A map of Ireland circa 1500 before the English re-conquest undertaken by the Tudors and Stuarts
Beyond the Pale, the authority of the Dublin government was tenuous. The Hiberno-Norman lords had been able to carve out fiefdoms for themselves but not to settle them with English tenants. As a result, in the 14th and 15th centuries, in the wake of Irish rebellion, Scottish invasion, the Black Death and a lack of interest on the part of the London government, the territories controlled by those lords achieved a high degree of independence. The Butlers, Fitzgeralds and Burkes raised their own armed forces, enforced their own law, and adopted Gaelic language and culture.
Beyond those territories large areas of land previously held by authority of the English crown were taken by the resurgent Gaelic Irish, particularly in the north and midlands.
The large scale map shows the most important "septs" in Ireland around the beginning of the sixteenth-century.
A sept is an English word for a division of a family, especially of a Scottish or Irish family. The term is used in both Scotland and Ireland, where it may be translated as sliocht, meaning "progeny" or "seed", which may indicate the descendants of a person. The word may derive from the Latin saeptum, meaning "enclosure" or "fold".
Among the most important septs were the O'Neills (Uí Néill) in central Ulster (Tir Eoghain)—flanked to their west by the O'Donnells—the O'Byrnes and O'Tooles in County Wicklow, the Kavanaghs in County Wexford, the MacCarthys and O'Sullivans in County Cork and County Kerry and the O'Brien (Ó Briain) lordship of Thomond in County Clare.
From 1536, Henry VIII of England decided to reconquer Ireland and bring it under crown control. The Fitzgerald dynasty of Kildare, who had become the effective rulers of Ireland in the 15th century, had become unreliable allies of the Tudor monarchs. They had invited Burgundian troops into Dublin to crown the Yorkist pretender, Lambert Simnel as King of England in 1487. Again in 1536, Silken Thomas Fitzgerald went into open rebellion against the crown. Having put down this rebellion, Henry resolved to bring Ireland under English government control so the island would not become a base for future rebellions or foreign invasions of England. In 1541, he upgraded Ireland from a lordship to a full Kingdom. Henry was proclaimed King of Ireland at a meeting of the Irish Parliament that year. This was the first meeting of the Irish Parliament to be attended by the Gaelic Irish chieftains as well as the Hiberno-Norman aristocracy. With the institutions of government in place, the next step was to extend the control of the English Kingdom of Ireland over all of its claimed territory.
Arrival of English colonists in Munster
Following the failure of the two Desmond rebellions of 1569–1573 and 1579–1583 in the Irish province of Munster, there was a wholesale land confiscation and colonisation, that was imposed upon a region devastated by the English "scorched earth" military campaign.
This has proved to be the model for a pattern of English colonisation over the succeeding centuries, that has consistently resulted in an accumulation of property and wealth for a few, the colonists and the colonial power itself, through the dispossession of property for the many, the indigenous population.
These rebellions were motivated primarily by the desire to maintain the independence of feudal lords from their monarch but also had an element of religious antagonism between Catholic Geraldines and the Protestant English state. They culminated in the destruction of the Desmond dynasty and the plantation or colonisation of Munster with English Protestant settlers. 'Desmond' is the Anglicisation of the Irish Deasmumhain, meaning 'South Munster'.
These rebellions were led by the Earl of Desmond, the head of the FitzGerald dynasty in Munster, and his followers, the Geraldines and their allies, against the threat of the extension of an Elizabethan English government over the province by their South Welsh Tewdwr cousins.
Here is an excerpt from an article on the Ceann Sleibhe - Information Wrap:
To every place there belongs a story . . .
and that refers to some of the brutal aspects and consequences of the second rebellion.
From Bloody Bess to the Faerie Queen
Elizabeth I of England was also known as: Astraea, Belphoebe, Bloody Bess, Fortune's Empress, Gloriana, Good Queen Bess, the Glory of Her Sex, the Great, the Maiden Queen, the Fairie Queene, the Peerless Oriana, the Queen of the Northern Seas, the Queen of Shepherds, the Virgin Queen.
