Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/528

 5i8 E. P. Cheyney Other similarities existed. In the colonization of Ireland as of America, organized and chartered companies are not unknown. In 1611 the East India Company purchased certain lands near Dun- daniel on the southern coast of County Cork, where they erected iron-works, built dwellings for 300 workmen, cut down woods, estab- lished a ship-yard, and within the next two years spent £7,000 and built two vessels of 500 and 400 tons.' In 1609, after prolonged negotiation between the Privy Council and the officers of the city of London, an agreement was entered into by which the whole county of Derry in Ireland was handed over to the city, to be colonized under its control and to its profit. In order to carry out this work the '■ Honorable Society of the Governor and Assistants of London of the New Plantation in Ulster within the Realm of Ireland " was formed by the court of mayor and aldermen of the city, the Ward- robe in the Guildhall was set apart for its meeting-place, and a charter of incorporation granted it by the crown, May 29, 1613.- The society proceeded immediately to divide the land among the twelve city companies for sale and settlement, reserving to itself only the posses- sion of the cities of Londonderry and Coleraine, their contiguous lands, and the woods, ferries, and fisheries.^ But this was scarcely a genuine trading company ; it existed, indeed still exists, only as an intermediary between the government and the settlers. The dis- tant commerce that lay at the basis of the other companies which carried out schemes of colonization had no place in the relations be- tween England and Ireland, and such companies could therefore hold here hardly any appreciable place. On the other hand, both in Ireland and in Virginia we hear much of groups or combinations of men or " consortships ", formed to carry out independent settlements. It was an associated group of twenty-seven volunteers from the southwestern counties of England, under the headship of Sir Peter Carew, who in 1569 petitioned the queen for a grant of the southwestern counties of Ireland. During the colonization of Munster in 1586, we hear of "nineteen men who desire in one consort with the writer, Henry Ughtred, to plant the counties of Connollo and Kerry " ; of the gentlemen of one associa- tion of Cheshire, Lancashire, Somerset, and Dorset; and of another of Hampshire and Devon.'' In connection with the plantation of Ulster " consorts of undertakers " are authorized, and the name of 1 Cal. St. Papers, Ireland, 1611-1614, pp. 170, 369, 381. 2 A Concise View of the Origin. . . of the Governor and Assistants. . . commonly called the Irish Society (London, 1822) ; Report of Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Irish Society, May 4, 1891. ' Conci.se View, p. 38. ' Cal. St. Papers, Ireland, 1586-15SS, pp. 51, 242, 243.