The Planters are Settled on the Land

As soon as the Irish Papist landowners had been, to some extent, got rid of, that is to say in the Summer of 1653, the great work of settling the adventurers and soldiers on the lands which had been cleared was begun.

Already, indeed sometimes many months before this, numbers of the soldiers had sold the shares assigned them, sometimes for a few pints of beer or a couple of shillings. The purchasers were often the officers of the regiments, who thus, by buying up many shares, accumulated for themselves great estates at a nominal cost.

When the companies were marched down to the districts assigned them, and the lands portioned out to the individual soldiers, these were often discontented, even at first, and more discontented afterwards when they had made trial of the conditions under which they were henceforth to live. There was no good beer, they said, nor good cheese to be had, and there was no one to marry. To marry the Irish Catholic girls they were forbidden, unless these would change their religion, which they rarely were willing to do. In the end a good many abandoned their lands and returned to their own country.

In the assignments there were frequent mistakes, and still more frequent frauds. Men contrived, by bribing officials, to have excellent lands scheduled as ” barren,” and added to their shares.
 
Some adventurers managed to obtain lands yielding an annual income of several thousand pounds for an original subscription of as many hundreds. Under the Restoration, the Irish Attorney-General, Domville, gave it as his opinion that the soldiers and adventurers had got into their hands, one way or another, nearly a million and a quarter acres more than was justly due to them.