Plantation and politics in Williamite Ireland

Abstract

In historical writing about Ireland in the years following the Glorious Revolution little attention has been paid to the idea of ‘plantation’. The governing assumption has been that any schemes to introduce substantial numbers of Protestant settlers were outmoded and unrealistic. This article takes another look at the extent to which, after 1691, elements in the Protestant propertied elite promoted plantation schemes and suggests that the idea was not only central to the plans for reconstruction envisaged by particular groups, especially in the province of Munster, but played a part in moulding a political outlook and creating a distinctively Whig political interest both in the Irish parliament and in the localities. The article goes on to propose that a set of developments in the middle years of the 1690s reduced interest in plantation, so that, by the early 1700s, the political energies of the ‘Protestant ascendancy’ were instead focused on legislation to restrict the property rights and political influence of what had come to be regarded as an entrenched Catholic majority in the population at large.