In so far as people in Ulster who welcomed The Flight of the Earls are concerned, there is in fact evidence that there was a substantial number of people (perhaps you could say rivals of the exiled lords, or the lords living in exile now) who perhaps felt that their hour had come - that they would succeed basically to the positions vacated by the Earls and their followers who took part in The Flight of the Earls.

Now that was the expectation, the native Irish were people who, you know, I suppose like a lot of other people, every cloud has a silver lining, and you know, The Flight of the Earls had taken place and now this was an opportunity for a new group of leading native Irish people to assume a very prominent place in Ulster society. That was their expectation: it didn’t happen like that because the Crown were glad to get rid of one set of over-mighty individuals, the over-mighty subject; they certainly weren’t prepared to allow a new group to fill their shoes.

So there was and there is evidence that there were native Irish people who were, at the time, glad that the Earls had gone - their hour had come or so it seemed, but the reality was, in the allocations given out in the Plantation of Ulster, these people were to be greatly disappointed. So what you had happening ultimately was that these people basically, their anger fused with the anger of the exiled lords, and there was, you know... the previous sort of divisions within Ulster were forgotten in the face of this common enemy who had deprived the native Irish of Ulster of so much land.