ABSTRACT
The Treaty of Limerick was quite unacceptable to Ireland' s Protestants. The Catholic enthusiasm of the Patriot Parliament had terrified them; they had seen their farms and estates, which, in their view, had been carved out of an empty wilderness, about to be lost. Armed bands of Catholic tories and rapparees, a new kind of bandit, roamed the countryside; pirates attacked the ships which carried Protestant goods abroad. There was lawlessness everywhere. Protestants feIt there was only one safe place to be, and that was on top.
