Clinawly, 6,208 acres in fifty-two grants.
Coole and Tircannada, 4,160 acres in five grants.
Tullaghah, Cavan, 4,900 acres in twenty-one grants.
Castle Rashen, 5,700 acres in eighteen grants.
Concerning the district among these in which the largest amount of land was assigned to the natives, Kilmacrenan, let us hear what its character was. After a mention of the commencement of some work having been made by Captain Will Stewart, in Kilmacrenan, we are told “the rest of the servitors have done nothing by reason of the wildness of the land, being the worst in all the country, insomuch that the natives are unwilling to come to dwell upon it until they be forced to remove.”[[26]]
Grants of refuse land having been assigned to a few hundred of the natives, what became of the others, the unfortunate people who found aliens suddenly planted upon the land of their fathers, and had no other provision made for them? Government provided that they should go. It does not seem to have been at all a worry to Government where they should go, as long as they went. The only thing needful was that they should be got away from the lands to be planted. Some were impressed into the service of the King of Sweden, some were transported to the newly-formed colony of Virginia, some went to the natives’ parts, and some to work on the Bishops’ or servitors’ lands. The great thing was that they should go. The leading Irishmen were all killed; banished or imprisoned on frivolous charges, or occasionally on no charges at all. The most brilliant of them, Brian MacArt O’Neill, the son of Art McBarron, was accused on a false charge of slaying a man at a family party in the house of Turlough McHenry O’Neill of the Fews, and was arrested and hanged. He had been the rising hope of the natives; it was thought he would proclaim himself “The O’Neill.” His name is perpetuated near Belfast in MacArt’s Fort, on the Cave Hill, Ballymacarrett, and O’Neill’s Fort.[[27]] Three men of high position, all bearing English titles, were imprisoned in the Tower by Chichester. Sir Donnell Ballagh O’Cahan was one of Tyrone’s sons-in-law; he had left Tyrone in 1600 when Docwra landed at Derry with a large force. A promise was made him that he would be given a territory independent of Tyrone. Sir Henry Docwra honourably maintained this promise, but after the Queen’s death it was repudiated by Chichester. O’Cahan spoke bitterly. He does not seem to have contemplated any violent step, but when he heard of the two Earls making for Derry, he hastened to join them, as if he wanted to quietly leave the land that was now cursed by the wiles and the falsehood of the strangers. But haste as he would, the poor man failed to join the two Earls, and then like a squeezed lemon, he was cast aside. He was imprisoned first in Dublin and then in the Tower. Never tried; he had committed no crime save that of Esau; for he wanted to escape from his responsibilities, and to leave his lands and his vassals to the possession of the race he could now trust no longer. For nineteen years in lonely imprisonment he lived to curse the day when he allowed himself to be overcome by English blandishments. Another person whose existence was inconvenient was Sir Cormac O’Neill, the brother of Tyrone. He brought to Dublin Castle the news of the flight of the Earls; he asked to be custodian of his brother’s lands and premises till his return; but lawyer Davies had already an eye to the plunder of the Ulster lands, so with grim humour he wrote, “We took a custodian of the knight himself.” The third prisoner, Sir Neal Garve O’Donnell, had a claim to the chiefry of Tyrconnell, he was married to the Earl’s sister, Nuala. It was impossible to get a jury to convict him.[[28]] It was some consolation to Sir Neal in his imprisonment to know that his wife was not starving or insane like Sir Donnell O’Cahan’s; for Lady O’Donnell went into exile with her brother, and soothed his dying hours. Many of the people preferred voluntary exile to remaining in Ireland under the altered conditions. The Earls and leaders were banished or in prison or dead. In 1611 Chichester revived a proclamation of 1605 for the banishment of priests; so many went of their own accord to Spain or the Netherlands.
