Changes in land ownership:

Plantations
Plantations
There were 3 types of ruler:
1. the king of England
2. Anglo-Norman lords
3. Gaelic chieftains

A king of England
• He was the lord of Ireland
• The pale, where he ruled, followed English common law.

B Anglo-Irish lords
• They were supposed to be loyal to the king of England
• By the 16th century they became independent of the crown.
• They followed English common law and Gaelic brehon law.
• Some examples of the Anglo-Irish lords were the Fitzgeralds of Kildare, the butlers of
Ormond and the Fitzgeralds of Desmond.

C Gaelic chieftains
• They followed the brehon law
• Each kingdom of tuath had its own king.
• Some examples of the Gaelic chieftains were the O’Neill’s of Tyrone and the
O’Donnell’s of Donegal.

The Tudors
The Tudors were King Henry VII, his family and his descendants.
Why they wanted Ireland:
1. They didn’t want other countries to use Ireland as a weapon against them.
2. They wanted to introduce the protestant religion.
3. They thought that the English culture was superior to the Irish Gaelic culture.

Henry VIII – military conquest

• Henry VIII came into conflict with the Fitzgeralds of Kildare. Henry put the Earl
of Kildare in jail.
• This led the earls son, silken Thomas to rebel.
• Henry sent over an army of 2,300 soldiers under Sir William skeffington.
• Skeffington attacked the Fitzgeralds’ castle at maynooth with a canon.
• Later, silken Thomas and his five uncles were beheaded in London.

Henry VIII – surrender and regrant

• Gaelic and Anglo-Irish lords were encouraged to surrender their lands to the king.
• They had to promise to be loyal to the king and to follow English laws.
 • Their land was regranted to them and they were given new English titles.

Plantations
• After rebellious chiefs were defeated, their land was confiscated.
• Settlers were planted on their land.
• The settlers used the English law, language and customs.

The plantation of Laois -

Offaly
1. In the middle of the 16th century, the O’Moores and O’Connor’s were the lords of
Laois and Offaly.
2. They raided the pale for cattle.
3. Queen Mary sent her lord deputy with an army to conquer them.

Scheme
1. 2/3rds of the land was to be planted while the remaining 3 rd was to be left to loyal Irish
people.
2. The undertakers were to have stone houses and armed followers.
3. They were not allowed to mix with the Irish.
4. the land was shired:
• Laois was Queens County. Its main town was Mary borough which is now port
Laois.
• Offaly was Kings County. Its main town was Phillips town which is now called
daingean.
5. The plantation was a failure because there were not enough settlers and the Irish kept
attacking.
The Plantation of Munster
• In the middle of the 16th century, most of Munster was ruled by the Fitzgeralds, who were
earls of Desmond.
• However, Queen Elizabeth I was trying to increase her power in the province.
• She employed presidents to impose the English law and protestant religion.
• She employed adventurers to lay claim to land in Munster.
• In the 1560’s and 1570’s there were 2 rebellions.
• James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald was the leader.
• The English forces defeated the rebels.
• James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald went in search for help.
• The pope sent 600 soldiers.
• They landed in smerwick harbour.
• When they landed they were surrounded. They surrendered to the lord deputy but were
massacred.
• The land belonging to rebels was confiscated.
• Three hundred thousand acres of land were confiscated all together.

Scheme
• The land was divided into estates, the largest of which was 12000 acres.
• Undertakers were not allowed to mix with or employ Irish people.
• They had to be ready to defend themselves after 7 years. Until then they were protected
by the English government.
• Some undertakers got very large grants of land. One of these was Sir Walter Raleigh,
who was given 42,000 acres around youghal, Co. Cork.
• The undertakers were named so because they undertook to fulfil certain conditions.

Success or failure?
• The English government hoped that 20,000 planters would come, but only one third of
that actually came.
• Due to lack of tenants, the undertakers had to rent land to Irish people.
• The nine-year war meant that English planters were forced to move into towns or back to
England.

