George Paulet; he took various English stations, and continued a vigorous guerilla warfare, until "a happy shot, which smote him on the head, settled that business." His followers dispersed after his death, and any who fell into the hands of the English were executed "with a necessary severity."* This was the last blow struck in Ulster, which thenceforward presented a scene of loyalty and desolation excellently suited to the reforming spirit of the king. A large tract of land in the six northern counties, Tyrowen, the principality of O'Neill; Coleraine or Derry, O'Cahan's country; Donegal, the principality of O'Donnell; Fermanagh, M'Gwire's country; Cavan, O'Reilly's country; and Armagh, fell to the lot of James by a forced construction of the law of forfeiture and escheat. The suppression of O'Dogherty's insurrection cleared the way to the completion of the policy of fraud and violence by which a splendid country was torn from its just possessors; by which the old laws of property were overturned, and an ancient people banished from the dwellings of their fathers. By these rebellions or these "sham plots," five hundred thousand acres escheated to the crown a foreign law handed over the domains of the fugitive Chiefs to the "king's passion for reforming Ireland by the introduction of English civility;" and we shall soon see how fully he indulged this passion, and how much at the expense of his Irish subjects.

* Leland, vol. 2, p. 429.

Leland, vol. 2, p. 424. The historian is apologist of robbery.

I

an excellent

CHAPTER III.

The Spirit of Plantation-Attempted Plantation of Sir Thomas Smith-of the Earl of Essex-The War of Desmond-Munster pacified-Plantation of MunsterSettlement of the Montgomeries in the Ardes of Down.

THE plantation of James, though the most consummate and finished of all the Irish plantations, was by no means an original thought. From the first settlement of the English in Ireland, they had but one object—the acquisition of estates at the expense of the natives. Hence the latter were always considered in the light of enemies, who were to be exterminated; or barbarians, who were to be civilized by the simple process of robbery. Religion gave another excuse to fraud and plunder; the Catholics, who were the owners of the soil, chiefs and people, required the purifying influences of the Reformation, and these they received by the confiscation of their lands, and the violent seizure of their property.

Whatever was the pretence, the end was the same. To punish "disloyal rebels and traitors"— to civilize a barbarous people-to establish true religion;-for such wise and Christian purposes there appeared to the English government in Ireland, and the "hungry vultures that haunted the Castle," no surer means than to rob and defraud the natives, to root them out by the sword, and to plant Scotchmen and Englishmen in their

D

ancient homes. And there are not wanting philosophic historians who look complacently on this process of civilization, and pious divines who can see nothing but the extension of true religious principle in acts of wholesale national spoliation.

The reign of Elizabeth, so pregnant with every form of oppression, was abundant in instances of the systematic spoliation to which the name of Plantation has been given; and it is expedient before proceeding to detail the projects and performances of James, that we should give a cursory glance at the attempts made by his sensual, selfish, and despotic predecessor.†

Cox presents us with the germ of systematic plunder. "He says that so far back as the year 1559 it was one of the instructions given to the Earl of Sussex when he came over as Lord Deputy "to people Ulster with English." But Sussex was sufficiently engaged in Leinster, where * he had reduced Leix and Offally into shire land by the name of King's and Queen's County, and where he was spreading civilization by the usual

Hume, Hallam, and Reid passim. Reid is a Presbyterian, one of the old Scotch spawn of James's Plantation. It would be strange if, in his impartial eyes the scheme of plunder which James executed would not find special favour; and it has.

In 1582, Sir John Perrott presented to Elizabeth his "opinion for the suppressing of rebellion, and the well governing of Ireland," in which he recommends the cutting down the wood for the navy and the settlement of shipwrights in convenient places, Cork, Youghal, Wexford, and Belfast. Nothing appears to have come from this plan of an useful plantation. It was not suf ficiently acquisitive for the taste of the Queen's advisers

agencies of fire and sword, and he had no time to fulfil these commands of the English court: An offer was, however, made ten years later by Sir Thomas Gerrard of Lancashire for the planting of the Glynnes and Clandeboy. His proposal is of the date of the 15th March, 1569.* But, however agreeable any scheme of the kind might have been to the taste of the court, no steps were at that time taken in pursuance of Gerrard's proposition.

The first attempt that was absolutely made was that of Sir Thomas Smith, the Secretary to the Queen, in 1572. Sir Thomas Smith was of a speculative turn and had a family to provide for. He did not look abroad for foreign settlements, † but conceived the sensible notion of making an ample provision for a bastard son, by a grant of Irish lands; and circumstances favoured his paternal intentions. In the Parliament of 1569 Shane O'Neill had been attainted for various treasons, conspiracies, and rebellions, and a great part of his territories of Antrim and Down had been forfeited to the Crown. From the Glynnes of Antrim to the Ardes of Down, all passed by this forfeiture, and Sir Thomas Smith represented to the Queen the propriety of colonizing the forfeited estates with English settlers, who having an interest in the soil, would be willing to oppose the natives without expense to the

site Shirley's account of the "Dominion of Farney in the Earldom of Ulster," p. 47. This is an excellent 96cal history."

Leland, vol. 2, p. 253.

#TOP VIR 2 05510)9

Crown.*

The adventurous youth was commissioned to lead his colony into the Ardes in Down— an ancient territory of the O'Neills. It is a peninsula eighteen miles long. To every footman of his goodly company of plunderers were granted one hundred and twenty acres ; to every horseman one hundred and forty at the moderate rent of a penny by the acre. The result was that the districts they settled in became a wilderness of savage warfare; when unfortunately for the interests of "English civility" and of the youthful planter, "the whole design was defeated by the assassination of young Smith, who fell by the treachery of one of the O'Neills."+

Another, and equally unsuccessful, attempt to plant Ulster, was made in 1573, by a more distinguished minion of the Queen, Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex. Elizabeth embarked with that noble Earl in his project of colonizing Clanaodh-buidhe, in Ulster. The first attempt at

*

Lingard, vol. 8, p. 127; a bargain in which the planter pays, by wholesale murder, for the privilege of wholesale robbery. This creates naturally an interest in the soil!

† Leland, vol. 2, p. 254. We shall presently see how Essex dealt with "one of the O'Neills."

Amongst the crimes which stain the memory of Elizabeth, one of the worst is that of having been a partner of Sir John Hawkins, the great seaman, in prosecuting the slave trade. I mention it, because it indicates that cupidity of nature and that indifference to human suffering, which caused Ireland to endure so much at her hands. The renowned mariner, who had, like most of the seamen of the day, a dash of the pirate in him, made several voyages to the coast of Africa for negroes-bartering hides, sugar, and ginger for the human commo