THE ULSTER CONFLICT Cromwell applied a cruel and ruthless policy of extermination and extirpation in Ireland, partly to avenge the « massacres of 1641 », partly in an attempt to crush Catholic power in Ireland. This involved not only the expropriation of Royalist, mainly Catholic, landowners and the handing over of their land to Protestant adventurers (many of them Cromwell's soldiers), but also a vicious attack on the Catholic peasantry, thousands of whom were either slaughtered, sold into slavery in the West Indies, or driven into the barren west of Ireland under the slogan, « Hell or Connaught ». The new order, in which social and political power was decisively i_n the hands of a class of English Protestant, and often absentee, landlords, remains linked by many people with the hated memory of Cromwell's revenge. The events of these years increased the sense of embattlement in both the Protestant settlers and the Catholic Irish, and the lines of division between the two communities became more definite. In Ulster the Anglican landowners had been and remained opposed to the dissenting Protestantism of the Presbyterian lower classes whom they regarded as a threat to their position. The two sides, however, would always come together against any manifestation of what they considered the Catholic menace. The Presbyterians also remained constitutional monarchists, despite their experience under Charles 1 and much to the disgust of Cromwell, so they gave a cautious welcome to the restoration of the monarchy in England in 1660 in the person of Charles 2. They were cautious because they knew that the Stuarts had been carefully cultivated by the Vatican in their exile in the 1650s. Charles 2 proceeded very circumspectly in the early years of his reign, but he renewed the fears of the Ulster Protestant community towards the end of his reign by evidence of favour towards Catholics. He made a formal conversion to Catholicism on his death bed and his successor, James 2, came to the throne as a Catholic. His pursuance of Catholic policies in England led to his expulsion by the English parliament in 1688. He had undertaken a similar policy of restoring Catholic influence in Ireland by means of his Lord Lieutenant, Richard Talbot, whom he created Earl of Tyrconnel, and this enraged the Protestant community against him. James had fled to France where he sought the help of Louis 15, whose puppet he was, to restore his power. In the meantime the English parliament had appointed William of Orange (then ruler of the Netherlands) as his Protestant succ59
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