
The Plantation of Ulster (;
Ulster Scots: ) was the organised
colonisation
475px, Map of the year each country achieved List of sovereign states by date of formation, independence.
Colonization (British English: colonisation) is a process of establishing occupation of or control over foreign territories or peoples f ...
(''
plantation
Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house, grow crops including cotton, cannabis, tob ...
'') of
Ulster
Ulster (; or ; or ''Ulster'') is one of the four traditional or historic provinces of Ireland, Irish provinces. It is made up of nine Counties of Ireland, counties: six of these constitute Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom); t ...
a
province
A province is an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire, Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...
of
Ireland
Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
by people from
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the List of European ...
during the reign of King
James VI and I
James VI and I (James Charles Stuart; 19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and King of Ireland, Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 M ...
.
Small privately funded plantations by wealthy landowners began in 1606,
[.][.][.] while the official plantation began in 1609. Most of the land had been confiscated from the native
Gaelic chiefs, several of whom
had fled Ireland for mainland Europe in 1607 following the
Nine Years' War
The Nine Years' War was a European great power conflict from 1688 to 1697 between Kingdom of France, France and the Grand Alliance (League of Augsburg), Grand Alliance. Although largely concentrated in Europe, fighting spread to colonial poss ...
against
English rule. The official plantation comprised an estimated half a million
acres
The acre ( ) is a unit of land area used in the British imperial and the United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, ...
(2,000 km
2) of
arable land
Arable land (from the , "able to be ploughed") is any land capable of being ploughed and used to grow crops.''Oxford English Dictionary'', "arable, ''adj''. and ''n.''" Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2013. Alternatively, for the purposes of a ...
in counties
Armagh
Armagh ( ; , , " Macha's height") is a city and the county town of County Armagh, in Northern Ireland, as well as a civil parish. It is the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland – the seat of the Archbishops of Armagh, the Primates of All ...
,
Cavan
Cavan ( ; ) is the county town of County Cavan in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. The town lies in Ulster, near the border with County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. The town is bypassed by the main N3 road (Ireland), N3 road that links Dublin ( ...
,
Fermanagh
Historically, Fermanagh (), as opposed to the modern County Fermanagh, was a kingdom of Gaelic Ireland, associated geographically with present-day County Fermanagh. ''Fir Manach'' originally referred to a distinct kin group of alleged Laigin or ...
,
Tyrone,
Donegal, and
Londonderry. Land in counties
Antrim,
Down, and
Monaghan
Monaghan ( ; ) is the county town of County Monaghan, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It also provides the name of its Civil parishes in Ireland, civil parish and Monaghan (barony), Monaghan barony.
The population of the town as of the 2022 cen ...
was privately colonised with the king's support.
Among those involved in planning and overseeing the plantation were King James, the
Lord Deputy of Ireland,
Arthur Chichester, and the
Attorney-General for Ireland
The Attorney-General for Ireland was an Kingdom of Ireland, Irish and then, from 1801 under the Acts of Union 1800, United Kingdom government office-holder. He was senior in rank to the Solicitor-General for Ireland: both advised the Crown on ...
,
John Davies.
[: "Advisors to King James VI/I, notably Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy from 1604, and Sir John Davies, the lawyer, favoured the plantation as a definitive response to the challenges of ruling Ireland. ... Undertakers, servitors and natives were granted large blocks of land as long as they planted English-speaking Protestants".] They saw the plantation as a means of controlling,
anglicising, and "civilising" Ulster. The province was almost wholly
Gaelic,
Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
, rural, and had been the region most resistant to English control. The plantation was also meant to sever the ties of the Gaelic clans of Ulster with those from the
Scottish Highlands
The Highlands (; , ) is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Scottish Lowlands, Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Scots language, Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gae ...
,
as it meant a strategic threat to England.
The
colonists
A settler or a colonist is a person who establishes or joins a permanent presence that is separate to existing communities. The entity that a settler establishes is a settlement. A settler is called a pioneer if they are among the first settli ...
(or "British tenants")
[.] were required to be English-speaking,
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...
,
and loyal to the king. Some of the landlords and settlers, however, were Catholic.