However, there were some successes.

• Some of the planters stayed in Ireland.
• New plantation towns were built.
 • New farming methods were developed – industry increased.
• New breeds of cattle were brought to Ireland – trade prospered.

The Plantation of Ulster

1. Gaelic chiefs and clans were the main rulers of Ulster.
2. The most powerful of these chiefs were the O’Neill’s of Tyrone and the O’Donnell’s of
Donegal.
3. The Ulster chiefs defeated the English armies sent to fight them.
4. One of the battles was the Battle of the Yellow Ford, in which O’Neill’s army defeated
an invading English army and killed 2,000 soldiers.

Spanish help
5. O’Neill’s success encouraged Phillip II of Spain to send ships with 4,000 soldiers.
6. They were defeated at the battle of kinsale in 1601.
7. Two years later, O’Neill made peace with the English government in the treaty of
mellifont {Co. Louth}.

Flight of the Earls

8. In 1607, O’Neill and the other chiefs fled Ireland, setting out from Lough swilly on a ship
bound for the continent.
9. Hugh O’Neill and Rory O’Donnell were two of the chiefs on board.
10. The new king, James I, declared the leaders traitors and confiscated their land.
The plan of the plantation
11. Land was confiscated in 6 counties – Donegal, Derry, Fermanagh, Cavan, Armagh and
Tyrone.
12. Antrim and down were already planted.
13. Monaghan was left alone.
14. A commission of inquiry visited the confiscated counties and investigated the ownership
of the land.
15. A team of surveyors, protected by soldiers, travelled with them.

The plantation in action

16. James wanted the plantation for various reasons:
• To create a loyal protestant population
• To gain money from rents
• To pay soldiers who fought in the nine-year war and the people who helped with
the plantations.

17. The land was given to several groups:

Who were they?
Undertakers English and Scottish planters
Servitors English soldiers and officials
who were owed money after
the Nine Years war and later
Loyal Irish Irish of “good merit” : Gaelic
Irish who had not taken part in
the rebellion
Conditions
Not allowed to have Gaelic
Irish tenants.
Could get 2,000, 1,500 or
1,000 acres of land
Rent: £5.33 per 1,000 acres
Could take some Gaelic Irish
tenants
Had 1,000 acres
Rent: £8 per 1,000 acres
Could have Gaelic tenants
Had 1,000 acres
Rent: £10.66 per 1,000 acres

Defence
18. Those who had 1,000 acres had to build a bawn, which was a stone wall around the
perimeter of their land.
19. Those with 1,500 acres had to build a stone house and a bawn.
20. Those with 2,000 acres of land had to build a castle, a defensive tower and a bawn.
21. By 1649 15,000 settlers had come to Ireland from England and Scotland.

The plantation of co. Londonderry

22. King James I and the guilds of London brought settlers to Co. Derry, which they now
renamed Co. Londonderry.

How successful was the plantation?

23. From the point of view of the English government, the Ulster plantation was more
successful than the plantation of Laois – Offaly or Munster.
24. It increased the influence of English law, the English language and English farming
methods in Ulster.
25. It ensured a loyal population.
26. It spread the protestant religion.
Results
27. By 1641, there were about 15,000 English or Scottish settlers in Ulster.
28. Some of the Gaelic Irish got land but those who didn’t continued to attack.
29. The settlers had a different religion to the Gaelic Irish. In 1641 this caused the native
Irish to attack.
30. There were conflicts between the native Irish and the English because of land and
religion. This led to troubles in Northern Ireland from the 1960’s onwards.
31. New towns were built, including Letterkenny (Co. Donegal), Strabane and Derry (Co.
Derry).
32. New farming methods were developing, increasing trade. Roads, inns and mills were
built.