"Fort of Slaughter" - "Fort of Gold"
It was at this place that Sir Walter Raleigh was present at the Siege of Smerwick, and where he led a party that beheaded some 600 Spanish and italian soldiers, in what would nowadays be considered a war crime.
Ard na Caithne, (English: Smerwick) meaning height of the arbutus or strawberry tree, in the heart of the Kerry Gaeltacht, is one of the principal bays of Corca Dhuibhne. It is nestled at the foot of An Triúr Deirfiúr and Cnoc Bhréanainn, which at 952 metres (3,123 ft) is the highest mountain in the Brandon group.
Bounded by the villages of Baile an Fheirtéaraigh, Baile na nGall and Ard na Caithne itself, the area is what has been known as the Fíor-Ghaeltacht, or true Gaeltacht, in recent decades. an Irish-language word for any primarily Irish-speaking region. In Ireland, the term Gaeltacht refers individually to any, or collectively to all, of the districts where the government recognises that the Irish language is the predominant vernacular, or language of the home. Ard na Caithne (old anglicised form Ardnaconnia) was also known in Irish as Iorras Tuaiscirt ("north peninsula") and Gall-Iorras ("peninsula of the strangers").
The Siege and Massacre of Smerwick
The Second Desmond Rebellion (1579–1583) was the more widespread and bloody of the two Desmond Rebellions launched by the FitzGerald dynasty of Desmond in Munster, Ireland, against English rule in Ireland. The second rebellion began in July 1579 when James FitzMaurice FitzGerald landed in Ireland with a force of Papal troops, triggering an insurrection across the south of Ireland on the part of the Desmond dynasty, their allies and others who were dissatisfied for various reasons with English government of the country. The rebellion ended with the 1583 death of Gerald FitzGerald, 15th Earl of Desmond, and the defeat of the rebels.
The rebellion was in equal part a protest by feudal lords against the intrusion of central government into their domains; a conservative Irish reaction to English policies that were altering traditional Gaelic society; and a religious conflict, in which the rebels claimed that they were upholding Catholicism against a Protestant queen who had been pronounced a heretic in 1570 by the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis.
On 10 September 1580, a squadron of Spanish ships under the command of Don Juan Martinez de Recalde landed a Papal force of Spanish and Italians numbering 600 men commanded by Sebastiano di San Giuseppe (aka Sebastiano da Modena), at Smerwick, on the Dingle Peninsula near the same point where Fitzmaurice had landed the previous year. They had been sent by Philip II to aid the rebellion (in a clandestine manner), as a result it was paid for and sent by Pope Gregory XIII. At the time neither Spain nor the Papacy was formally at war with the Kingdom of Ireland, but the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis of 1570 had released observant Catholics from their allegiance to Queen Elizabeth I.
Leading a rebel force of 4,000 men somewhere to the east, Lord Desmond, Lord Baltinglass and John of Desmond tried to link up for supplies with the expeditionary force. However, the English forces under The 10th Earl of Ormond and The 14th Baron Grey de Wilton blocked them, and Richard Bingham's ships blockaded their ships in the bay at Smerwick. San Giuseppe had no choice but to retreat to the fort at Dún an Óir.
On 5 November, a naval force led by Admiral Sir William Winter arrived at Smerwick Harbour, replenishing the supplies of Lord Grey de Wilton, who was camped at Dingle, and landing eight artillery pieces. The invading forces were geographically isolated on the tip of the narrow Corca Dhuibhne (Dingle Peninsula), cut off by Cnoc Bréanainn (Mount Brandon), one of the highest mountains in Ireland, on one side, and the much larger English force on the other.
The 400–500 strong force of Papal freelance soldiers (of Spanish and Italian origin), having previously captured the village, had been forced by this situation to retreat to this nearby defensive position, now known as Dún an Óir ('the Fort of Gold', possibly a persistent mistranscription for Dún an Áir, 'the Fort of Slaughter'), where they were then besieged by the Irish Royal Army. The English forces began the artillery barrage on Dún an Óir on the morning of the 8 November, which rapidly broke down the improvised defences of the fort.
