THE ULSTER CONFLICT at this time: trading and political rivalry with Spain. Ireland was very strategically placed as the base for an attack on England, so the English ruling class tired to make Ireland securer for itself by dispossessing native Catholic landlords and replacing them with English Protestants defended against reprisal by severe repression of even the most legitimate expression of discontent. The political divisions in the island were now being reinforced by associated religious divisions. English suspicion that the native population were now a source of danger because of their loyalty to the Roman Church and susceptibility to the intrigues of foreign powers found the confirmation it sought in a rebellion in the south western province of Munster which lasted from 1579-83 and received Spanish assistance. So, when twelve years later most of the northern clans rose in revolt, and in 1598 Hugh O'Neill the earl of Tyrone (who had come near to achieving a united Gaelic front) defeated in battle English forces under the command of Sir Henry Bagenal, the government of Elizabeth 1 took vigorous action out of dread of renewed Spanish intervention. The Spanish intervention came in 1601 but it was too late because English forces under Mountjoy had established too strong a hold and had steadily eroded the strength of the O'Neills, who submitted to the new English king, James 1, in 1603. The eight years of struggle had left Ulster devastated, starving and depopulated. This was the last major attempt to restore a Gaelic social order. Up to this point Ulster had been the most Gaelic part of Ireland except for a few precariously English-held coastal fortresses, and had resisted English colonization ( though there had been a tradition for many centuries of exchange of population between eastern Ulster - the counties of Antrim and Down - and western Scotland). It was this very intransigence however, which led the English government to plan a very intensive colonization (or « plantation ») of Ulster. One of the terms of settlement between James 1 and the earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell was that the clan chieftains should become English-style hereditary landowners, but although they accepted this for a while, they were unable to settle down under the new regime which saw a diminution of teir lands, and in 1607 the earls fled to the Continent together with their entourages and dependents. This « flight of the Earls» was treated as treason by the English government, and their estates (in western Ulster) were confiscated by the Crown. The mass of the native population who remained in the area SS
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