Ireland under the Stuarts and during the Interregnum, Vol. I (of 3), 1603-1642

Chichester’s expedition into the North in the summer of 1608 was a military promenade and an assize circuit combined, an inquiry about the escheated lands being added to the normal business. The commission included no bishop, and Montgomery, who was present during part of the circuit, made this a reason for objecting to anything being done. Davies and Ridgeway found that the Termon lands were in ‘possession of certain scholars called Erenachs, and whereof they were in ancient times true owners and proprietors, the Tyrone jury found to be vested in the Crown by the statute 11th of Elizabeth, whereby Shane O’Neill was attainted, and never since diverted by any grant from the late Queen or his Majesty.’ Montgomery claimed the Termons as demesne, and hurried over to Court with his grievance, carrying a recommendation from Chichester for the bishopric of Meath, which fell vacant at the moment. Davies took care that all the Ulster bishops should be of the next commission, but Chichester ventured to hint that Montgomery affected worldly cares too much and thought too little of reforming his clergy.[62 - Davies to Salisbury, August 5, 1608.]

Chichester’s original plan

On October 14, 1608, Ley and Davies left Ireland, carrying with them Chichester’s instructions as to the plantation of Ulster. He briefly described the position of Tyrone, Fermanagh, Donegal, Cavan, Armagh, and Coleraine or Londonderry, desiring them to note ‘that many of the natives in each county claim freehold in the lands they possess; and albeit their demands are not justifiable by law, yet it is hard and almost impossible to displant them.’ Even those who were tainted by rebellion should be considered, and only ‘the rest of the land’ passed to undertakers or to well-chosen servitors. The oath of supremacy was to be taken by all settlers, but some exceptions might be allowed in the case of natives who were to build houses like those in the Pale. The English and Scotch settlers were to build castles, thus securing themselves against native aggression, and the poorer officers were to be placed in the most dangerous places with small salaries to enable them to keep armed men. The natives, as less outlay was demanded from them, were required, and would be willing, to pay more rent than the settlers. The committee appointed to make arrangements in London consisted of Ley and Davies, Sir Anthony St. Leger, Sir Henry Docwra, Sir Oliver St. John, and Sir James Fullerton, with whom Bishop Montgomery was afterwards associated. They all had experience of Ulster except St. Leger, who was Master of the Rolls in Ireland, and had been a commissioner of the Munster settlement, and Fullerton, who was doubtless expected to look after the Scotch element in the business. Chichester thought it necessary to warn Salisbury about his Majesty’s partiality for his original subjects, being of opinion that Highlanders or Islemen introduced into Ulster would be more troublesome and less profitable than the Irish themselves. In about two months the London committee had got so far as to produce a detailed plan for the settlement of Tyrone, and a copy of this was sent to the Lord Deputy.[63 - Instructions to Ley and Davies, October 14, 1608; Chichester to the King, October 15, and to Salisbury, October 18; Project of the Committee for the plantation of Tyrone, December 20.]

British settlers invited over

At the beginning of 1609 the English Government printed and circulated a sort of prospectus, whereby settlers might be induced to offer themselves. Scotch and English undertakers were invited for tracts of a thousand, fifteen hundred, and two thousand acres, paying quit-rents to the Crown at the rate of six shillings and eightpence for every sixty acres, but rent-free for the first two years. It was intended that the largest grantees should hold by knight-service, but this burdensome tenure was afterwards abandoned at Chichester’s earnest prayer and common socage was everywhere substituted. The undertakers, whose portions were to be assigned by lot, were to build castles and bawns or courtyards within two years, and to have access to the royal forests for materials, being bound to keep, train and arm men enough for their defence. Chichester said that two years was not long enough to allow for the buildings, and the time was afterwards extended. Every undertaker was to take the oath of supremacy before his patent could be sealed; none might alienate to the Irish. They were to provide English or Scotch tenants only, and were tied to five years personal residence. Tenancies at will were prohibited. The servitors, generally men with some military experience, were allowed to have Irish tenants, in which case they were to pay 8l. for every thousand acres; but where they established British tenants this was reduced to 5l. 6s. 8d. Alienations to the Irish were forbidden, or to any one who would not take the oath of supremacy, the privileges and duties of the servitors being for the rest much the same as in the first case. The native Irish who formed the third class of grantees were subject, after the first year, to quit-rents twice as large as the undertakers, being subject to the same conditions as to tenures and building, but nothing was said about the oath of supremacy. Chichester knew that the natives could not as a rule build castles or bawns, and this part of the plan turned out to be unworkable. He protested from first to last that too little land was reserved to the Irish. There were further provisoes for erecting market towns and corporations, for at least one free school in every county and for a convenient number of parish churches with incumbents supported by tithes.[64 - ‘Orders and Conditions of Plantation,’ printed in Harris’s Hibernica, p. 63, and in Hill’s Plantation in Ulster, p. 78. Project for the Plantation in Carew, dated January 23, 1608, but evidently belonging to 1608-9; it does for the other escheated counties what was done for Tyrone only in the MS. dated December 20, 1608.]