After a three-day siege, the commander Di San Giuseppe surrendered on 10 November 1580. Accounts vary on whether they had been granted quarter. Grey de Wilton ordered the summary executions, sparing only the commanders. Grey had also heard that the main Irish rebel army of 4,000 "who had promised to be on the mountains", were somewhere in the hills to his east, looking to be rearmed and supplied by Di San Giuseppe, and they might in turn surround his army; but this army never appeared.
According to Grey de Wilton's account, contained in a despatch to Queen Elizabeth I of England dated 11 November 1580, he rejected an approach made by the besieged Spanish and Italian forces to agree terms of a conditional surrender in which they would cede the fort and leave. Lord Grey de Wilton claimed that he insisted that they surrender without preconditions and put themselves at his mercy, and that he subsequently rejected a request for a ceasefire. An agreement was finally made for an unconditional surrender the next morning, with hostages being taken by English forces to ensure compliance. The following morning, an English force entered the fort to secure and guard armaments and supplies. Grey de Wilton's account in his despatch says "Then put I in certain bands, who straight fell to execution. There were six hundred slain." Grey de Wilton's forces spared those of higher rank: "Those that I gave life unto, I have bestowed upon the captains and gentlemen that hath well deserved..."
Local historian Margaret Anna Cusack (alias MF Cusack) noted that there is a degree of controversy about Lord Grey de Wilton's version of events to Elizabeth, and identifies three other contemporary accounts, by O'Daly, O'Sullivan Beare and Russell, which contradict it.
According to these versions, Grey de Wilton promised the garrison their lives in return for their surrender, a promise which he broke, remembered in the term "Grey's faith".
Like Grey himself, none of these commentators can be described as neutral, as they were all either serving the state or opposed to it. Cusack's interpretation of the events could not be described as unbiased, given her position as a Catholic nun and fervent Irish nationalist at the time.
Cusack also confirmed (Cusack MF, An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 Dublin, 1868) that Di San Giuseppe (whom she named by the Spanish version, San José) had sold the "Fort del Ore" for a bribe:Colonel Sebastian San José, who proved eventually so fearful a traitor to the cause he had volunteered to defend .. The Geraldine cause was reduced to the lowest ebb by the treachery of José. She explained that:
In a few days the courage of the Spanish commander failed, and he entered into treaty with the Lord Deputy. A bargain was made that he should receive a large share of the spoils. He had obtained a personal interview in the Viceroy's camp, and the only persons for whom he made conditions were the Spaniards who had accompanied him on the expedition. The English were admitted to the fortress on the following day, and a feast was prepared for them.Sir Geoffrey Fenton wrote to London on 14 November about the prisoners that a further "....20 or 30 Captains and Alphiaries [were] spared to report in Spain and Italy the poverty and infidelity of their Irish consociates [sic]."
According to Cusack (Cusack, MF, The History of the Kingdom of Kerry, 1871 p.187-9), the few that were spared suffered a worse fate. They were offered life if they would renounce their Catholic faith; on refusal, their arms and legs were broken in three places by an ironsmith. They were left in agony for a day and night and then hanged. In contrast, Grey's report mentioned: "Execution of the Englishman who served Dr Sanders, and two others, whose arms and legs were broken for torture." He did not specify why they were tortured, nor refer to their religion.
According to the English writer John Hooker in his Supply to the Irish Chronicle (an addition to Holinshed's Chronicles) written in 1587, the bands ordered to carry out the executions were led by Captain Raleigh (later Sir Walter Raleigh) and Captain Mackworth.
Richard Bingham, future commander of Connacht, was present and described events in a letter to The 1st Earl of Leicester, although he claimed the massacre was perpetrated by sailors. The poet Edmund Spenser, then secretary to the Lord Deputy, is also thought to have been present.
The monument dates from 1980; the seaward side bears a cross and a Gaelic inscription 'igcuimhne dhun an oir samhain 1580'. According to the folklore of the area, the execution of the captives took two days, with many of the captives being beheaded in a field known locally in Irish as Gort a Ghearradh (the Field of the Cutting); their bodies later being thrown into the sea.
