‘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 suggestive at the present time.  He says, ’It is very discouraging for a wealthy farmer to have anything to do with church lands, as his improvements cannot even be secured to him during his own life, or the life of his landlord, but he may at any time be deprived of the fruits of his industry, by the incumbent changing his living, as his interest then terminates.’  This evil was remedied first by making the leases renewable, on the payment of fines, and, in our own time, an act was passed enabling the tenants to convert their leaseholds into perpetuities.  The consequence is, that the church lands now present some of the finest features in the social landscape, occupied by a class of resident gentry, an essential link, in any well-organised society, between the people and the great proprietors.  The Board of Trinity College felt so strongly the necessity of giving fixed tenures, if permanent improvements were to be effected