page_title: Plantations of Ireland
section_title: Later plantations (1610–1641)
hierarchical_section_title: Plantations of Ireland / Later plantations (1610–1641)
caption_attribution_description: Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork (1556-1643)
context_page_description: Plantations in 16th- and 17th-century Ireland involved the confiscation of land by the English crown and the colonisation of this land with settlers from the island of Great Britain. There had already been smaller-scale immigration from England as far back as the 12th century, which had resulted in a distinct ethnicity in Ireland known as the Old English, or Hiberno-Normans. Unofficial plantations carried out privately by landlords also took place, such as those in County Antrim and County Down.
  The 16th-century plantations were established through large areas of the country by the confiscation of lands occupied by Gaelic clans and Hiberno-Norman dynasties, but principally in the provinces of Munster and Leinster. The Crown granted these lands to colonists from England. This process began during the reign of Henry VIII and continued under Mary I and Elizabeth I. It was accelerated under James I, when the Plantation of Ulster took place on land escheated from those Gaelic chiefs who broke the terms of surrender and regrant, Charles I, and Oliver Cromwell; in their time, land was also granted to Scottish planters.
context_section_description: In addition to the Ulster plantation, several other small plantations occurred under the reign of the Stuart Kings—James I and Charles I—in the early 17th century.  The first of these took place in north county Wexford in 1610, where lands were confiscated from the MacMurrough-Kavanagh clan.
  Since most land-owning families in Ireland had taken their estates by force in the previous four hundred years, very few of them, with the exception of the New English planters, had proper legal titles for them.  As a result, in order to obtain such titles, they were required to forfeit a quarter of their lands.  This policy was used against the Kavanaghs in Wexford and subsequently elsewhere, to break up Catholic Irish estates (especially the Gaelic ones) around the country. Following the precedent set in Wexford, small plantations were established in Laois and Offaly, Longford, Leitrim and north Tipperary.
  To take one example of this policy: in 1621 King James I established his claims to the whole of Upper Ossory in County Laois, including the manor of Offerlane. James claimed royal inheritance (from the de Clare family) at an inquisition held at Port Laoise, and instituted a plantation of the area in 1626. John FitzPatrick, Baron Upper Ossory, refused to submit the manor of Castletown to the plantation. In 1537 his ancestor, Brian MacGiollaPadraig, had agreed to surrender Upper Ossory to King Henry VIII and was regranted the lordship under English law; in 1541 he was made Baron of Upper Ossory. After John FitzPatrick's death in 1626, his son Florence continued this opposition to the plantation on his estates. However, the Fitzpatricks were eventually forced to concede a portion of their lands.
  In Laois and Offally, the Tudor plantation had consisted of a chain of military garrisons. In the new, more peaceful climate of the 17th century, it attracted large numbers of landowners, tenants and labourers. Prominent planters in Leinster in this period include Charles Coote, Adam Loftus, and William Parsons.
  In Munster, during the peaceful early years of the 17th century, thousands more English and Welsh settlers arrived in the province. There were many small plantations in Munster in this period, as Irish lords were required to forfeit up to one third of their estates to get their deeds to the remainder recognised by the English authorities. The settlers became concentrated in towns along the south coast – especially Youghal, Bandon, Kinsale and Cork city. Notable English Undertakers of the Munster Plantation include Walter Raleigh, Edmund Spenser, and Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork. The latter especially made huge fortunes out of amassing Irish lands and developing them for industry and agriculture.
  The Irish Catholic upper classes were unable to stop the continued plantations in Ireland because they had been barred from public office on religious grounds. By 1615 they comprised a minority in the Irish Parliament, as a result of the creation of "pocket boroughs" (where Protestants were in the majority) in planted areas. In 1625, they gained a temporary halt to land confiscations by agreeing to pay for England's war with France and Spain.
  In addition to the plantations, thousands of independent settlers arrived in Ireland in the early 17th century, from the Netherlands and France as well as Britain. Many of them became chief tenants of Irish land-owners; others set up in the towns (especially Dublin) — notably as bankers and financiers. By 1641, there were calculated to be up to 125,000 Protestant settlers in Ireland, though they were still outnumbered by native Catholics by around 15 to 1.
  Not all of the early 17th century English Planters were Protestants. A considerable number of English Catholics settled in Ireland between 1603–1641, in part for economic reasons but also to escape persecution in England. In the time of Elizabeth and James I, the Catholics of England suffered a greater degree of persecution than English Catholics in Ireland. In England, Catholics were greatly outnumbered by Protestants and lived under constant fear 
caption: Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, who amassed huge quantities of land in southern Ireland in the early 17th century
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