Plantation People

One of the most momentous events in Irish history, the ‘Flight of the Earls’, took place in September 1607, when Hugh O'Neill and Rory O'Donnell, respectively the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell, sailed from Lough Swilly in Co. Donegal for the Continent with around 100 of their followers. Fearing their return to Ireland with Spanish military support, and seeing an opportunity to transform Ulster, the Crown confiscated the lands of O’Neill and O’Donnell, and those of other Irish lordships.

The process of designing what turned out to be a complex and systematic plantation plan, and the necessary preliminaries to its implementation, took over two years and it was not until 1610 that the new ownership arrangements could be brought into being. The scheme eventually adopted affected six Ulster counties – Armagh, Cavan, Coleraine (renamed Londonderry in 1613), Donegal, Fermanagh and Tyrone, collectively known as the ‘escheated’ or planted counties.

Under the scheme for the Plantation in Ulster, blocks of land were parcelled out to several categories of grantee. English and Scottish undertakers, so named because they agreed to undertake the planting of their estates with settlers, received the largest allocation of land in the overall plantation scheme. Servitors – those who had served the Crown in Ireland in a civil or military capacity – ‘deserving’ Gaelic Irish, and institutions such as Trinity College Dublin, and the Protestant Church were also beneficiaries of the scheme.

Image: Distribution of lands in the Ulster Plantation

The undertakers, so-called because they agreed to undertake the ‘planting’ of British settlers on the estates they were given, received the largest allocation of land in the Plantation scheme, with some 161,500 acres. There were more Scottish undertakers than English – 59 to 51, but the average size of the Scottish-owned estates was smaller than the English-owned estates.

The individual blocks of land, known as proportions, granted to the undertakers were of three sizes – 1,000 acres, 1,500 acres and 2,000 acres (often denoted ‘small’, ‘middle’ and ‘great’). An undertaker could own more than one proportion so long as his total acreage did not exceed the stipulated amount.

The undertakers were expected to introduce British settlers to their estates and were forbidden to have Irish tenants. As with so much else about the Plantation, the theory was very different from the practice and in actual fact on nearly every estate there were substantial numbers of Irish. This is looked at in more detail in the section on the Irish and the Plantation.

A number of the English undertakers were men with existing connections to Ireland and there was an overlap between the undertakers and the servitors (see next section). However, most of the English undertakers were newcomers, and in general, where their places of origin are known, from East Anglia and the Midlands.

The English undertakers came from a varied range of backgrounds. Only a few were from the highest echelons of society and most were not people of special substance by the standards of contemporary England. Sir Arthur Chichester noted in 1610 that the settlers from England were ‘for the most part, plain country gentlemen … If they have any money they keep it close.’

With regard to the Scots, much interest in acquiring plantation land had been shown by the wealthy urban middle classes, particularly in Edinburgh, but in the end the government chose, for the most part, middle ranking lairds who would have had greater experience of estate management. However, the principal Scottish undertakers were all titled and many of them enjoyed close relationships with the king.

Servitors were men who had served the Crown in Ireland as soldiers or government officials. Altogether the servitors received nearly 55,000 acres in the Plantation counties. Most of them were given estates of 1,000-2,000 acres, but some of them received as little as 200 acres. Nearly all of the servitors were English. There were only two Scots – Patrick Crawford and Sir William Stewart - and a few Welshmen, including Sir John Vaughan and his brother Henry.

The baronies or precincts that were allocated to the servitors were Orior in County Armagh, Castlerahan, Tullygarvey, Clanmahon and Tullyhaw in County Cavan, Kilmacrenan in County Donegal, Coole and Tirkenndy, and Clanawley in County Fermanagh, and Dungannon in County Tyrone. Unlike the undertakers, the servitors were allowed to have both Irish and British tenants.

In order to ensure the success of the Plantation, the King was anxious that the great merchant companies of London would be involved. In 1610 a body composed of London aldermen, merchants and representatives of livery companies was formed to further the involvement of the city of London in the Plantation scheme. This body eventually became known as the Irish Society, a joint-stock company that can be compared with the East India Company or the Virginia Company.

County Coleraine, as it was then called, was earmarked for the Londoners and the greater part of it was to be granted out in estates to the companies. In 1613 the county was renamed Londonderry (as was the settlement at Derry) to emphasise the connection with the city of London, and by this time adjoining portions of counties Antrim, Donegal and Tyrone had been added to it. The Irish Society was specifically responsible for developing the strategic towns of Coleraine and Derry.

