading men of the Irish that they had at the time of the passing of the Act made no real effort on behalf of the unheard innocents, since as nomineees it was to their interest not to diminish the limited amount of land available for reprisals; for their own restoration depended on their being enough reprisals left after restoration of innocents to allow of compensation to the Cromwellians actually in possession of their, the nominees, estates.[3]

The King professed himself satisfied with the arguments put before him, and declared his intention of upholding the Acts of Settlement and Explanation.

In 1675 it was brought to his notice that the transplanted persons in Connaught and Clare had as yet received no legal titles to the estates assigned to them by the Cromwellian government.[4] This was set right by the issue of letters patent to the transplanted. In all 580 grants were issued, a number which appears surprisingly small. It is possible, however, as I have already said, that new grants were not considered necessary in cases where the Cromwellians had assigned to the landowners within the various qualifications their proper proportion out of their former estates. In 1684 a "Commission of Grace" was issued, for securing defective titles, and for disposing of lands still in the King's possession. The number of grants under this Commission was 223 and some Catholic landowners at least were included among the grantees. The recipients of grants were to pay a fine which was intended for the benefit of such of the nominees and innocents transplanted to Connaught for whom as yet no compensation had been found. The money however, found its way into the pockets of the Duchess of Cleveland.[5]