Chichester’s criticisms

All schemes of colonisation devised at a distance must necessarily be modified when the actual work begins. Chichester at once objected to the principle of division ‘in the arithmetical proportion or popular equality’ proposed. The grants should, he thought, be larger or smaller according to local circumstances, and to the qualifications of particular settlers. A few eminent persons with means and reputation might, if liberally treated, act as protectors to weaker men who would be exposed to attacks from the natives. People coming from the same part of Britain should be encouraged to settle near together, and this could not be done if everything was left to the chances of a lottery. Moses indeed was the wisest of law-givers, but ‘the Hebrews were mighty in number and rich in substance; compelled into the land of promise by divine necessity, to extinguish the nations and to possess their vineyards, cities, and towns already built, where, and not elsewhere, they and their posterities were to remain. But in the present plantation they have no armies on foot, they are but a few, without means of plantation (as being separated by sea) and every man having free will to take or leave. The country to be inhabited has no sign of plantation, and yet is full of people and subject, but of no faith nor truth in conversation, and yet hardly, or not at all, to be removed, though they be thorns in the side of the English. The county of Tyrone, with Coleraine, only has 5,000 able men.’

The natives neglected

He objected altogether to tenure by knight-service, and that idea was abandoned, and also to a strict limitation of time for building without considering local difficulties. It was evident to him that too little land was assigned to native freeholders, especially in Tyrone, the result of which must be discontent, especially as it was intended to remove the ‘swordsmen or idle gentlemen who in effect are the greatest part of men bearing credit and sway in that province.’ And Chichester begged that the greatest possible latitude should be given to the commissioners who had to decide questions upon the spot.[65 - Chichester to the Privy Council, March 10, 1609, and to Davies, March 31.]

Survey of escheated lands

Sir John Davies returned to Ireland at the beginning of May 1609, in full possession of the King’s mind on the subject of the plantation. A commission was issued to Chichester and fifteen others, named for the most part by him, to survey the escheated counties and to decide as to the proportions to be allotted to the settlers and natives. In order to meet difficulties about the rights of his see raised by Bishop Montgomery, he was made a commissioner along with the Primate and the Bishop of Kilmore. Davies thought seventeen too many, but the quorum was five, and nothing was to be done without the consent of the Deputy, the Chancellor, the Primate and the Bishop of Derry. The commissioners left Dundalk on August 3 and remained in Ulster until Michaelmas. Besides the business of surveying they prepared an abstract of the King’s title and held assizes for gaol delivery and other purposes in each of the six escheated counties. Davies constantly reported progress to Salisbury, not failing to point out that it was still necessary to take military precautions everywhere. ‘Our geographers,’ he said, ‘do not forget what entertainment the Irish of Tyrconnel gave to a map-maker about the end of the late great rebellion; for one Barkeley being appointed by the late Earl of Devonshire to draw a true and perfect map of the north parts of Ulster, when he came into Tyrconnel, the inhabitants took off his head, because they would not have their country discovered.’[66 - The Commission is calendared at July 19, 1609, and printed in Harris’s Hibernica, and by Hill. Davies to Salisbury, August 28, 1609.]