Progress was initially slow with a degree of reluctance on the part of the Londoners to commit to the Plantation. It was not until late 1613 that the allocation of lands in County Londonderry to the companies was carried out by lot. There were twelve ‘chief companies’, most of which had a number of ‘associate companies’, though the latter were to play a fairly minor role in the Plantation.

The chief companies were those of the Clothworkers, Drapers, Fishmongers, Goldsmiths, Grocers, Haberdashers, Ironmongers, Mercers, Merchant Taylors, Salters, Skinners and Vintners

The classic study of this venture is T.W. Moody, The Londonderry Plantation (1939, reprinted 2019). Two major works by James Stevens Curl – The Londonderry Plantation, 1609-1914 (1986) and The Honourable the Irish Society and the Plantation of Ulster, 1608-2000 (2000) – consider the buildings erected and settlements developed in the Plantation period and beyond.

For every 1,000 acres he was granted an undertaker was expected to introduce at least ten British families that together were to comprise 24 adult males. On most of the undertakers' estates settlement was initially slow, but within a few years settlers communities of some significance had emerged on some of them.

On other estates, however, landowners found it virtually impossible to induce families to settle. John Leigh, the owner of a proportion in the barony of Clogher, complained in 1622 that such a large part of his lands was ‘so bad, being only heath and boggy mountain land … that no British tenant will be drawn to inhabit upon it upon any terms or conditions.'

Most of the British tenants in Ulster were from a rural background, with some more innovative than others in their new environment. For many of the settlers life was a struggle and crossing the Irish Sea did not bring them all the benefits that they had hoped for. On one of the estates that Sir Stephen Butler had acquired in Fermanagh, it was noted in 1622 that the settlers ‘seemed to have so little encouragement as they wish themselves again in their own country’. Others, however, had the necessary skills to prosper in Ulster.

In terms of numbers, it would appear that there were some 3,200 adult Englishmen in the escheated counties in 1622, while the number of adult Scotsmen was slightly larger at c. 3,740.

Strong bonds of kinship can be found between a landlord and his tenants on some estates. Other settlers came independently in search of a better life. Many no doubt thought that Ulster would provide an opportunity to revive the family’s economic fortunes and recover status lost in Scotland.

The majority of the Scottish settlers came from the south-west of Scotland and in particular Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, and Dumfries and Galloway. We know very little about any of them and in only a relatively small number of instances is it possible to identify the precise place in Scotland from where they originated.

There was also a strong contingent from the Borders. This was an area that had been associated with lawlessness in the late sixteenth century. Many Borders families were attracted to Fermanagh as a potential new home. Here, in an area that was remote from Britain and close to the frontier of the Plantation, they would be free from the restrictions of state authority and immune from the Scottish justice system. These families were also resilient, able to survive the upheavals of the seventeenth century, and adapt to the changed circumstances in which they found themselves.

For the most part, the English and Scottish settlers lived largely separate lives. On many of the Scottish-owned estates, especially in the Foyle Valley, English tenants were virtually unknown. The major exception to this was in County Cavan where there was a much closer ratio of English to Scots on the Scottish-owned estates. On the other hand, many Scots lived and farmed successfully on English-owned estates, in some instances making up a majority of the British tenants.

The Progress of the Plantation

The initial progress made by the undertakers and servitors varied considerably and in some areas very little if anything was achieved in the early stages of the Plantation. Many of the undertakers found that the task they were taking on was simply beyond them. In November 1610 the lord deputy of Ireland, Sir Arthur Chichester, made the following observation: ‘The Scottish come with greater port and better accompanied and attended, but it may be with less money in their purses’.

Some undertakers granted lands in less favourable areas found it virtually impossible to induce tenants from Britain to settle on their lands. In east Tyrone Bernard Lindsay’s proportion lay ‘towards the mountains and is extremely rough and scarcely habitable’. When Scottish settlers arrived there ‘at the first site of the barrenness thereof [they] made their instant retreat’. A few of the undertakers never visited their estates at all, while others took possession in person, but sold out soon afterwards.

Because so many of the original grantees lacked either the desire to stay or the financial resources to fulfil their plantation obligations, the years after the inauguration of the Plantation scheme witnessed numerous changes to the pattern of landownership.