The Cromwellian Plantation

• In 1641, a rebellion broke out in Ireland.
• 1,000people were killed.
• During the rebellion a massacre of Protestants took place in Ulster.
• At the same time, a civil war had started in England between the royalists, supporters of
King Charles I, and the parliamentarians, who wanted more power for the parliament.
• Oliver Cromwell was the leader of the parliamentarians.
• In 1649, Oliver Cromwell and 12,000 English soldiers landed in Ringsend.
• They marched to Drogheda and massacred everyone there.
• After that, all the towns they went to surrendered to them.
• The English government sent the priests, women and children of the areas to the West
Indies to work on plantations there.

• The plantation in action

 • The aims of the plantation were:
o To get rid of Catholics.
o to punish rebels and avenge the massacre of protestants
o To pay debts to adventurers and soldiers.

Confiscation
• The act of settlement 1652 punished rebel leaders severely:
1. Those who fought against parliament – ‘rebel’ landowners – lost all their land.
2. Those who could not prove their loyalty to the parliament lost their land and were
‘transplanted’ to Connaught and Co. Claire. They were given some land there in
part compensation.

The down survey

• Sir William petty, an army doctor, offered to survey and map the confiscated lands.
• He employed soldiers to carry out the measuring and mapping.
• It was called the down survey because all the information was set down on maps and in
written accounts.
• By the time he was finished, Ireland was the most accurately mapped country in Europe.
• Petty estimated that 11 million acres had been confiscated.
• The land was divided between adventurers, who got most of the land, and soldiers.
• Some of the soldiers had no interest in the land, so they sold it.

How successful was the Cromwellian plantation?

• The plantation failed to crush the catholic religion. But the main losers were the catholic
landowners. Catholic landowners in Ulster, Munster and Leinster lost most of their lands.
They were replaced by protestant landowners, who became the new landlord class. In
1641 the Catholics owned 3⁄5 of the land of Ireland. By 1665 they owned only 1⁄6 of the
land. Catholic landowners were now mainly confined to Connacht and Co. Clare.
• Many of the catholic landowners who were dispossessed in Cromwell’s plantation went
hiding in woods and hills. They became outlaw bands, called Tories, who attacked the
settlers.
• Catholics remained on as tenants and labourers.
• Catholics were forbidden to live in towns. Property and trade were mainly in the hands of
the Protestants.
• For the next 200 years, power and wealth in Ireland remained in the hands of Protestants.

Overall results of the plantations: a summary

• Land ownership changed: land was confiscated from Catholics and given to Protestants.
• The tenants in most parts of the country were still catholic.
• The conflict between Catholics and Protestants was about both land and religion.
• The culture and language of Gaelic Ireland declined because the Gaelic chiefs lost all
their power.
• The planters introduced new farming methods. These new methods depended more on
tillage, whereas the Gaelic system depended on the ownership of cattle.
• New towns where founded in many parts of the country. Protestants controlled most of
the trade and business in the towns.
• Protestants ensured their control of the wealth and power of the country by introducing
the penal laws. These laws forbade Catholics to:
 1. keep weapons
2. send their children to schools on the continent or run schools in Ireland
3. buy land
4. hold government positions
5. sit in parliament
6. vote
• The lessons learned during plantations in Ireland were used when the English government
organised plantations in North America.
• At the end of the 19th century, the tenant farmers and the land lords battled for control of
the land in the land war. The landlords lost. The tenant farmers bought out the landlord
class. The tenants were able to buy land with the help of loans from the British
government.

Ruler Henry VIII Mary Tudor Elizabeth I James I Cromwell

Area Kildare Laois – Munster Ulster
{surrender Offaly
and regrant}
Years 1509-47 1656 1558-1603 1609+ 1649-52
Dispossessed Fitzgeralds O’Moores Earl of O’Neill’s Catholic
Irish family O’Connor’s desmond O’Donnell’s landowners
{fitzgeralds}
results failure Land shired Undertakers *undertakers Act of
failure Garrisons *servitors settlement
New farming *Irish Protestant
methods landowners ascendancy
Towns Towns class
rebellion Success
Religion
Language
customs