The Scottish settlers were mostly
Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a historically Reformed Protestant tradition named for its form of church government by representative assemblies of elders, known as "presbyters". Though other Reformed churches are structurally similar, the word ''Pr ...
Lowlanders and the English settlers were mostly
Anglican
Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...
Northerners; their cultures differed from
that of the native Irish.
Although some "loyal" natives were granted land, the native Irish reaction to the plantation was generally hostile, and native writers lamented what they saw as the decline of Gaelic society and the influx of foreigners.
The Plantation of Ulster was the biggest of the
plantations of Ireland
Plantation (settlement or colony), Plantations in 16th- and 17th-century Ireland () involved the confiscation of Irish-owned land by the Kingdom of England, English The Crown, Crown and the colonisation of this land with settlers from Great Br ...
. It led to the founding of many of Ulster's towns and created a lasting
Ulster Protestant community in the province with ties to Britain. It also resulted in many of the native Irish nobility losing their land and led to centuries of
ethnic
An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...
and
sectarian
Sectarianism is a debated concept. Some scholars and journalists define it as pre-existing fixed communal categories in society, and use it to explain political, cultural, or religious conflicts between groups. Others conceive of sectarianism a ...
animosity, which at times
spilled into conflict, notably in the
Irish Rebellion of 1641
The Irish Rebellion of 1641 was an uprising in Kingdom of Ireland, Ireland, initiated on 23 October 1641 by Catholic gentry and military officers. Their demands included an end to anti-Catholic discrimination, greater Irish self-governance, and ...
and, more recently,
the Troubles
The Troubles () were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed t ...
.
Ulster before plantation
Before the plantation,
Ulster
Ulster (; or ; or ''Ulster'') is one of the four traditional or historic provinces of Ireland, Irish provinces. It is made up of nine Counties of Ireland, counties: six of these constitute Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom); t ...
had been the most
Gaelic province of Ireland, as it was the least anglicised and the most independent of English control. The region was almost wholly rural and had few towns or villages.
[.] Throughout the 16th century, Ulster was viewed by the English as being "underpopulated" and undeveloped. The economy of Gaelic Ulster was overwhelmingly based on agriculture, especially cattle-raising. Many of the Gaelic Irish practised "creaghting" or "booleying", a kind of
transhumance
Transhumance is a type of pastoralism or Nomad, nomadism, a seasonal movement of livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures. In montane regions (''vertical transhumance''), it implies movement between higher pastures in summer and low ...
whereby some of them moved with their cattle to upland pastures during the summer months and lived in temporary dwellings during that time. This often led outsiders to mistakenly believe the Gaelic Irish were nomadic.
The population of Ulster before the Plantation has been estimated to be around 180,000-200,000. This was after the destruction caused by the devastating famine and warfare at the end of the Nine Years War. Michael Perceval-Maxwell estimated that by 1600 Ulster's total adult population was only 25,000-40,000. The war fought between the native Irish Confederacy and the English Crown undoubtedly contributed to depopulation, with 60,000 reported dead by famine and attacks on the civilian population.
The
Tudor conquest of Ireland
Ireland was conquered by the Tudor monarchs of England in the 16th century. The Anglo-Normans had Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland, conquered swathes of Ireland in the late 12th century, bringing it under Lordship of Ireland, English rule. In t ...
began in the 1540s, during the reign of
Henry VIII
Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is known for his Wives of Henry VIII, six marriages and his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. ...
(1509–1547), and concluded in the reign of
Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was List of English monarchs, Queen of England and List of Irish monarchs, Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. She was the last and longest reigning monarch of the House of Tudo ...
(1558–1603) sixty years later, breaking the power of the semi-independent Irish chieftains. As part of the conquest,
plantations (colonial settlements) were established in Queen's County and King's County (
Laois
County Laois ( ; ) is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Eastern and Midland Region and in the province of Leinster. It was known as Queen's County from 1556 to 1922. The modern county takes its name from Loígis, a medieval kingdom. Hist ...
and
Offaly) in the 1550s as well as
Munster
Munster ( or ) is the largest of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the south west of the island. In early Ireland, the Kingdom of Munster was one of the kingdoms of Gaelic Ireland ruled by a "king of over-kings" (). Following the Nor ...
in the 1580s, and in 1568 Warham St Leger and Richard Grenville established Joint stock/Cooperate colonies in Cork, although these were not very successful.
