Plantation of Ulster

The Plantation of Ulster was the organised colonisation (plantation) of Ulster. Ulster is a province of Ireland. People from Scotland and England were sent by the English government to live there. This started at the beginning of the 17th century, from 1606. It was colonised to stop the people living in the area fighting against the English rule. Ulster had been the region most resistant to English control during the previous century.

All land owned by Irish chieftains of the O'Neill dynasty (Uí Néill in Gaelic) and O'Donnell dynasty (Uí Domhnaill in Gaelic) was taken from them, and used for the colonists. This land added up to an estimated half a million acres (2,000 km²) in the counties County Donegal (called Tyrconnell at the time), Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan, Coleraine and Armagh.^[1] Most of counties Antrim and Down were privately colonised.^[2]

The colonists were also called the "British tenants".^[3][4] They were mostly from Scotland and England. They had to be English-speaking and Protestant.^[5] The Scottish colonists were mostly Presbyterian^[3] and the English mostly members of the Church of England. The Plantation of Ulster was the biggest of the Plantations of Ireland.

1. ↑ T. A. Jackson, p. 51.
2. ↑ A.T.Q. Stewart: The Narrow Ground: The Roots of Conflict in Ulster. London, Faber and Faber Ltd. New Edition, 1989. Page 38. Cyril Falls: The Birth of Ulster. London, Constable and Company Ltd. 1996. Pages 156-157. M. Perceval-Maxwell: The Scottish Migration to Ulster in the Reign of James 1. Belfast, Ulster Historical Foundation. 1999. Page 55.
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} Edmund Curtis, p. 198.
4. ↑ T.W Moody & F.X. Martin, p. 190.
5. ↑ BBC History – The Plantation of Ulster – Religion