however, was far from keeping pace with the influx of consumers.
The necessaries of life were scarce. Conveniences to which every
plain farmer and burgess in England was accustomed could hardly
be procured by nobles and generals. No coin was to be seen except
lumps of base metal which were called crowns and shillings.
Nominal prices were enormously high. A quart of ale cost two and
sixpence, a quart of brandy three pounds. The only towns of any
note on the western coast were Limerick and Galway; and the
oppression which the shopkeepers of those towns underwent was
such that many of them stole away with the remains of their
stocks to the English territory, where a Papist, though he had to
endure much restraint and much humiliation, was allowed to put
his own price on his goods, and received that price in silver.
Those traders who remained within the unhappy region were ruined.
Every warehouse that contained any valuable property was broken
open by ruffians who pretended that they were commissioned to
procure stores for the public service; and the owner received, in
return for bales of cloth and hogsheads of sugar, some fragments
of old kettles and saucepans, which would not in London or Paris
have been taken by a beggar.

As soon as a merchant ship arrived in the bay of Galway or in the
Shannon, she was boarded by these robbers. The cargo was carried
away; and the proprietor was forced to content himself with such
a quantity of cowhides, of wool and of tallow as the gang which
had plundered him chose to give him. The consequence was that,
while foreign commodities were pouring fast into the harbours of
Londonderry, Carrickfergus, Dublin, Waterford and Cork, every
mariner avoided Limerick and Galway as nests of pirates.75