Abstract
In an older historiographical tradition, the sixteenth-century attempts to settle Antrim and Down led by Thomas Smith and Walter Devereux, the first earl of Essex, were simply one link in a long pattern of colonisation or ‘plantation’ beginning in Leix-Offaly in the 1550s, proceeding through Munster and Ulster in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and culminating in the Cromwellian/Restoration and Williamite settlements. Through this long chain of confiscation and settlement Ireland was finally conquered and civilised. More recently, historians have realised that despite their superficial similarities what differentiated these episodes in the early modern world was greater than what connected them. Some settlements, such as the plantations of Munster and Ulster were attempts at social engineering with clear visions of a social order underpinning them. Others, such as the Restoration or Williamite settlements were simply land expropriations following military actions. Most schemes were government-initiated but some, most notably those in sixteenth-century Ulster, were private plantations more akin to the later north American settlement of Virginia than to other Irish schemes. There is, therefore, a need to examine colonisation schemes individually rather than as part of a wider pattern.
In this context, the two sixteenth-century schemes of settlement in Counties Antrim and Down have not fared well. While they have been discussed in passing as part of wider studies they have not attracted their own historians since Robert Dunlop's articles of the mid-1920s and, in the case of Thomas Smith's County Down settlement, Hiram Morgan's important article of 1985. This book is therefore to be welcomed as a significant contribution to the understanding of how an individual scheme evolved in particular circumstances. Its approach is primarily chronological, creating a narrative of a little-understood event on its own terms rather than as part of a wider argument about the nature of sixteenth-century Ireland, although the implications of this study do have wider applications that are discussed in the conclusion. Despite its narrow chronological range and tight geographical focus the range of evidence that has been assembled is striking. While the core evidence is drawn from the State Papers that has been supplemented by a wide range of sources derived from both public and private sources. The arrangement of the volume is largely chronological beginning with a survey of Ulster before Essex's ‘Enterprise’ and a survey of Essex's early career and the early planning of the enterprise (chapters one and two). Chapter three deals with the problems that Essex faced and the need to renegotiate the terms of the plan in the wake of the difficulties that had been encountered (chapter four). Chapters five, six and seven follow Essex's campaigns through 1574 and 1575, ending with Essex's return to England and the final collapse of the ‘Enterprise’. For those interested in the social and economic impact of plantation micro studies such as this might seem to have little to offer. There was no long-term settlement and the whole ‘Enterprise’ had no real economic impact. Chapter six, however, does contain a fascinating discussion of the plan that Essex drew up for his settlement the ‘Opinion for the government and reformation of Ulster’, which placed urbanisation at the centre of a reform strategy that would form the basis for garrisons, and the small-scale colonisation that he was convinced would reform Ulster. It may be that the evolution of settlement in his other Ulster property in Monaghan represented a greater realisation of his plans than his adventure in Antrim and may have been significant in the long run.
Such plans for reform were not unusual in the late sixteenth century and perhaps more revealing of Essex's motivation for his involvement in Ulster is the interesting material that Heffernan has assembled on Essex's personal finances. The first earl of Essex was one of few Elizabethan nobles who evaded the exhaustive scrutiny of Lawrence Stone in his The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641 (1965) so that in searching for motives for colonisation profit tended to be overlooked. In a more thorough account of Essex's finances (esp. pp. 148–9, 160–1) Heffernan shows how mired in debt he actually was (not including the £10,000 he owed the queen for the right to settle Antrim). It seems that a powerful motive for colonisation was personal profit that remained unrealised.
Why, despite such significant investment by Essex and others (including the government in London), the settlement scheme remained unrealised is an intriguing question and is clearly bound up with the complex character of the earl. It also reflected some of the structural problems of the Elizabethan state. Heffernan argues that the most significant problem that Essex had to deal with was the queen herself, and particularly her inability to make decisions, and the Privy Council's love of issuing contradictory orders that left Essex compromised in his dealing with O’Neill. These are valid insights but perhaps even more important than these was the inability of early modern central administrations to control events as complex and multi-faceted as plantations without any significant administrative support. The result, revealed in every settlement from Leix-Offaly to the Longford plantation of the seventeenth century, was the way in which local circumstances neutralised the best-laid plans of Dublin or London and changed the design and execution of settlement. More studies like this one will allow us to nuance this insight. For such studies, this is a model to follow with its rigorous analysis of sources and its careful narrative.