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The Plantation of Ulster (Irish: Plandáil Uladh) was planned in 1598 with the process of colonisation taking place in 1609. All the estates of the O'Neills, the Earls of Tyrone, the O'Donnells of Tyrconnell and their chief supporters were confiscated. The estates comprised an estimated half a million acres (4,000 km²) of land (waste, woodland and bog were uncounted) in the counties of Donegal, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan, Coleraine (Londonderry) and Armagh in the northern Irish province of Ulster.

'British’ tenants', a term applied to the Protestant English and Scottish planters of whom the Scottish were usually Presbyterian and "persecuted" Dissenters, were then settled on land which had been confiscated from Irish landowners. The Plantation of Ulster was the biggest and most successful of the Plantations of Ireland. Ulster was settled in this way to prevent further rebellion as it had proved itself over the preceding century to be the most resistant of Ireland's provinces to English invasion.

Planning the plantation

Prior to its conquest in the Nine Years War of the 1590s, Ulster had been the most Gaelic part of Ireland, a province existing largely outside English control. An early attempt at plantation in the 1570s on the east coast of Ulster by Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex, had failed (See Plantations of Ireland).

The Nine Years War ended in 1603 with the surrender of the O’Neill and O’Donnell lords to the English crown, following an extremely costly series of campaigns by the English in which they had to counter significant Spanish aid to the Irish. But the situation following the peace was far more propitious for colonisation schemes, and much of the legal groundwork was laid by Sir John Davies, then attorney general of Ireland.

The terms of surrender granted to the rebels in 1603 were generous, with the principal condition that lands formerly contested by feudal right and brehon law be held under English law. However, when Hugh O'Neill and other rebel aristocrats left Ireland in the Flight of the Earls in 1607 to seek Spanish help for a new rebellion, Lord Deputy Arthur Chichester seized their lands and prepared to colonise the province in a fairly modest plantation. This would have included large grants of land to native Irish lords who had sided with the English during the war, for example Niall Garve O'Donnell. However, the plan was interrupted by the rebellion in 1608 of Cahir O'Doherty of Donegal, a former ally of the English and the rebellion was put down by Wingfield. After O'Doherty's death his lands at Inishowen were granted out by the state, and eventually escheated to the Crown. This episode prompted Chichester to expand his plans to expropriate the legal titles of all native landowners in the province.

The Plantation of Ulster was sold to James I, king of England, Scotland and Ireland, as a joint British venture to pacify and civilise Ulster. At least half the settlers would be Scots. Five counties were involved in the official plantation — Donegal, Coleraine, Tyrone, Fermanagh and Armagh.

The plan for the plantation was determined by two factors. One was the wish to make sure the settlement could not be destroyed by rebellion as the first Munster Plantation had been. This meant that, rather than settling the planters in isolated pockets of land confiscated from convicted rebels, all of the land would be confiscated and then redistributed to create concentrations of British settlers around new towns and garrisons. What was more, the new landowners were explicitly banned from taking Irish tenants and had to import workers from England and Scotland. The remaining Irish landowners were to be granted one quarter of the land in Ulster. The peasant Irish population was intended to be relocated to live near garrisons and Protestant churches. Moreover, the planters were barred from selling their lands to any Irishman and were required to build defences against any possible rebellion or invasion. The settlement was to be completed within three years. In this way, it was hoped that a defensible new community composed entirely of loyal British subjects would be created.

The second major influence on the Plantation was the negotiation among various interest groups on the British side. The principal landowners were to be Undertakers, wealthy men from England and Scotland who undertook to import tenants from their own estates. They were granted around 3000 acres (12 km²) each, on condition that they settle a minimum of 48 adult males (including at least 20 families), who had to be English-speaking and Protestant. However, veterans of the Nine Years War (known as Servitors) led by Arthur Chichester successfully lobbied to be rewarded with land grants of their own. Since these former officers did not have enough private capital to fund the colonisation, their involvement was subsidised by the twelve great guilds. Livery companies from the City of London were coerced into investing in the project, as were The City of London guilds which were also granted land on the west bank of the River Foyle, to build their own city (Londonderry near the older Derry) as well as lands in County Londonderry. The final major recipient of lands was the Protestant Church of Ireland, which was granted all the churches and lands previously owned by the Roman Catholic Church. The British government intended that clerics from England and the Pale would convert the native population to Protestantism. There was also the plantation of Munster and Leinster.

Plantation in operation

The plantation was a mixed success. About the time the Plantation of Ulster was planned, the Virginia Plantation at Jamestown in 1607 started. The London guilds planning to fund the Plantation of Ulster switched and backed the London Virginia Company instead. Many British Protestant settlers went to Virginia or New England in the New World rather than to Ulster. By the 1630s, there were 20,000 adult male British settlers in Ulster, which meant that the total settler population could have been as high as 80,000. They formed local majorities of the population in the Finn and Foyle valleys (around modern Derry and east Donegal), in north Armagh and in east Tyrone. Moreover, there had also been substantial settlement on officially unplanted lands in south Antrim and north Down, sponsored by the Scottish landowner James Hamilton. What was more, the settler population grew rapidly, as just under half of the planters were women — a very high ratio compared to contemporary Spanish settlement in Latin America or early English settlement in Virginia.