The area underestimated

Lord Audley’s proposals

The Commissioners depended on a survey in which the amount of land available was enormously underrated, even if we suppose that all the waste was omitted. Thus the area of Tyrone was stated as 98,187 acres, whereas it really contains 806,650, of which more than a quarter is waste and water. Well informed people no doubt suspected something of this, and hoped in the scramble to get much more than the estimated quantity. One ambitious undertaker accordingly offered to take charge of 100,000 acres in Tyrone, which was more than the whole county was supposed to contain. Upon this he proposed to bind himself in a penalty of 1,000l. to build thirty-three castles with 600 acres attached to each, and as many towns each with 2,400, and to settle at least 1,000 families. There were further provisions for markets and fairs, and for the erection of glass, iron, and dye works. The rent offered was 553l. and all was to be completed within five years, when this bond might be cancelled. Upon this Chichester sarcastically remarks that he is ‘an ancient nobleman and apt to undertake much; but his manner of life in Munster and the small cost he has bestowed to make his house fit for him, or any room within the same, does not promise the building of substantial castles or a convenient plantation in Ulster. Besides which he is near to himself and loves not hospitality. Such an one will be unwelcome to that people and will soon make himself contemptible, and if the natives be not better provided for than I have yet heard of they will kindle many a fire in his buildings before they be half finished.’ Davies, however, who had married Lord Audley’s daughter, was much comforted to hear that one whose ancestors had conquered North Wales and had been among the first invaders of Ireland should desire to be an undertaker ‘in so large and frank a manner.’ Possibly Lord Audley’s intention resembled that of a speculator who applies for 10,000l. worth of stock on the chance of 500l. being allotted to him. In consideration of his services at Kinsale and elsewhere, 3,000 acres in Tyrone were granted to him and his wife, 2,000 to his eldest son Mervyn, and 2,000 to his second son Ferdinand. When Carew visited these lands in 1611 he reported that nothing at all had been done. Audley was created Earl of Castlehaven in 1616, and died in the following year, but his infamous successor was not more active. Pynnar reported in 1619 that the acreage was considerably larger than had been expressed in the grant, and that upon it there was ‘no building at all, either of bawn or castle, neither freeholders.’ There were a few British tenants at will, but they were fast leaving the land, for the tenants could not get leases without offering large fines for decreased holdings. The younger Castlehaven had by some means got possession of 2,000 acres more originally granted to Sir Edward Blunt, and upon this a house had been built. The total result was that sixty-four British tenants had sixty acres apiece, but they could lay out nothing without leases, and were all going away. The rest, says Pynnar, ‘is let to twenty Irish gentlemen, as appeareth by the Rent-roll, which is contrary to the articles of plantation; and these Irish gentlemen have under them, as I was informed by the tenants and gentlemen in the country, about 3,000 souls of all sorts.’ Thus were sown the dragon’s teeth which in due time produced the rebellion of 1641.[67 - The ‘Project,’ dated January 23, 1608-9, is printed in Carew, vi. 13, in Harris’s Hibernica, 53, and in Hill’s Plantation of Ulster, 90. The passages concerning Lord Audley and his family are collected by Hill.]

Londonderry and Coleraine

The fate of Randolph’s and Docwra’s settlements, or perhaps the fear that O’Cahan might yet be restored, prevented applications for grants in the county of Coleraine or what is now known as Londonderry. It occurred to James or to Salisbury that the difficulty could be got over by offering the whole district to the city of London, whose wealth might enable them to settle and defend it. The suggestion was made to the Lord Mayor, who on July 1, 1609, directed each of the City companies to name four representatives for the discussion of the subject. In addition to the published papers a special document was communicated to the City in which the advantages of the settlement were duly set forth. Derry might be made impregnable, and probably Coleraine also, and charters with great privileges were offered for each. The negotiations which followed were not conducted by the Irish Government, but between the Privy Council and the City direct. On January 28, 1610, articles were agreed upon by which the Corporation bound themselves to lay out 20,000l. and to build within two years 200 houses at Derry and 100 at Coleraine, sites being provided for 300 more in the one case and for 200 in the other. Afterwards they were allowed to finish building at Coleraine before beginning at Derry, conditional on their making the fortifications there defensible before the winter of 1611. The whole county, with trifling exceptions, was granted to the City in socage, and they had the ecclesiastical patronage within the two new towns and the fisheries of the Foyle and the Bann. It was not intended that there should be any delay in setting to work, and the Londoners undertook to build sixty houses at Derry and forty at Coleraine before November. On the other hand the King covenanted to protect them until they were strong enough to protect themselves, and to give his consent to such legislation as might be found necessary. Formal charters were not, however, granted until 1613.[68 - The negotiations are detailed in Hill’s Plantation. Instructions to Sir John Bourchier, May 1611.]

