Plantation Sources

There are many contemporary sources that can tell us about the Plantation. Some of these will provide information on the names of those who came to Ulster in the early seventeenth century. Others will provide an insight into everyday life.

The following archival institutions contain material that will be of interest to those researching the Ulster Plantation.

Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast

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National Library of Ireland, Dublin

The National Archives, London

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National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh

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The original Irish patent rolls, recording, among other things, grants of land or pardons issued, were destroyed in the Public Record Office, Dublin, in 1922. Fortunately, some of the material had been published in calendar form. Printed calendars have survived for the patent rolls of James I and the early part of the reign of Charles I.

The Calendar of the Patent Rolls of the Reign of James I was prepared under the direction of the Irish Record Commission prior to 1830 and was printed before the Commission closed. The Irish Manuscripts Commission published a facsimile of the printed calendar in 1966, but this publication is now out of print.

The Calendar of the Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland, of the Reign of Charles the First: First to Eighth Year, Inclusive edited by James Morrin (Dublin, 1863) covers the period from 1625 to 1633. It can be read online at Google Books.

State papers concerning Ireland are preserved in The National Archives (formerly the Public Record Office) in London under SP/63. The documents concern the administration of Ireland in this period of enormous change. There is much information of interest about the Ulster Plantation and developments in the north of Ireland in the early sevententh century. Calendars of the papers covering the period 1509–1670 were published in 24 volumes by the Public Record Office between 1860 and 1911, under the title Calendar of the State Papers relating to Ireland (CSPI). Each volume has a comprehensive index.

Also worth consulting for early material on the administration of Ireland is the Calendar of the Carew manuscripts: Preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth, edited by J. S. Brewer and William Bullen (6 vols, London, 1867–73), covering the period 1515–1624.

Some of these volumes can be read online:

The 1641 depositions provide eye-witness accounts of what was happening in Ireland in the aftermath of the 1641 rising. The original depositions are held in Trinity College, Dublin, and have recently been made available as a searchable database.

During the Plantation period testamentary jurisdiction was vested with the Church of Ireland, a situation that continued until 1857. Unfortunately, virtually all will probated under the authority of the Church of Ireland were destroyed in Dublin in 1922 with the burning of the old Public Record Office of Ireland. Indexes, arranged by diocese, do survive, but the only one dating from as far back as the early seventeenth century is the index to wills probated in the diocese of Derry which starts in 1612. This has been published. Nearly 150 testators whose wills were probated between 1612 and 1640 are listed. Not only does the will index give the name and date of probate for each – which can be used as an approximate guide as to when they died – their residence and even on occasion their occupation are also given.

See list of pre-1641 testators in Derry diocese

Extracts from several of these wills survive. For example, abstracts of the wills of George and Ellen Halyburton exist. George Halyburton was a tenant on Sir William Hamilton’s estate of Manor Elieston in County Tyrone. His will of 1638 reveals that he had been leased the townlands of Gortin and Lenamore by Sir William on 2 May 1633 for 21 years at an annual rent of £22. His will also reveals that he was the son of Henry Halyburton. George died c.1638. On 18 September 1640 Ellen Halyburton wrote her will. She was then living at Gortin with her son Patrick. Her other son Henry was in Scotland. In her will she wrote that it was her desire that she be buried alongside her husband in the chancel of Cappagh Church. Those who were present when Ellen wrote her will were Robert Algeo, Robert Hamilton and Peter Massie, a curate. (Both wills can be found in PRONI, ref. T/808/15101.)

