Ulster plantation

Ulster plantation, the British colonization of Cos. Armagh, Cavan, Donegal, Fermanagh, Londonderry, and Tyrone, escheated to the crown following the Flight of the Earls. Lord Deputy Chichester favoured a cautious settlement with extensive regrants to natives, even after the unexpected revolt of Sir Cahir O'Doherty. James I, advised by Sir Francis Bacon, preferred the more radical approach advocated by Chief Justice Sir James Ley and Sir John Davies. Their 1609 ‘orders and conditions’ provided the framework for the plantation.

Land was divided into ‘proportions’ of 2,000, 1,500, and 1,000 acres, with three categories of grantee. English and Scottish chief planters (undertakers) had the heaviest responsibilities as regards fortification and settlement. Civil and military servants of the crown in Ireland (servitors) were allowed to have Irish tenants, but could have lower rents if they settled the required number of 24 adult English and Lowland Scots per 1,000 acres. Local recipients (natives) were to pay higher rents and abstain from Irish exactions and tillage methods. The plantation was delayed until Sir Josias Bodley had mapped the country, estimated its acreage, and sorted temporal from spiritual lands. On this basis 28 baronies or ‘precincts’ were established, eight for English undertakers, eight for Scottish ones, and twelve for servitors and natives jointly.

Successful applicants for grants came from lists drawn up in London and Edinburgh. English undertakers received 51 ‘proportions’ of the best quality land, or 18 per cent of the total. Some were nobles hoping to restore their fortunes; most were gentry from East Anglia and the midlands with annual incomes of about £200. Scottish undertakers, mostly from the central lowland belt, received a similar proportion of less profitable lands and being of small means (probably £150 per annum on average) were allotted smaller estates in baronies sprinkled throughtout the escheated counties. A further 10 per cent went to the Irish Society and its associated London companies for the strategic plantation of Londonderry. The servitors, including leading officials such as Chichester, Davies, and Sir William Parsons, the surveyor‐general, local garrison commanders, and Palesmen in Co. Cavan, received 12 per cent. The Church of Ireland received 16 per cent, Trinity College 3 per cent, and local schools, towns, and forts a further 3 per cent.

Native grantees received only 20 per cent of the planted counties. These individuals had assisted the state during the Nine Years War, but even so they were given reduced holdings, often shifted to place them under servitor supervision, and forbidden to buy additional land. Some received life grants only. The promises made to Niall Garbh O'Donnell and Donell O'Cahan, now imprisoned in the Tower of London for alleged involvement in O'Doherty's revolt, were ignored. The rights of freeholders, which the government had vigorously promoted before the Flight, were deliberately disregarded. On the eve of the plantation Sir Toby Caulfeild reported that there was ‘not a more discontented people in Europe’.

In 1610 landless Irish, who were to remove themselves to servitor or church estates, were given a stay of eviction because undertakers had not yet arrived. When undertakers or their agents did appear, tenancies were parcelled out to natives, contrary to plantation rules, because they were willing to pay high rents. Chichester shipped out 6,000 idlemen as mercenaries, but others remained in Ulster, more interested in menacing the plantation as ‘woodkern’ than in farming as tenants. After a further conspiracy involving O'Neills and O'Cahans in 1615, more freeholds were confiscated and a draconian security policy saw the hanging of hundreds of woodkern. Anxieties about the possible return of Hugh O'Neill and speculation in land grants slowed progress. Government inspections, such as Pynnar's survey in 1619, found deficiencies in fortification and settlement, along with slowness in evicting the natives. New patents were eventually issued to errant undertakers in 1628 permitting them to keep native tenants on a quarter of their proportions at double the old rent. However, inability to compete with English and Scottish tenants soon forced the Irish into subsistence on marginal lands.

By 1630 about 6,500 adult British males had settled in the escheated counties. Settlers were now arriving on their own initiative, rather than being brought over from the undertaker's home region. This facilitated a process of colonial spread from ports of entry to the hinterland, and quickly became the dominant migration pattern. Internal migration also developed as tenantry pursued easier tenures and better land. The patterns of settlement were set as early as 1622 and distinct English, Scottish, and Irish localities were emerging. Sixteen new corporate towns were established, tilting the balance in favour of Protestants in the Irish parliament. An infrastructure of roads, inns, and mills developed, and an agrarian export economy emerged strongly and then languished in the 1630s. Gaelic methods of tillage, harvesting, and threshing, which were well suited to local conditions, were slow in disappearing.

Bibliography

Robinson, Philip , The Plantation of Ulster: British Settlement in an Irish Landscape 1600–1670 (1984)

Hiram Morgan