Sir Thomas Phillips

After O’Dogherty’s sack some of the burned-out houses at Derry were made habitable by Captain John Vaughan, and cabins were also built among the ruins, so that the Londoners had some shelter. At Coleraine they were better off. A lease of which there were still some years to run had been granted to Captain, afterwards Sir Thomas, Phillips of the Dominican monastery there, and he had bought other land in the neighbourhood. Phillips had learned the art of war abroad, and quickly fulfilled Chichester’s prophecy that it would be safer in his hands than ‘left to the use of priests and friars, who to this time have ever enjoyed it.’ When O’Dogherty broke out, Phillips had only thirty-two soldiers available, but many fled to him from Derry, and he armed the men as they came in so that no attack was made by the Irish. When the settlement of the Londoners was first mooted, Sir Thomas gave all the help he could. He was bound to give up Coleraine to the King if required for a garrison or corporate town, but received a grant of Limavady in exchange for his other possessions. He went over to England with a strong recommendation from Chichester, and enlarged there upon the profits to be expected by the Londoners. When the agents of the City arrived in Ulster he accompanied them in their tour and gave all the help he could. ‘At Toome,’ he says, ‘I caused some ore to be sent for of which the smith made iron before their faces, and of the iron made steel in less than one hour. Mr. Broad, one of the agents for the City, who has skill in such things, says that this poor smith has better satisfied him than Germans and others that presume much of their skill.’ He showed the agents the woods and fisheries. With the exception of Phillips’s lands and those belonging to the Church all the country outside the liberties of the two corporations was divided among the twelve City companies.[69 - Chichester to Cecil, June 8, 1604; Phillips to Salisbury, May 10, 1608, September 24, 1609; Chichester to Salisbury, April 7, 1609. A tolerable understanding of the Ulster settlement generally, and of the Londoners in particular, may be arrived at through Hill’s Plantation in Ulster, 1877, and J. C. Beresford’s Concise View of the Irish Society, 1842.]

Slow progress of the work

Activity of the Londoners

Towards the close of 1610 it became evident that the settlement of Ulster could not be completed for some time. It was scarcely, Chichester said, ‘a work for private men who expect a present profit, or to be performed without blows or opposition.’ Jesuits and friars were busy in exciting the people and inducing them to expect Tyrone’s return, and they always found means to communicate with the fugitives abroad. A still greater cause for discontent was the way in which the land had been divided. Chichester ‘conceived that one-half of each county would have been left assigned to natives; but now they have but one barony in a county and in some counties less.’ He had protested against this all along, but with little effect. The Irish, Davies said, objected to be small freeholders, as they would be obliged to serve on juries and spend double the value of their land at sessions and assizes. They all preferred to be under a master, and they did not much care what master provided he were on the spot with will and power to protect them. They would live contentedly enough as tenants under any one, even a Protestant bishop, ‘as young pheasants do under the wings of a home-hen though she be not their natural mother.’ But when the time came the natives found that half a loaf was better than no bread, and accepted the lands allotted to them. The Londoners, having more capital and better support than the other undertakers, had got to work the quickest, and the Attorney-General was so struck by the preparations at Coleraine, that he was reminded of ‘Dido’s colony building of Carthage,’ and quoted Virgil’s description of the scene. Four months later he reported that undertakers were coming over by every passage, ‘so that by the end of summer the wilderness of Ulster will have a more civil form.’ Barnaby Rich, who had written many books about the country, was even more optimistic. Being asked sixteen times in one week what he thought of the new plantation, he answered that Ireland was now as safe as Cheapside: ‘the rebels shall never more stand out hereafter, as they have done in times past.’[70 - Davies to Salisbury, September 24, 1610. A more elaborate version, intended probably for private circulation, is printed from a Harleian MS. in Davies’ Tracts and dated November 8. Same to same, January 21, 1610-11. B. Rich’s New Description of Ireland, London, 1610, dedicated to Salisbury.]

English and Scots compared

Chichester was a good deal less sanguine than Davies both as to present and future. The English undertakers were with few exceptions not quite of the right kind. They were plain country gentlemen not apparently possessed of much money, and not very willing to lay out what they had. Many sought only for present advantage, and sold their claims to anyone who would buy. The Scotch were perhaps poorer, but they came with more followers and persuaded the natives to work for them by promising to get the King’s leave for them to remain as tenants. The Irish were ready to do anything to avoid ‘removing from the place of their birth and education, hoping at one time or other to find an opportunity to cut their landlords’ throats; for they hate the Scottish deadly, and out of their malice towards them they begin to affect the English better than they have been accustomed.’ In the meantime they provided concealed arms. Three years later it was found that the Scotch were very much inclined to marry Irish girls, for which reproof and punishment were prescribed by the King lest the whole settlement should degenerate into an Irish country. The best chance, Chichester thought, was to induce as many old tried officers as possible to settle upon the land. The natives had learned to obey them, and they knew what could and what could not be done. There was, however, a tendency in high quarters to provide for young Scotch gentlemen, and to neglect ‘ancienter captains and of far better worth and desert’ who knew the country well. Sir Oliver Lambert was sent over to represent the case of the veterans, not as the best orator but because he had ‘long travelled and bled in the business when it was at the worst, and had seen many alterations since he first came into the land.’[71 - Chichester to Salisbury, November 1610 (No. 915 in Cal.); the King to Lord Chichester, June 5, 1614.]

