Clare Island Survey — Agriculture and its History. 5 37 



These quotations show not only how the English planters set about 

 reclaiming and improving the land ; but also that they adopted generally 

 the system of farming that was common upon " inclosed " farms in Britain. 

 But it must not be assumed that, although they introduced many improve- 

 ments, the planters turned Ireland from a grazing to a tillage country. Tillage 

 was increased very considerably, but it was only on the original Norman line 

 of route down from the Pale through Carlow, Wexford, Kilkenny, and Queen's 

 County, and on to Tipperary and parts of Limerick and Cork that it became 

 outstanding. Improved methods were eventually introduced beyond the 

 Shannon ; but the main industry of that part of the country has always been 

 the raising and grazing of sheep and cattle. 



The plantations in the north were different in one or two essential points. 

 Beclamation there was harder, for it had to be begun at the beginning ; the 

 planters, who were chiefly from Scotland and the north of England, got 

 smaller estates ;' and oats were the crop by far most widely grown. Barley 

 and bere were grown, but very little wheat, if any at all. 



Having begun by reclaiming and improving the land, the planters next 

 imported stock from England. If they were going to farm as they had 

 been accustomed, bigger and stronger cattle to breed bullocks for the 

 plough, for one thing, were a pressing necessity. The cattle in Ireland up 

 to the time of the plantations were nearly all of the little black Celtic race 

 now represented by the Kerries. There was a hornless ingredient, brought 

 in by the Norsemen ; but there is no strong proof that there were others. The 

 Normans were not the men to introduce cattle. The early colonists may 

 have brought some over ; but, in their day, there was no special inducement, 

 because the cattle in England and Wales were not, as a rule, larger than 

 those in Ireland. England herself had begun to import the larger kinds 

 of cattle from Holland and Flanders not so very long before the times of the 

 Irish plantations ; and it was only about that time that the value of the larger- 

 sized bullocks for ploughs and waggons became known. Of the planters' 

 importations there are now no details to be found. That they bad begun 

 before 1580 might be inferred from a letter of that date, in which Sir Nicholas 

 White, the Master of the Bolls, says : " The native cattle were black " ; 2 and 

 that some numbers were being brought in by 1611 may be inferred from a 

 Government regulation of that date : " For 2000 acres, and so rateably 

 the undertaker for the first year may carry 20 cows, 2 bulls, and 20 young 

 store cattle ; 100 ewes and 6 rams ; 20 mares, horses, and colts ; and as many 



1 Did the comparative poverty of the northern landowners throw a larger share of the work of 

 reclamation upon the tenants, and did this lead eventually to the Ulster tenant right custom ? 



2 Housman and Sinclair's History of the Devon Breed of Cattle, 1st edn., p. 21. 



