The idea of colonization was not a new one. It had been tried officially and unofficially in various parts of Ireland. When done officially the attempts had been failures, but the private colonizations had occasionally been successful—from the colonists’ point of view. Early in King James’s reign Chichester had brought over a number of Englishmen from Devonshire and planted them in Carrickfergus and Malone, near Belfast, and it was undoubtedly this which led to the bold project of colonizing six whole counties in Ulster. If the matter had been left to Chichester it would have taken a milder form. But Sir John Davies began to take a lead in the project, and in the end he became the working agent of the whole affair. He was Irish Attorney-General. This was just the time for unscrupulous and cunning men to rise to power, for practically everything in the country was in a state of transition. It had been even suggested that the standing seat of the Deputy and the law should be translated from Dublin to Athlone, as being the centre of Ireland. The proposal was that the Deputy should have two presidents, one in Munster at Kylmalocke, the other in Ulster at Lyeller (probably for Lyffer or Lifford).[[11]] Such proposals as these show the feeling of powerlessness that marked the English councils, and when the idea of a plantation was put forward, it became more and more popular with the Government, increasing in the harshness of the method of plantation until in the end it became only a grotesque parody of what was put forward, a parody in fact so grotesque that it never worked and never would have worked. Salisbury and Chichester seem to have had some idea of humanity in their proposals, but Davies’ suggestions were cunning, specious, and harsh. Salisbury proposed to Chichester to take natives as tenants of part of the lands, not giving too much to one planter. Sir Oliver St. John advised that no part of the land to be planted should be given away, but that it should be let to the natives at high and dear rates. Chichester though doubtless acquisitive in the extreme seems to have had some feeling for the sufferings of others; in a letter to Salisbury he says, “the word of removing and transplanting is as welcome to the natives as the sentence of death.”[[12]] His proposal was to divide the land among the inhabitants, letting each have as much as he can manage by himself or his tenants; the rest of the land to be bestowed upon servitors and men of worth. This was the plan he preferred, but he felt the need of immediate action, because when he wrote in September, 1607, after the flight of the Earls, he said the people were gone to put on their arms, so he gave as an alternative, the plan to drive out the natives of Tyrone, Tyrconnell and Fermanagh, over the rivers of the Bande (Bann), Blackwater, and Lough Erne, there to inhabit the waste lands.[[13]] Sir John Davies favoured the policy of rooting out the natives from their holdings, for their own good, of course! He says transplanting the natives is like moving a fruit tree, to make it bring forth better fruit, and not to destroy it. His plan was accepted.
Notwithstanding his learned lore about fruit trees, we shall see that there was no enthusiasm about the farming operations of the Davies clique in the subsequent enquiries and surveys of the plantation. To him was due the idea of excluding the Irish from the colonies.
But before the lands could be handed over to the English and Scotch adventurers, there was a little preliminary violation of a solemn pledge. Perhaps a Stuart’s word never counted for very much, yet in passing we may as well record that after the flight of Tyrone and Tyrconnell, James solemnly declared that their vassals (for such they were rather than tenants) should be protected in their rights. There are no less than three proclamations to this effect, of the dates 7th September, 1st November, and 9th November, 1607. Let me quote the title of one. “Proclamation declaring that the King had taken into his hands all the lands and goods of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell, Cowconnaght Oge Magwir and their other fellow-fugitives, and that he would preserve in their estates and protect all the inhabitants of those counties who held under the persons who had thus forfeited.”