Raleigh received 40,000 acres (16,000 ha) (approx. 0.2% of Ireland) upon the seizure and distribution of land following the attainders arising from the rebellion, including the coastal walled town of Youghal and, further up the Blackwater River, the village of Lismore.
This made him one of the principal landowners in Munster, but he had limited success inducing English tenants to settle on his estates. Raleigh made the town of Youghal his occasional home during his 17 years as an Irish landlord, frequently being domiciled at Killua Castle, Clonmellon, County Westmeath.
Amongst Raleigh's acquaintances in Munster was another Englishman who had been granted land there, poet Edmund Spenser. In the 1590s, he and Raleigh travelled together from Ireland to the court at London, where Spenser presented part of his allegorical poem The Faerie Queene to Elizabeth I.
After three years of scorched earth warfare by the English, Munster was racked by famine. In April 1582, the provost marshal of Munster, Sir Warham St Leger, estimated that 30,000 people had died of hunger in the previous six months. Plague broke out in Cork city, to where the country people had fled to avoid the fighting. People continued to die of starvation and plague long after the war had ended, and it is estimated that by 1589 one-third of the province's population had died.
Grey was recalled by Elizabeth I for his excessive brutality. Two famous accounts tell us of the devastation of Munster after the Desmond rebellion. The first is from the Gaelic Annals of the Four Masters:
“ ... the whole tract of country from Waterford to Lothra, and from Cnamhchoill (a wood close to Tipperary) to the county of Kilkenny, was suffered to remain one surface of weeds and waste… At this period it was commonly said that the lowing of a cow or the whistle of the ploughboy could scarcely be heard from Dun-Caoin to Cashel in Munster. ”
The second is from the View of the Present State of Ireland, written by English poet Edmund Spenser and author of The Faerie Queene, who fought in the campaign and approved the scorched earth method, suggesting it as a useful method of enforcing English ways:
“ In those late wars in Munster; for notwithstanding that the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cattle, that you would have thought they could have been able to stand long, yet ere one year and a half they were brought to such wretchedness, as that any stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the wood and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked Anatomies [of] death, they spoke like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eat of the carrions, happy where they could find them, yea, and one another soon after, in so much as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot of water-cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to continue therewithal; that in a short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man or beast.”
These methods were subsequently applied by succeeding English and British colonial military expeditions from Munster in Ireland to the Boer War in southern Africa.
The wars of the 1570s and 1580s marked a watershed in Ireland. The southern Geraldine axis of power was annihilated, and Munster was "planted" with English colonists given land confiscated from those who fought for their country.
After a survey begun in 1584 by Sir Valentine Browne, Surveyor General of Ireland, the thousands of English soldiers and administrators who had been imported to suppress the rebellion were given land in the Munster Plantation of Desmond's confiscated estates.
An account of the second rebellion and the aftermath of colonisation can be found at The Irish Story website, in an article by John Dorney:
The Munster Plantation and the MacCarthys, 1583-1597
Into this wasted and almost dispeopled region, Elizabeth resolved to introduce English colonies. Not long afterwards, a series of English settlements sprung up in south-west Cork, in particular at Baltimore, Crookhaven, Bantry Bay and Bandon, frontier settlements on the edge of the English empire, deep in the heart of Gaelic Munster.
Bandon As a frontier town Bandon was originally enclosed by a city wall for the potential defence and protection from the indigenous population of the surrounding countryside. The walls were generally about nine feet thick, and varied in height from thirty to fifty feet.
The City Walls
There were six bastions each mounted with two guns and the area enclosed by the walls was estimated at 27 acres compared to 30 acres within the walls of Londonderry. The fortifications in Bandon, however, were said to be the best in Ireland. By 1622 there were about 250 houses in Bandon and a population of over 2000 English families residing in the town and neighbourhood. By comparison in 1659 the population of Derry was 586. Within a century, Bandon would be the largest town in Cork.
The early years proved difficult and dangerous. Bandon lay on the outer edge of the area under English control; it was surrounded by a vast woodland populated by wolves, deer and the displaced O Mahony clansmen and other rebels. With the Nine Years war, another Irish rebellion against English rule came to Munster in 1598 most of the settlers were chased off their lands and took refuge in Cork city or fled back to England.