In the 1570s, Elizabeth I authorised a privately funded
plantation of eastern Ulster, led by
Thomas Smith and
Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex
Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex (16 September 1539 – 22 September 1576), was an English nobleman and general. From 1573 until his death he fought in Ireland in connection with the Plantations of Ireland, most notably the Rathlin Island ...
. This was a failure and sparked violent conflict with the local Irish lord, in which Lord Deputy Essex
killed many of the lord of
Clandeboy's kin.
In the Nine Years' War of 1594–1603, an alliance of northern Gaelic chieftains—led by
Hugh O'Neill of
Tyrone,
Hugh Roe O'Donnell of
Tyrconnell, and
Hugh Maguire of
Fermanagh
Historically, Fermanagh (), as opposed to the modern County Fermanagh, was a kingdom of Gaelic Ireland, associated geographically with present-day County Fermanagh. ''Fir Manach'' originally referred to a distinct kin group of alleged Laigin or ...
—resisted the imposition of English government in Ulster and sought to affirm their own control. Following an extremely costly series of campaigns by the English the war ended in 1603 with the
Treaty of Mellifont
The Treaty of Mellifont (), also known as the Articles of Mellifont, was signed in 1603, ending the Nine Years' War (Ireland), Nine Years' War which took place in Ireland from 1593 to 1603.
End of war
Following the English victory in the Battl ...
. The terms of surrender granted to what remained of O'Neill's forces were considered generous at the time.
After the Treaty of Mellifont, the northern chieftains attempted to consolidate their positions, whilst some within the
English administration attempted to undermine them. In 1607, O'Neill and his primary allies left Ireland to seek Spanish help for a new rebellion to restore their privileges, in what became known as the
. King James issued a proclamation declaring their action to be
treason
Treason is the crime of attacking a state (polity), state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to Coup d'état, overthrow its government, spy ...
, paving the way for the
forfeiture of their lands and titles.
Planning the plantation

A colonization of Ulster had been proposed since the end of the
Nine Years' War
The Nine Years' War was a European great power conflict from 1688 to 1697 between Kingdom of France, France and the Grand Alliance (League of Augsburg), Grand Alliance. Although largely concentrated in Europe, fighting spread to colonial poss ...
. The original proposals were smaller, involving planting settlers around key military posts and on church land, and would have included large land grants to native Irish lords who sided with the English during the war, such as
Niall Garve O'Donnell. However, in 1608 Sir
Cahir O'Doherty of
Inishowen
Inishowen () is a peninsula in the north of County Donegal in Ireland. Inishowen is the largest peninsula on the island of Ireland.
The Inishowen peninsula includes Ireland's most northerly point, Malin Head. The Grianan of Aileach, a ringfor ...
launched
a rebellion, capturing and
burning the town of Derry. The brief rebellion was ended by Sir
Richard Wingfield at the
Battle of Kilmacrennan. The rebellion prompted
Arthur Chichester, the
Lord Deputy of Ireland, to plan a much bigger plantation and to
expropriate the legal titles of all native landowners in the province.
John Davies, the
Attorney-General for Ireland
The Attorney-General for Ireland was an Kingdom of Ireland, Irish and then, from 1801 under the Acts of Union 1800, United Kingdom government office-holder. He was senior in rank to the Solicitor-General for Ireland: both advised the Crown on ...
, used the law as a tool of conquest and colonization. Before the Flight of the Earls, the English administration had sought to minimise the personal estates of the chieftains, but now they treated the chieftains as sole owners of their whole territories, so that all the land could be confiscated. Most of this land was deemed to be forfeited (or
escheat
Escheat () is a common law doctrine that transfers the real property of a person who has died without heirs to the crown or state. It serves to ensure that property is not left in "limbo" without recognized ownership. It originally applied t ...
ed) to the Crown because the chieftains were declared to be
attainted.
English judges had also
declared that titles to land held under
gavelkind, the native Irish custom of inheriting land, had no standing under English law.
Davies used this as a means to confiscate land, when other means failed.
