Plantations of Ireland - Subsequent Settlement

Subsequent Settlement

For the remainder of the 17th century, Irish Catholics tried to get the Cromwellian Act of Settlement reversed. They briefly achieved this under James II during the Williamite war in Ireland, but the Jacobite defeat there led to another round of land confiscations. The 1680s and 90s saw another major wave of settlement in Ireland (though not another plantation). The new settlers were principally composed of Scots, tens of thousands of whom fled a famine in the lowlands and border regions of Scotland to come to Ulster. It was at this point that Protestants and people of Scottish descent (who were mainly Presbyterians) became an absolute majority of the population in Ulster.

Another group established in Ireland at this time were French Huguenots, who had been expelled from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Many of the Frenchmen were former soldiers, who had fought on the Williamite side in the Williamite war in Ireland. This community established themselves mainly in Dublin, where their communal graveyard can still be seen off St Stephen's Green. The numbers of this community may have reached 10,000