The Flight of the Earls and the Plantation of Ulster
After the last great Gaelic lords flee Ireland, the Crown confiscates their lands in Ulster and settles them with English and Scottish Protestants.
- Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 — Nicholas Canny, Oxford University Press (2001)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
Under the Tudors, England set out to complete the conquest of Ireland. The Nine Years’ War (1594–1603), led by Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, and Rory O’Donnell, was the last great Gaelic resistance; it was broken after the defeat of O’Neill and his Spanish allies at Kinsale in 1601.
- Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 — Nicholas Canny, Oxford University Press (2001)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
In September 1607 O’Neill, O’Donnell and about ninety followers sailed from Rathmullan in Donegal for the Continent, never to return. The “Flight of the Earls” is remembered as the end of the old Gaelic order. The Crown declared their lands forfeit and from 1609 organised the Plantation of Ulster, granting land in six counties to English and Scottish “undertakers”, who were meant to bring in Protestant tenants, and to London livery companies, which rebuilt Derry as Londonderry.
- Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 — Nicholas Canny, Oxford University Press (2001)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- The Oxford Companion to Irish History — S. J. Connolly (ed.), Oxford University Press (2002)
The plan never fully worked: many Irish stayed on as tenants, often on poorer land. Separately, Scottish Presbyterians poured into Antrim and Down. The result was a province of mixed and deeply unequal communities, divided by religion and land. Resentment exploded in the rising of 1641.
- Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 — Nicholas Canny, Oxford University Press (2001)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
A colonial land-grab that dispossessed the native Irish and planted a hostile population, the root of partition and the Troubles.
- Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 — Nicholas Canny, Oxford University Press (2001)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
The founding of a hard-working Protestant community that turned Ulster into Ireland's most prosperous province, with roots now more than four hundred years deep.
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- The Oxford Companion to Irish History — S. J. Connolly (ed.), Oxford University Press (2002)
Why it matters today
The Plantation laid the foundations of Northern Ireland's two communities: largely Protestant descendants of settlers, many identifying as British, and largely Catholic descendants of the native Irish. Today's map of loyalties in the North still echoes it.
This is where both of Northern Ireland's communities trace their story. Unionists celebrate four centuries of Ulster Protestant roots, many of them Scottish, and Ulster-Scots speech and culture; nationalists remember confiscation and dispossession. Even the map of which towns and townlands lean which way still echoes the settlement pattern.