Plantation Surveys

1611 – A survey carried out by Sir George Carew

Sir George Carew had considerable experience of Ireland and Irish affairs, having served there in various capacities between 1574 and 1603, latterly as president of Munster, and was considered by the government as the ideal man to carry out an investigation into the initial progress of the Plantation. He received his instructions in mid June and set off for Dublin a short time afterwards. Preparations for his journey north were then made and in late July he and his fellow commissioners set off on their ‘perambulation about Ulster’. Travelling via Newry, Carrickfergus and Dunluce, Derry was reached on 14 August. Thereafter they made their way through Donegal, Fermanagh, Tyrone and Armagh before returning to Dublin on 5 September. Their investigations were carried out with such haste that it was not possible to visit every county – Cavan was missed out – let alone every proportion. Much of the information collected during the survey was provided by the governors and sheriffs of each county. Because of this, some caution must be exercised as to the accuracy of population figures and progress of the building projects. Nonetheless it is possible to gain an insight into progress in the escheated counties at the very start of the Plantation.

1613 – A survey carried out by Sir Josias Bodley

Source: Historical Manuscripts Commission, Hastings Mss, iv (London, 1947), pp. 159–92.

Concerns that little progress had been made in the months after Carew’s survey resulted in December 1612 in the king ordering a further investigation to be carried out. This was conducted between 2 February and 25 April and was led by Sir Josias Bodley, an experienced English official in Ireland. In late 1612 Bodley was appointed director-general of fortifications in Ireland. He had also carried out a detailed investigations of fortifications in Ireland in 1608 and in 1609 oversaw the large-scale mapping exercise of the escheated lands in Ulster. Bodley spent nearly four times as long as Carew in carrying out his survey and his report can be considered a much more accurate account of the progress of the Plantation. He visited most of the proportions in person. Bodley’s experiences as a military engineer and his understanding of fortifications is reflected in the detailed descriptions he sometimes gave of castles built by the undertakers. He was also careful to assess the information provided to him on the numbers of tenants on each proportion.

1618–9 – A survey carried out by Captain Nicholas Pynnar.

This survey is printed in full in George Hill, An Historical Account of the Plantation of Ulster at the Commencement of the Seventeenth Century (Belfast, 1877). A copy is also available in the Manuscripts Room in Trinity College, Dublin.

On 28 November 1618 Captain Nicholas Pynnar was issued with a commission to carry a new survey into the progress of the Plantation in the escheated counties. Like Bodley and Carew before him, Pynnar had considerable experience of Ireland. He himself had been the recipient of a servitor’s proportion in County Cavan though he did little to improve his lands. He spent the best part of four months – 119 days in all – carrying out his investigations and this is reflected in the level of detail he was able to provide on each proportion. Like Bodley he visited most of the Plantation estates in person and, in addition to describing the buildings, agricultural practices and numbers of tenants, he also distinguished between the different categories of tenant, indicating the number of freeholders, leaseholders and cottagers.

1622 – A survey carried out by commissioners appointed by the government.

The official reports for each county were published as follows: 1622 – A survey carried out by commissioners appointed by the government. The official survey for each county has been printed in Victor Treadwell (ed.), The Irish Commission of 1622 (Dublin, 2006), published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission.

The 1622 commission was the most detailed of all the investigations into the progress of the Plantation. Preparations for it probably began in late 1621. The commission was concerned with far more than simply the state of affairs in the escheated counties and its remit extended to investigating the Church, legal system, trade and a host of other issues affecting Ireland. Seven of the 21 persons on the commission were chosen to visit Ulster. The names of these men and the counties they investigated were Lord Caulfield, Sir Dudley Digges and Nathaniel Rich (Armagh and Tyrone), Sir Thomas Phillips and Richard Hadsor (Donegal and Londonderry), and Sir Francis Annesley and Sir James Perrot (Cavan and Fermanagh). Their visits to Ulster took place between late July and mid September.

The methods employed in compiling the reports differed from county to county. For Armagh and Tyrone there is considerably more documentation than for the other counties. In these two counties each undertaker or his agent was required to submit a certificate detailing the number of tenants on his proportion(s) as well as the building activities that had been undertaken. The certificate might then have been checked and comments made on its accuracy. Much of this material has been included in Treadwell’s abovementioned volume. While this survey was more thorough than the others mentioned above, it is clear that not every proportion was visited. For example, it was reported of Connor McShane O’Neill’s proportion of Clabby, 1,500 acres, ‘This was much out of our way so as we went not to see it’. Instead the commissioners relied instead on information from the high sheriff and ‘other gentlemen of credit’ and Pynnar’s survey.

