and "civilising" Ulster. The province was almost wholly Gaelic, Catholic and rural, and had been the region most resistant to English control. The plantation was also meant to sever the ties of the Gaelic clans of Ulster with those from the Highlands of Scotland, as it meant a strategic threat to England.

Most of the land colonised was confiscated from the native Irish. Begun privately in 1606, the plantation became government-sponsored in 1609, with much land