THE PLANTATION OF DOWN. 173 ling that way in 1635 gives a quaint description of the country in that transition period :— On July 5 he landed at Carrickfergus, where he found that Lord Chichester had a stately house, or rather like a prince's palace.' In Belfast, he said, my Lord Chichester had another daintie, stately palace, which, indeed, was the glory and beauty of the town. And there were also daintie planted. The Bishop of orchards, gardens, and walks Dromore, to whom the town of Dromore entirely belonged, lived there in a little timber house.' He was not given to hospitality, for though his chaplain was a Manchester man, named Leigh, he allowed his English visitor to stop at an inn over the way. This,' wrote the tourist,' is a very dear house, 8d. ordinary for ourselves, 6d. for our servants, and we were overcharged in beere.' The way thence to Newry was most difficult for a stranger to find out. Therein he wandered, and, being lost, fell among the Irish touns.' The Irish houses were the poorest cabins he had seen, erected in the middle of fields and grounds which they farmed and rented. This,' he added, is a wild country, not inhabited, planted, nor enclosed.' He gave an Irishman 'a groat' to bring him into the way, yet he led him, like a villein, directly out of the way, and so left him in the lurch. 6 Leaving Belfast, this Englishman said: Near hereunto, Mr. Arthur Hill, son and heir of Sir Moyses Hill, hath a brave plantation, which he holds by lease, and which has still forty years to come. The plantation, it is said, doth yield him 1,000l. per annum. Many Lancashire and Cheshire men are here planted. They sit upon a rackrent, and pay 5s. or 6s. for good ploughing land, which now is clothed with excellent good corne.' According to the Down survey, made twenty-two years later, Dromore had not improved: There are no buildings in this parish; only Dromore, it being a market town, hath some old thatched houses and a ruined church standing in it. What other buildings are in the parish are nothing but removeable creaghts.' To the economist and the legislator, the most interesting portions of the state papers of the 16th and 17th centuries are, undoubtedly, those which tell us how the people lived, how they were employed, housed, and fed, what measure of happiness fell to their lot, and what were the causes that affected their welfare, that made them contented and loyal, or miserable and disaffected. Contemporary authors, who deal with social phenomena, are also read with special interest for the same reason. They present pictures of society in their own time, and enable us to conceive the sort of life our forefathers led, and to estimate, at least in a rough way, what they did for posterity. Harris was moved to write his History of Down' by indignation at the misrepresentations of the English press of his day. They had the audacity to say that the Irish people were uncivilised, rude, and barbarous; that they delighted in butter tempered with oatmeal, and sometimes flesh without bread, which they ate raw, having first pressed the blood out of it; and drank down large draughts of usquebaugh for digestion, reserving their little corn for the horses; that their dress and habits were no less barbarous; that cattle was their chief wealth; that they counted it no infamy to commit robberies, and that in their view violence and murder were in no way displeasing to God; that the country was overgrown with woods, which abounded in wolves and other voracious animals,' &c. It was, no doubt, very provoking that such stories should be repeated 130 years after the plantation of Ulster, and Harris undertook, with laudable patriotism, to show how far this description of Ireland was removed from the truth, from the present state of only one county in the kingdom.' The information which the well-informed writer gives is most valuable, and very much to the purpose of our present inquiry. More than half the arable ground was then (in 1745) under tillage, affording great quantities of oats, some rye and wheat, and plenty of barley,' commonly called English 6 THE PLANTATION OF DOWN. 175 or spring barley, making excellent malt liquor, which of late, by means of drying the grain with Kilkenny coals, was exceedingly improved. The ale made in the county was distinguished for its fine colour and flavour. The people found the benefit of a sufficient tillage, being not obliged to take up with the poor unwholesome diet which the commonalty of Munster and Connaught had been forced to in the late years of scarcity; and sickness and mortality were not near so great as in other provinces of the kingdom.' Yet the county Down seemed very unfavourable for tillage. The economists of our time, perhaps our viceroys too, would say it was only fit for bullocks and sheep. It was'naturally coarse, and full of hills; the air was sharp and cold in winter, with earlier frosts than in the south, the soil inclined to wood, unless constantly ploughed and kept open, and the low grounds degenerated