This Nine Years' War, also called Tyrone's Rebellion, took place in Ireland from 1593 to 1603, was a continuing response to the then-ongoing Tudor conquest of Ireland, with armed conflict taking place across Ireland, but mainly involving the northern province of Ulster.
The war against the leader of the rebellion, Hugh O'Neill and his allies, was the largest conflict fought by England in the Elizabethan era. At the height of the conflict (1600–1601) more than 18,000 soldiers were fighting in the English army in Ireland.
Scorched earth warfare was carried out in Ulster, just as it had been conducted earlier in the crushing of the rebellion in Munster. In an article for The Irish Story John Dorney references the continuation of this brutal method of warfare under the heading War and Famine in Ireland:
In the closing stages of the Nine Years War (1594-1603) in 1601-03, much the same pattern of war-related famine occurred. Hugh O’Neill’s and his allies’ forces had been dispersed and were reduced to fugitive warfare in the hills and forests of central Ulster.John Dorney makes the point that;
English commanders, Lord Mountjoy, Henry Dowcra and Arthur Chichester along with Niall Garbh O’Donnell, a local rival of O’Neill’s ally Hugh O’Donnell, used the same brutal tactics seen in the Desmond wars, devastating the countryside and killing the civilian population at random.
Chichester reported of one such raid; “We have killed, burnt and spoiled …within four miles of Dungannon…we have killed above 100 people of all sorts, besides such as were burnt, how many I know not. We spare none of what quality or sex soever, and it hath bred much terror in the people”.
Famine soon hit Ulster as a result of the English scorched earth strategy. In this case, the deliberate destruction of food may have been combined with exceptionally cold weather and a poor harvest to accentuate famine conditions. The 1590s, with combination of war and extremely wet and cold summers and harvest seasons, saw near-famine condition throughout Ireland. The harsh winter of 1602-03 saw famine occur across Europe.
In Ulster, however, there can be no doubt that conditions were far worse than elsewhere in Ireland. Fynes Morrison, Mountjoy’s secretary, recorded that;
“No spectacle was more frequent in towns and ditches and especially in the wasted countries, than to see multitudes of these poor people dead with their mouths all coloured green by eating nettles”.
Chichester’s forces found that the locals were reduced to cannibalism, in one instance coming upon five children eating a dead woman, their mother.
Irish sources claimed that as many as 60,000 people had died in the Ulster famine of 1602-3. This may be an exaggeration, as we have no reliable information even about the population of the province, or indeed of the island at the time, but we can be sure that the death toll was very large as a proportion of the pre-war population. The repeated references to cannibalism, both in the 1580s and 1600s is a clear indication that these were very serious crises, where starvation had reached such a pitch that neighbourly and even family bonds of human solidarity had broken down.
. . . the war-related famines of late Tudor Ireland did leave an important legacy, aside solely from their part in breaking the resistance of native lords to their incorporation into the English-run Kingdom of Ireland. Without the depopulation of much of Ulster at the end of the Nine Years War, it is difficult to see how, in 1608 the province could have been ‘planted’ as it was, with settlers from England and Scotland.
James Sheridan The Irish Times reviewer of The Nine Years War: 1593-1603 by James O’Neill writes:
This book centres on the intriguing and historically significant conflict that marked the end of the 16th century and saw the defeat of the bellicose Gaelic Irish lordships of Ulster by the forces of England’s queen Elizabeth. The Nine Years War was a tumultuous and defining period in Irish history as it marked the end of the traditional Gaelic political order, which had ruled Ireland since antiquity and firmly established the control of the English crown and royal government over the whole island.
With the collapse of the Gaelic noble classes, who had dominated Irish political life, culture and economic and social circles for generations, English authority was able to finally permeate through Irish society unchecked, thereby setting in motion the creation of a colonial order that would shape Irish history and in particular Ulster for the next 400 years.
