26/56 They were stern Englishmen, impatient of abuses among their own countrymen, and having no more sympathy for Irishmen than for wolves. In the Pale they found that peculation had grown into a custom; the most barefaced frauds had been converted by habit into rights: and a captain's commission was thought ill-handled if it did not yield, beyond the pay, 500 l. They received pay for each hundred men, when only sixty were on the roll. The soldiers, following the example of their leaders, robbed and ground the peasantry. |