PLANTATION OF ULSTER 107
in the aggregate. The fundamental cause of this voluntary exile
seems to have been that the earls felt that their claims were
incompatible with English authority, and rather than submit
they preferred to leave the country. Their departure was fol-
lowed by an insignificant rising led by O'Dogherty. When this
had been subdued, there remained the question of the disposal
of the land which the English government considered had
escheated to itself. The result was the plantation of Ulster.
The plan for the division and plantation of the forfeited lands
in the six counties of Ulster (Tyrone, Coleraine, Donegal, Fer-
managh, Armagh, and Cavan) provided that a careful survey
should be made of every county and the land first divided into
four parts, which in turn were to be subdivided: two into parcels
of 1,000 acres apiece, a third into parcels of 1,500 acres, and a
fourth into parcels of 2,000 acres—all to form parishes, in each
of which a church should be erected and endowed with glebe
land. These parishes were to be occupied by undertakers, who
were to be: English or Scottish, who should plant their land with
English or Scottish tenants; servitors1 in Ireland, who might
take English or Irish tenants at their choice; and native Irish,
who should be freeholders. Various conditions were laid down,
by which the undertakers were to build stout houses and court-
yards, capable of standing a siege. All were to pay rent,2
Chichester, then lord deputy, criticized the scheme on account
of its uniformity and especially for the assignment of too little
land to the native freeholders. Actually the project was never
carried out in its entirety. It proved difficult to secure enough
undertakers, and a number of them were speculators, like Lord
Audley—who received 7,000 acres for himself and his two sons,
but upon whose land it was reported in 1619 there was cno
building at all, either of bawn [courtyard] or castle, neither
free-holders' .3 Moreover the stipulation that undertakers should
plant only English or Scottish tenants was often ignored, and
the Irish were allowed to remain as tenants on land they had
once owned. A muster taken twenty years after the beginning
of the settlement gives 13,000 as the number of British males in
Ulster, and of these only about 7,000 were settled on land
escheated in 1607. There were then less than 2,000 fire-arms
in the province, so that the hope of forming permanent English
1 Those who had served the Crown as civilians or soldiers.
* George Hill, The Plantation of Ulster (1877), pp. 78-88. 3 Bagwell, i. 76.