King James, having heard very unsatisfactory reports of the progress of the plantation, wrote a letter to the lord deputy in 1612, strongly complaining of the neglect of the ‘Londoners’ to fulfil the obligations they had voluntarily undertaken.  He had made ’liberal donations of great proportions of those lands to divers British undertakers and servitors, with favourable tenures and reservations for their better encouragement; but hitherto neither the safety of that country, nor the planting of religion and civility among those rude and barbarous people, which were the principal motives of that project, and which he expected as the only fruits and returns of his bounty, had been as yet any whit materially effected.  He was not ignorant how much the real accomplishment of the plantation concerned the future peace and safety of that kingdom; but if there was no reason of state to press it forward, he would yet pursue and effect that object with the same earnestness, ’merely for the goodness and morality of it; esteeming the settling of religion, the introducing of civility, order, and government among a barbarous and unsubjected people, to be acts of piety and glory, and worthy also a Christian prince to endeavour.’

The king therefore ordered that there should be a strict inquiry into the work done, because ’the Londoners pretended the expense of great sums of money in that service, and yet the outward appearance of it was very small.’  The lord deputy was solemnly charged to give him a faithful account without care or fear to displease any of his subjects, English or Scottish, of what quality soever.’

Sir Josias Bodley was the commissioner appointed for this purpose.  He reported very unfavourably, in consequence of which his majesty called upon the Irish society and the several companies to give him an account of their stewardship.  He also wrote again to the lord deputy in 1615.  The language the king uses is remarkable, as proving the trusteeship of the companies.  Referring to Bodley’s report he said:—­

’We have examined, viewed, and reviewed, with our own eye, every part thereof, and find greatly to our discontentment the slow progression of that plantation; some few only of our British undertakers, servitors, and natives having as yet proceeded effectually by the accomplishment of such things in all points as are required of them by the articles of the plantation; the rest, and by much the greatest part, having either done nothing at all, or so little, or, by reason of the slightness thereof, to so little purpose, that the work seems rather to us to be forgotten by them, and to perish under their hand, than any whit to be advanced by them; some having begun to build and not planted, others begun to plant and not built, and all of them, in general, retaining the Irish still upon their lands, the avoiding of which was the fundamental reason of that plantation.  We have made a collection of their names, as we found their endeavours and negligences