hordes of wild western Gaels and the like, only to add fuel to the seething fires of Irish unrest. The Lord Deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester, the shrewdest of Crown officials in Ireland, and his Dublin council fully recognised that industrious farmers and artisans were the only material to carry the business through; and King James, having been successfully brought to heel, now threw himself with ardour into the project.

So in July 1608, a commission, accompanied by troops, started from Dublin on a journey of inspection through the six escheated counties. They were away for two crowded months, incidentally trying suspected persons, skirmishing with recalcitrant natives, and everywhere summoning juries to give evidence on boundaries. They treated the country for survey purposes as virgin territory, for such natives as might be retained on the soil were to be allotted fresh lands. The country consisted of bog, forest, waste mountain and pasture land, and was thus scheduled. Whatever may have been its condition at a former period, it was at this time almost wholly grazing ground, and the tillage area was nearly negligible; while beyond a few rude houses or stone towers, occupied by the better sort, there were scarcely any substantial dwellings.

The labours of the Commission were completed on Sept. 2. But the results were so imperfect that another expedition started immediately and returned late in October; and Sir John Davys, of the ready pen, Attorney-General, and Sir James Ley, Chief Justice, repaired to London with the Report to assist in perfecting the scheme. Excluding the county of Derry, which was to pass en bloc to the London companies, the amount of land surveyed for settlement was, in round figures, 600,000 acres. It was understood that only reasonably productive land was to be reckoned in this computation, since the total area of the five counties was, of course, many times this amount. But, making liberal allowance for mountains, woods, and bogs, there is yet a large margin unaccounted for-a problem that is met by the statement of competent judges, that the surveyed lands, by design or carelessness, were considerably underestimated.

The scheme of the Plantation which was thoroughly, Vol. 239.-No. 474.

C

and in the end successfully, carried out, was as follows. The old Church lands, already the property of a Protestant Establishment, hardly yet animate, but to be now definitely enjoyed by Anglican bishops and clergy, amounted to about a tenth of the whole. Outside this, with exceptions to be noted later, each county, having been divided into six or eight baronies, was further subdivided, as regards its surveyed lands, into tracts of 2000, 1500, and 1000 acres. These were respectively designated Greater, Middle, and Lesser 'Proportions,' the last being at least as numerous as the other two combined. They were to be all held on free and common socage. Each Proportion' carried rights on the neighbouring bogs, wastes, and woods of timber and turf, rights which appear to have been so freely interpreted as to result eventually in largely extended ownership. Candidates for land had been long stirring; and Dublin, so Chichester reports in the summer of 1609, was full of strangers. These were of two classes. First in numbers and importance were the potential Undertakers, or civic' planters, English and Scottish. Secondly, there were the old soldiers of the late Irish wars, the 'servitors,' who had been bitterly disappointed three years previously at the pardoning of the two earls and the resumption of their status and estates, which they had now so conveniently abdicated. In the third place, about 60,000 acres were reserved for shifted natives against whom nothing could be urged. These servitors and natives were to be mingled together in each county and, so far as possible, on the fringes of the planted country, the martial men having naturally been credited with a better understanding of the Irish, and otherwise more qualified to suppress trouble within, as well as without, the Plantation frontiers.

About a fourth of the whole area surveyed was set apart for the servitors and natives, but generally in rather smaller individual parcels than the three Proportion' rates of the Civil Plantation. This last was to consist of an equal number of English and Scottish Undertakers in each county, the object being to avert the danger of too much racial segregation. But, in order to retain the benefit for individual groups of hometies in a strange and dangerous country, alternate

baronies or 'precincts,' were allotted en bloc to Scots and English respectively. Further, encouragement was given for each barony to be occupied by persons from the same district or connexion. These little groups of some half-dozen Undertakers to a barony were headed by a leader, or consort,' who in turn drew lots for a choice of the said alternate barony. One or two greater 'Proportions' in most counties were reserved for servitors or natives, and three in Cavan, for the former, as a more especial danger-point.

So precise was the distribution between Scots and English that in the five counties the former received 64 Proportions,' containing 82,000 acres, the latter 62 of 84,000 acres. Servitors and natives had 103,000 acres ; corporate towns (to be), free schools (to be founded), and Trinity College, nominally 10,000 acres. The terms of entry to the accepted Undertakers were as follows: an annual payment of 51.6s. 8d. for every thousand acres, after the first four years; owners of Greatest Proportions to erect a castle of stone, surrounded by a bawne (defensive enclosure); owners of Middle Proportions, a castle or house of stone within a bawne; while for those of the Lesser Proportions, only a bawne, without specification as to house, was prescribed. These buildings had to be erected within a given time, ultimately extended to four years, while five continuous years of residence by the Undertaker, or a qualified representative, formed another very necessary condition. Lastly, one or two sureties, or 'cautioners,' had to be found in each case.

