Economic background of the settlers
The full implementation of the Plantation project depended on attracting wealthy men in England and Scotland who were willing to invest in the scheme. Individual undertakers required a cash sum of between £500 and £1500 to carry out all the conditions of their Plantation grant. In reality, few of the undertakers could afford even the minimum figure required to develop their new Irish properties. Most of the English undertakers were men of moderate means, with an average income of £200 per annum. In Scotland, King James I used his influence to persuade a number of prominent Scottish noblemen to become chief undertakers but with an average annual income of £150, the majority of the Scottish landlords had even less surplus cash than their English counterparts. The business men associated with the City of London Plantation lands had more access to capital but they were reluctant to invest it in Irish property preferring the more lucrative potential of the British colonies in north America and the West Indies. Some Scottish merchants expressed an interest in becoming undertakers in Ulster but James rejected their overtures in the belief that landlords would have more of the necessary experience and ideological commitment.
The terms of the Plantation grants were beyond the means of most of the undertakers to fulfil them. This helps to explain why so many of the original undertakers sold their grants and withdrew from the Plantation in the early years of the scheme. It also places in context the failure of a significant number of landlords to build on or develop the commercial potential of their estate
The main beneficiaries of the financial predicament of the initial undertakers were the servitors who bought up grants of Ulster land very cheaply in the 1610s and 1620s. Little is known of the financial circumstances of this group. Most were English and had served in Ireland in the late 16th century, either as soldiers or in the civil administration and had accumulated whatever money they had through their Irish employment. Some also had property interests in other parts of Ireland and only a small number took up residence on their Ulster estates.
The majority of British tenants on the Plantation were Scottish and were attracted to Ireland for economic reasons. Many were living in poverty in their home areas as an expanding population, rising prices and increased unemployment led to serious economic problems in Scotland, particularly in the 1630s when the numbers of Scottish people coming to Ireland soared. Migration to Ireland offered the possibility of immediate escape from dire poverty and the prospect of future prosperity.
The response of rural inhabitants in Scotland to the Plantation was in sharp contrast to that in rural England where relatively few people opted to move to Ulster. The English tenants who did take up residence came from the northern borders of England or had gone to Ireland to work temporarily on the building programme of the Plantation but had been inveigled to stay on as tenants by landlords desperate to fulfil the tenancy terms of their grants.
Economic background to settlers - Dr. Hiram Morgan
The Plantation contribution of the Scots, I think, is significant: they bring a new religion to Ulster and that, I think, is a significant thing. They make it a much more diverse community than before.
And of course they stay very much in their own communities - they form Scottish villages and communities in Ulster: they do not mix in with the English or indeed with the native Irish to any great degree - apart from those native Irish, the few who become Presbyterians. They remain in their own communities, and they come in much greater numbers from Scotland because of the proximity from Scotland, the proximity of Ulster to Scotland.
But they remain distinct communities right up until the 19th century, so when you look at the Ordnance Survey in the 19th century, you see that there are still English areas in Ulster, and Scottish areas.
It is only with industrialisation and the so-called evangelisation of the mid-19th century, that you do see something called ‘Ulster Protestant’ emerging which is when people migrate into the towns, they form a joint Protestant identity. But before that, before urbanisation, evangelisation, and then on the other side the pressure from Irish nationalism, you do not have a distinctly British Protestant community in Ulster: you have two communities, one of English Anglican background and the other Scottish Presbyterian background - they are distinctive.
Economic background to settlers - Professor Nicholas Canny
James VI and I, having been James VI of Scotland before he becomes James I of England, liked to style himself ‘King of Great Britain’: and he begins to use that terminology as the terminology whereby Scottish and English, and perhaps even Irish, subjects might mingle together in a single court; and that he would have a composite monarchy rather than a monarchy where the culture of one of the jurisdictions would be dominant over all of the others.
But while he articulated this quite extensively, as he was becoming King in London, he really didn’t deliver much benefit to his Scottish subjects (a relatively small number of his Scottish courtiers came with him to London and resided in London). But as far as Scotland was concerned, they had lost a King and they hadn’t gained anything else: and the patronage which goes with a King being in residence had all shifted to London.
But now with the Ulster Plantation, he recognised a possibility of actually giving some tangible benefits which were in his gift, to some of his Scottish subjects. And the Ulster Plantation is totally different from the Munster Plantation in the sense that it includes a significant number, an equal number of Scottish undertakers with English undertakers. That would have been inconceivable when the Plantation occurred in Munster when, in English political views, they had a negative view of the Scots, now the Scots were being brought in as equal partners.
- Dr. Raymond Gillespie
The idea of the Plantation of Ulster was to bring people together from different parts of what was then becoming quite a trendy term - ‘Britain’. That is, that Englishmen and Scottishmen were to be planted together and, in the words of Sir John Davies, that they would grow up together like trees in an orchard and they would form this new society. And, in a sense, Ulster was meant to be a model of what could be created between England and Scotland with the new King, James VI of Scotland / James I of England.
Now many of those who actually get the land in Ulster, of course, are far from ideal candidates for this: many of them are perceived as ‘free-booters’; many of them are perceived as the King’s favourites who got land with, you know, not having the right sort of backgrounds at all to be landlords and so tensions grow up between the English and the Scots.
Even at very simple levels, you know, the English do not understand the Scots: they cannot understand the language they speak; they cannot read the way in which they write (there has to be an extra clerk appointed to read Scottish script) so that there are all sorts of tensions growing up between them. And in one case, one rather interesting case, an English landlord takes a pot-shot at a Scottish landlord in the Barony of Strabane.
Now that’s the only example we have of tensions going that far, but it’s clear that relationships were far, far from easy and that some of the relationships between the English and the Scots were at least as fraught as the relationships between the Irish and the English - remembering of course that many of the Scots who came were Highland Scots, with Gaelic as their language, with many of their manners and customs, of course, being rather like those of the native Irish. And also many others of the Scots who came were worse than that - they were Catholic - so that the Scottish settlement in the Barony of Strabane, (one of the most important areas of settlement) was almost entirely Scottish Catholic who were fleeing Scotland so tensions were, shall we say, pronounced at times.
Economic and social conditions
- Professor Nicholas Canny
Rigid fortifications were required by the Government so that, in that sense, you can say that they are a reflection of the attitudes of those who were coming in. A significant number of the planters, particularly those who were servitors, were themselves of military background. Many of them held military positions simultaneous with being planters, so that unquestionably from the servitor point of view, the necessity of maintaining a strong military presence, that that was part of their being - after all they had been soldiers all of their life, soldiers who had now become landed proprietors. They believed that the opportunity to acquire these lands was in the aftermath of war and that they had to be held by force.
The undertakers might not necessarily have shared that particular point of view. And neither... we are not quite certain, what the political and social attitudes of those who came in as tenants, and indeed as artisans (because there was a significant artisan population as well), that these people who wanted - of necessity, they had to establish good working relations with their Catholic neighbours. If you came in as a carpenter or a tanner, quite clEarly you had to engage in day-to-day interactions with the Catholic population who still were the most numerous population on the ground in the buying and selling of commodities.
And there is some evidence that a significant number of the incoming population learned the Irish language, or at least learned sufficient Irish language to facilitate commercial interactions with the native population. Perhaps some of them abandoned their Protestantism, in the same way as some of the Catholic population on the Irish side abandoned their Catholicism in that sense. And there does appear to have been some degree of inter-marriage between the two populations, probably relatively low, but nonetheless some interaction was occurring at that level; which we don’t fully understand because we don’t have the kind of sources that provide insight into the mentalities of those at any level other than at the highest level.