The Plantation of Ulster

The Plantation of Ulster

Ulster Flag

Ulster flag

The Plantation of Ulster happened in 1611,after the flight of Earls in which the main Ulster Gaelic chiefs, the O’Neills and O’Donnells fled to the continent. The English Government has spent 9 years (1594 -1603) and a lot of money reducing the Gaelic chiefs of Ulster to submission and they were intent on insuring it would not have to be done again.

The official Ulster Plantation - Settlemap Map - see BBC Wars & Conflict website

After the Flight of the Earls from Donegal, the Plantation of Ulster began, the most ambitious programme of colonisation yet undertaken by the English Crown, perhaps the most grandiose ever planned in western Europe, on a par with the great colonial undertakings of Spain and Portugal overseas The English Lord Lieutenant, Sir Arthur Chichester, and the Attorney General, Sir John Davies, were the instruments, for giving effect to the great Plantation.

The natives were driven to the bogs and the moors where it was hoped that they would starve to death. The solution was to remove the natives from their land and replace them with English and Scottish settlers. The scheme included 6 Ulster counties The Plantation is an event that echoes to the present day. In North-east Ulster it planted very deep roots and within a generation many parts of NE Ulster were as English (and Scottish) as the land the settlers had left.

At the same time the Plantation opened up what had been the poorest province in Ireland, created the first urban settlements in the north outside of Antrim and Down, and laid the basis of an industrial revolution which would make Ulster one of the western world's most dynamic commercial and manufacturing centres by the beginning of the twentieth century.

The confiscated lands of six counties - Cavan, Donegal (Tyrconnell), Armagh, Fermanagh, Londonderry (Coleraine) and Tyrone - were divided into 'precincts', subdivided into large, middle, and small 'proportions' to be given to 'servitors' (army commanders and the King's servants), 'undertakers' (men of property who undertook to bring over Protestant British families), and 'deserving Irish' (those who had changed sides in time during the Earls' rebellion). The latest marketing techniques were used: in April 1610 a detailed brochure, the 'Printed Book', provided applicants with information on rents and conditions; and pamphlets extravagantly described the prospects awaiting loyal British subjects seeking to better themselves

Soon the great migration began, drawn from every class: army veterans such as Sir Basil Brooke and Sir Faithful Fortescue; younger sons of gentlemen seeking estates of their own; nobles, including the Earl of Abercorn; merchants and craftsmen, evicted Scottish farmers; and fugitives from justice from the Borders.

The British colonists found planting Ulster much more perilous than they had been led to believe. They had been told that the province was almost completely depopulated but everywhere they were outnumbered by the natives. On the lonely settlements by the Sperrins or Glenveagh the baying of a wolf at the moon must have sent a chill down the spine of many a planter who had never heard the sound before. The fear of 'woodkerne' lurking in the thickets was better founded: these were guerrilla fighters as resourceful and as ruthless as Partisans or Viet Cong, harrying the colonists when least expected

The greatest threat, however, was the smouldering resentment of the native Irish who worked and farmed with the settlers.

Thatched Cottage

The Gaelic Irish were confronted by alien planters adhering to a variety of Protestantism far distant from their own Catholicism: in Ulster, in particular, the uncompromising spirit of the Counter-Reformation faced the inflexible determination of the Presbyterian and Puritan settlers.

The Elizabethan conquest, the Flight of the Earls and the Ulster Plantation occurred at a time of intense religious division in Europe. Those divisions were kept alive in the north of Ireland - by fear, insecurity and instability - long after they had been largely dissipated in the rest of Europe

Colonists from England and Huguenots from France established a thriving linen industry which would eventually become the biggest in the world.

Linen

Flax is the raw material of the Linen Trade. Irish flax is particularly strong

Linen

The flax flower is either blue or white, and there are few prettier sights than a flax field in bloom

The great forests were ruthlessly cut down but this opened up new lands for cultivation. Ulster, which had been the poorest province in Ireland, by degrees became the most prosperous. Never the less, recollection of dispossession, massacre and persecution had been etched deep into the folk consciousness of Protestants and Catholics alike. So it was that the Flight of the Earls and the Plantation of Ulster left a grim legacy of mistrust and bitterness persisting all too durably to our own time

Following decades characterised by massacres, sieges, ruthless campaigning and widespread destruction, peace returned in the 1690s.	Map of Ulster	The Planters transformed the Province. They pioneered town planning in Ireland, creating urban settlements with broad streets and squares where there had been none before
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