The penalties against the tories themselves were to allow them no quarter when caught, and to set a price upon their heads.  The ordinary price for the head of a tory was 40 s.; for leaders of tories, or distinguished men, it varied from 5 l. to 30 l.

‘But,’ continues Mr. Prendergast, ’a more effective way of suppressing tories seems to have been to induce them, as already mentioned, to betray or murder one another—­a measure continued after the Restoration, during the absence of parliaments, by acts and orders of state, and re-enacted by the first parliament summoned after the Revolution, when in that and the following reigns almost every provision of the rule of the parliament of England in Ireland was re-enacted by the parliaments of Ireland, composed of the soldiers and adventurers of Cromwell’s day, or new English and Scotch capitalists.  In 1695 any tory killing two other tories proclaimed and on their keeping was entitled to pardon—­a measure which put such distrust and alarm among their bands on finding one of their number so killed, that it became difficult to kill a second.  Therefore, in 1718, it was declared sufficient qualification for pardon for a tory to kill one of his fellow-tories.  This law was continued in 1755 for twenty-one years, and only expired in 1776.  Tory-hunting and tory-murdering thus became common pursuits.  No wonder, therefore, after so lengthened an existence, to find traces of the tories in our household words.  Few, however, are now aware that the well-known Irish nursery rhymes have so truly historical a foundation:—­

  ‘Ho! brother Teig, what is your story?’
  ‘I went to the wood and shot a tory:’ 
  ‘I went to the wood, and shot another;’
  ‘Was it the same, or was it his brother?’

  ’I hunted him in, and I hunted him out,
  Three times through the bog, and about and about;
  Till out of a bush I spied his head,
  So I levelled my gun and shot him dead.’

After the war of 1688, the tories received fresh accessions, and, a great part of the kingdom being left waste and desolate, they betook themselves to these wilds, and greatly discouraged the replanting of the kingdom by their frequent murders of the new Scotch and English planters; the Irish ‘choosing rather’ (so runs the language of the act) ’to suffer strangers to be robbed and despoiled, than to apprehend or convict the offenders.’  In order, therefore, for the better encouragement of strangers to plant and inhabit the kingdom, any persons presented as tories, by the gentlemen of a county, and proclaimed as such by the lord lieutenant, might be shot as outlaws and traitors; and any persons harbouring them were to be guilty of high treason.[1] Rewards were offered for the taking or killing of them; and the inhabitants of the barony, of the ancient native race, were to make satisfaction for all robberies and spoils.  If persons were maimed or dismembered by tories, they were to be compensated by 10 l.; and the families of persons murdered were to receive 30 l.’