 In the wake of the first Desmond Rebellion, Henry Sidney, the Lord Deputy of Ireland and William Drury, the Lord President of Munster, had up to 700 unemployed or "masterless" soldiers executed, judging them to be a danger to the public peace.The surviving mercenary soldiers in Munster would form the backbone of the coming rebellion.Secondly, many of the local Irish Lords felt that their interests were threatened by the English policy of Plantations – confiscating land for which the owner did not have an English title and establishing English colonies on it.