The great want at this place was a bridge, and it was thought by some that the Londoners were unwilling to supply it, because they made so much by the ferry. The estates of the twelve companies were perhaps in proportion rather better managed than those of the city of London itself, but there were the same complaints everywhere of insufficient encouragement to settlers, of leases withheld or delayed, and of Irish tenants who would promise any rent being preferred to British colonists. Phillips thought there were about 4,000 adult males in the whole county, of whom three-fourths were Irish. Of the remaining quarter not two-thirds were capable of bearing arms effectively, and in the last year of James's reign Phillips declared his belief that the colonists were really at the mercy of the natives. The towns, such as they were, seemed 'rather baits to ill-affected persons than places of security,' and there were so many robberies and murders that fresh settlers were hardly to be expected.[79] [Sidenote: English, Scotch and Irish.] The original idea of the plantation was to settle English and Scotch undertakers in about equal numbers. The Scotch on the whole made the best settlers, in spite of, or possibly in consequence of, their tendency to intermarry with the Irish, and there can be no doubt that the ecclesiastical policy of James and Charles drove many Presbyterians from their own country to Ulster. The chiefs of the Hamiltons and Montgomeries might favour the official Church, but Strafford found his most determined enemies among the humbler Scots, and he seriously thought of banishing them all. Even under Cromwell they did not get on too well with the English, but in the long run Anglicanism and Presbyterianism combined sufficiently to give a permanently Protestant tone to the northern province. The rebellion of 1641 prevented the colonists from dividing their forces as they might otherwise have done, and the alliance held good in 1688, and even, after a very short hesitation, in 1798. By the partiality of James a very great quantity of land was given to the Church, and especially to the Bishops, most of whom did not do very much for the common defence. Of the whole land granted in the six escheated counties, little more than one-tenth was given as property to the natives; the rest of them lived chiefly as dependants on the undertakers, and without legal interest in the land which they were forced to till for a subsistence. And there were a large number whose business had been fighting, and who lived on those who worked when there was no longer any fighting to be done. Thus very few of the Ulster Irish had anything to lose by a successful revolt, and many might think they had a great deal to gain. The acreage of the grants was far less than the actual contents of the different counties, and thus there was still plenty of room for the nomad herdsmen whose descendants flocked to Owen Roe's standard. [Sidenote: Distribution of land.]