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.

Above : Painting Of Hugh O’Neill

When the news of the intended confiscations came to the ears of the Irish whose lands lay within the counties to be planted, it was to them ” as a sentence of death.” The fiat, however, had gone forth against them; no justice, much less mercy, was accorded them. In vain they employed lawyers to plead their cause before the Royal Commission ; the decisions were almost always against them. It mattered little that, in order to justify many of the confiscations, the most absurd pleas had to be resorted to.