Ulster Plantation Reference Books

George Hill’s Historical account of the Plantation in Ulster, first published in 1877 and recently reproduced as an e-book by the Ulster-Scots Agency, remains unsurpassed for the level of detail it contains, particularly in the footnotes.

The standard work on the settlements of Scots in early seventeenth-century Ulster is Michael Perceval Maxwell’s Scottish migration to Ulster in the reign of James I (1973). Among the most valuable aspects of his book are the appendices providing detailed biographical information on the Scottish undertakers and servitors in Ulster.

The Earl of Belmore’s Parliamentary Memoirs of Fermanagh and Tyrone, from 1613 to 1885 (1887) contains a huge amount of information, much of it derived from sources now lost, on those who represented these counties in the old Irish House of Commons, prior to 1801, and latterly the Westminster parliament. Read online here

Family Memoirs

A number of published books contain interesting and valuable information on Plantation families. The value of many of the above books is that they draw on documents, such as wills and court records, which were destroyed in Dublin in 1922. The books listed below represent simply a selection of the family histories that have been published and which can illuminate the lives of the participants in the Plantation scheme.

Henry Blackwood Archdale, Memoirs of the Archdales with the descents of some allied families (privately printed, Enniskillen, 1925) covers not only the Archdales of Suffolk who settled in northern Fermanagh in the early seventeenth century, but also the Mervyns, a family originating in Wiltshire, who established a landed base in the Trillick of County Tyrone.

H. C. Lawlor, A history of the family of Cairnes or Cairns and its connections (London, 1906). Read online here

Henry Biddall Swanzy, The families of French of Belturbet and Nixon of Fermanagh and their descendants (privately printed, 1908) begins with the merchant family of French which had settled in the market town of Belturbet, in County Cavan, some time before the outbreak of the 1641 rising. Read online.

George Hamilton, A History of the House of Hamilton (Edinburgh, 1933) contains a wealth of information of the many branches of the Hamilton family who migrated to Ulster in the seventeenth century. This includes not only aristocratic families such as the Abercorn Hamiltons, but also those from middling backgrounds such as the Hamiltons of Priestfield in Blantyre who settled in the Strabane area.

Everard Hamilton, Hamilton Memoirs being historical and genealogical notices of a branch of that family which settled in Ireland in the reign of James I (Dundalk, 1920) is concerned with that branch of the Hamilton family which originated in Priestfield in Blantyre and settled at Ballyfatton near Strabane in the early seventeenth century.

Henry Biddall Swanzy, Some account of the family of Hassard with a list of descendants in England and Ireland (privately printed, 1903)

Ernest H. Godfrey, The Lindesays of Loughry, County Tyrone: a genealogical history (London, 1949).

The Montgomery Manuscripts

Henry Saunderson, The Saundersons of Castle Saunderson (privately printed, 1936) deals with a family that first settled in east Tyrone in the 1610s, acquiring the proportion of Tullylagan, before moving to Cavan in the mid seventeenth century.

Andrew Godfrey Stuart, A genealogical and historical sketch of the Stuarts of the House of Castlestuart in Ireland (Edinburgh, 1854).

Charlotte Violet Trench, The Wrays of Donegal, Londonderry and Antrim (Oxford, 1945)

Amy Isabel Young, Three hundred years in Innishowen, being more particularly an account of the family of Young of Culdaff, with short accounts of many other families connected with them during that period (Belfast, 1929). Among the ‘many other families’ that Mrs Young deals with are those of Benson, Cary, Hart, Nesbitt, and Vaughan.

The Ulster Plantation