The Plantation of Ulster (; Ulster Scots: ) was the organised colonisation ("plantation") of the Irish province of Ulster by people from Great Britain in the early 17th century, during the reign of King James I. Most of it was on confiscated Irish land. It was the biggest of the plantations of Ireland.
Small privately funded plantations by wealthy landowners began in 1606,... while the official plantation began in 1609. Most of the land had been confiscated from the native Gaelic chiefs, several of whom had fled Ireland for mainland Europe in 1607 following the Nine Years' War against English rule. The official plantation comprised an estimated half a million acres (2,000 km2) of arable land in counties Armagh, Cavan, Fermanagh, Tyrone, Donegal, and Londonderry. Land in counties Antrim, Down, and Monaghan was privately colonised with the king's support.
Among those involved in planning and overseeing the plantation were King James, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Arthur Chichester, and the Attorney-General for Ireland, John Davies.: "Advisors to King James VI/I, notably Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy from 1604, and Sir John Davies, the lawyer, favoured the plantation as a definitive response to the challenges of ruling Ireland. ... Undertakers, servitors and natives were granted large blocks of land as long as they planted English-speaking Protestants". They saw the plantation as a means of controlling, anglicising,: "According to the Lord Deputy Chichester, the plantation would 'separate the Irish by themselves ... [so they would], in heart in tongue and every way else become English" and "civilising" Ulster.: "To King James the Plantation of Ulster would be a civilising enterprise which would 'establish the true religion of Christ among men ... almost lost in superstition'. In short, he intended his grandiose scheme to bring the enlightenment of the Reformation to one of the most remote and benighted provinces in his kingdom. Yet some of the most determined planters were, in fact, Catholics." The province was almost wholly Gaelic, Catholic, rural, and had been the region most resistant to English control. The colonists (or "British tenants"). were required to be English-speaking Protestants; most came from the Scottish Lowlands and Northern England. Although some "loyal" natives were granted land, and a small number of the planters were Catholics,: "Many will be surprised that three amongst the most energetic planters were Catholics. Sir Randall MacDonell, Earl of Antrim, ... George Tuchet, 18th Baron Audley, ... Sir George Hamilton of Greenlaw, together with his relatives ... made his well-managed estate in the Strabane area a haven for Scottish Catholics".: "The result was that over the ensuing decades many Catholic Scots ... were persuaded to settle in this part of Tyrone [Strabane]". the native Irish reaction to the plantation was generally hostile, and native writers lamented what they saw as the decline of Gaelic society and the influx of foreigners.
The plantation led to the founding of many of Ulster's towns and created a separate and lasting Ulster Protestant community in the province with ties to Britain. It also resulted in many of the native Irish nobility losing their land and led to centuries of ethnic and sectarian animosity, which at times spilled into conflict, notably in the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and, more recently, the Troubles.
Ulster before plantation
Before the plantation, Ulster had been the most Gaelic province of Ireland, as it was the least anglicised and the most independent of English control. The region was almost wholly rural and had few towns or villages.. Throughout the 16th century, Ulster was viewed by the English as being "underpopulated" and undeveloped. The economy of Gaelic Ulster was overwhelmingly based on agriculture, especially cattle-raising. Many of the Gaelic Irish practised "creaghting" or "booleying", a kind of transhumance whereby some of them moved with their cattle to upland pastures during the summer months and lived in temporary dwellings during that time. This often led outsiders to mistakenly believe the Gaelic Irish were nomadic.: "The economy was overwhelmingly dependent on agriculture. ... The English consistently underestimated the importance of arable farming in Gaelic Ulster, but there is no doubt that cattle raising was the basis of the rural economy. ... This form of transhumance, known as 'booleying', often led outsiders to conclude mistakenly that the Gaelic Irish lived a nomadic existence." However, by the end of the Sixteenth century, the Irish economy heavily relied on arable agriculture. The Earl of Tyrone used crop yields to finance his war against the English. Tyrone developed a system of Demesne agriculture, which increased the profitability of agriculture within his territories. When Lord Mountjoy invaded Ulster in 1601, he identified the harvest as the primary means by which Tyrone continued the war. James O'Neill, The Nine Years War, pp 108-109
The population of Ulster before the Plantation has been estimated to be around 180,000-200,000. This was after the destruction caused by the devastating famine and warfare at the end of the Nine Years War. The war fought between the native Irish Confederacy and the English Crown undoubtedly contributed to depopulation, with 60,000 reported dead by famine and attacks on the civilian population.
