noted in the service, which we will retain as a memorial with us, and they shall be sure to feel the effects of our favour and disfavour, as there shall be occasion.  It is well known to you that if we had intended only (as it seems most of them over-greedily have done) our present profit, we might have converted those large territories to our escheated lands, to the great improvement of the revenue of our crown there; but we chose rather, for the safety of that country and the civilizing of that people, to part with the inheritance of them at extreme undervalues, and to make a plantation of them; and since we were merely induced thereunto out of reason of state, we think we may without any breach of justice make bold with their rights who have neglected their duties in a service of so much importance unto us, and by the same law and reason of state resume into our hands their lands who have failed to perform, according to our original intention, the articles of plantation, and bestow them upon some other men more active and worthy of them than themselves:  and the time is long since expired within which they were bound to have finished to all purposes their plantation, so that we want not just provocation to proceed presently with all rigour against them.’

He gave them a year to pull up their arrears of work, and in conclusion said to Chichester:  ’My lord, in this service I expect that zeal and uprightness from you, that you will spare no flesh, English or Scottish; for no private man’s worth is able to counterbalance the particular safety of a kingdom, which this plantation, well accomplished, will procure.’

Two or three years later, Captain Pynnar was sent to survey the lands that had been granted to the undertakers, and to report upon the improvements they had effected.  A few notices from his report will give an idea of the state of Ulster at the commencement of this great social revolution:—­

Armagh was one of the six counties confiscated by James I. The territory had belonged to the O’Neills, the O’Hanlons, the O’Carrols, and M’Kanes, whose people were all involved more or less in the fortunes of the Earl of Tyrone, who wielded sovereign power over this portion of Ulster.  The plantation scheme was said to be the work of the Privy Council of Ireland, and submitted by them for the adoption of the English Government.  It was part of the plan that all the lands escheated in each county should be divided into four parts, whereof two should be subdivided into proportions consisting of about 1,000 acres a piece; a third part into proportions of 1,500 acres; and the fourth in proportions of 2,000 acres.  Every proportion was to be made into a parish, a church was to be erected on it, and the minister endowed with glebe land.  If an incumbent of a parish of 1,000 acres he was to have sixty; if of 1,500 acres, ninety; and if 2,000 acres, he was to have 120 acres; and the whole tithes and duties of every parish should be allotted to the incumbent as well as the glebe.  The undertakers were to be of several sorts. 1st, English and Scotch, who were to plant their proportions with English and Scotch tenants; 2nd, servitors in Ireland, who might take English or Scotch tenants at their choice; 3rd, natives of the county, who were to be freeholders.