The Stolen Lands?
The following extract from Sean O’Callaghan’s book The Informer, is certainly emotive, but is it accurate?
To stand with an old farmer on a hillside in Pomeroy in County Tyrone while he pointed out Protestant farms, ‘stolen from us by them black bastards’, is to understand the emotive power of blood and earth. No matter how I looked at it the reality stared me full in the face: this was a war between Catholics and Protestants, not against the British. I might want to attack a British Army patrol or barracks, but the local IRA men would rather shoot a Protestant neighbour who was in the UDR or police reserve. [1]
The assertion is that the Catholic lands were ‘stolen’ by the Protestants. There is no indication of when the land was supposed to have been ‘stolen’, but we will assume the inference is to the Ulster Plantation in 1609.
In legal terms, the Ulster Plantation cannot be referred to as theft, as we shall see. On 21st July 1609, James I established a Commission to map out the divisions of the land, and to identify the sites on which the undertakers were to build. The Commission included the Archbishops of Dublin and Armagh, as well as the Surveyor-General and 17 other men. They travelled through Ulster, holding assizes in each county, and Cyril Falls describes the events in Armagh and Tyrone in detail. As the particular issue at stake is Pomeroy and Tyrone, we will concentrate on the Tyrone element.
Except for a few hundred acres of glebe and abbey lands and some territory granted to Sir Henry Oge O’Neill and his heirs, the whole county, said the jury, was now in “the real and actual possession of His Majesty, by reason of the attainder of treason of Hugh, late Earl of Tyrone, and by the Statute of the attainder of Shane O’Neill, made in the 11th year of the reign of the late Queen Elizabeth, and by reason of either of them.” [2]
Therefore, in terms of the law, the county of Tyrone was judged to belong to James I, to distribute or use in any way he wished. How he had come into possession of the land was due to the treasonous offences of the former landowners, who fled in 1607, at the Flight of the Earls. Therefore, if anyone had ‘stolen’ the land, it was not the Protestants, but the monarchy. Following this logic, the Pomeroy farmer’s anger should be directed, not at the local Protestant farmers who now possess the land, but towards a king who passed away almost 400 years ago, and who obtained possession of the land.
But even in this simple summary, there are factors that are overlooked. We must examine more closely how and why O’Neill was guilty of treason, and how this in turn leads to the land being transferred legally, and not through theft.
What may dismay the nationalists of today is that the so-called Gaelic nation of Ireland was loyal to the English monarchy from the accession of James I until the execution of Charles I in 1649. This assertion can be pieced together from several sources, on the grounds of poetry, declarations, genealogy and theology.
Cunningham notes that James’ ‘accession to the throne in 1603 was marked by poetic offerings from at least two Ulster poets, Eochaidh Ó hEodhusa and Fearghal Óg Mac an Bhaird.’ [3] She later observes that ‘In their attitude of loyalty to James I the Ulster poets were of one mind with Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, who though strenuously opposed to those activities of the Dublin administration which threatened his independence and status within his own lordship nevertheless assured James I in 1606 that he was determined ‘to live and die in your Majesty’s service’.’ [4] Thus, from these two quotes, we can see that the Gaelic poets regarded James as their rightful king, and that Hugh O’Neill had pledged loyalty to James, so his flight to the European mainland was regarded as treason.
In addition to the poets’ welcomes to James, ‘the adoption of James I by the Irish learned class and his absorption by them into the Irish scheme of things is reflected most vividly in the work of the genealogists. Overnight an impeccable genealogy was bestowed on him; as Mac an Bhaird declared, only the son of Mary had more noble blood than he.’ [5] That the genealogists, an important part of the Gaelic society, should strive to provide James with such a heritage shows that they too regarded him as their rightful king, despite being to them an outsider.
To these perspectives is added that of the Catholic Church:
The accommodation by the learned class of James I and the facility by which an appropriate niche was found for him in the inherited Irish value-system is merely a working out in intellectual terms of a shift which had already been accomplished in the theological and religious spheres. The crucial development was the appointment of Peter Lombard as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland in 1601 and the subsequent implementation of his policy of acceptance of the status quo. [6]
This policy of the status quo was based on a new theological formula developed by the Jesuits, in which it was possible to separate spiritual authority and temporal authority, and that it was possible, therefore, for a Catholic people to give allegiance at least in temporal affairs to a ‘heretical’ Prince.
