Plantation of Ulster (1609): English and Scottish Colonists

The Plantation of Ulster was the organised settlement of English and Scottish Protestants on land in the north of Ireland confiscated from Gaelic Irish lords, carried out under James I from 1609. It followed the defeat of the Ulster lords in the Nine Years’ War and the departure of the earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell in 1607. The plantation transformed the landscape, towns and population of Ulster and laid the foundations of religious and political divisions that lasted into the twenty-first century.

Background: from Gaelic Ulster to confiscation

Before 1600 Ulster was the most Gaelic province of Ireland, dominated by lords such as the O’Neills of Tyrone and the O’Donnells of Tyrconnell. Previous English attempts to plant colonies there, such as the Earl of Essex’s venture in Antrim in the 1570s, had failed.

The Nine Years’ War (1593–1603) ended in English victory, but the Gaelic lords kept much of their land. When Hugh O’Neill and Rory O’Donnell sailed into exile in September 1607, an event remembered as the Flight of the Earls, the government declared their lands forfeit. A short rebellion by Sir Cahir O’Doherty in 1608 added Inishowen to the confiscations. In total, the crown claimed most of six counties.

Even before this, private settlement had begun in Antrim and Down, which lay outside the official scheme. From 1606 the Scottish lairds James Hamilton and Hugh Montgomery brought many lowland Scots across the narrow sea to lands obtained from the Gaelic lord Con O’Neill.

Planning the plantation

James I, now ruling England, Scotland and Ireland after the Union of the Crowns, saw the confiscation as a chance to make Ulster secure. His Lord Deputy in Dublin, Sir Arthur Chichester, and the Attorney-General, Sir John Davies, surveyed the land in 1608 and 1609. The “Orders and Conditions” for the plantation were published in 1609.

Land was divided into estates called proportions of about 1,000, 1,500 or 2,000 plantation acres. Because only profitable land was counted, the real estates were often much larger. Grantees fell into three groups:

• Undertakers, English and Scottish gentlemen who undertook to settle British tenants and were not supposed to keep Irish tenants.
• Servitors, mostly army officers and officials who had served the crown in Ireland; they could take Irish tenants but paid higher rent.
• Deserving native Irish, Gaelic landholders judged loyal, who received smaller grants, also at higher rent.

Undertakers had to build defences: a castle and bawn (a walled enclosure) on the largest estates, a stone or brick house with a bawn on the middle ones, and at least a bawn on the smallest. They were also expected to settle a set number of British men on each estate, usually given as 24 adult men from at least ten families per 1,000 acres. Land was also set aside for the Protestant Church of Ireland, for schools and for Trinity College Dublin.

The City of London and Londonderry

James persuaded the City of London to take on the county of Coleraine. Under an agreement of 1610, the City and its livery companies funded settlement, and in 1613 the Irish Society was created to manage it. The county was enlarged and renamed Londonderry, and the town of Derry was rebuilt as Londonderry, with stone walls completed by about 1619. Coleraine was also rebuilt. Each of the twelve great livery companies, such as the Goldsmiths and the Grocers, received its own estate.

How the plantation worked in practice

Grants were distributed from 1610, and settlers began arriving in numbers. They founded or rebuilt towns such as Enniskillen, Cavan, Strabane and Dungannon, introduced English-style farming and markets, and built churches, mills and fortified houses.

Results fell short of the plans. Government surveys by Sir George Carew in 1611, Sir Josias Bodley in 1613 and Nicholas Pynnar in 1618 and 1619 found that many grantees had not built what they promised or brought enough settlers. Because British tenants were hard to find, many undertakers kept Irish tenants, who often paid higher rents. The result was a patchwork in which settlers and native Irish lived side by side, but with land and power largely in settler hands.

Settlers brought new forms of landholding, leases and written contracts, and they cleared woodland for farms and timber. Many Irish families were pushed onto poorer or upland ground, while others remained close to the new settlements as tenants, herders and labourers. Irish and English law, language and religion now existed side by side, often uneasily, and the Catholic clergy continued to minister to the native population despite official hostility.

The settlers were not a single group. English settlers, more common in Armagh, Fermanagh and the London estates, generally belonged to the established Church of Ireland. Many of the Scots came from the south-west of Scotland and brought a Presbyterian outlook that would later make them uneasy partners of the Anglican establishment.

Scots were especially numerous, encouraged by the short sea crossing. By the 1630s the British settler population of Ulster, including Antrim and Down, probably numbered several tens of thousands, although exact figures are uncertain.

Key people

• James VI and I (1566–1625), who promoted the plantation as a way to secure and “civilise” Ulster.
• Sir Arthur Chichester (1563–1625), Lord Deputy of Ireland from 1605 to 1616, who organised the scheme and received large estates himself.
• Sir John Davies (1569–1626), Attorney-General for Ireland and the scheme’s chief legal architect.
• James Hamilton and Hugh Montgomery, Scottish lairds who led the private settlement of Down from 1606.

Consequences

For many Gaelic Irish the plantation meant the loss of land, status and political leadership. Resentment grew, and in October 1641 Catholic Irish rose in arms. The Irish Rebellion of 1641 saw thousands of settlers killed or driven from their homes; estimates of settler deaths range from about 4,000 to 12,000, including those who died of cold and hunger. The memory of 1641 shaped Protestant fears for centuries.

Later upheavals, including Cromwell’s conquest and the Williamite War, confirmed Protestant landownership. A new wave of Scottish migration in the 1690s strengthened the Presbyterian community. In the eighteenth century many Ulster Presbyterians emigrated to North America, where they became known as the Scotch-Irish or Scots-Irish.

Legacy

The plantation gave Ulster a distinctive society, with a large Protestant population of British descent, a strong Scottish influence on speech and religion, and towns laid out around central squares or “diamonds”. It also created a lasting division between communities defined by religion, origin and political loyalty.

Those divisions shaped the partition of Ireland in 1921 and the conflict known as the Troubles. Historians caution against drawing a straight line from 1609 to modern politics, but the plantation remains one of the most important events in the history of the north of Ireland.

Timeline

• 1603, 30 March: Hugh O’Neill submits at Mellifont, ending the Nine Years’ War.
• 1606: Hamilton and Montgomery begin settling Scots in County Down.
• 1607, 14 September: Flight of the Earls from Rathmullan.
• 1608, April to July: Sir Cahir O’Doherty’s revolt; Derry is burned.
• 1609: Orders and Conditions of the plantation are published.
• 1610: Land grants are made; the City of London agrees to plant Coleraine.
• 1613: The Irish Society is formed and County Londonderry created.
• 1618–1619: Pynnar’s survey reports on the progress of settlement.
• 1641, 23 October: Irish rebellion breaks out in Ulster.

Why it matters

The Plantation of Ulster was the most ambitious colonisation scheme in the British Isles. By changing who owned the land and who lived on it, it created the communities and tensions that defined the history of Ulster and Northern Ireland for four centuries.