The Plantation of Ulster was presented to
James I as a joint "British", or English and Scottish, venture to 'pacify' and 'civilise' Ulster, with half the settlers to be from one country. James had been King of Scotland before he also became King of England and wanted to reward his Scottish subjects with land in Ulster to assure them they were not being neglected now that he had moved his court to London. Long-standing contacts between Ulster and the west of Scotland meant that Scottish participation was a practical necessity. James saw the
Gaels
The Gaels ( ; ; ; ) are an Insular Celts, Insular Celtic ethnolinguistic group native to Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. They are associated with the Goidelic languages, Gaelic languages: a branch of the Celtic languages comprising ...
as barbarous and rebellious,
[.] and believed Gaelic culture should be wiped out. For centuries, Scottish Gaelic mercenaries called
gallowglass () had been migrating to Ireland to serve under the Irish chiefs. Another goal of the plantation was to sever the ties of the Gaelic clans of Ulster with those from the Highlands of Scotland,
as these ties posed a strategic threat to England.
Six counties were involved in the official plantation
Donegal,
Londonderry,
Tyrone,
Fermanagh
Historically, Fermanagh (), as opposed to the modern County Fermanagh, was a kingdom of Gaelic Ireland, associated geographically with present-day County Fermanagh. ''Fir Manach'' originally referred to a distinct kin group of alleged Laigin or ...
,
Cavan
Cavan ( ; ) is the county town of County Cavan in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. The town lies in Ulster, near the border with County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. The town is bypassed by the main N3 road (Ireland), N3 road that links Dublin ( ...
and
Armagh
Armagh ( ; , , " Macha's height") is a city and the county town of County Armagh, in Northern Ireland, as well as a civil parish. It is the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland – the seat of the Archbishops of Armagh, the Primates of All ...
. In the two officially unplanted counties of
Antrim and
Down, substantial Presbyterian Scots settlement had been underway since 1606.
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
Plantation (settlement or colony), Plantations in 16th- and 17th-century Ireland () involved the confiscation of Irish-owned land by the Kingdom of England, English The Crown, Crown and the colonisation of this land with settlers from Great Br ...
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 km
2) 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
A livery company is a type of guild or professional association that originated in medieval times in London, England. Livery companies comprise London's ancient and modern trade associations and guilds, almost all of which are Style (form of a ...
from the
City of London
The City of London, also known as ''the City'', is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county and Districts of England, local government district with City status in the United Kingdom, city status in England. It is the Old town, his ...
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
Derry, officially Londonderry, is the second-largest City status in the United Kingdom, city in Northern Ireland, and the fifth-largest on the island of Ireland. Located in County Londonderry, the city now covers both banks of the River Fo ...
(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
The Church of Ireland (, ; , ) is a Christian church in Ireland, and an autonomy, autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. It is organised on an all-Ireland basis and is the Christianity in Ireland, second-largest Christian church on the ...
, 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.
Implementing the plantation
Since 1606, there had been substantial lowland Scots settlement on disinhabited land in north Down, led by
Hugh Montgomery and
James Hamilton James Hamilton may refer to:
Dukes
*James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton (1606–1649), heir to the throne of Scotland
*James Hamilton, 4th Duke of Hamilton (1658–1712), Scottish nobleman
*James Hamilton, 5th Duke of Hamilton (1703–1743), Sco ...
. In 1607,
Sir Randall MacDonnell settled 300 Presbyterian Scots families on his land in Antrim.
From 1609 onwards, British Protestant colonists arrived in Ulster through direct importation by Undertakers to their estates and also by a spread to unpopulated areas, through ports such as Derry and Carrickfergus. In addition, there was much internal movement of settlers who did not like the original land allotted to them. Some planters settled on uninhabited and unexploited land, often building up their farms and homes on overgrown terrain that has been variously described as "wilderness" and "virgin" ground. In 1612,
William Cole received a grant of land to establish a settler town at
Enniskillen
Enniskillen ( , from , ' Ceithlenn's island') is the largest town in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. It is in the middle of the county, between the Upper and Lower sections of Lough Erne. It had a population of 14,086 at the 2011 censu ...
.
