Had the northern earls not taken flight in September 1607, Irish history in the rest of the 17th century might have been quite different. Admittedly, the earls no longer held their old position as virtual rulers of independent septs, but they remained formidable landlords over vast areas with as much, if not more, power and influence than any of the other Gaelic chieftains, such as those in Connaught and Clare who had abided by the Composition, and the various Old English Catholic lords, especially, but not exclusively, those of Leinster. As it was, Catholics, not as chieftains, but as landlords, still controlled over 80 percent of the land of Ireland, dominated many of the old towns, and would make up a substantial portion of any Irish parliament that might be called. Whatever expansion in the ranks of Protestantism took place was almost entirely of newcomers to Ireland, the New English, who were very often public officials. There remained an unwarranted conviction that the Catholicism of King James's mother would reassert itself in the new king, James, or that he would at least be more appreciative of the grievances of his Catholic subjects. Even the lord deputy, Mountjoy, although having been a brutal conqueror, had upon peace taken a more conciliatory line. But Mountjoy was replaced by Arthur Chichester in 1604, and he was dead by 1606. Other servants of the king had other designs on Ireland.
One such was the extremely talented attorney general for Ireland, Sir John Davies, who saw the flight of the earls as achieving something that the best army in Europe had not been able to achieve: an opportunity for colonization that would make Ireland a new England in all but name. Within two weeks of the flight, Chichester submitted to the English Privy Council a proposal regarding the disposal of the lands of those who had left. Surveys and mapmaking of six Ulster counties (Armagh, Cavan, Coleraine (Derry), Donegal, Fermanagh and Tyrone), were undertaken during 1608, 1609, and 1610, readying the province for plantation.4
In a settlement of 1590, Monaghan had been left to the Irish landlords, and Antrim and Down were held by Scots lords, one of whom was the son of Sorley Boy McDonnell, a sometime ally of the O’Neills, who controlled the celebrated Glens of Antrim, and other native chiefs like O’Neill and a Magennis, as well as a substantial Scots settlement recruited by two adventurers, Sirs James Hamilton and Hugh Montgomery, who had induced imprudent Irish chieftains to sell their lands.
World History
