The colony that was established in Ulster in 1610 was not the first attempt by the English to colonize and subdue Ireland. The earliest noted instance of invasion against the natives of the island was made around the Fourth Century by Christian missionaries from Gaul. They established monasteries throughout Ireland and eventually converted the Celtic natives to Christianity. From the beginning of the Ninth Century through the yeare 950 AD, the Vikings made a number of invasions into the island and exerted their power over it. Then, in 1166, as a result of an Internal struggle for lordship over the province of Leinster, the Cambro-Norman barons under King Henry II were invited by the claimant, King Dermot to intervene in the civil strife.
The Cambro-Normans invaded the island, conquered Leinster for Dermot and then proceeded to attack the surrounding provinces. They established a number of English strongholds, the most notable of which was in and around Dublin. From that point through the Sixteenth Century the English government treated Ireland the same as it treated the North American Continent - as if it had some inherent right to colonize it.
The English court granted tracts of land throughout Ireland (and Pennsylvania) to the barons and knights who had assisted in the invasion. They, in turn, established feudal estates and brought peasants from England and Wales as colonists. The Irish natives resisted subjection and at times re-conquered the lands taken from them. This process of English invasion and Irish revolt against the English continued sporadically for the next few centuries. Queen Elizabeth I made four attempts: one each in the provinces of Leinster and Munster in the 1560s and twice in Ulster in the 1570s. But each of those attempts ultimately failed because the English settlers either became disillusioned and returned home to England or intermarried with the Irish and adopted their customs and their hatred of the English colonization schemes. Although a small number of attempts at colonization experienced limited success, the English could not claim any clear victory until the Ulster Plantation scheme was undertaken.
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Hugh Ó Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, a large portion of the province of Ulster, attempted to gain control of the entire province in the early-1590s. He raised an army with the help of some English adventurers and set about subduing the lesser officials in Ulster. The English settlers in Ulster began to fear that Ó Neill's aims might be to likewise expel them from the province, and prepared to confront him. In order to bolster his own army of Irishmen, Ó Neill elicited the aid of Spanish soldiers. King Philip III of Spain sent Ó Neill a force of 4,000 men. Queen Elizabeth responded by sending an army of nearly 20,000 Englishmen against Ó Neill's army. In 1601 the two armies collided at Kinsale in Munster. The Irish suffered a great defeat and the English army that had been sent to quell the rebellion did not stop at just that. The English destroyed all of the homes, food and livestock they came across in the province. The utter destruction of the native Irish farmsteads paved the way for a colonization scheme of Cloyne and Douglas, Breifne and Cavan, Londonderry, and in America, i.e., Massachusetts, Virginia, by Queen Elizabeth's successor, King James I - the Stuart Restoration. |  |
The Inishowen Peninsula of Co. Donegal was originally part of the Kingdom of Tirowen (Tyrone) and ruled by Cinel Eoghain septs (descendants of Eoghain, or Owen, a son of Nial of the Nine Hostages.) With the defeat of the Irish under Ó Neill, their lands in Ulster, which amounted to roughly six of the nine counties in that province, were declared to be forfeited to the English court. After he had divided up those lands, and designated portions which were to be granted to lords and gentry of England, members of the army that had participated in the Irish campaign, and the church, there was almost one half million acres for a settlement of the common people. It was originally King James' intention to settle Londoners and Scots in the Ulster Plantation. London was overly crowded with nearly 250,000 residents and the Lowlands of Scotland, as noted previously, had been struggling to survive for many years. By sending a large number of these two groups to Ireland, the king hoped to benefit all around.