By 1622, a survey found that there were 6,402 British adult males on Plantation lands, of whom 3,100 were English and 3,700 Scottish – indicating a total adult planter population of around 12,000. However, another 4,000 Scottish adult males had settled in unplanted Antrim and Down, giving a total settler population of about 19,000.
Despite the fact that the Plantation had decreed that the Irish population be displaced, this did not generally happen in practice. Firstly, some 300 native landowners who had taken the English side in the Nine Years' War were rewarded with land grants. Secondly, the majority of the Gaelic Irish remained in their native areas, but were now only allowed worse land than before the plantation. They usually lived close to and even in the same townlands as the settlers and the land they had farmed previously. The main reason for this was that Undertakers could not import enough English or Scottish tenants to fill their agricultural workforce and had to fall back on Irish tenants. However, in a few heavily populated lowland areas (such as parts of north Armagh) it is likely that some population displacement occurred.
However, the Plantation remained threatened by the attacks of bandits, known as "
wood-kern", who were often Irish soldiers or dispossessed landowners. In 1609, Chichester had 1,300 former Gaelic soldiers deported from Ulster to serve in the
Swedish Army
The Swedish Army () is the army, land force of the Swedish Armed Forces of the Kingdom of Sweden. Beginning with its service in 1521, the Swedish Army has been active for more than 500 years.
History
Svea Life Guards dates back to the year 1 ...
. As a result, military garrisons were established across Ulster and many of the Plantation towns, notably Derry, were fortified. The settlers were also required to maintain arms and attend an annual military 'muster'.
There had been very few towns in Ulster before the Plantation.
Most modern towns in the province can date their origins back to this period. Plantation towns generally have a single broad main street ending in a square in a design often known as a "diamond", which can be seen in communities like
The Diamond, Donegal
The Diamond is the main square in Donegal Town. It forms the town centre with an extensive pedestrian area with seating and trees. It includes a prominent 'obelisk' unveiled in 1938 celebrating 'the Four Masters', four Gaelic historians led by ...
.
Failures
The plantation was a mixed success from the point of view of the settlers. About the time the Plantation of Ulster was planned, the
Virginia Plantation at
Jamestown in 1607 started. The London guilds planning to fund the Plantation of Ulster switched and backed the
London Virginia Company instead. Many British Protestant settlers went to
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...
or
New England
New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...
in America rather than to Ulster.
By the 1630s, there were 20,000 adult male British settlers in Ulster, which meant that the total settler population could have been as high as 80,000. They formed local majorities of the population in the
Finn and
Foyle valleys (around modern County Londonderry and east Donegal), in north Armagh and in east Tyrone. Moreover, the unofficial settlements in Antrim and Down were thriving. The settler population grew rapidly, as just under half of the planters were women.
The attempted conversion of the Irish to Protestantism was generally a failure. One problem was language difference. The Protestant clerics imported were usually all
monoglot
Monoglottism (Greek μόνος ''monos'', "alone, solitary", + γλῶττα , "tongue, language") or, more commonly, monolingualism or unilingualism, is the condition of being able to speak only a single language, as opposed to multilingualism. ...
English speakers, whereas the native population were usually monoglot Irish speakers. However, ministers chosen to serve in the plantation were required to take a course in the Irish language before ordination, and nearly 10% of those who took up their preferments spoke it fluently. Nevertheless, conversion was rare, despite the fact that, after 1621, Gaelic Irish natives could be officially classed as British if they converted to Protestantism. Of those Catholics who did convert to Protestantism, many made their choice for social and political reasons.
The reaction of the native Irish to the plantation was generally hostile. Chichester wrote in 1610 that the native Irish in Ulster were "generally discontented, and repine greatly at their fortunes, and the small quantity of land left to them". That same year, English army officer
Toby Caulfield wrote that "there is not a more discontented people in Christendom" than the Ulster Irish. Irish Gaelic writers bewailed the plantation. In an entry for the year 1608, the ''
Annals of the Four Masters
The ''Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland'' () or the ''Annals of the Four Masters'' () are chronicles of Middle Ages, medieval Irish history. The entries span from the Genesis flood narrative, Deluge, dated as 2,242 Anno Mundi, years after crea ...
