The earliest Plantations of Ireland, which had…
1556 CE
The earliest Plantations of Ireland, which had occurred in the context of the Tudor reconquest of Ireland, had been intended to pacify and Anglicize the country under English rule and incorporate the native ruling classes into the English aristocracy.
Ireland was by this means to become a peaceful and reliable English possession, and would no longer be a source of rebellions and a potential base for foreign invasions.
"Plantations" or colonization, which play a major part in this policy, had taken two forms in the first half of the sixteenth century.
The first was "exemplary plantations", where small colonies of English settlers were installed to provide model farming communities that the Irish could emulate.
One such colony has been planted at Kerrycurihy, near Cork city in land leased off James FitzGerald, the 14th Earl of Desmond.
Desmond had in January 1541 agreed, as one of the terms of his submission to Henry VIII of England, to send Gerald FitzGerald, his eight-year-old son by his second wife More O'Carroll, to be educated in England.
Proposals to this effect had been renewed at the accession of Edward VI; Gerald was to be the companion of the young king.
Unfortunately for the subsequent peace of Munster, these projects have not been carried out.
The FitzGeralds hold the Desmond estates by a doubtful title, and the Butlers, the hereditary enemies of the Geraldines, make claims on them based on the marriage of James Butler, 9th Earl of Ormonde, to Lady Joan Fitzgerald, daughter and heiress-general of James FitzGerald, 10th Earl of Desmond.
On Ormonde's death in 1546, Lady Joan had proposed to marry Gerald FitzGerald, and eventually did so, after the death of her second husband, Sir Francis Bryan.
The effect of this marriage has been a temporary cessation of open hostility between the Desmonds and the eldest of Joan’s three sons by James, Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormonde.
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