PLANTATION OF ULSTER

New Zealand Tablet, 23 October 1919, Page 37

PLANTATION OF ULSTER

HOW THE IRISH WERE DRIVEN INTO THE BOGS :s f||| g --^^'AND MOUNTAINS. f|*'* ' i .a ' The Plantation of Ulster was commenced in 1608. Shortly after the flight of the Earls—O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone; and O'Donnell, Earl of Tirconnell— all the fertile lands in Donegal, Derry, Tyrone, Armagh, Fermanagh, and Cavan were confiscated. The area of the confiscated land was 511,465 Irish acres, or 750,000 English acres. Sir Arthur Chichester had the management of the confiscated lands, which were divided into lots of 2000, 1500, and 1000 acres. The English and Scotch planters got the 2000-acre lots on condition that they people them with English and Scotch tenants the Irish were to be excluded. The 1500-acre lots were given to those who served the Crown in Ireland, provided the servitors be all Protestants. They were at liberty; to take English, Scotch, or Irish tenants, but they must not be Catholics. The 1000-acre lots were open to English, Scotch, or Irish planters. Companies of English merchants, formed in London, were granted large areas. Innishowen, Sir Cahir O'Doherty's patrimony, was taken by the arch-confiscator, Sir Arthur Chichester. Large tracts were also set aside for Protestant religious and educational purposes. The native Irish were ordered "to depart with their goods and chattels at or before May (1609) next into what other part of the realm they pleased." This order, however, was not obeyed. The stubborn natives moved from their fertile lands and comfortable homes to the barren mountain tracts, the glens, and the bogs, on the outskirts of the rich lands which they themselves and their ancestors had cultivated. The English and Scotch settlers were treated with great consideration by the new lords of the soil while the unfortunate old Irish in the barren tracts and wastes of Ulster were harassed and robbed by the alien landlords. Under those conditions, which prevailed for generations, it is no wonder that the new settlers prospered, and that they outstripped their less fortunate neighbors in wealth, and in all that comes with the possession of wealth. All the lucrative Government positions, not alone in all Ulster, but all over Ireland, were up to a few years ago filled by the Protestant ascendancy. To Governmental paternalism rather than to thrift is due the 'prosperity of Ulster, but this prosperity is also greatly exaggerated, especially by writers and speakers who draw on their own preconceived opinions rather than from historic facts. In the controversy going on at present in the correspondence columns of the New York papers, many correspondents go so far as to assert that Ulster was a wilderness before the coming of the English and Scotch settlers. As a matter of fact, Ulster was prosperous and highly cultivated many centuries before the Planters ha.d set their foot on the province. The condition of Ulster a few years previous to the "plantation" is described as follows in a work entitled Concise View of the Society of the New Plantation of Ulster, Called the Irish Society: "It yieldeth store of all necessary for man's sustenance in such measure as may not only maintain itself, but also furnish the City of London yearly with manifold provision. ... As it is fit for all sorts of husbandry, so for increase of cattle it doth excel. . . . Hemp and flax do more natfurally grow there than elsewhere, and the goodliest and largest timber may easily be brought to . the sea by Lough Neagh and the river of the Bann."' Mrs. Green, in The Making of Ireland and Its Undoing, describes the Ulster dwelling of the pre-plantation , period: —"The house of the chief of a territory, or of the kenfine or head of family, gave proof not only of wealth and comfort, but of a love of beauty and color. If the building was of wood it was often finely wrought and finished. 'A white wattled edifice of noble polish, habitation of the sweet and scented branches.' Before the devastation

of the north; Tyrone, according to the English, w was; 'fairest and goodliest county in Ireland, universal;! wealthy, and well ;<. inhabited, and Armagh one ■'■■■ of the farrest <' 7 and best churches in Ireland.' It was, : in^fact,' a land meet for the [English to inhabit. Poets sang of 'Ulster's' loving province,' •; 'that noble, '; apple-blossomed t expanse; ;of ancient soil, where there was; all worthy produce of fruit- ' bearing boughs.' 5 Spenser: himself marvelled at the wealth of Ulster; it 'was thickly inhabited,' he wrote, 'and as well stocked with wealth as any portion of England. .Records of undoubted antiquity 'prove that when the King was engaged in war 30,000 marks x were paid -by : Ulster-;' (1557.) "On their first raid on Shane O'Neill the English had found in Armagh enough butter, corn, and victuals collected to. maintain an army of Scots for a whole year-r----so great a mass, indeed, vthat the English could not by any means have it carried away or during their abode in Armagh gather it in one place, for that almost every house was full with one kind of victual, so it was resolved that the victuals should be burned in the houses where they lay, the Lord Primate's and the Dean's houses only;; preserved." % - (1516.) -"When Ulster men were described as 'more beast-like and barbarous than the people of other countries,' Shane O'Neill haughtily asked the English Queen to observe the peace and wealth of his country as compared to her% own possessions in Ireland. Three hundred of the Queen's, farmers in the Pale had fled from English rule to seek the safety and well-being of. Tyrone 'it was a very evil sign,' Shane added in his biting irony, 'that men forsake the Pale and dwell among wild, savage people.'" a (1483.) "In Cavan, lying in.the shelter of Lough Ough- ; ; ter, we may still trace the remains of a peaceful and undefended open trading centrethe sunny valley, with gardens stretching up the hills, the great monastery, and by its side on a low lift of grass, the palace and business ;= centre of the O'Reillys, among the greatest of Irish trading chiefs, whose money was spread by their traffic all over Ireland, and was even 'commonly current' in England. The Maguires were famed for the husbandry, crafts, andcommerce that occupied the men of Enniskillen. It was such markets as these that the English legislators deplored, exhorting all English traders to clear out of them, and by •a rigid boycott doom these busy Irishmen to ruin." Mrs. Green collected the foregoing facts mainly from State papers, and in every instance the State papers or the works from which she has collected the facts are mentioned in foot-notes. It is very evident that ;the Planters foutad Ulster not a desert but a land flowing with ; milk and honey. Three hundred and seven years have passed since they set foot in Ulster, and their descendants to-day are Irishmen. In any part of the world that you will meet an Ulster man you will never mistake him for an Englishman. «. , ._ In spite of racial differences and religious animosities, the two races intermarried, and, strange as it may appear to those who do not know Ulster, many Orangemen bear purely Gaelic names. The racial differences have disappeared, and with a better knowledge of each other, and with mutual toleration, Davis's vision of a union of Orange and Green may be realised in our own generation. ■"■. f A