of manufactured goods, and the exportation of the produce of their lands. It would be a mistake to suppose from these insolent rules about the “meer Irish” that none of them got any land. The outside undertakers got the good grants, but the natives got their leavings. The mountainous slopes and remote lands and other parts that were not likely to be productive, were given to the native element. The plan was to concentrate the intruders into villages and towns, and to scatter the Irish as much as possible, putting the servitors (or English who had been in Ireland for some years in military service) near to the natives to keep them in awe. There was always some land that it was quite necessary to let the Irish get, if it was ever to be saved from becoming absolutely waste land. Sir R. Jacob (the Solicitor-General for Ireland) showed both humour and acuteness in a letter he wrote to Salisbury in 1609, in which he urged the safety of allowing the natives to keep some land, and also suggests that the very inferior parts might go to them, he says: “The arrantest knave of the Byrne’s answered Sir Henry Sydney, when accused of dwelling on the Archbishop’s lands without paying rent, ‘My Lord, if I dwelt not there, none but thieves and outlaws would.’ So he says civil men will not plant themselves in mountain, rocks or desert places, even if they have it for nothing.... The Irish had no leader and no arms; they had 20,000 fighting men in Ulster if they had arms. O’Dogherty could not have made the progress he did, if he had not first lighted upon the king’s storehouse so as to arm his men.”[22] Those natives who got grants of a substantial amount obtained them as a special reward for subserviency in some form or other: for instance, Art McBarron was given 2,000 acres in Orior to induce him to clear out of O’Neilan, Chichester considering that his removal would be a great help in getting other natives to go out. In that case the grant was only for the lives of Art McBarron and his wife.[23] Similarly when Sir Tirlagh McHenry O’Neale was willing to be moved out of the Fewes, a request was made that orders be sent to the Lord Deputy to provide some convenient place in Cavan or elsewhere to settle him, in order to plant servitors in his country. Are we really so like sheep? There is yet to be told even a more absurd illustration than the case of McBarron to show how much our rulers in King James’ day believed we played the game of “follow my leader.” As a matter of fact, so far was this from being the case, that the native gentry who got grants of land became degraded in position, so that those who were gentry children in 1610 were in 1670 old men in frieze coats, farming small scraps of land. Few of the Irish who got somewhat liberal grants were able to retain them until the time of Pynnar’s inspection in 1618-1620.