into morass or bog where the drains were neglected. Yet, by the constant labour and industry of the inhabitants, the morass grounds had of late, by burning and proper management, produced surprisingly large crops of rye and oats. Coarse lands, manured with lime, had answered the farmers' views in wheat, and yielded a great produce, and wherever marl was found there was great store of barley. The staple commodity of the county was linen, due care of which manufacture brought great wealth among the people. Consequently the county was observed to be 'populous and flourishing, though it did not become amenable to the laws till the reign of Queen Elizabeth, nor fully till the reign of James I.' The English habit, language, and manners almost universally prevailed. 'Irish,' says Harris, can be heard only among the inferior rank of Irish Papists, and even that little diminishes every day, by the great desire the poor natives have that their children should be taught to read and write in the English tongue in the Charter, or other English Protestant schools, to which they willingly send them.' The author exults in the progress of Protestantism. There were but two Catholic gentlemen in the county who had estates, and their income was very moderate. When the priests were registered in 1704 there were but thirty in the county. In 1733 the books of the hearthmoney collectors showed Protestant families in the county Down Catholic families Total Protestants, reckoning five a family Protestant majority 14,060 Our author, who was an excellent Protestant of the 18th century type, with boundless faith in the moral influence of the Charter schools, would be greatly distressed if he could have lived in these degenerate days, and seen the last religious census, which gives the following figures for the county of Down:— Protestants of all denominations Total population 202,026 97,240 299,266 The total number of souls in the county in the year 1733 was 96,350. These figures show that the population was more than trebled in 130 years, and that the Catholics have increased nearly fourfold. The history of the Hertfort estate illustrates every phase of the tenant-right question. It contains 66,000 acres, and comprises the barony of Upper Massereene, part of the barony of Upper Belfast, in the county of Antrim, and part of the baronies of Castlereagh and Lower Iveagh, in the county of Down; consisting altogether of no less than 140 townlands. It extends from Dunmurry to Lough Neagh, a distance of about fourteen miles as the crow flies. When the Devon commission made its inquiry, the population upon this estate amounted to about 50,000. It contains mountain land, and the mountains are particularly wet, because, unlike the mountains in other parts of the country, the substratum is a stiff retentive clay. At that time there was not a spot of mountain or bog upon Lord Hertfort's the lords of KILL-ULTAGH. 177 estate that was not let by the acre. About one-third of the land is of first-rate quality; there are 15,000 or 16,000 acres of mountain, and about the same quantity of land of medium quality. In the early part of Elizabeth's reign this property formed a section of the immense territory ruled over by the O'Neills. One of these princes was called the Captain of Kill-Ultagh. In those times, when might was right, this redoubtable chief levied heavy contributions on the settlers, partly in retaliation for aggressions and outrages perpetrated by the English upon his own people. The queen, with the view of effecting a reconciliation, requested the lord deputy, Sir H. Sidney, to pay the Irish chief a visit. He did so, but his welcome was by no means gratifying. In fact, O'Neill would not condescend to receive him at all. His reason for exhibiting a want of hospitality so un-Irish was this:-He said his 'home had been pillaged, his lands swept of their cattle, and his vassals shot like wild animals.' The lord deputy, in his notes of the northern tour, written in October, 1585, says :'I came to Kill-Ultagh, which I found rich and plentiful, after the manner of these countries. But the captain was proud and insolent; he would not come to me, nor have I apt reason to visit him as I would. But he shall be paid for this before long; I will not remain in his debt.' The 'apt reason' for carrying out this threat soon occurred. Tyrone had once more taken the field against the queen; the captain joined his relative; all his property was consequently forfeited, and handed over to Sir Fulke Conway, a Welsh soldier of some celebrity. Sir Fulke died in 1626, and his brother, who was a favourite of Charles I., succeeded to the estate, to which his royal patron added the lands of Derryvolgie, thus making him lord of nearly 70,000 statute acres of the broad lands of Down and Antrim. The Conways brought over a number of English and Welsh families, who settled on the estate, and intermarrying with the natives, a race of sturdy yeomen soon sprang up. The Conways were good landlords, and greatly beloved by the N |