The
Plantation of Ulster (
Irish Plandáil Uladh) was a planned process of
colonisation which took place in the northern
Irish province of
Ulster during the early 17th century in the reign of
James I of England.
The Plantation of Ulster was the biggest and most successful of the Plantations of Ireland. Ulster was planted in this way to prevent further rebellion, having proved itself over the preceding century to be the most resistant of Ireland's provinces to English invasion.
Prior to its conquest in the Nine Years War of the 1590s, Ulster had been the most Gaelic part of Ireland, a province existing largely outside English control. An early attempt at plantation on the east coast of Ulster by Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex, in the 1570s had failed (See Plantations of Ireland).
The Nine Years War ended in 1603 with the surrender of the O’Neill and O’Donnell lords to the English crown, following an extremely costly series of campaigns by the English in which they had to counter significant Spanish aid to the Irish. But the situation following the peace was far more propitious for colonisation schemes, and much of the legal groundwork was laid by Sir John Davies, then attorney general of Ireland.
