Parliament of 1569.  She bestowed the district of Ards, in Down, upon her secretary, Sir Thomas Smith.  It was described as “divers parts and parcels of her Highness’ Earldom of Ulster that lay waste, or else was inhabited with a wicked, barbarous, and uncivil people.”  There were, however, two grievous misstatements in this document.  Ulster did not belong to her Highness, unless, indeed, the Act of a packed Parliament could be considered legal; and the people who inhabited it were neither “wicked, barbarous, nor uncivil.”  The tract of country thus unceremoniously bestowed on an English adventurer, was in the possession of Sir Rowland Savage.  His first ancestor was one of the most distinguished of the Anglo-Norman settlers who had accompanied De Courcy to Ireland.  Thus, although he could not claim the prescriptive right of several thousand years for his possessions, he certainly had the right of possession for several centuries.  An attempt had been made about ten years before to drive him out of part of his territory, and he had written a letter to “The Right Hon. the Earl of Sussex, Lieutenant-General of Ireland,” asking for “justice,” which justice he had not obtained.  He was permitted to hold the Southern Ards, because he could not be expelled from it without considerable difficulty, and because it was the least valuable part of his property.

Smith confided the conduct of the enterprise to his natural son who has already been mentioned as the person who attempted to poison Shane O’Neill.  The first State Paper notice of this enterprise is in a letter, dated February, 8, 1572, from Captain Piers to the Lord Deputy, stating that the country is in an uproar “at Mr. Smith coming over to plant in the north.”  There is a rare black letter still extant, entitled, ["Letter by F.B. on the Peopling of the Ardes”] which Smith wrote to induce English adventurers to join him in his speculation.  It is composed with considerable ability.  He condemns severely the degeneracy of the early English settlers, “who allied and fostered themselves with the Irish.”  He says that “England was never fuller of people than it is at this day,” and attributes this to “the dissolution of abbeys, which hath doubled the number of gentlemen and marriages.”  He says the younger sons who cannot “maintain themselves in the emulation of the world,” as the elder and richer do, should emigrate; and then he gives glowing accounts of the advantages of this emigration.

Strange to say, one of the principal inducements he offers is that the “churle of Ireland is very simple and toylsomme man, desiring nothing but that he may not be eaten out with ceasse [rent], coyne, and liverie.”  He passes over the subject of rent without any comment, but he explains very fully how “the churle is eaten up” with the exactions of “coyne and liverie.”  He says these laborious Irish will gladly come “to live under us, and to farm our ground;” but he does not say anything about the kind of treatment