'' states that the land was "taken from the Irish" and given "to foreign tribes", and that Irish chiefs were "banished into other countries where most of them died". Likewise, an early 17th-century poem by the Irish
bard
In Celtic cultures, a bard is an oral repository and professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's a ...
Lochlann Óg Ó Dálaigh laments the plantation, the displacement of the native Irish, and the decline of Gaelic culture. It asks "Where have the Gaels gone?", adding "We have in their stead an arrogant, impure crowd, of foreigners' blood".
Historian
Thomas Bartlett suggests that Irish hostility to the plantation may have been muted in the early years, as there were much fewer settlers arriving than expected. Bartlett writes that a hatred for the planters grew with the influx of settlers from the 1620s, and the increasing marginalization of the Irish. Historian Gerard Farrell writes that the plantation stoked a "smoldering resentment" in the Irish, among whom "a widespread perception persisted that they and the generation before them had been unfairly dispossessed of their lands by force and legal chicanery". Petty violence and sabotage against the planters was rife, and many Irish came to identify with the wood-kern who attacked settlements and ambushed settlers. Ferrell suggests it took many years for an Irish uprising to happen because there was depopulation, because many native leaders had been removed, and those who remained only belatedly realised the threat of the plantation.
Wars of the Three Kingdoms
By the 1630s it is suggested that the plantation was settling down with "tacit religious tolerance", and in every county Old Irish were serving as royal officials and members of the Irish Parliament. However, in the 1640s, the Ulster Plantation was thrown into turmoil by
civil wars that raged in Ireland, England and Scotland. The wars saw Irish rebellion against the planters, twelve years of bloody war, and ultimately the re-conquest of the province by the English parliamentary
New Model Army
The New Model Army or New Modelled Army was a standing army formed in 1645 by the Parliamentarians during the First English Civil War, then disbanded after the Stuart Restoration in 1660. It differed from other armies employed in the 1639 t ...
that confirmed English and Protestant dominance in the province.
After 1630, Scottish migration to Ireland waned for a decade. In the 1630s, Presbyterians in Scotland
staged a rebellion against Charles I for trying to impose Anglicanism. The same was attempted in Ireland, where most Scots colonists were Presbyterian. A large number of them returned to Scotland as a result. Charles I subsequently raised an army largely composed of Irish Catholics, and sent them to Ulster in preparation to invade Scotland. The English and Scottish parliaments then threatened to attack this army. In the midst of this, Gaelic Irish landowners in Ulster, led by
Felim O'Neill and
Rory O'More, planned a rebellion to take over the administration in Ireland.
On 23 October 1641, the Ulster Catholics
staged a rebellion. The mobilised natives turned on the British colonists, massacring about 4,000 and expelling about 8,000 more.
Marianne Elliott believes that "1641 destroyed the Ulster Plantation as a mixed settlement". The initial leader of the rebellion, Felim O'Neill, had actually been a beneficiary of the Plantation land grants. Most of his supporters' families had been dispossessed and were likely motivated by the desire to recover their ancestral lands. Many colonists who survived rushed to the seaports and went back to Great Britain.
The massacres made a lasting impression on psyche of the Ulster Protestant population.
A. T. Q. Stewart states that "The fear which it inspired survives in the Protestant subconscious as the memory of the Penal Laws or the Famine persists in the Catholic." He also believed that "Here, if anywhere, the mentality of siege was born, as the warning bonfires blazed from hilltop to hilltop, and the beating drums summoned men to the defence of castles and walled towns crowded with refugees."
In the summer of 1642, the
Scottish Parliament
The Scottish Parliament ( ; ) is the Devolution in the United Kingdom, devolved, unicameral legislature of Scotland. It is located in the Holyrood, Edinburgh, Holyrood area of Edinburgh, and is frequently referred to by the metonym 'Holyrood'. ...
sent some 10,000 soldiers to quell the Irish rebellion. In revenge for the massacres of Scottish colonists, the army committed many atrocities against the Catholic population. Based in
Carrickfergus
Carrickfergus ( , meaning " Fergus' rock") is a large town in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It sits on the north shore of Belfast Lough, from Belfast. The town had a population of 28,141 at the 2021 census. It is County Antrim's oldest t ...
