PREFACE THE documents printed in these two volumes form part of a collection I made many years ago, when I had it in mind to write a history of the Commonwealth in Ireland. That intention was never realised for several reasons but chiefly because I felt that the knowledge I possessed of Irish history was insuficient to enable me to deal with the subject adequately. At the time I was of opinion that the view taken by Prendergast in his well-known book-The Commonwealth Settlement of Irelad -was not an entirely impartial one. I thought it possible to present the Crornwellian policy in a more favourable light than either he or Carte, with his royalist predilections, had done. My position was that taken up by Cromwell himself that the conquest and confiscation of Ireland was the divine retribution for the horrid and unprovoked massacre by the Irish Catholics of the English and Scottish settlers in Ireland in the first year of the Rebellion. In this spirit I made these transcripts, and...