IRELAND
	As in Scotland, Cromwell's actions made him very unpopular in Ireland; as a nominally independent nation, it was effectively conquered by English forces. His suppression of the Royalists in Ireland during 1649 still has a strong resonance for many Irish people; nearly 3,500 people were massacred in Drogheda (around 2,700 Royalist soldiers and all the men in the town carrying arms, including civilians, prisoners, and Catholic priests) after its capture. The event is one of the historical memories that has fuelled Irish-English and Catholic-Protestant strife which has troubled Ireland for over three centuries and continues to do so. Cromwell felt justified in ordering the massacre because the city's defenders had continued to fight after the walls of Drogheda had been breached - in violation of what were then the conventions of warfare;-
	I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches who have imbued their hands in so much innocent blood, and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are the satisfactory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret.
	Cromwell returned to England in May 1650 leaving the English army, under the command of Edmund Ludlow and Henry Ireton, to conquer the whole of Ireland. Ireland was fianlly subdued by the Commonwealth on April 27th, 1653 when Philip O'Reilly surrendered at Cloghoughton.
	The Act for the the Settlement of Ireland was passed in August 1652 and authorized the expropriation of irish lands on a grand scale - eleven million acres out of approximately twenty million. Much of the confiscated land was given to English soldiers in lieu of their pay and they, in turn, sold it to Protestant settlers - by 1656, four-fifths of Irish land had passed into Protestant hands.