Mission of Carew, 1611

James was puzzled by conflicting accounts, and reminded Chichester that he had followed his guidance more closely than any king had ever followed any governor. In order that he might have someone thoroughly informed to apply to he sent over a special commissioner, who was to view the plantation as far as it had got and advise generally as to how the Irish Government might be made financially self-supporting. The person chosen was the famous ex-president of Munster, now Lord Carew, who as Vice-Chamberlain of the Queen’s household would always be at hand. Special letters were at the same time sent to Clanricarde and Thomond, who were personal friends of Carew’s. The King seems to have been struck by Chichester’s often reiterated opinion that sufficient provision had not been made for the natives in the escheated counties, and he directed Chichester and Carew to find out ‘how his Majesty may without breach of justice make use of the notorious omissions and forfeitures made by the undertakers of Munster, for supply of some such portion of land as may be necessary for transplanting the natives of Ulster.’[72 - Chichester to the King and to Northampton, October 31, 1610; Davies to Salisbury, September 24. The instructions to Carew with the King’s letter to Chichester, Clanricarde, and Thomond are all in Carew, June 24, 1611.]

His prophecy,

Carew left Dublin on July 30 accompanied by Chichester, Ridgeway, Wingfield, and Lambert. For three weeks there was unceasing rain, and Carew was near being drowned in fording a flooded river. The commissioners found large numbers of Irish still upon lands from which they ought to have departed according to the theory of the plantation, and at Ballyshannon they addressed a warrant to the sheriff of each escheated county to remove them all by May 1 next. The work was, however, being imperfectly done, and Carew’s real opinions may best be gathered from a paper drawn up by him three years later. Formerly, he said, there was always a strong royalist party among the older population of Ireland, but religious feeling had brought the old English and the native Irish much nearer together. Many had learned something of war abroad, and something also of policy, and they would have the advantage of giving the first blow. They would ‘rebel under the veil of religion and liberty, than which nothing is esteemed so precious in the hearts of men,’ and even the inhabitants of the Pale would be drawn in for the first time in history. ‘For this cause, in odium tertii, the slaughters and rivers of blood shed between them is forgotten and the intrusions made by themselves or their ancestors on either part for title of land is remitted.’

which was fulfilled

A settler’s precautions

Tyrone’s return was still looked for, and if that were unlikely on account of his age, there was always the chance of a foreign invasion. If the King of Spain sent 10,000 men into Ireland ‘armed with the Pope’s indulgences and excommunications,’ all the modern English and Scotch would be instantly massacred in their houses, ‘which is not difficult to execute in a moment by reason they are dispersed, and the natives’ swords will be in their throats in every part of the realm like the Sicilian Vespers, before the cloud of mischief shall disappear.’ The reconquest would be a Herculean labour. Citadels at Waterford, Cork, and some other places, and a small standing army always ready to move were the chief precautions to be taken. Carew was a true prophet, though the crisis did not come in his lifetime. Officers from the Netherlands, indulgences and excommunications, with occasional supplies of arms and ammunition, but without the 10,000 men of Spain, were enough to maintain a ten years’ war, and the labour of ending it was indeed Herculean.[73 - Diary of Lord Carew’s journey in 1611 in Carew, No. 126; ib. No. 156; Carew to Salisbury, September 6, 1611.]

