The Londonderry Plantation

Eighty years after it was first published, the Foundation reprinted a hugely important work, The Londonderry Plantation 1609–41: The City of London and the Plantation in Ulster by T. W. Moody. This publication was the first seriously scholarly attempt to understand what actually happened in the Londonderry Plantation; it was published at a time when Irish historical writing was entering a new phase with a more ‘scientific’ approach to historical writing and research, with Moody and his peers leading the way.

In researching his book, Moody drew extensively on historical archives in the City of London, including records which perished subsequently in the Blitz. As Professor James Stevens Curl commented in his new Foreword to the work:

So Moody’s great book remains of singular significance in the history of Ulster, and although I was privileged to carry on research into the Londoners’ Plantation well past 1641, I acknowledge the integrity of Moody’s scholarship and industry in laying the foundations of proper source-based narrative, free from speculation, hoary mythology, and cant.

This elegantly-designed edition reproduces the book in facsimile along with the original illustrations, most of them now in full colour. The book was launched at Cutts House, Coleraine, the offices of the Honourable the Irish Society, on 18 December 2019.