e of tillage.' The whole of the reports indicate that the Crown
required of the undertakers two things. First, that they should
themselves reside on the land, that they should build strong houses,
fortified with bawns, and keep a certain number of armed men for
the defence of the settlement. Secondly, that the English and Scotch
settlers who were expected to reclaim the land and build houses, were
to have 'estates' in their farms, either as freeholders or lessees.
The grants were made to the undertakers on these conditions--they
should be resident, and they should have around them a number of
independent yeomanry to defend the king when called upon to do so.
Everything connected with the plantation gives the idea of permanent
tenures for the settlers. A curious fact is mentioned about Sir John
Davis, who had been so active in bringing about the plantation. He
obtained a grant for 500 acres. 'Upon this,' says Pynar, 'there is
nothing at all built, nor so much as an English tenant on the land.'
It seems his tenants were all of the class for whose extirpation
he pleaded, as weeds that would choke the Saxon crop. Henry M'Shane
O'Neill got 1,000 acres at Camlagh, 'but he being lately dead, it was
in the hands of Sir Toby Caulfield, who intended to do something upon
it, for as yet there was nothing built.' Sir Toby was the ancestor of
the Earl of Charlemont, always one of the best landlords in Ulster.

It is gratifying to find that both the undertakers and the original
tenants are still fairly represented--a considerable number of the
former having founded noble houses, and the latter having multiplied
and enriched the land to such an extent that, though the population
is dense and the farms are generally very small, they are the most
prosperous and contented population in the kingdom. Leases were common
in this county at the close of the last century, but the terms were
short--twenty-one years and one life. Some had leases for thirty-one
years or three lives, and there were some perpetuities. Land was
then so valuable that when a small estate came into the market--large
estates hardly ever did--they brought from twenty-five to thirty
years' purchase. The large tracts of church land, which are now among
the richest and most desirable in the country, presented at the
close of the last century, a melancholy contrast to the farms that
surrounded them. The reason is given by Sir Charles Coote. It is most
instructive and suggestiv