Cromwellian land settlement

Cromwellian land settlement, the greatest early modern transformation in Irish landownership, creating an estate system which lasted with minor adjustments until the late 19th century. Indeed it is no accident that J. P. Prendergast's pioneer study, The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland (1865), coincided with the emergence of the Irish land question as a contentious political issue.

Although the Act for Adventurers had raised only £306,718, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland had cost an estimated £3.5 million. Other state creditors, and arrears of pay due to 35,000 soldiers, had thus to be satisfied out of Irish land. The first object under the 1652 act for the settling of Ireland was to identify ‘rebel’ landowners for clearance. The most guilty, including 105 named chief rebels, were subject to execution, banishment, and transportation, while others who had not shown ‘constant good affection’ to parliament were subject to various levels of forfeiture and transplantation to Connacht.

In September 1653 the English parliament set aside four counties (Dublin, Kildare, Carlow, and Cork) for the government, and ten counties (Armagh, Down, Antrim, Laois, Offaly, Meath, Westmeath, Limerick, Tipperary, and Waterford) for division between the adventurers and soldiers, with more land to be provided out of other counties if necessary. A tripartite Civil Survey, by jury inquisition, ‘gross’ estimation, and mapping supervised by William Petty, was ordered. In January 1654 1,500 adventurers began dividing their halves of the ten counties by lot. In this way 1,043 adventurers were eventually assigned 1.1 million acres, 5 per cent of total profitable land, the biggest beneficiaries being London merchants who had recently bought out other investors at knock‐down prices. The 33,419 debentures issued to disbanding soldiers, theoretically convertible into Irish land at the same ‘act‐rates’ as the adventurers, were worth only 12s. 6d. in the pound after the adventurers' share‐out. More land had to be made available but only 11,804 certificates of possession were taken out, most soldiers having sold their debentures cheaply to their land‐hungry officers. Some soldiers, particularly Munster Protestants who had turned coat late in the day, got nothing, as indeed did some adventurers because of the inaccuracies of the ‘gross’ survey. Petty reckoned that 11 million of Ireland's 20 million acres had been confiscated, but Henry Cromwell complained that the land and debt problems were still not fully resolved in 1659. The post‐Restoration books of Survey and Distribution show that Charles II confirmed 7,500 soldiers and 500 adventurers in their lands. In the interim land speculation had continued with Old Protestants in particular rounding off their estates.

The Cromwellian land settlement saw no new wave of immigration. Bottigheimer claims that the adventurers were more interested in a return on their investment than in bringing over English yeomen. By 1657 Catholic tenantry had drifted back into many confiscated territories or had never left, and the 1659 ‘census’ indicates that they still composed three‐quarters of the population. However, Catholic landowners had been displaced from Ulster, Munster, and Leinster by victorious army officers and opportunistic Old Protestants.

Bibliography

Bottigheimer, K. S. , English Money and Irish Land: The ‘Adventurers’ in the Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland (1971)

Hiram Morgan