Chichester’s long experience as governor of Carrickfergus before he assumed the government, had not led him to think the Ulster Irish irreclaimable. By giving them as much land as they could manage properly, along with the example of better farmers from England and Scotland, he hoped to make them into tolerably peaceful subjects. The undertakers, however, were of course chiefly actuated by considerations of profit, and at first regarded the natives as a mere hindrance, though afterwards they learned to value their help and sometimes to be on very good terms with them. Among the first adventurers was Thomas Blenerhasset, of Horseford, in Norfolk, who was more or less joined in the enterprise with several other East Anglians. He has left us an account of how the thing struck him in 1610, and he was from the first of opinion that the main point was to guard against ‘the cruel wood-kerne, the devouring wolf, and other suspicious Irish.’ He had been with Chichester at Lifford, and learned among other things that Sir Toby Caulfield, who was not at all an unpopular man, had to drive in his cattle every night, ‘and do he and his what they can, the wolf and the wood-kerne, within caliver shot of his fort, have often times a share.’ At first he had agreed with Bacon that isolated castles could not be maintained so as to guard a settlement, but while modifying this idea somewhat, he still held that a strong town was the best guarantee for peace. He contemplated a state of things in which the burghers of Lifford, Omagh, Enniskillen, Dungannon, and Coleraine should frequently sally forth in bands of 100 at a time from each place, join their forces when necessary, and discover every hole, cave, and lurking place, ‘and no doubt it will be a pleasant hunt and much prey will fall to the followers.’ Even the wolf would be scared by these means, and ‘those good fellows in trowzes’ the wandering herdsmen would no longer listen to revolutionary counsels or shelter the lurking wood-kerne. Blenerhasset had a grant of 1,500 acres in Fermanagh on the east side of Lough Erne. When Pynnar saw the place after eight years’ work he found the undertaker’s wife and family living in a good stone house with a defensible courtyard. Over 250 acres was leased to tenants for life or years, and there were a few English cottages with the beginnings of a church. It was supposed that twenty-six men were available, ‘but I saw them not, for the undertakers and many of the tenants were absent.’

The settlers outnumbered

In partnership with his kinsman Sir Edward, Blenerhasset had also an adjacent property of 1,000 acres which had been originally granted to John Thurston of Suffolk, and upon this Pynnar found ‘nothing at all built and all the land inhabited with Irish,’ whose names as they stood in 1629 have been preserved. Sir Edward Blenerhasset and his son Francis had another lot upon which there were twenty-two British families and no Irish, ‘but the undertaker was in England.’ The natives upon one of these three portions were no doubt more numerous than the English on the other two, and they were always there, and there is evidence to show that even where Pynnar found none there were many ten years later.[74 - Blenerhasset’s ‘Direction for the Plantation of Ulster’, 1610, is reprinted in Contemporary History, i. 317.]

Position of the natives

If Chichester’s plan of providing for the Ulster Irish first and giving the surplus land to colonists had been carried out, there might have been some chance of a peaceful settlement. Without much capital or agricultural skill the natives would probably have remained poor, and the remnant of the chiefs would have certainly gone on trying to live in the old profuse way with diminished means; but there would have been many conservative forces at work, for most men would have had something to lose. As it was both gentlemen and kerne remained in considerable numbers, and never ceased to hope for a return to the old system. They felt themselves in an inferior position, but were never able to make a serious move until the difficulties of Charles I. with Scotland and with the English Parliament paralysed the central government. The Munster precedent ought to have given warning enough, but the means of defence possessed by the colonists were very inadequate, and the army was small. The natives had still a great numerical preponderance in Ulster, though they retained but a fraction of the land, and the colonists were not so well armed as to make up the difference. A muster taken after 1628 gives 13,092 as the total number of British men in the province, and of these only 7,336, or not much more than half, were in the escheated counties. Down, which was outside the plantation scheme, contained 4,045. The province possessed but 1,920 stand of firearms, muskets, calivers and snaphaunces, and there were not even swords or pikes for all. Any smith could make a pike, and swords were easily hidden, so that the colonists had but little advantage if regular troops are left out of the account. Lord Conway saw the necessity of protecting his property against the kerne, but the arms which he provided were stopped in Lancashire, and he had to appeal to the English Government for leave. Yet the Lord Deputy had already received strict orders to see that the tenants of Ulster undertakers were trained, and to take care that they were not fraudulently counted in among the soldiers of paid regiments.[75 - The Ulster muster-roll printed in Contemp. Hist., i. 332 from Add. MS. 4770, mentions the Earldom of Fingal, which was not created till 1628. Directions to the Lord Deputy, 1626, No. 521. Lord Conway to the Lord Treasurer, January 4, 1628.]