The Tudor conquest of Ireland began in the 1540s, during the reign of Henry VIII (1509–1547), and concluded in the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) sixty years later, breaking the power of the semi-independent Irish chieftains. As part of the conquest, plantations (colonial settlements) were established in Queen's County and King's County (Laois and Offaly) in the 1550s as well as Munster in the 1580s, and in 1568 Warham St Leger and Richard Grenville established Joint stock/Cooperate colonies in Cork, although these were not very successful.
In the 1570s, Elizabeth I authorised a privately funded plantation of eastern Ulster, led by Thomas Smith and Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex. This was a failure and sparked violent conflict with the local Irish lord, in which Lord Deputy Essex killed many of the lord of Clandeboy's kin.
In the Nine Years' War of 1594–1603, an alliance of northern Gaelic chieftains—led by Hugh O'Neill of Tyrone, Hugh Roe O'Donnell of Tyrconnell, and Hugh Maguire of Fermanagh—resisted the imposition of English government in Ulster and sought to affirm their own control. Following an extremely costly series of campaigns by the English, the war ended in 1603 with the Treaty of Mellifont. The terms of surrender granted to what remained of O'Neill's forces were considered generous at the time.
After the Treaty of Mellifont, the northern chieftains attempted to consolidate their positions, whilst some within the English administration attempted to undermine them. In 1607, O'Neill and his primary allies left Ireland to seek Spanish help for a new rebellion to restore their privileges, in what became known as the Flight of the Earls. King James issued a proclamation declaring their action to be treason, paving the way for the forfeiture of their lands and titles.
Aims The Plantation of Ulster was presented to James I as a joint "British" (English and Scottish) venture to 'pacify' and 'civilise' Ulster, with the number of settlers split evenly between each country. James saw the Gaels as barbarous and rebellious,. and believed Gaelic culture should be wiped out. Plantation was seen as a means of anglicising Ulster and implementing the Protestant Reformation there.: "To King James the Plantation of Ulster would be a civilising enterprise which would 'establish the true religion of Christ among men ... almost lost in superstition'. In short, he intended his grandiose scheme to bring the enlightenment of the Reformation to one of the most remote and benighted provinces in his kingdom. Yet some of the most determined planters were, in fact, Catholics."
For centuries, Scottish Gaelic mercenaries called gallowglass () had been migrating to Ulster to serve under the Irish chiefs. James wanted to sever these ties, seeing them as a threat to England.
Furthermore, James had been King of Scotland before he became King of England and wanted to reward his Scottish subjects with land in Ulster to assure them they were not being neglected now that he had moved his court to London. Long-standing contacts between Ulster and the west of Scotland meant that Scottish participation was a practical necessity.
King James therefore had the following objectives in implementing the plantation:
To bring the rebellious province of Ulster under full control To anglicise the Ulster Irish and convert them to Protestantism To sever ties between the Gaelic clans of Ulster and those of the Scottish Highlands, preventing the flow of mercenaries To ensure that the Scottish subjects of James I would not be overlooked by the London court and would be rewarded with land for their loyalty To relocate the Border reiver families to Ireland to pacify the Anglo-Scottish border region, which had often been in a state of conflict, and to provide fighting men who could suppress the native Irish.George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets, HarperCollins, 1995, pp. 363, 374–376.Patrick Macrory, The Siege of Derry.', Oxford, 1980, p. 46.
Planning the plantation
A colonisation of Ulster had been proposed since the end of the Nine Years' War. The original proposals were smaller, involving planting settlers around key military posts and on church land, and would have included large land grants to native Irish lords who sided with the English during the war, such as Niall Garve O'Donnell. However, in 1608 Sir Cahir O'Doherty of Inishowen launched a rebellion, capturing and burning the town of Derry. The brief rebellion was ended by Sir Richard Wingfield at the Battle of Kilmacrennan. The rebellion prompted Arthur Chichester, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, to plan a much bigger plantation and to expropriate the legal titles of all native landowners in the province. John Davies, the Attorney-General for Ireland, used the law as a tool of conquest and colonisation. Before the Flight of the Earls, the English administration had sought to minimise the personal estates of the chieftains, but now they treated the chieftains as sole owners of their whole territories, so that all the land could be confiscated. Most of this land was deemed to be forfeited (or escheated) to the Crown because the chieftains were declared to be attainted. English judges had also declared that titles to land held under gavelkind, the native Irish custom of inheriting land, had no standing under English law. Davies used this as a means to confiscate land, when other means failed.
Six counties were involved in the official plantationDonegal, Londonderry, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan and Armagh. In the two officially unplanted counties of Antrim and Down, substantial Presbyterian Scots settlement had been underway since 1606.
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 in the Nine Years' War. This meant that, rather than settling the planters in isolated pockets of land confiscated from the Irish, all of the land would be confiscated and then redistributed to create concentrations of British settlers around new towns and garrisons.