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18 December 2009
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Wars and Conflict - The Plantation of Ulster

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The Gaelic lords had to mortgage their lands
- Dr. Hiram Morgan

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It’s undoubtedly the case that Gaelic Ireland was losing out to a new capitalist spirit of landholding which they simply couldn’t cope with. For instance, one of the reasons why Gaelic landholding collapses in east-Ulster, Antrim and Down where there is no formal Plantation, is that the lords there get into debt. Whereas previously they dealt locally and received military support and services from the local community, now they had to undertake expensive judicial and legal business, provincially and of course in Dublin. Lawyers always cost a fortune, in the first instance, and law-cases then, as today, often went on a long time. And secondly, lobbying in London cost a fortune, and the Gaelic lords simply couldn’t cope with that whirl and they got into debt and they start to mortgage their lands. So that many of them are losing out through mortgaging their land, and the Clandeboye O’Neills do those sorts of deals and give away parts of their land to solve their debt problems, but eventually lose all their lands. But this is happening all over Ulster and all over Ireland - so that indebtedness and the mortgage of property also causes a lot of property transfer from Gaelic hands into the hands of English colonists and, more likely, English officials.
 

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