My reasoning for going into each of these aspects in depth is that it provides us with a better picture of Gaelic society in the early 1600s. We can thus summarise, by stating that the Gaelic chieftains such as Hugh O’Neill (Earl of Tyrone), as well as the Gaelic poets, and the Catholic hierarchy, were loyal to the Stuart monarchy. Thus, when O’Neill and others fled Ireland in the flight of the earls, they were, in effect (and later confirmed by the Commission in 1609), surrendering their lands to the monarchy. With this in place, the monarch could rightfully use or distribute those lands as he wished.
If we were to conclude now, it would be our recommendation to the Pomeroy farmer to vent his anger against either James I, or indeed, against his own ancestors who were loyal to James in the first place, or more specifically against the earls who fled. But there is of course much more on the Plantations than what we have used thus far.
The era of the plantations provide many surprises to us looking back on them, and even some embarrassing facts that do not suit the agenda of Irish republicans. We will look at several of these now in turn, including Catholic planters, Native tenants, Native grantees, and the state of the native population.
The republican mythology of the plantation tells the story of how the Protestant planters came into Ireland and took the land off the native Catholics, or, in the words of the Pomeroy farmer, the lands were ‘stolen from us by them black bastards.’ [7] Sadly for those republicans, the myth is not supported by the facts. Several of the Scottish Undertakers (those who obtained the largest tracts of land) were, in fact, Roman Catholics. One of these was the brother of the Earl of Abercorn, Sir George Hamilton, who also became the guardian of the Earl’s minor heir, in 1618. As a result of Sir George’s actions, there was ‘by 1630 numerous Scottish Roman catholics living in the area.’ [8] Thus, the first plank of the republican myth, that Protestants stole the land, has been proven false, on the grounds that there were Catholic planters who received some of the land.
The Undertakers were not permitted to take on Irish (catholic) tenants. They had received grants of about 2000 acres, and were only allowed to bring over tenants from England or Scotland. But the Servitors, the second group of planters were permitted Irish tenants. Servitors were granted 1500 acres, and many did take on Irish tenants, who were Catholics. Thus, Catholics would have been involved in the plantation as tenants, as well as being planters.
Further, the third category of planter was the native Irish, who were granted about 1000 acres, and were absolved of any building conditions (Undertakers and Servitors had to provide a bawn and/or castle as part of their conditions of involvement). These native Irish would have been free to take on anyone they wanted as tenants.
Thus, summing up this section, it is clear that the republican mythology of the plantation as being a period when the Protestants stole the land from Catholic hands is untrue. This conclusion is best summarised by ATQ Stewart, of the School of History at Queen’s University Belfast, who said of the plantation, ‘A very substantial proportion of the original plantation was not disturbed at all’ [9]
If we now take all the information gathered, the conclusion must be that: because the entire Gaelic society regarded James I as their sovereign, and because the chieftains had sworn loyalty to him, the flight of the earls was an act of treason. Due to this treason, their estates were forfeit to the monarch, which could distribute them as he pleased. Therefore, while the planters (both Catholics and Protestants) may have been given the lands in question, they were in no way stolen.
[1] Sean O’Callaghan, 1999, The Informer (Corgi Books, London), page 118
[2] Cyril Falls, 1996, The Birth of Ulster (Constable, London), page 172
[3] Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Native Culture and Political Change’ in Ciaran Brady and Raymond Gillespie, 1986, Natives and Newcomers (Irish Academic Press, Dublin), page 156
[4] Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Native Culture and Political Change’ in Ciaran Brady and Raymond Gillespie (editors), 1986, Natives and Newcomers (Irish Academic Press, Dublin), page 157
[5] Breandán Ó Buachalla, ‘James our true king’ in D. George Boyce, Robert Eccleshall and Vincent Geoghegan (editors), 1993, Political Thought in Ireland Since the Seventeenth Century (Routledge, London), page 11
[6] Ibid
[7] Sean O’Callaghan, 1999, The Informer (Corgi Books, London), page 118
[8] M Perceval-Maxwell, 1999, The Scottish Migration to Ulster in the Reign of James I (Ulster Historical Foundation Publications, Belfast), page 326
[9] ATQ Stewart, 1997, The Narrow Ground (Blackstaff Press, Belfast), page 25
bravenet.com