Undertakers were, furthermore, pledged to bring

a specified number of tenants and labourers, English or inland' Scots-i.e. not Highlanders, Islesmen, or West-Coasters-and to erect or cause them to erect suitable houses, 'close to the bawne.' They were not permitted to accept native tenants. One-third of each estate was to be sub-let under fee-farm grants, another third in leases of not less than forty years, while the remainder was available for de mesne, tenantsat-will, and cottars. Every proprietor was to keep a sufficient stand of arms, and to muster and drill his tenantry periodically-a tolerably obvious precaution, with a considerable native population on their flanks, all bitterly outraged in sentiment and, as regards the

upper sort, in person or pocket. The servitors paying 21. per 1000 acres more than the others were allowed to take native tenants, being obviously unable to import Britons, and presumably more competent to control a native tenantry. The servitors' grants were generally, as were those to most natives, under 1000 acres.

All this sourds like one of those paper schemes with which visionaries have always been wont to amuse themselves by drafting for potential colonies oversea. But this one went through, with many evasions and lapses, to be sure. Yet it worked out and proved sound, though the massacre of 1641 made, no doubt, big breaches in it. If the trade restrictions of England, and still more the crazy policy of the Irish parliament and the greater northern landlords had not drained Protestant Ireland so severely between 1700 and 1774, Irish history might have been written differently.

There was no lack of Undertakers; selection was easy; and many were rejected. Here is an average sample of the Englishmen who offered themselves and were mostly accepted: Dillon, of Aggardsley Park, Staffs; Sir Anthony Cope, of Cope Castle; several Tuchets, of Lord Audley's family; a Clare, of Stanfield Hall, Norfolk; Sir T. Cornewall, of the well-known Hereford family; St John, of Lydiard Tregoze, Wilts; Sir Maurice Berkeley, of Somerset; Sir Hugh Wirral, of Yorks; Bogas, of Deresham Park, Suffolk; Sir W. Harman; Sir J. Mallory; Flowerdew, Blenerhassett, and Archdale, all of Norfolk; Sir Francis Fishe, of Bedford. Financial status was carefully regarded; and in a full list all were credited with incomes of from 100l. to 500l. a year, such, in fact, as was enjoyed by substantial country squires of the period. A few burgesses appear, but Chichester, in a later dispatch, describes the Undertakers as mostly 'plain country-gentlemen.' It is worth noting, too, that a clear majority come from East Anglia and the East Midlands, and that a west-country colony in Co. Cork had come to great grief in the preceding century.

Here, again, are some examples of the Scottish applicants, equally significant: Homne, of Milne ; Lauder, of Belhaven; Douglas, of Shott; various Hamiltons, of the Abercorn and other landed families; Lord Ochiltree; Sir T. Boyd, of Bedley; a Stewart, of

Minto; Sir John Drummond, of Perthshire; three Cunninghams, of Glengarnock; Sir Patrick McKie, of Laerg; Balfour, Lord Burleigh; Sir John Wishart, Laird of Petarro; Moneypenny (of the Fife family); Maclellan, Baron of Bombie; and Patrick Vans, of Barnbarroch. A few burghers of Glasgow and Edinburgh and some private servants of King James are exceptions in a list from which the above is a fortuitous selection. There are two or three ministers among the Scots, and as many parsons among the English adventurers. Among the servitors are such significant names as Wingfield, Folliott, Caulfield, Conway, Hansard, Perrott, Bodley, and Fettiplace, all Knights; and among the Captains are Atherton, Trevellian, Boddington, Throgmorton, Leigh, Annesley, Trevor, Fleming, Gore, Culme, Ackland, Devereux, Bagnall, and Daubenny. It seems to have been quite usual, too, for Scottish lairds to retain their territorial affix, after they had abandoned or sold their patrimony and crossed the Channel. Thus we find the Laird of Dunduff, the Laird of Luss, the Laird of Bombie, and others, registered as Ulster colonists.

The accepted Undertakers, or their representatives, were mostly in Ireland by the summer and autumn of 1610; and proclamation was made all over the six counties warning the natives to evacuate the 'proportion' lands by May 1611. There is scarcely a sign of dwellings being taken into consideration. Perhaps the mass of them were hardly worth it. In the initial difficulties of the Undertakers we learn that the natives rendered much help; many no doubt hoped to remain as tenants in their own localities, possibly not realising the edict to the contrary. Indeed, many did so, while under the servitors they were mostly retained as such under official permission. Most of them, too, had cattle, which few British had as yet acquired, while such other necessaries as they produced could be readily sold to the incomers. The bulk of them, at the low rents prevailing, would be actually freer men under normal English tenancy than under the heel of their old chiefs, with their dues, exactions, and troops of cosherers and idle followers. Sentiment, however, we are told, was stronger than the fact of material improvement. To a man, they were ready to cut the throats of the colonists. The