[[14]] It would appear that the rising of Sir Cahir O’Dogherty, which was limited to Inishowen, a small portion of Tyrconnell, was made the excuse for violating the solemn pledges we have quoted, pledges which referred to the Celts of six counties. The fact was that after these proclamations were made, Davies the Irish Attorney-General and Bacon, then the English Solicitor-General, decided that the natives must be rooted out, and if O’Dogherty’s rebellion had not occurred, some other convenient excuse would have been made. O’Dogherty’s rising originated in the violent and overbearing disposition of Sir George Paulett, the governor of the colony at Derry. Sir Richard Cox says,[[15]] “Undoubtedly the Government well enough understood, that this rebellion was designed to be the most general that had ever been in Ireland; and that the Confederates had better assurance, or at least a stronger expectation of foreign aid, than in any rebellion heretofore.” These words can surely have no truth in them. There seems to have been a dispute concerning rent between O’Dogherty and Tyrone. Sir Cahir had been foreman of the Grand Jury of Donegal when the Commission met that was sent to inquire into the attainted estates of Tyrone and Tyrconnell.[[16]] In fact until he resented the personal indignity put upon him by Paulett (who struck him) he had been a loyal and willing subject of the Crown, and there was naturally nothing in his previous career to make him a leader who could rally a large force of insurgents around him. Instead of showing a great organized revolt, the comparative success of his brief rising points to the deep detestation of the Ulster men against their English rulers, and their willingness to follow any leader who could assume the headship over them. The following is quoted from the Celtic Society’s Miscellany, a note on Docwra’s Narration[[17]]: “It is not generally known that Sir Cahir O’Dogherty was knighted for his bravery in fighting against the O’Neills. Such, however, was the case, as is clear from our author’s text. He was as great an enemy to O’Domhnaill as was Niall Garbh, and his rebellion when too late had its origin in a personal insult.” In fact until he went out into open revolt, Sir Cahir and Lady O’Dogherty (and especially the latter) had always shown a preference for English society.[[18]]
The rules for the Plantation of Ulster are to be found in MacNevin’s Confiscation of Ulster. The lands were to be divided into portions of 1,000, 1,500 and 2,000 acres. They were originally to have been given by lot, but this was afterwards abandoned. The rent for the English and Scotch adventurers was £5 6s. 8d. for 1,000 acres, or 1⅓d. per acre. Taking the value of money then at 12 or 13 times the present value, this was not a heavy charge. Any “meer Irish” who got grants of land had to pay double;[[19]] besides, the rent for the English and Scotch was remitted for the first two years, but the natives were not excused, on the ground that they had no charges for transportation. The Plantation acre was invented to make up for any deficiency in the acreage caused by mountain and bog. The expressions ‘Fengal measure,’ and ‘great country measure,’ are also to be met with in the documents of the period: I do not know what their exact significations are.[[20]] Every undertaker was to build in proportion to his grant: the 2,000 acre man was within two years to build a castle, with a strong court or bawn around it. The 1,500 acre man a stone or brick house with a bawn about it; and the 1,000 acre undertaker to build at least a strong court or bawn. They were to have free timber for the two years. They were to have a store of arms. Thus in a grant to Lady Lambert it is specified that in the house she is to build at Cavan, they are “to keep therein 21 muskets and callivers, and 21 hand weapons as arms for 42 men, for defence against rebels and enemies; also 9 muskets and callivers, and 9 hand weapons, and also 12 muskets and callivers and 12 hand weapons, according to the instructions for the Plantation of Ulster.” A formidable little provision for arming 84 men in one house.[[21]] Every undertaker to take the oath of Supremacy; not to demise any land to the meer Irish; not to leave the country for five years. Restrictions were put upon their demising the land within five years. They were not to create tenancies at will, but for a number of years, for life, in tail or in fee-simple. Irish systems of tenure were abolished. The undertakers were given special privileges in the remission of customs, both for the importation of manufactured goods, and the exportation of the produce of their lands. It would be a mistake to suppose from these insolent rules about the “meer Irish” that none of them got any land. The outside undertakers got the good grants, but the natives got their leavings. The mountainous slopes and remote lands and other parts that were not likely to be productive, were given to the native element. The plan was to concentrate the intruders into villages and towns, and to scatter the Irish as much as possible, putting the servitors (or English who had been in Ireland for some years in military service) near to the natives to keep them in awe. There was always some land that it was quite necessary to let the Irish get, if it was ever to be saved from becoming absolutely waste land. Sir R. Jacob (the Solicitor-General for Ireland) showed both humour and acuteness in a letter he wrote to Salisbury in 1609, in which he urged the safety of allowing the natives to keep some land, and also suggests that the very inferior parts might go to them, he says: “The arrantest knave of the Byrne’s answered Sir Henry Sydney, when accused of dwelling on the Archbishop’s lands without paying rent, ‘My Lord, if I dwelt not there, none but thieves and outlaws would.’ So he says civil men will not plant themselves in mountain, rocks or desert places, even if they have it for nothing.... The Irish had no leader and no arms; they had 20,000 fighting men in Ulster if they had arms. O’Dogherty could not have made the progress he did, if he had not first lighted upon the king’s storehouse so as to arm his men.”[[22]] Those natives who got grants of a substantial amount obtained them as a special reward for subserviency in some form or other: for instance, Art McBarron was given 2,000 acres in Orior to induce him to clear out of O’Neilan, Chichester considering that his removal would be a great help in getting other natives to go out. In that case the grant was only for the lives of Art McBarron and his wife.[[23]] Similarly when Sir Tirlagh McHenry O’Neale was willing to be moved out of the Fewes, a request was made that orders be sent to the Lord Deputy to provide some convenient place in Cavan or elsewhere to settle him, in order to plant servitors in his country. Are we really so like sheep? There is yet to be told even a more absurd illustration than the case of McBarron to show how much our rulers in King James’ day believed we played the game of “follow my leader.” As a matter of fact, so far was this from being the case, that the native gentry who got grants of land became degraded in position, so that those who were gentry children in 1610 were in 1670 old men in frieze coats, farming small scraps of land. Few of the Irish who got somewhat liberal grants were able to retain them until the time of Pynnar’s inspection in 1618-1620.
It is not clear that conforming to the Act of Supremacy was essential in the native grantees, though we may be sure from what we see about the encouragements given to Irishmen of position who conformed, that as much use as possible was made of the plan of bribing people into Protestantism. So we must seek for other reasons for the failure to keep their possessions: there was the requirement of an English or stone house to be built; the abolition of the old tribal land systems and introduction of another system that they did not understand; the depression resulting from the discovery that they were now become a part of the English garrison. To which we must remember to add, that the natives’ grants of lands were in the most barren and rocky parts of Ulster. As a people we are mainly pastoral, and this was more conspicuously the case in the days of the Plantation, as everyone who has read Spenser’s View of Ireland will remember. The only hope of doing much with nearly all of the land given to the natives lay in tillage, a thing which the Irish of that day had a very imperfect knowledge of. Hill mentions one case where the ownership of the land continued on all right: it was in the grant to Tirlagh Oge O’Neale’s widow; and in that case the Irish custom was specially permitted by the Government grant.[[24]] In his Survey Pynnar says the English did not plough or use husbandry, being afraid to incur the risk, and that the Irish did not because they did not know when they might be moved. So the Scotch were the only ones who supplied food. The British lived on the heavy rents paid them by the Irish grazing tenants. If the Irish were to take away their cattle, he says, the British must either forsake their dwellings or endure great distress on the sudden. “Yet,” he says, “the co-habitation of the Irish is dangerous.” This report tells us there were most Irish on the London Company’s lands; five proportions were not estated; it was more profitable to take Irish on them; seven proportions were leased for 61 years, and the lessees affirmed they were not bound to plant English on them. There were sixty natives in Tyrone who got small grants, generally of 60 acres each. They were all transplanted into portions of the barony of Dungannon which neither undertakers nor servitors would occupy.[[25]] Here are some of the figures of natives grants. It is necessary to mention that it very often happens that one grant is made out for a number of persons.
Oriel, 4,080 acres in forty grants.
Dungannon, 4,080 acres in forty-nine grants.
Kilmacrenan, 13,752 acres in nineteen grants.
Clonemahowne, 3,587 acres in eight grants.
Tullagarvy, 6,012 acres in eight grants.