Bodley’s survey, 1615

Pynnar’s survey, 1618-19

To the end of his life James continued to take a great interest in the Ulster settlement, and was impatient when slow progress was reported. Sir Josiah Bodley, who had former experience to help him, made a general survey or inspection, which was concluded early in 1615. The result was disappointing, very few having carried out their engagements to the full. Some had built without planting, others had planted without building, and in general they retained the Irish style to avoid which was a fundamental reason for the enterprise. The Londoners and other defaulters were given till the end of August 1616 to make good their shortcomings, and some advance was made in consequence of the King’s threats. The survey so well known as Pynnar’s followed at the end of 1618. Pynnar found that in the six counties there were 1,974 British families, including 6,215 men having arms and being capable of bearing them. One hundred and twenty-six castles had been built and forty-two walled enclosures without houses. Of substantial unfortified houses Pynnar saw 1,897, and he heard of a good many more, but he thought it very doubtful whether the colony would endure. ‘My reason,’ he says, ‘is that many of the English tenants do not yet plough upon the lands, neither use husbandry.’ They had not confidence enough to provide themselves with servants or cattle, and much of the land was grazed by Irish stockholders, who contributed nothing to the general security. There might be starvation but for the Scottish tenants, who tilled a great deal. The Irish graziers were more immediately profitable than English tenants, and their competition kept up the rents. The Irish, though indispensable, were dangerous, and there were more of them on the Londoners’ lands than anywhere else. The agents indeed discouraged British settlers, persuading their employers at home that the land was bad, and so securing the higher rents which native graziers were ready to give or at least to promise. ‘Take it from me,’ said Bacon, ‘that the bane of a plantation is when the undertakers or planters make such haste to a little mechanical present profit, as disturbeth the whole frame and nobleness of the work for times to come.’[76 - The King to Chichester, March 25, 1615; Pynnar’s Survey, 1618-19, printed by Hill and in Harris’s Hibernica; Bacon’s speech in 1617 in Spedding’s Life, vi. 206.]

Fresh survey in 1622

Four years later there was yet another survey which may be taken to describe the state of the colony at the end of James I.’s reign. The commissioners, who divided the work among themselves, reported that much had been done, but that the conditions insisted on by the King had on the whole not been performed. Many of the undertakers were non-resident, their agents retained native tenants and the British settlers complained that ‘the Irish were countenanced by their landlords against them.’ But few freeholders were made, rents were too high, and covenants too stringent. Some promised leases informally ‘which giveth such as are unconscionable power to put poor men out of their holdings when they have builded with confidence of settlement.’ Much building was badly done, and instead of encouraging villages the undertakers dispersed their tenants ‘in woods and coverts subject to the malice of any kerne to rob, kill, and burn them and their houses.’ Copies of the conditions to which undertakers were bound could not be had, and so the humbler settlers were at their mercy and that of their agents and lawyers. The servitors were rather better than the undertakers, but their faults were of the same kind, and they also were ‘so dispersed that a few kerne might easily take victuals from them by force if they gave it not willingly.’ The Irish grantees as a rule built nothing, and their enclosures made with sods were valueless. They made no estate of any kind to their tenants, but kept to the old Irish exactions, and they ploughed in the ‘Irish barbarous manner by the tails of their garrons.’ The commissioners recommended that the King should give new patents instead of those which deserve to be forfeited. A full fourth part of the undertaken lands should be leased for twenty-one years or lives to the Irish on condition of living in villages, going to church, wearing English clothes, ploughing in English fashion, bringing up their children to learning an industry, and enclosing at least a fourth of their cultivated land. Undertakers were to be fined if they took Irish tenants or graziers on any other terms, and alienation for any longer term was to involve forfeiture.[77 - Brief return of the 1822 survey in Sloane MS. 4756.]

The natives not transplanted

Whether as tenants, graziers, or labourers, the Irish inhabitants were found indispensable. Early in 1624 their stay was officially sanctioned, pending inquiry, and in 1626 there was a further extension to May 1628, and after that for another year; but neither then nor later was the transplantation really carried out. The undertakers, or some of them, had indeed their own grievances. Having been unable to perform their covenants strictly, and being afraid of forfeiture, some of them offered to submit to a double rent and other penalties, in consideration of a fresh title, but this arrangement was not carried out. The result of the uncertainty was that hundreds of British families gave up the idea of settling and went away, while the Irish held on desperately whether the legal landlords liked it or not.[78 - Proclamation of December 13, 1627, in the Irish R.O.]

