Articles for the Native Irish in the Ulster Plantation
III. ARTICLES.
These “Articles” refer to the Irish Natives, who were to be admitted to be Freeholders:
1. “They shall have Estates in Fee-Farm.”
2. “They shall pay the yearly Rent of ten pounds, thirteen shillings and four pence for every Portion of a thousand Acres, and so rateably for the greater Proportion, which is after the rate of thirteen shillings and four pence for every sixty Acres, or thereabouts; and they shall pay no Rent for the first year.”[17]
3. “For their Tenures, they shall hold as the other Undertakers respectively, according to their Portions, with a Proviso of forfeiture of their estates, if they enter into actual rebellion.”
4. “They shall inhabit their Lands, and build their Castles, Houses, and Bawnes, within two years, as the former Undertakers.”
5. “They shall make certain estates (or Leases) for Years, or for Lives, to their Under-Tenants, and they shall take no Irish exactions.”[18]
6. “They shall use Tillage and Husbandry after the manner of the English Pale.”[19]
Notes
[17] First Year: The few native undertakers do not appear to have made any objection to the payment of a so much larger rent than had been laid on the others; but they complained at being obliged to commence paying so soon, to erect their buildings in so short a time, and to relinquish their long-cherished and much-loved custom of creaghting (or “living by cattle”).
[18] Irish Exactions: Like the Land System of the Hebrews, the Gaelic System, which obtained among the Gaels in Ireland, down to the seventeenth century, allotted a portion of land to each head of a family, for the sustenance of himself and those dependent on him; and each head of a family rendered towards the maintenance and dignity of the Chief of the Clan certain duties or “chief-rents,” which were not, however, identical with the word rent, as now understood between landlord and tenant; for the Irish Chieftain was not the owner of the land, he was merely the head and protector of his Clan. The “exactions” above mentioned were, A.D. 1613, abolished in Ireland, in the reign of King James, I., by the Parliament then held in Dublin, by the Lord Deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester.
[19] English Pale: This meant that the Irish who were to be admitted as Freeholders in the Ulster Plantation, were to turn their attention in a greater degree to cropping the lands, abandoning their own system of almost universal grazing and creaghting.