’Your very affectionate friend, to love and serve you,

  ‘CHARLES FLEETWOOD.’

He congratulated them that, ’having by the blessing of God obtained their peace, they might sit down in the enjoyment of the enemies’ fields and houses, which they planted not nor built not.  They had no reason to repent their services, considering how great an issue God had given.’  Yet many refused to settle, and sold their debentures to their officers.  What could they do with the farms?  They had no horses or ploughs, no cattle to stock the land, no labourers to till it.  Above all, they had no women.  Flogging was the punishment for amours with Irish girls, and marriage with the idolatrous race was forbidden under heavy penalties.  Hence the soldiers pretended that their wives were converted to Protestantism.  But this was to be tested by a strict examination of each as to the state of her soul, and the means by which she had been enlightened.  If she did not stand the test, her husband was degraded in rank, and, if disbanded, he was liable to be sent to Connaught with the fair seducer.  The charms of the Irish women, however, proved irresistible, and the hearts of the pious rulers were sorely troubled by this danger.

’In 1652, amongst the first plans for paying the army their arrears in land, it was suggested there should be a law that any officers or soldiers marrying Irishwomen should lose their commands, forfeit their arrears, and be made incapable of inheriting lands in Ireland.  No such provision, however, was introduced into the act, because it provided against this danger more effectually by ordering the women to transplant, together with the whole nation, to Connaught.  Those in authority, however, ought never to have let the English officers and soldiers come in contact with the Irishwomen, or should have ordered another army of young Englishwomen over, if they did not intend this provision to be nugatory.  Planted in a wasted country, amongst the former owners and their families, with little to do but to make love, and no lips to make love to but Irish, love or marriage must follow between them as necessarily as a geometrical conclusion follows from the premises.  For there were but few who (in the language of a Cromwellian patriot),

——­’rather than turne From English principles, would sooner burne; And rather than marrie an Irish wife, Would batchellers remain for tearme of life.’

About forty years after the Cromwellian Settlement, and just seven years after the Battle of the Boyne, the following was written:  ’We cannot so much wonder at this [the quick “degenerating” of the English of Ireland], when we consider how many there are of the children of Oliver’s soldiers in Ireland who cannot speak one word of English.  And (which is strange) the same may be said of some of the children of King William’s soldiers who came but t’other day into the country.  This misfortune is owing to the marrying Irishwomen