, the Scottish army fought against the rebels until 1650, although much of the army was destroyed by the Irish forces at the
Battle of Benburb in 1646. In the northwest of Ulster, the colonists around Derry and east Donegal organised the
Laggan Army in self-defence. The British forces fought an inconclusive war with the Ulster Irish led by
Owen Roe O'Neill. All sides committed atrocities against civilians in this war, exacerbating the population displacement begun by the Plantation.
In addition to fighting the Ulster Irish, the British settlers fought each other in 1648–49 over the issues of the
English Civil War
The English Civil War or Great Rebellion was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Cavaliers, Royalists and Roundhead, Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of th ...
. The Scottish Presbyterian army sided with the King and the Laggan Army sided with the English Parliament. In 1649–50, the New Model Army, along with some of the British colonists under
Charles Coote, defeated both the Scottish forces and the Ulster Irish.
As a result, the
English Parliamentarians (or
Cromwellians) were generally hostile to Scottish Presbyterians after they
re-conquered Ireland from the Catholic
Confederates in 1649–53. The main beneficiaries of the postwar
Cromwellian settlement were English Protestants like Sir Charles Coote, who had taken the Parliament's side over the King or the Scottish Presbyterians. The Wars eliminated the last major Catholic landowners in Ulster.
Continued migration from Scotland and England to Ulster
Most Scottish planters came from southwest Scotland, but many also came from the unstable regions along the border with England. The plan was that moving Borderers (see
Border Reivers
Border Reivers were Cattle raiding, raiders along the Anglo-Scottish border. They included both Scotland, Scottish and England, English people, and they raided the entire border country without regard to their victims' nationality.Hay, D. "E ...
) to Ireland (particularly to
County Fermanagh
County Fermanagh ( ; ) is one of the thirty-two counties of Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of six counties of Northern Ireland.
The county covers an area of and had a population of 63,585 as of 2021. Enniskillen is the ...
) would both solve the Border problem and tie down Ulster. This was of particular concern to
James VI of Scotland
James VI and I (James Charles Stuart; 19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 until ...
when he became King of England, since he knew Scottish instability could jeopardise his chances of ruling both kingdoms effectively.
Another wave of Scottish immigration to Ulster took place in the 1690s, when tens of thousands of Scots fled
a famine (1696–1698) in the border region of Scotland. It was at this point that Scottish Presbyterians became the majority community in the province. Whereas in the 1660s, they made up some 20% of Ulster's population (though 60% of its British population) by 1720 they were an absolute majority in Ulster, with up to 50,000 having arrived during the period 1690–1710. There was continuing
English migration throughout this period, particularly the 1650s and 1680s, notably amongst these settlers were the
Quakers
Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestantism, Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally ...
from Northern England, who contributed greatly to the cultivation of flax and linen. In total, during the half century between 1650 and 1700, 100,000 British settlers migrated to Ulster, with around half being English, however Scots were numerically superior overall.
Despite the fact that Scottish Presbyterians strongly supported the
Williamite
A Williamite was a follower of King William III of England (r. 1689–1702) who deposed King James II and VII in the Glorious Revolution. William, the Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, replaced James with the support of English Whigs.
On ...
s in the
Williamite war in Ireland
The Williamite War in Ireland took place from March 1689 to October 1691. Fought between Jacobitism, Jacobite supporters of James II of England, James II and those of his successor, William III of England, William III, it resulted in a Williamit ...
in the 1690s, they were excluded from power in the postwar settlement by the Anglican
Protestant Ascendancy
The Protestant Ascendancy (also known as the Ascendancy) was the sociopolitical and economical domination of Ireland between the 17th and early 20th centuries by a small Anglicanism, Anglican ruling class, whose members consisted of landowners, ...
. During the 18th century, rising Ulster Scots resentment over religious, political and economic issues fueled their emigration to the
American colonies, beginning in 1717 and continuing up to the 1770s. Scots-Irish from Ulster and Scotland and British from the borders region comprised the most numerous group of immigrants from Great Britain and Ireland to the colonies in the years before the
American Revolution
The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...
