Ireland under the Stuarts and During the Interregnum, Vol. 1 (of 3), 1603-1642Bagwell, Richard
History
Ireland under the Stuarts and During the Interregnum, Vol. 1 (of 3), 1603-1642
Bagwell, Richard
Ireland -- History -- 17th century
Four years later there was yet another survey which may be taken to
describe the state of the colony at the end of James I.'s reign. The
commissioners, who divided the work among themselves, reported that
much had been done, but that the conditions insisted on by the King
had on the whole not been performed. Many of the undertakers were
non-resident, their agents retained native tenants and the British
settlers complained that 'the Irish were countenanced by their
landlords against them.' But few freeholders were made, rents were too
high, and covenants too stringent. Some promised leases informally
'which giveth such as are unconscionable power to put poor men out of
their holdings when they have builded with confidence of settlement.'
Much building was badly done, and instead of encouraging villages the
undertakers dispersed their tenants 'in woods and coverts subject to
the malice of any kerne to rob, kill, and burn them and their houses.'
Copies of the conditions to which undertakers were bound could not
be had, and so the humbler settlers were at their mercy and that of
their agents and lawyers. The servitors were rather better than the
undertakers, but their faults were of the same kind, and they also
were 'so dispersed that a few kerne might easily take victuals from
them by force if they gave it not willingly.' The Irish grantees
as a rule built nothing, and their enclosures made with sods were
valueless. They made no estate of any kind to their tenants, but kept
to the old Irish exactions, and they ploughed in the 'Irish barbarous
manner by the tails of their garrons.' The commissioners recommended
that the King should give new patents instead of those which deserve
to be forfeited. A full fourth part of the undertaken lands should
be leased for twenty-one years or lives to the Irish on condition
of living in villages, going to church, wearing English clothes,
ploughing in English fashion, bringing up their children to learning
an industry, and enclosing at least a fourth of their cultivated land.
Undertakers were to be fined if they took Irish tenants or graziers
on any other terms, and alienation for any longer term was to involve
forfeiture.[77]
[Sidenote: The natives not transplanted.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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