Then with a thoughtful feeling for Irish prejudices, Government even provided some of the people with free passages out of the country; but in this case they were not sent to Spain, but into the service of the King of Sweden. When we remember that it was in the days of Gustavus Adolphus, “the Lion of the North, and the Champion of the Protestant Faith,” it will be seen that this measure of emigration was eminently calculated to show the considerateness of our English rulers. The men who took the people to Sweden were Captains Sandford and Bingley. I shall quote the reference from the Calendar of Patent Rolls. “King’s letter for a grant to Captain John Sandford, for ever, of all the mountain lands, bogs and woods in Ulster, escheated to the Crown, by the attainders of the Earls of Tyrone and Tierconnell, or any of their adherents, or any other traitors, or which otherwise belong to the Crown, and are not now in charge, to be holden under the conditions of the Plantation of Ulster, at a yearly rent of £10. This grant is to be made in consideration of Captain Sandford’s absence, during the distribution of the escheated lands in Ulster, in consequence of which no portion was assigned to him, he being then engaged in conducting the loose kerne and swordsmen of that province to the service of the King of Sweden, disburthening the country by that means of many turbulent and disaffected persons who would otherwise have troubled the peace.” (It will, perhaps, be satisfactory to learn that, in addition to this grant, Sandford secured lands in Donegal from Sir Richard and Sir Ralph Bingley, and Sir John Davies.) This Sweden business seems to have been eminently successful from the Government point of view. Sir R. Jacob wished that 1,000 more could be sent from each province; and hopes were expressed that the swordsmen, not only of Ulster, but of Connaught, could be transmitted to Sweden or Virginia.[[29]] We have the follow-my-leader theory again; for the Lords of the Council proposed to Chichester that native gentlemen should be sent to be leaders and heads for the troops who were transported into Gustavus Adolphus’s service. The charges were £1 each for clothing, 5d. per day per man for thirty-one days, carriage 10s. per man, and a sum amounting to 10s. per man for fee for pressing them into a foreign service.
If the rules about the non-employment of natives, and not letting them get on the land, had been strictly observed, it would certainly have led to a complete turning out of the people, and perhaps have precipitated the rising of 1641. And it was from no want of will on the part of the intruders that the law was not rigidly followed. The truth was, English and Scotch settlers were difficult to get; so, however unwillingly, the undertakers admitted Irish tenants and labourers, who in their despair were willing to come to any terms. Chichester saw clearly all along that an impossible thing was being attempted. He wrote in 1610 strongly opposing any change of policy about the natives, and speaks of the folly of crowding large numbers of servitors and natives in half a barony (as in Tyrone),[[30]] and says the natives will rather die than be removed to the small proportions assigned to them, or will seek a new dwelling in other counties. The Viceroy, as we see, was never in earnest in enforcing the laws for the expelling of natives; and so those laws were never fully carried out. The squatters required the Irish as hewers of wood and drawers of water. These restrictions were abolished before the end of James’ reign, and in 1626 the original undertakers, having failed to comply with the Plantation rules preventing them having native tenants, and having thus rendered themselves liable to forfeiture under Charles I, were allowed to surrender their titles, and get a re-grant under new conditions, one of which was that one quarter of each proportion was to be let to native tenants.
Thus a period of less than two decades saw the final disappearance of the obnoxious parts of the Plantation system. But they had never had vitality, and indeed the agents of the Irish Society from the very beginning insisted on letting their lands to Irish tenants. When the representatives of the Londoners came over on a tour of inspection, the officials who met them were given strict injunctions to put everything in the best light, and one of their cares was to prevent the Londoners from having any unnecessary fears of the Irish. In this they succeeded so well that they overshot the mark. The London Companies could get very few British tenants in O’Cahan’s country or Laughinsholin, where the people kept so many pikes, so they insisted on having Irish tenants. Hill says, “The Companies stoutly maintained the right of holding the Irish as their tenants, of preventing their expulsion; and to these Londoners we are indebted, more perhaps than to the servitors or Bishops, for the thriving and vigorous native population in Ulster at the present day. Indeed the whole business furnishes a curious illustration of the following words of the poet:—
The best laid schemes of mice and men,