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extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair.
COUNTY LONDONDERRYDrink is the curse of the land. It makes you fight with your neighbour.When James became king in 1603 he little knew that within a few years an event would take place that would change the course of Irish history. The event was the departure from Ireland of the powerful Gaelic lords under their charismatic leader Hugh O’Neill and it was to become known as The Flight of the Earls. The incident heralded the start of the Plantation. James began by telling the businessmen of the city of London what wonderful opportunities awaited them in Ulster. The ‘promised land’ stretched from the Foyle to the Lower Bann and included the fisheries of both rivers together with the towns of Derry and Coleraine. Both towns were strategically placed on rivers open to invasion from without, which together with the threat of rebellion from within, made it vitally important that they were fortified and strengthened against attack. The land between the two was at that time populated by ‘creaghts’ – large pastoral populations who lived in mud huts suitable to a semi-nomadic way of life, easily built and easily destroyed. They spent much of their time with their vast herds of cattle wandering from place to place in search of grazing. The scheme for the Plantation was the work of three Commissions which sat between 1608 and 1610. In all the counties except Londonderry the settlers were to hold their grants directly from the King. In Londonderry negotiations were conducted by the King and Privy Council who appointed four citizens as a separate commission to work in liaison with Sir Arthur Chichester. The old barony of Loughinshollin was to be added to that of Colerain (as it was then called), to make the new county of Londonderry. The new County was then shared out amongst the London Guilds and Companies to whom it had been granted. These (the Grocers’, Mercers’, Fishmongers’, Drapers’, Skinners’, Goldsmiths’, Merchant Taylors’, Haberdashers’, Salters’, Ironmongers’, Vintners’ and Clothworkers’ Companies; also a number of lesser-known smaller companies) were represented by the Honourable The Irish Society, a group composed of ‘six and twenty honest and discreet citizens of London’. The towns of Londonderry and Coleraine together with the fisheries of the Foyle and the Bann were to be the direct responsibility of the Society. Because of their wealth the Londoners were regarded as best able to guard the coastline from the Foyle to the Bann (in view of O’Neill’s possible return with an invading force). Their estates totalled about 38,500 acres ‘Irish and arable’. Each undertaker was expected to build, within three years, a castle encircled by a bawn for protection against the ‘hostile Irish’. As it turned out the Londoners were far from ideal pioneers. They were in fact reluctant to take on the work and were exasperatingly slow in getting on with it. Some did get to work; others merely glanced at their lands and returned home, while many did not appear at all. Of those who had made progress, the English had concentrated on building, while the more thrifty Scots had started to raise crops. These groups received encouragement from the Commissioners while absentees were threatened with forfeiture. Many Irish however, still occupied their former lands, as the newcomers saw no point in driving out tenants when as yet there were no new ones to replace them. Others lurked in the woods, fought not only with the new settlers but with each other and made raids on the owners of their lost lands. Throughout the seventeenth century the new landlords set about improving the landscape by clearing trees, making roads and founding towns. The great forest of Glenconkeyne which stretched along the western shore of Lough Neagh was hewn down and the timber prepared for floating down the Bann for rebuilding the towns of Coleraine and Londonderry. All went well until the death of King James in 1625. His successor, Charles I, was determined to obtain more money from Ireland to make him independent of the English Parliament. He imposed new rents and insisted on the colonists obeying his every word. He fined the London Companies £70,000 for occupying lands to which he claimed they were not entitled. This was a dangerous thing to do as the Companies were both wealthy and powerful and in the long run it would not be in his own interests to antagonise them. As it turned out the fine was eventually declared unlawful and was never paid. The changing political and economic situation made the native Irish rebellious. This came to a head in 1641. Then in 1666 the British Parliament introduced harsh new laws. One was the Irish Cattle Act which prevented the export of Irish cattle and farm produce to England. This struck a blow at one of Ireland’s few sources of wealth and it affected Protestant landowners more than Roman Catholic. Driven to find some other source of income, farmers turned to the intensive breeding of horses, a field in which they have been successful to the present day. However, discontent leading to rebellion and war continued for most of the remainder of the seventeenth century. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were comparatively peaceful, allowing the Londoners to get on with the job of governing and improving the country. What the Irish Society inherited in Coleraine, according to Pynnar in his report of 1618, was a town ‘in a most wretched state, and that part of the towne which is unbuilt so dirty especially at the market place, that it is nearly impassable’. Derry (of which more later) was but a collection of ruined forts and church buildings. Extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. Forthcoming extracts regarding County Londonderry: Part 2 Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 |
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