James O’Neill’s study of this conflict and its implications proves increasingly relevant as the contested place of Ulster in Irish, British and European politics once again reasserts itself. In minute and studious detail, it highlights the various dynamics of the period. Special emphasis is given to the English and Irish armies’ conduct as well as their various campaigns and modes of fighting. Irish society and military forces were more than able to match their English counterparts in waging a large-scale conflict. This marked a dramatic change from earlier Anglo-Gaelic conflicts where Gaelic armies were often outgunned by their numerically and materially superior English opponents.
The author highlights how native Irish rulers such as Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, was able to create a hugely impressive well-armed, expertly led, trained and motivated field army, with a flexible domestic war-economy to match, which frequently outmanoeuvred and overcame English forces. Moreover, enormous research and analysis is given to explaining the course of the conflict, which culminated in the eventual victory of English forces by 1603. This includes examining the various tentative stages of the conflict including early rebel Gaelic Irish Ulster lords’ reasons for going to war with the English Crown in 1593-5, their initial successes over Crown forces, the growth of the conflict outside the boundaries of Ulster as other Gaelic Irish lords capitalised on English difficulties to forcibly pursue their own political agendas with the Crown and the continued political negotiations between Gaelic figures such as Hugh O’Neill and both the English and Spanish Crowns during this period.
Through brute military force, the use of famine and scorched earth tactics and little hindered by lacklustre Spanish forces (culminating in the disastrous defeat of Gaelic forces at the battle of Kinsale in 1601) the English under Lord Deputy Sir Charles Blount and Lord Mountjoy finally managed to secure victory and affirm Crown dominance over not only Ulster but the whole of Ireland by 1603. This in turn ensured English authority over Ireland for centuries to come and laid the groundwork for the plantation of Ulster by Elizabeth’s successor James I with ramifications still felt today.
Aftermath of the Nine Years War
After this war, the English authorities in Dublin established real control over Ireland for the first time, bringing a centralised government to the entire island, and successfully disarmed the native lordships. In 1614 the Catholic majority in the Irish Parliament was overthrown through the creation of numerous new boroughs which were dominated by the new settlers. However, the English were not successful in converting the Catholic Irish to the Protestant religion and the brutal methods used by crown authority (including resorting to martial law) to bring the country under English control, heightened resentment of English rule.
From the mid-16th to the early 17th century, crown governments had carried out a policy of land confiscation and colonisation known as Plantations. Scottish and English Protestant colonists were sent to the provinces of Munster, Ulster and the counties of Laois and Offaly. These Protestant settlers replaced the Irish Catholic landowners who were removed from their lands. These settlers formed the ruling class of future British appointed administrations in Ireland. Several Penal Laws, aimed at Catholics, Baptists and Presbyterians, were introduced to encourage conversion to the established (Anglican) Church of Ireland. By 1619-20 the dispossession of all classes of mainly indigenous Irish resulted in the establishment of these plantations, of colonial settlements, inhabited now by people who had arrived from England and Scotland.
The Plantation of Ulster, had settled up to 80,000 English and Scots in the north of Ireland by 1641. The so-called Ulster Scots were predominantly Presbyterian, which distinguished them from the Anglican English colonists. The plantations changed the demography of Ireland by creating large communities with a British and Protestant identity. The elite of these communities replaced the older Catholic ruling class, which had shared with the general population a common Irish identity and set of political attitudes.
The Surveyors arrive after the "Flight of the Earls".
Bodley Barony Map of Fermanagh - Fermanagh County Museum
A survey of the lands of Ulster began in 1609. After the Flight of the Earls and the O’Doherty rebellion the crown took the opportunity to survey the lands of Ulster and get a better understanding of the physical and cultural landscape of the province. Sir Josias Bodley was the head of the team of mapmakers who undertook this task and his name has become attached to the maps as a result.
See the article on Departures
The Flight of the Earls refers to the departure of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone and Rory O'Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, and about ninety followers who left Ulster in Ireland for mainland Europe in September 1607.
