5 32 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



had the Norman-English and the Irish been left alone, they might have laid a 

 surer foundation ; but before they could have done so, some of them would 

 have had to set up a strong central government, which would have put an end 

 to intertribal rivalry and strife, and the Brehon laws would have had to be 

 modified. So far as we know no tribal system in the world's history, Aryan 

 or other, has been conducive to agricultural advance. 



The planters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centimes generally followed 

 the direction taken by the Normans. They sat down in the flat lands in 

 the north and in the south, and estates were granted all over the central 

 plain from the Pale to Galway. For example, in the south : " The estate 

 of the Southern Geraldines having been confiscated, and the population almost 

 destroyed, an English plantation in Munster followed, as of course. In 

 Munster 574,628 acres were forfeited to the Crown. . . . This tract of land 

 was portioned out into seigniories of 12,000, 8,000, 6,000, and 4,000 acres each. 

 The undertakers, that is, the grantees who should undertake the planting of 

 a territory, were to have estates in fee-farm, at a rent of £33 6s. 8d. for estates 

 of 12,000 acres, to be doubled after the expiration of three years. Every 

 undertaker of 12,000 acres was bound to plant 86 families ; to retain for his 

 own family 1,500 acres ; for one chief farmer, 400 acres ; for two good farmers, 

 600 acres ; for two other farmers, 400 acres ; for fourteen freeholders (300 

 each), 4,200 acres; for forty copyholders (100 each), 4,000 acres ; for twenty 

 cottages and labourers, 800 acres. 



" Some undertakers obtained more than one seignory. Sir Walter Raleigh 

 secured 42,000 acres in Cork and Waterford." 1 



Later, in the north, " the lands to be planted were divided into three 

 proportions, the greatest, of 2,000 English acres, the middle, of 1,500, and the 

 least, of 1,000 each." 2 ..." The King granted estates to all, to be held by 

 them and their heirs. The undertakers of 2,000 acres held of him in capite ; 

 those of 1,500, by knight's service, as of the Castle of Dublin ; and those of 

 1,000 in common socage. The first were, in four years, obliged to build a 

 castle and a bawn : the second, in two years, a strong stone and brick house 

 and bawn ; and the last a bawn ; timber for that purpose, as well as for their 

 tenants' houses, being assigned them out of the King's woods. The first were 

 obliged to plant on their lands, within three years, forty-eight able men 

 eighteen years old or upwards, bom in England, or the inland parts of Scotland, 

 to be reduced to twenty families ; to keep a demesne of 600 acres on their 

 hands ; to have four fee-farmers on a hundred and twenty acres each ; six 



1 Ric-hey's Short History, p. 543. 



- Quoted in Richey, p. 602, from Carte's life of Ormond. 



