Plantation of Ulster

The Plantation of Ulster followed the Flight of the Earls and the collapse of much Gaelic lordship in the north of Ireland. Land was confiscated and granted to settlers, undertakers, servitors and institutions from England and Scotland. It changed landholding, religion and power in Ulster.

The plantation mattered because it transformed Irish history and left a long political legacy. It created new communities and fortified towns, but also dispossession, resentment and future conflict. The tensions of the seventeenth century cannot be understood without it.

This setting appears in Irish historical fiction and can connect with novels by Morgan Llywelyn and other writers of Ireland’s early modern conflicts. It suits stories about settlers, Gaelic families, surveyors, soldiers, ministers and communities living with contested land.