In 1605, the new Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir Arthur Chichester, began to encroach on the former freedoms of the two Earls and The Maguire, enforcing the new freeholds, especially that granted in North Ulster to the Ó Catháin chief. The Ó Catháins had formerly been important subjects of the O'Neills and required protection; in turn, Chichester wanted to reduce O'Neill's authority. An option was to charge O'Neill with treason if he did not comply with the new arrangements. The discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in the same year made it harder for Catholics to appear loyal to both the crown and the papacy. As the Dublin administration sided with Ó Catháin, O'Neill was invited by King James to make his case in 1607 to the Privy Council in London, which he never did. Fearing arrest, they chose to flee to Continental Europe, where they hoped to recruit an army for the invasion of Ireland with Spanish help.
Arrival of the "Undertakers"
The new elite represented both English and Scottish interests in Ireland. The physical and economic nature of Irish society was also changed, as new concepts of ownership, trade and credit were introduced. These changes led to the creation of a Protestant ruling class, which during the 17th century secured the authority of Crown government in Ireland.
The Northern Ireland COMMUNITY ARCHIVE is rewriting the story.
The plan for the plantation was determined by two factors. One was the wish to make sure the settlement could not be destroyed by rebellion as the first Munster Plantation had been in the Nine Years' War. This meant that, rather than settling the planters in isolated pockets of land confiscated from the Irish, all of the land would be confiscated and then redistributed to create concentrations of British settlers around new towns and garrisons.
What was more, the new landowners were explicitly banned from taking Irish tenants and had to import workers from England and Scotland. The remaining Irish landowners were to be granted one quarter of the land in Ulster. The peasant Irish population was intended to be relocated to live near garrisons and Protestant churches. Moreover, the planters were barred from selling their lands to any Irishman and were required to build defences against any possible rebellion or invasion. The settlement was to be completed within three years. In this way, it was hoped that a defensible new community composed entirely of loyal British subjects would be created.
The second major influence on the Plantation was the negotiation among various interest groups on the British side. The principal landowners were to be "Undertakers", wealthy men from England and Scotland who undertook to import tenants from their own estates. They were granted around 3000 acres (12 km²) each, on condition that they settle a minimum of 48 adult males (including at least 20 families), who had to be English-speaking and Protestant. Veterans of the Nine Years' War, known as "Servitors", led by Arthur Chichester successfully lobbied to be rewarded with land grants of their own.
Since these former officers did not have enough private capital to fund the colonisation, their involvement was subsidised by the twelve great guilds. Livery companies from the City of London were coerced into investing in the project, as were City of London guilds which were granted land on the west bank of the River Foyle, to build their own city on the site of Derry (renamed Londonderry after them) as well as lands in County Coleraine. They were known jointly as The Honourable The Irish Society. The final major recipient of lands was the Protestant Church of Ireland, which was granted all the churches and lands previously owned by the Roman Catholic Church. The British government intended that clerics from England and the Pale would convert the native population to Anglicanism.
The Northern Ireland COMMUNITY ARCHIVE publishes material on these first planters and plantations.
Coleraine was the first ‘planted’ town in Ulster and, with Derry, was at the epicentre of this ambitious project.
This formal street plan, featuring a large central market square and a Protestant church, and fortified by an earthen rampart and ditch, conforms to the ideal vision of a Plantation town.
The Diamond is a common name for the market square at the centre of plantation towns. Markets were central to the Plantation project – it was assumed that control, regulation and commercialisation of the economy would also establish a ‘civilised’ society. Plans for Plantation towns usually also include a church and a jail.
Coleraine succeeded because it was built on an established ecclesiastical and trading centre, at a strategic crossing on the Bann close to rich local fisheries and forests. Other settlements on the frontier of the Plantation failed to conform to the plan and ultimately did not survive.
Movanagher bawn was the headquarters of the rich and powerful Mercers Company. But the Mercers were unable to attract enough people to make the new settlement viable and were forced to rely on Irish tenants. In 1619, the population was recorded as 3 freeholders, 52 British men and 145 Irish men. The settlement was abandoned after the 1641 Rebellion.
The map shows an incoherent settlement scattered through the forest, with four English-style timber frame houses, but six houses that are clearly Gaelic-style, probably built of woven branches covered in mud.
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