1603-1649***


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Transcriber’s note:

      Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).





STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY, 1603-1649

Being a Course of Lectures
Delivered before the Irish Literary Society of London

Edited by

R. BARRY O’BRIEN

Second Series






Browne and Nolan, Limited
Dublin, Belfast & Cork
London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd.
Stationers’ Hall Court, E.C.
1906




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                                Contents


                                                      PAGE
             THE PLANTATION OF ULSTER                    1
               THE REV. S. A. COX, M.A.


             STRAFFORD
                 PART I.—THE GRACES                     69
                 PART II.—THE EVE OF “1641”            137
               PHILIP WILSON, M.A.


             “1641”                                    169
               ARTHUR HOUSTON, K.C., LL.D.


             THE CONFEDERATION OF KILKENNY             225
               DR. DONELAN, M.CH., M.B.




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                        THE PLANTATION OF ULSTER

                BY THE REVEREND S. A. COX, M.A., T.C.D.




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                        The Plantation of Ulster

    “The truth is, they that gape after poor Irishmen’s lands do what
    they can to have a colour to beg them”—(_State Papers_, _Ireland_,
    1610, p. 415).


THESE words were written in an appeal for justice, or even the formality
of a trial, by one who was betrayed by the English whom he had served.
Sir Donnell O’Cahan had left his own people to seek an English alliance,
and was rewarded by an imprisonment of nineteen years, without ever
being brought up for trial. He was goaded into a just indignation by
rumours that reached him in the early days of his imprisonment in
Dublin, of Lady O’Cahan’s destitution and insanity, but after a couple
of years he was moved to the Tower of London, where he, and other
noblemen who were confined because men hungered after their lands,
languished away till death gave them release. It will not surprise most
of our readers to know that his letters were intercepted and carefully
studied with a view to finding something treasonable in them. Truly
Ireland’s share in the privileges of Magna Carta has been a small one.

The opening of James I’s reign in Ireland was auspicious enough. The
battle of Kinsale was an effort of an United Ireland, aided by Spanish
troops, to meet and expel the English in the battle-field: it failed,
and with it came to an end the hopes of the great Irish lords to do
anything by open warfare. James found Ireland decimated by war and
famine: some parts like the Ards in the County Down had been literally
cleared of their inhabitants.[1] The chiefs were willing enough to
submit, if submission meant that they were to become great Palatine
lords, with no interference from the Crown in their relations with their
vassals, or in the exercise of their religion. The once turbulent
Anglo-Irish lords had nearly all conformed to the Protestant religion,
