ABSTRACT
Plantation schemes in Ireland never worked well in the face of necessary compromise with or loss to native powers. Yet plantations did help place Irish territory under direct British rule and taxation. Many English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish people loyal to the crown made part or all of their livelihoods out of this (for them) fortuitous change of land ownership. The turnover was accompanied and greatly exaggerated by widespread changes in landownership laws that favored the Protestant minority into the twentieth century.4 Hence, while “the clearest proof of failure in official plantation settlement policies is that they were abandoned so completely and so soon,” their general impetus towards colonial change contributed to overall settlement patterns that undoubtedly reflected an incremental change in favor of British subjects and English law and loyalties.5
