In 1608–9, through a mixture of threats and promises from James I, the City of London become involved in the most planned and orderly of the various plantation schemes in Ireland. Fifty-five of its livery companies eventually became financial backers of the plantation, and in return their governing body, the Irish Society, received a royal … Read more
The archives An estimated 370 manuscript maps of Ulster survive, dating from roughly 1567 through to 1636, in fifteen repositories throughout Britain and Ireland. In Britain these include the National Archives, the British Library, the National Maritime Museum, the Guildhall Library, Drapers’ Hall, Goldsmiths’ Hall and Lambeth Palace Library (all in London); Longleat House, Wiltshire; … Read more
Disappointingly little remains of the original manuscripts dating from the Plantation’s early decades in this collection, owing in part to a fire in London’s Guildhall in 1786. Nevertheless, the inclusion of later copies of items dating from 1609, such as a table of lands and landholders, helps in reconstructing other elements of the Plantation’s early … Read more
After the Nine Years’ War, pardons given to the Ulster Irish lords who had risen in revolt against the Crown suggest a power vacuum in the northern province and an impecunious state in no position to fill it. Attempts had been made to shire Ulster and impose English law from the 1580s, but following the … Read more
During the first decade of the seventeenth century, Ulster, traditionally a bastion of Gaelic society and culture, was transformed in a relatively short time by the military defeat and subsequent departure to the Continent of the northern earls, Rory O’Donnell and Hugh O’Neill. Moreover, the unsuccessful revolt in 1608 of Sir Cahir O’Doherty persuaded the … Read more