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One of the things which is happening in late 16th century Ulster society is that the great lords, O’Neill / O’Donnell, are increasingly stressing their power at the expense of those underneath. So when they leave with The Flight of the Earls in 1607, it raises a whole generation of lords of the second rank, people such as the Baron Enniskillen, Sir Phelim O’Neill - and these people who previously were nobodies, or very, very tangentially connected to the élite, suddenly become important landowners.
They get property under the Plantation scheme, they are... Many of these are the so-called deserving natives; many of them had fought for the Crown during the 9 years’ war in the 1590s; and these people become powerful figures within Irish society. They also become very anglicised.
It’s interesting that, in 1641, when the rebellion breaks out, the way the rebellion breaks out is Sir Phelim O’Neill going to have dinner with Sir Toby Caufield. He knocks on the gate, the guards let him in: this is a common occurrence, he goes to dinner with this Englishman quite often. He then draws his sword and seizes the castle.
But these people, by the 1640s, are Justices of the Peace, they are MPs, they are peers of the realm, they are well knit-into this new world, because this new world had offered them opportunities that the old world simply had not.
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