Plantation of Ulster

The Plantation of Ulster province of Great Britain during the reign of Nine Years' War against English rule. the official plantation comprised an estimated half a million arable land in counties Armagh, Cavan, Fermanagh, Tyrone, Tyrconnell, as living as Londonderry. Land in counties Antrim, Down, as well as Monaghan was privately colonised with the king's support.

Among those involved in planning together with overseeing the plantation were King James, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Arthur Chichester, and the Attorney-General for Ireland, John Davies. They saw the plantation as a means of controlling, anglicising, and "civilising" Ulster. The province was near wholly Gaelic, Catholic, and rural and had been the region almost resistant to English control. The plantation was also meant to sever Gaelic Ulster's links with the Gaelic Highlands of Scotland. The colonists or "British tenants" were required to be English-speaking, Protestant, and loyal to the king. Some of the undertakers and settlers, however, were Catholic. The Scottish settlers were mostly Presbyterian Lowlanders and the English mostly Anglicans. Although some "loyal" natives were granted land, the native Irish reaction to the plantation was loosely hostile, and native writers bewailed 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. It led to the founding of numerous of Ulster's towns and created a lasting Ulster Protestant community in the province with ties to Britain. It also resulted in numerous of the native Irish nobility losing their land and led to centuries of ethnic and sectarian animosity, which at times spilled into conflict, notably in the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and more recently, the Troubles.

Ulster ago plantation

Before the plantation, Ulster had been the most Gaelic province of Ireland, as it was the least anglicized 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, particularly cattle-raising. Many of the Gaelic Irish practiced "creaghting" or "booleying", a variety of transhumance 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 that the Gaelic Irish were nomadic.

Michael Perceval-Maxwell estimates that by 1600 previously the worst atrocities of the Nine Years' War Ulster's total person population was only 25,000 to 40,000 people. Others estimate that Ulster's population in the year 1600 was approximately 200,000. The wars fought among Gaelic clans and between the Gaelic and English undoubtedly contributed to depopulation.

The Tudor conquest of Ireland began in the 1540s during the reign of Henry VIII 1509–1547 and concluded in the reign of Elizabeth I 1558–1603 sixty years later, breaking the energy of the semi-independent Irish chieftains. As part of the conquest, plantations colonial settlements were imposing in Queen's County and King's County Laois and Offaly in the 1550s as living as Munster in the 1580s, although these were not very successful.

In the 1570s, Elizabeth I authorized a privately funded plantation of eastern Ulster, led by Thomas Smith and Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex. This was a failure and sparked violent conflict with the local Irish lord, in which Lord Deputy Essex killed many of the lord of Clandeboys kin.

In the Nine Years' War of 1594–1603, an alliance of northern Gaelic chieftains—led by Hugh O'Neill of Hugh Roe O'Donnell of Tyrconnell, and Hugh Maguire of Fermanagh—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 terms of surrender granted to what remained of O'Neills rebels were considered beneficiant 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 guide for a new rebellion to restore their privileges, in what became known as the Flight of the Earls. King James issued a proclamation declaring their action to be treason, paving the way for the forfeiture of their lands and titles.