The Ulster Plantations: Turning Ireland Protestant and British

It's quite telling to read the terms of the Treaty of Mellifont in 1603. Agreed between Charles Blount, 8th Baron Mountjoy - the English Lord Deputy in Ireland - and Hugh Uí Néill (pictured), Ulster clan chief and nominally High King of Ireland, it is a study in dismantling a people.

Some of the items on the list are unexceptional.  The defeated Irish had to promise never to seek foreign aid against English forces again. The usual stuff.

But the bulk of it is something quite different.  English was to replace Gaelic as the national language in the country; Hugh had to lose the title Uí Néill; Brehon Law had to be swopped for English law; and it became illegal for Irish earls to support bards.

That was hitting at the very fabric of Gaelic society.  It was stripping away all that informed national self-identity.  It was asking the Irish to forget who and what they were, and just become English.

The Uí Néill agreed, because he had no choice in the matter.  Plus it would buy him time to allow his people to recover after the scorched earth policies that had led to an English victory.  It's unlikely that he had any intention of following its demands to the letter.

That was probably understood by the English too.  A couple of years later, the proclamations came thick and fast.  The Irish were to answer to no clan chief nor Irish Lord, they were to acknowledge King James as their monarch.  All Catholic priests were to leave the country.

As for Hugh Uí Néill, he was personally targeted. The systematic erosion of his power base led directly to the Flight of the Earls in 1607.  With their passage was the end of centuries of Gaelic clan law in Ireland.

The cultural genocide was underway.  It would take another 250 years to come close to achieving it, but what happened next ensured that the efforts would continue into the modern day.

When Hugh Uí Néill was summoned to see King James in 1607, the Gaelic High King could see a future stretching out before him in the Tower of London.  Or worse. 

English policy in Ireland was now pushing way beyond the treaty.  Eroding away the power of the Irish Earls. 

Uí Néill and TyrConnell determined that the only way through this was to flee to Spain and try to gain military support there.  Their departure became known as the Flight of the Earls, and the beginning of the end for Gaelic Ulster.

King James seized both of their lands for the English crown, and that encompassed most of what is today Northern Ireland.

He also knew precisely what he was going to do with it; a plan which had perhaps been brewing for a while.  He would ensure that this corner of Ireland became English by supplanting the native population with his own.

Unfortunately that sort of thing takes money, something which the Nine Years' War with Ireland and the Anglo-Spanish wars had left the crown in deficit. 

King James turned to the City of London companies and emphasized the commercial benefits of such an undertaking.  The Capitalists agreed.  Now all that was needed was the terms, surveys and people to make it happen.

In 1609, an army belonging to King James escorted land surveyors through the counties of Donegal, Coleraine, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan and Armagh. Their job was to map out the land, in order that it might be carved up for English settlers.

While the City of London companies set about recruiting farmers and traders willing to withstand the risks, in order to gain land of their own; King James was finalizing the way it should all proceed.

The six counties were each split into equal sections.  Some portions were given to the Anglican Church in Ireland, in order to create ministries for the conversion of the native Irish from Catholicism.  Some were given to veteran soldiers from the Nine Years' War, who could be expected to help protect their country-folk now too.

County Coleraine was handed over to the City of London companies.  They promptly renamed the city of Derry as Londonderry, which became the name of the whole county.  This would be the fortified center of British plantation.

As for the Loyalist Settlers, they were categorized in one of three ways:

Undertakers: Primarily rich London traders, these people were required to pay for the passage and settlement of ten English families on their land.  There were no restrictions placed on the amount of Irish people allowed to stay as tenants to these landlords, but the native people were only to be given the least fertile land to encourage them to move on.

Servitors:  These veteran soldiers were not asked to pay for those settlers on their land.  But they were also permitted only five Irish tenants once there.

Both undertakers and servitors were required to build and maintain fortifications, in order to repel the Gaels and protect the settlers.

The Deserving Irish:  (Yes, this category really was called that.)  These people had to prove that they had taken no part in the recent rebellions against the English. They were to act as their overlords in language, culture and Protestant religion. They were allowed to retain Irish farmers on their land, who would be subservient to them.  Again the native farmers could only have the least fertile ground to farm.

Many in this last category were actually ethnically British.  They'd emigrated in earlier, failed plantations and had 'turned native' instead.

In the neighboring County Antrim and County Down, two Scottish private landlords had been doing the same since 1606.  Those lands were already filling up with Lowland Scots.  But the much bigger enterprise initiated from London was sluggish at best.

The issue was that the venture was so dangerous. It wasn't only the British servitors who were veterans of the war.  Ulster was regarded as one of the most fiercely rebellious Gaelic areas in Ireland.  The countryside was teeming with swordsmen who had fought on the Irish side in the Nine Years' War.

Moreover, it was a big upheaval to emigrate from 'civilized' England into 'wild and barbaric' Ireland.  The City of London companies, now calling this side of their business the Irish Society, were struggling to fill their quotas.

The solution came from King James's homeland. Presbyterian, English-speaking Scots proved a little more willing to secure a new life and land in Ulster.  When their numbers are added to those already flowing into Antrim and Down, the nationality of the Plantation settlers became overwhelmingly Scottish.

Even so, the critical number of British settlers failed to materialize.  In order to work the land to its full potential, many new land-owners allowed the Irish to stay on, albeit at four times their rent.  It was a good, cheap source of labor and a goldmine in cash.

However, that served the business interests of the individual over the cultural displacement policies of the crown.  Enough Irish Gaels were left in Ulster for the conflict to go on.

The descendants of those planted by the English crown still need the protection of the British army. The descendants of the native Irish are still holding their ground.

It's a Jacobean story which is nowhere near over. 

The current situation is that the Good Friday Agreement has finally brought some hope for a lasting peace.  Nevertheless, when the rest of Ireland became a Republic, Ulster remained in British hands.  Its army is still stationed there, continuing the work of the seventeenth-century servitors.

In the 21st century, the solution is much more complex than it was four hundred years ago. Back then, the settlers could simply go home.  Now they've had four centuries' worth of roots into the ground.  The issue of where 'home' is would be answered by them all as right where they are now.

As for the cultural genocide, it had a mixed success.  The Gaelic language, its laws, clan system and bards have gone from Ulster now.  In that way the Ulster Plantations served their purpose.  But the Catholic religion remains.

And the Ulster Gaels are more adamant than ever before that they are not now, nor ever will be, British.