From: "The Story of the Irish Race", by Seumas MacManus, from 1921, 35th printing in 1981. Page 405 Chapter XLVII "The Ulster Plantation" Within a decade after the "Flight if the Earls" came the Ulster Plantation - a scheme of fatal and far reaching consequence for the Island ever since. It was the Sixth James of Scotland who, after he became James I of England, perpetrated this crime. The land-greedy and gain-greedy among his Scotic fellow countryment, and among the English, were the instigators. Upon Ireland the covetous eyes of such people were ever turned. The flight of the Earls proved a welcome excuse for the wholesale robbing of the Clans. It was a very simple matter to find that all the Northern Chiefs had been conspiring to rebel - against England. Hence, they were "traitors" to England! And naturally their estates were forfeit and for distribution among James's hungry followers. That the Clan-Lands did not then, or ever at any time, belong to the Chieftain, but to the whole Clan community, was a matter of no consequence. According to English law and custom it should belong to the people's lords ( chiefs). And if "civilised" law did not obtain in Ireland, it must be imposed wheresoever British profit could be reaped from such imposition. The English Lord Lieutenant, Sir Arthur Chichester, and the Attorney General, Sir John Davis, were the instruments, under James, for giving effect to the great Plantation. The lands of the six counties of Donegal, Derry ( then called Coleraine), Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan and Armaggh - four million acres - were confiscated. ( The lands of the three remaining counties, Antrim, Down and Monaghan were bestowed upon Britons at other times). . The true owners, the natives, were driven like wild fowl or beasts, from the rich and fertile valleys of Ulster, which had been theirs from time immemorial, to the bogs and the moors and the barren crags - where it was hoped that they might starve and perish. English and Scotch Undertakers (( as they were called), and Servitors of teh Crown, scrambled for the fertile lands which were given to them in parcels of 1 thousand, 1,500 and 2,00- acres. The County of Coleraine (Derry) was divided up among the London trade Guilds, the drapers, fishmongers, vintners, haberdashers, etc., who had financed the Plantation scheme. The Church termon lands were bestowed upon the Protestant bishops. And thus a new nation was planted upon the fair face of Ireland's proudest quarter. The new nation was meant to be the permanent nation there. The written conditions upon which the new people got the lands specifically bound them to repress and abhor the Irish natives - conditions which through hundreds of years since the new people have faithfully endeavoured to carry out. They were bound never to alien the lands to Irish, to admit no Irish customs, not to intermarry with the Irishs, nor to permit any Irish other the menials to exist on or near their land. And they were bound to build castles and bawns, and keep many armed British retainers - thus constituting a permanent British garrison which would help to tame if not exterminate the Irish race. Sir John Davies, the Scotic king's very faithful servants, assures us that his master did tame the whole race. In his book, " A Discoverie of the True Causes why Ireland was never Subdued and Brought under Obedience to the Crowne of England until the Beginning of His Majesty's Happie Reign." he says, "T! he multitude having been brayed as it were in mortar with sword, pestilence and famine, altogether became admirers of the Crowne of England." And when they were made true admirers of the Crowne of England it was that their fertile possessions were given to the stranger, and they sent to co-habit with the snipe and the badger among the rocks and heather, And the faithful servant, Sir John, a pious Puritan rogue who stained his powers to rob and wrong the natives even far beyond the sweeping robbery powers which the "law" provided to his hand- this saint, in the traditional British fashion, tells us; "This transplanting of the natives is made by his Majestie like a father, rather than a lord or monarch. " So, as his Majestie doth in this, imitate the skilful husbandman who doth remove his fruit trees, not on purpose to extirpate and destroy, but the rather that they may bring forth better and sweeter fruit!". And when the starving one, from his perch among the rocks, glanced over the smiling valleys from which James had transplanted him for his own betterment, it is easy to conceive the depth of feeling with which he appreciated that kind father's solicitude. The character of the Planters who were given the lands of the hunted owned is recorded for us by the son of one of them, and also by a later one of their own descendents. Reid, in his "History of the Irish Presbyterians" says; "Among those whom divine Providence did send to Ireland ...the most part were such as either poverty or scandalous lives had forced hother". And Stewart, the son of a Presbyterian minister who was one of the Planters, writes: "From Scotland came many, and from England not a few, yet all of them generally the scum of both nations, who from debt, or breaking, or fleeing justice, or seeking shelter, came hither hoping to be without fear of man's justice." Sore indeed was the lot of the poor Irish in the woods, and mountains and moors. Thousands of them perished of starvation. Other, many thousands sailed away under leaders to enlist in Continental armies. To far Sweden alone went no less the six thousand swordsmen. But the lot of those who lived and remained was sorer far more than those who went either to exile or to death.. Texts taken from: Hill's Plantation of Ireland Sir John Davies' Irish Tracts MacNevin's Ulster Plantation