The Londoners criticised

The first school

Sir Thomas Phillips, officially described as ‘a brave soldier all his life,’ kept O’Cahan’s castle at Limavady in good repair, with drawbridge, moat, and two tiers of cannon. His two-storied residence, slated, with garden, orchard, and dovecote, stood by, and a mile from it he had built a village of eighteen small houses. He was thus in a position to criticise both Londonderry and Coleraine, and was much disgusted at the Londoners’ proceedings. It seemed to him that they cared only for present profit, and made very little attempt to carry out the conditions of their grant. The new city was, indeed, well walled when Pynnar saw it, but the gates were incomplete and the inhabitants not nearly enough to defend so great a circuit. Phillips was employed both by St. John and Falkland to superintend the settlement, and in the survey of 1622 he was associated with Richard Hadsor, a practised official who could speak Irish. Thomas Raven, employed as surveyor by the Londoners, evidently thought Phillips right in the main, but was shy about giving information, though anxious to do so in obedience to actual orders. The number of inhabitants in Londonderry had slightly increased, but 300 more houses would be required ere the walls could be properly manned. There were actually 109 families living in stone houses, and about twelve more in cabins, but not more than 110 armed men were available in the town, and about half that number outside. There was no church except a corner of the old monastery which had been repaired before O’Dogherty’s rising, and it would not hold half the people, few as they were. Near it, however, was ‘a fair free school of lime and stone, slated, with a base-court of lime and stone about it built at the charges of Matthias Springham of London, merchant, deceased.’ Twelve guns were mounted on the fort at Culmore. At Coleraine the number of men was nearly as great as at Londonderry, but the walls or ramparts were of earth, not faced with stones, and subject to frequent crumblings. There was a small church with a bell. The great want at this place was a bridge, and it was thought by some that the Londoners were unwilling to supply it, because they made so much by the ferry. The estates of the twelve companies were perhaps in proportion rather better managed than those of the city of London itself, but there were the same complaints everywhere of insufficient encouragement to settlers, of leases withheld or delayed, and of Irish tenants who would promise any rent being preferred to British colonists. Phillips thought there were about 4,000 adult males in the whole county, of whom three-fourths were Irish. Of the remaining quarter not two-thirds were capable of bearing arms effectively, and in the last year of James’s reign Phillips declared his belief that the colonists were really at the mercy of the natives. The towns, such as they were, seemed ‘rather baits to ill-affected persons than places of security,’ and there were so many robberies and murders that fresh settlers were hardly to be expected.[79 - The last volume of Russell’s and Prendergast’s Calendar passim, especially T. Raven to Phillips, June 24, 1621; Survey of the Londoners’ Plantation, August 10 to October 10, 1622; Phillips’s petition to the King, July 6, 1624, and his proposed remedies, September 24.]

English, Scotch and Irish

The original idea of the plantation was to settle English and Scotch undertakers in about equal numbers. The Scotch on the whole made the best settlers, in spite of, or possibly in consequence of, their tendency to intermarry with the Irish, and there can be no doubt that the ecclesiastical policy of James and Charles drove many Presbyterians from their own country to Ulster. The chiefs of the Hamiltons and Montgomeries might favour the official Church, but Strafford found his most determined enemies among the humbler Scots, and he seriously thought of banishing them all. Even under Cromwell they did not get on too well with the English, but in the long run Anglicanism and Presbyterianism combined sufficiently to give a permanently Protestant tone to the northern province. The rebellion of 1641 prevented the colonists from dividing their forces as they might otherwise have done, and the alliance held good in 1688, and even, after a very short hesitation, in 1798. By the partiality of James a very great quantity of land was given to the Church, and especially to the Bishops, most of whom did not do very much for the common defence. Of the whole land granted in the six escheated counties, little more than one-tenth was given as property to the natives; the rest of them lived chiefly as dependants on the undertakers, and without legal interest in the land which they were forced to till for a subsistence. And there were a large number whose business had been fighting, and who lived on those who worked when there was no longer any fighting to be done. Thus very few of the Ulster Irish had anything to lose by a successful revolt, and many might think they had a great deal to gain. The acreage of the grants was far less than the actual contents of the different counties, and thus there was still plenty of room for the nomad herdsmen whose descendants flocked to Owen Roe’s standard.

Distribution of land

From what seems to be authentic abstracts it appears that out of a nominal total of 511,465 acres in the escheated counties rather more than two-fifths were assigned to British undertakers. Outside of the Londoners’ district at least, the shares of Scotch and English grantees were about equal. Rather more than one-fifth went to the Church, including 12,300 acres for education, and rather more than one-fifth to servitors and natives combined, about 60,000 acres to patentees outside the settlement, and something over 6,000 acres to individual Irishmen of whom Connor Roe Maguire’s share was the largest. To servitors and natives about an equal area was given; but the latter were many times as numerous, so that their lots were very small, often as little as forty or fifty acres. 8,536 acres were devoted to schools at Enniskillen and Mountnorris, and to sites for towns at those places, as well as at Dungannon, Rathmullen, and Virginia. Many sales, exchanges, and dispositions by will were made during the reign of James, but the proportional distribution remained about the same.[80 - Three papers among the Carew MSS. for 1611 calendared as Nos. 130, 131, and 132.]

Results and expectations