. An estimated 150,000 left Ulster. They settled first mostly in
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...
and
western Virginia, from where they moved southwest into the backcountry of the
Upland South
The Upland South and Upper South are two overlapping cultural and geographic subregions in the inland part of the Southern United States. They differ from the Deep South and Atlantic coastal plain by terrain, history, economics, demographics, a ...
, the
Ozarks
The Ozarks, also known as the Ozark Mountains, Ozark Highlands or Ozark Plateau, is a physiographic region in the U.S. states of Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, as well as a small area in the southeastern corner of Kansas. The Ozarks cover ...
and the
Appalachian Mountains
The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, are a mountain range in eastern to northeastern North America. The term "Appalachian" refers to several different regions associated with the mountain range, and its surrounding terrain ...
.
Legacy

The legacy of the Plantation remains disputed. According to one interpretation, it created a society segregated between native Catholics and settler Protestants in Ulster and created a Protestant and British concentration in north-east Ireland. This argument therefore sees the Plantation as one of the long-term causes of the
Partition of Ireland
The Partition of Ireland () was the process by which the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (UK) divided Ireland into two self-governing polities: Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland (the area today known as the R ...
in 1921, as the north-east remained as part of the United Kingdom in
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland ( ; ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It has been #Descriptions, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares Repub ...
.
The densest Protestant settlement took place in the eastern counties of Antrim and Down, which were not part of the Plantation, whereas Donegal, in the west, was planted but did not become part of Northern Ireland.
Therefore, it is also argued that the Plantation itself was less important in the distinctiveness of the north-east of Ireland than natural population flow between Ulster and Scotland.
A. T. Q. Stewart, a protestant from Belfast, concluded: "The distinctive Ulster-Scottish culture, isolated from the mainstream of Catholic and Gaelic culture, would appear to have been created not by the specific and artificial plantation of the early seventeenth century, but by the continuous natural influx of Scottish settlers both before and after that episode ...."
The Plantation of Ulster is also widely seen as the origin of mutually antagonistic Catholic/Irish and Protestant/British identities in Ulster.
Richard English, an expert on the
Irish Republican Army
The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a name used by various Resistance movement, resistance organisations in Ireland throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Organisations by this name have been dominantly Catholic and dedicated to anti-imperiali ...
, has written that: "not all of those of British background in Ireland owe their Irish residence to the Plantations ... yet the Plantation did produce a large British/English interest in Ireland, a significant body of Irish Protestants who were tied through religion and politics to English power."
Genetic analysis has revealed that, "The distribution
f southwestern Scottish ancestryin Northern Ireland mirrors the distributions of the Plantations of Ireland throughout the 17th century. Thus the cluster will have experienced some genetic isolation by religion from adjacent Irish populations in the intervening centuries."
The settlers also left a legacy in terms of language. The strong
Ulster Scots dialect
Ulster Scots or Ulster-Scots (), also known as Ulster Scotch and Ullans, is the dialect (whose proponents assert is a dialect of Scots language, Scots) spoken in parts of Ulster, being almost exclusively spoken in parts of Northern Ireland a ...
originated through the speech of Lowland Scots settlers evolving and being influenced by both
Hiberno-English
Hiberno-English or Irish English (IrE), also formerly sometimes called Anglo-Irish, is the set of dialects of English native to the island of Ireland. In both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, English is the first language in e ...
dialect and the
Irish language
Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigenous ...
. Seventeenth-century English settlers also contributed colloquial words that are still in current use in Ulster.
See also
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Scotch-Irish Americans
Scotch-Irish Americans are American descendants of primarily Ulster Scots people, who emigrated from Ulster (Ireland's northernmost province) to the United States between the 18th and 19th centuries, with their ancestors having originally mig ...
*
Scottish names in Ulster
References
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Further reading
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External links
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{{Ireland topics
17th century in Ireland
17th century in England
17th century in Scotland
1606 establishments in England
1609 establishments in England
1609 in politics
Ulster
Ulster (; or ; or ''Ulster'') is one of the four traditional or historic provinces of Ireland, Irish provinces. It is made up of nine Counties of Ireland, counties: six of these constitute Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom); t ...
England–Ireland relations
Ireland–Scotland relations
History of agriculture in Ireland