Other aspects of the original plan proved unrealistic, however. Because of political uncertainty in Ireland and the risk of attack by the dispossessed Irish, the undertakers had difficulty attracting settlers (especially from England). They were forced to keep Irish tenants, thus destroying the original plan of segregation between settlers and natives. As a result, the Irish population was neither removed nor Anglicised. In practice, the settlers did not stay on bad land, but clustered around towns and the best land. This meant that, contrary to the terms of the plantation, many British landowners had to take Irish tenants. In 1609, Chichester had 1300 former Irish soldiers deported from Ulster to serve in the Swedish Army. The province remained plagued with native Irish bandits, known as "wood-kerne", who attacked settlers out of anger at their land being taken away.

The attempted conversion of the Irish to Protestantism had mixed effect. The clerics imported were usually all English speakers, whereas the native population were usually monoglot Gaelic speakers. However, ministers chosen to serve in the plantation were required to take a course in the Irish language before ordination, and nearly 10% of those who took up their preferments spoke it fluently. Of those Catholics who did convert to Protestantism, many made their choice for social and political reasons.

Wars of the Three Kingdoms and Ulster Plantation

In the 1640s, the Ulster Plantation was thrown into turmoil by civil wars that raged in Ireland, England, and Scotland. The wars saw Irish rebellion against the planters, twelve years of bloody war, and ultimately the re-conquest of the province by the English parliamentary New Model Army that confirmed English and Protestant dominance in the province.

After 1630, Scottish migration to Ireland waned for a decade. In the 1630s many Scots went home after King Charles I of England forced the Prayer Book of the Church of England on the Church of Ireland, thus compelling the Presbyterian Scots to change their form of worship. In 1638 Scots in Ulster had to take 'the Black Oath' against taking up arms against the King. At the same time in Scotland, the Bishops Wars was a Presbyterian uprising against King Charles I. The King subsequently raised an army largely composed of Irish Catholics, and sent them to Ulster in preparation to invade Scotland in his defense. This prompted the English and Scottish Parliaments to threaten an invasion of Ireland to subdue the Catholics there. The Gaelic Irish gentry in Ulster, led by Phelim O'Neill and Rory O'More, planned a rebellion to take over the administration in Ireland and preempt an anti-Catholic invasion.

On October 23rd, 1641, the native Gaelic Ulster Catholics broke out arms in the Irish Rebellion of 1641. The mobilised natives turned on the British planter population, massacring about 4000 settlers and expelling about 12,000 more. The initial leader of the rebellion, Phelim O'Neill, had actually been a beneficiary of the Plantation land grants. Most of his supporters' families had been dispossessed and were likely motivated by the desire to recover their ancestral lands. Many planter survivors rushed to the seaports and went back to Scotland or England. This massacre, and the reprisals that followed, permanently soured the relationship between planter and native communities.

In the summer of 1642, some 10,000 Scottish Covenanter soldiers, including some Highlanders, arrived to quell the Irish rebellion. In revenge for the massacres of Protestants, the Scots committed many atrocities against the Catholic population. However, civil war in England and Scotland (the Wars of the Three Kingdoms) broke out before the rebellion could be put down. Based in Carrickfergus, the Scottish army fought in Ireland until 1650 in the Irish Confederate Wars. Many stayed on in Ireland afterward with the permission of the Cromwellian authorities. In the northwest of Ulster, the Planters around Derry and east Donegal organised the Lagan Army in self defence. The Protestant forces fought an inconclusive war with the Ulster Catholics led by Owen Roe O'Neill. All sides committed atrocities against civilians in this war, exacerbating the population displacement begun by the Plantation.

In addition to fighting the native Ulster Catholics, the British settlers fought each other in 1648-49 over the issues of the English Civil War. The Scottish Presbyterian army sided with the King and the Lagan Army sided with the English Parliament. In 1649-50, the New Model Army, along with some of the British planter Protestants under Charles Coote, defeated both the Scottish forces in Ulster and the native Ulster Catholics.

As a result, the English Parliamentarians or Cromwellians (after Oliver Cromwell) were generally hostile to Scottish Presbyterians after they re-conquered Ireland from the Catholic Confederates in 1649-53. The main beneficiaries of the postwar Cromwellian Plantation in Ulster were English Protestants like Sir Charles Coote, who had taken the Parliament's side over the King or the Scottish Covenanters in the Civil Wars. The Wars eliminated the last major Catholic landowners in Ulster.

Ulster Plantation and the Scottish border problem

Most of the Scottish planters came from southwest Scotland, but many also came from the unstable regions along the border with England. The plan was that moving Borderers (see Border Reivers) to Ireland (particularly to County Fermanagh) would both solve the Border problem and tie down Ulster. This was of particular concern to James VI of Scotland when he became King of England, since he knew Scottish instability could jeopardise his chances of ruling both kingdoms effectively.