In fact within ten years of the inauguration of the scheme only 29 of the 51 estates allocated to English undertakers remained in the hands of the original grantees. Similarly, more than half of the Scottish estates – 33 out of 59 – had passed out of the ownership of the original grantees within the same period.

In their place came men with the energy and determination, not to mention the resources, to make the Plantation a success. One of the main consequences of the ready market in Plantation land was that it allowed several individuals to build up estates considerably greater than that originally permitted under the rules of the Plantation. One who did so spectacularly was Sir William Stewart who, from relatively unremarkable beginnings, was able to build up a vast estate spread over three baronies in counties Donegal and Tyrone.

Estate Management

If a grantee of Plantation land was going to benefit financially from his undertaking he would have to manage his estate effectively to derive an income from it. He was not free to chose how to do this as he pleased but was expected to follow specific guidelines.

The conditions of the plantation laid down a specific landholding structure designed to prevent landlords from managing their estates as they pleased and to provide proper security to their tenants in the form of written leases. It also represented an attempt to fashion a social structure and social relationships in the planted counties.

For each thousand acres the undertaker was to reserve for himself a demesne of 300 acres. The remaining 700 acres were to be divided up in the following manner: two fee-farmers or freeholders with 120 acres each; three leaseholders for three lives or twenty-one years with 100 acres each; and at least four families of husbandmen, artificers or cottagers on the final 160 acres. Tenants were to be issued with written deeds that gave them security of tenure.

Relatively few of the undertakers fulfilled these conditions precisely. Some did not have enough British tenants to lease farms to, while others did not make out proper written leases to their tenants creating uncertainty among them.

The behaviour of some landlords almost seemed designed to drive tenants away. Pynnar was told by some of the tenants on the Castlehaven estate in Omagh barony that unless they were prepared to pay treble the rent they would not have their leases recognised. On the other hand, there were landlords or their representatives who were highly respected by the tenants.

Sir William Cole received high praise from the commissioners of inquiry in 1622 for the progress on his estate in Magheraboy, Co. Fermanagh: ...

he hath let his land at easy rents and for long terms, which is the cause it is so well planted, we having seen none like it...and we wish that others who are deficient would take example by him.

Towns and Villages

The settlement pattern envisaged by the devisers of the plantation scheme was essentially one of an English model of rural settlement. The settlers were to live in towns and villages, fields were to be enclosed and English agricultural practices were to be used. They were not to live scattered across the countryside. Their houses were to be built close to the fortification constructed by the undertaker.

In this period towns were viewed as centres of civilisation, hence the importance attached to them in the Plantation. Towns were also seen as places of strength in the countryside as well as entities through which the Protestantism could be promoted.

For the most part, however, the reality was very different. Around two-thirds of Plantation estates lacked a nucleated settlement. Furthermore, many of the settlements that were denoted ‘town’ or ‘village’ in the Plantation surveys were unimpressive clusters of six to twelve houses.

Several reasons can be suggested for the absence of nucleated settlements from most of the Plantation estates. In part it was a reflection of the limited resources of the undertakers to develop an urban centre on their proportions. The development of a town was a major investment on the part of the landowner and beyond the means of most.

Urbanisation was most successful in County Londonderry where the London companies were active in developing towns on their estates. Most of the towns established by the London companies in the early seventeenth century are still important settlements today, including Ballykelly, Bellaghy, Dungiven, Macosquin, Magherafelt, Moneymore and Muff (now called Eglinton).

At the apex of the hierarchy of settlement, at least in terms of status and legal privileges, though not necessarily in size, was the corporate town. In November 1610 the town of Cavan was incorporated, while between 27 November 1612 and 29 April 1613 thirteen further places in the six planted counties received charters of incorporation:

They were: Dungannon, Strabane, Augher (Co. Tyrone); Limavady, Coleraine, Londonderry (Co. Londonderry); Belturbet (Co. Cavan); Armagh, Charlemont (Co. Armagh); Enniskillen (Co. Fermanagh); Ballyshannon, Donegal, Lifford (Co. Donegal).

With the exception of Cavan and Strabane, all of these places were essentially English-founded settlements. Others were to follow and corporate towns were also established in the other three counties in Ulster in the early 1600s.

The Ulster Plantation