The Plantation of Donegal - A Survey (By V. W. Treadwell, :M.A., Queen's University, Belfast). QN March 20th, 1622, partly as a re-.print. (5) The original returns of the sult of complaints from Ireland Commissioners do not appear to have and partly as a consequence of the survi•ved, but a seventeenth century English government'·s determination to copy of them is among the -2\dditional make of Ireland an efficient adminis- Manuscripts of the British Museum. trative unit, at once so1vent and secure, (6) From this MS., in 1924, Robert a comprehensive Commission was issu- Dunlop printed an abstract in extenso ed for the investigation of the state of of the report on the Mun'ster plantatthe country. One of the most important ion (7), and from it, has also been extasks of this Commission was to e'Xa- tracted the survey of Donegal, printed mine ithe charters and covenants of below for the first time (8). the undertakers in the plantat.Ions and Two general points may be noted to see how well they had been per- of its contents. First, it does not informed "either in matter of pTofit or elude the barony of Inishowen, which safety". They were also to ascertain was granted to Chichester in 1609 for "the quantity of ground in payment his part in the suppre'Ssion of O'Doghof the -rents" reserved to the King; the erty's revolt. Although this grant was buildings undertaken; the leasin~ of bound .by the general conditions of the lands; and the deliberate breach of plantation of Ulster, it was in fact a ~ovenants. Finally they were to pro- Liberty of a kind already obsolescent pose ·suitable action to remedy defects in England, in which the lord's officers and abuses; on all these matters the executed all writs and other p·rocess, Commissioners were to deliver certifi- ''with no sheriff or bailiff of the Crown cates into the English Chancery. (1). to intermeddle" (9). The terms of his Most of the twenty-one Commis- grant and his . influence at Court, ensioners entTusted with this immense abled Chichester to escape the general labour surveyed the several planta- inquisition; possibly he had to make tions in g·roups of two or thTee, and, a personal report to the King, but of further instructed in an additional this, there is no evidence. On the commission dated the 30th of July, (2) 1 other hand, the Commissioners did respent the following month to six weeks iview the town and district of Ballytouring their allotted districts. Rich- shannon, although (as they are careard Hadsor, a natiive of Louth and a ful to note) Lord Folliott's grant was barrister of the Middle Temple, (3) not subject to the conditions of plantand Sior ·Thomas Phillips, a prominent e,' .:on. It was pre·sumably for this reasservitor of County Londonderry, (4) on that Pinnar omitted it from his surwere reSJPOnsible for the survey of Don- vey in 1618-19 (10). egal and Londonderry. Thei·r report on Second, although no explanation the latter county has long been in if given i:i the· text, the barony of 511.
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