Another wave of Scottish immigration to Ulster took place in the 1690s, when tens of thousands of Scots fled a famine in the borders region. It was at this point that Scottish Presbyterians became the majority community in the province. These planters are often referred to as Ulster-Scots. Despite the fact that Scottish Presbyterians strongly supported the Williamites in the Williamite war in Ireland in the 1690s, they were excluded from power in the postwar settlement by the Anglican Protestant Ascendancy.

As a result, the descendants of the Presbyterian planters played a major part in the 1798 rebellion against British rule. Not all of the Scottish planters were Lowlanders, however, and there is also evidence of Scots from the southwest Highlands settling in Ulster. Many of these would have been Gaelic speakers like the native Ulster Catholics.

Legacy

The Plantation of Ulster is often considered the origin of sectarian strife in the northern Irish province. The Planters of the 17th century are often considered the ancestors of todays primarily Protestant Unionist community, who dsire to maintain the link with Britain. For instance, historian Tim Pat Coogan wrote in 1995, "the planters' descendants still live in the area, some of them as keenly aware of the dangers, real and imagined, posed by their Catholic neighbours as were their ancestors during the periods of ferocious warfare that ensued between Catholics and Protestants in the seventeenth century" . Conversely, the mostly Catholic Irish nationalist community is often thought of as being the descendant of the natives dispossessed by the Plantation.

Historian Richard English has written that, "not all of those of British background in Ireland owe thier Irish residence to the Plantations... yet the Plantation did produce a large British/English interest in Ireland, a significant body of Irish Protestants who were tied through religion and politics to English power .

It is also commonly held that Catholics tend to have Irish surnames while Protestants tend can be identified by English or Scottish ones. However, historian of 17th century Ulster John McCavitt has warned, "just in general terms, it could be pointed out that although surnames are often a guide to our ancestors, they should not always be taken as such...There is more cross breeding in Ulster's history than people imagined. For example, it is often stated that Ken Magennis' surname is closer to original Irish than Martin McGuinness. Another good example is Terence O'Neill former Prime Minister of NI who is descended from the famous O'Neill clan in Ulster. There is more cross breeding in Ulster's history than people imagined. "

The Plantation, as the origin of ethno-religious division in Ulster, is sometimes cited as being the long term cause of the Partition of Ireland in 1921.

According to John McCavitt, "The Ulster Plantation encompassed six of the historic nine counties in Ulster ... The unofficial Plantation of Ulster comprised the counties of Antrim and Down. "Private" settlement had been occuring here from 1603." Protestant settlement was most dense in the East. Gradually becoming less dense the further West. Thus at the time of Partition in 1921, it was the western counties such as Donegal that was not included in the new Northern Ireland because it's population was predominantly Catholic. Within Northern Ireland, there are also settlement patterns which reflect the mould of the Plantation of Ulster. In areas that were known as precincts granted to English and Scottish settlers, it was stipulated in the conditions of the Ulster Plantation that the Catholic Irish popuulation was to be totally removed. This did not always happen in practice, but the fact that north Armagh is predominantly Protestant reflects the fact that a certain degree of "segregation" has resulted.

However it has also been argued that the politics of modern Ulster unionists can be traced back no further than the late 19th century. And that, for example in the late 18th century, many Ulster Protestants subscribed to the seperatist nationalism of the Society of the United Irishmen. According to socialist writer Thomas A. Jackson, writing in 1951, it is a “complete fallacy” to point to the Plantation as the origin of modern Northern Ireland. In Ireland Her Own Jackson notes that four out of the six counties planted were never part of “Orange” Ulster until the Partition of Ireland. In addition, he writes that since the two mainly “Protestant” counties, Antrim and Down, were never part of the plantation, this “destroy the myth.”

References

1. T. A. Jackson, Pg.51
2. Edmund Curtis, Pg.198
3. T.W Moody & F.X. Martin, Pg.190
4. Edmund Curtis, Pg.198
5. T. A. Jackson,Pg.52
6. Padraig O Snodaigh,
7. Marianne Elliott,
8. Tim Pat Coogan, Pg.6
9. Richard English, Pg.59
10. http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/talkni/ask_ulster_plantation.shtml
11. http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/talkni/ask_ulster_plantation.shtml
12. http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/talkni/ask_ulster_plantation.shtml
13. T. A. Jackson, Pg.52

Bibliography

• T. A. Jackson, Ireland Her Own, Lawrence & Wishart (London) 1991 (New Edition), ISBN 0 85315 735 9
• Edmund Curtis, A History of Ireland: From Earliest Times to 1922, Routledge (2000 RP), ISBN 0 415 27949 6
• T.W Moody & F.X. Martin, The Course of Irish History, Mercier Press 1984 (Second Edition). ISBN 0-85342-715-1
• Marianne Elliott, The Catholics of Ulster: A History
• Padraig O Snodaigh, Hidden Ulster, Protestants and the Irish language
• Richard English, Irish Freedom, The History of Nationalism in Ireland.
• Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles.

External links

• Information on the Plantation of Ulster at 'The Flight Of The Earls' by Irish History expert Dr John McCavitt FRHistS
• BBC History: Plantation of Ulster
• Catholics of Ulster: A History
• Hidden Ulster, Protestants and the Irish language.

• History of Ireland
• Human migration
• Settlement schemes