and where they might soon settle down to agriculture. Furthermore, in 1641 Protestants held over 3,000,000 acres and Catholics about 586,000 acres in the six counties.[1] The truth seems to be that the whole of the six counties were confiscated; that O'Neill of the Fews, Conor Roe Maguire, and one or two O'Neills in Tyrone got large grants, and that about 280 other Irish proprietors had between one-eighth and one-ninth of the rest divided among them. And the surveyors when they speak of acres took into account only what they considered good land, wood, waste, and rough pasture being thrown in; so that to obtain a true estimate of what each man obtained we must multiply the acreage actually given by seven.[2]
We must remember in estimating the effects of the Plantation of Ulster that some regard was paid to the rights of the Irish. Sir John Davies makes a point of this in his letter of 1610, contrasting the procedure of James not only with the precedent set by the Spaniards in their late expulsion of the Moriscoes, but also with that set by the Anglo-Normans at their first invasion. And it must be borne in mind that as regards the four counties directly affected by the Flight of the Earls there were many more Irish with a legal title to landed property in them after the Plantation than before it. Rightly or wrongly the Crown in these counties had granted the clan lands to the chiefs. These
