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 the whole of the six "Plantation Counties." Others again give most misleading accounts of the extent of the confiscation. All these points deserve attention.

First, as to the actual state of affairs in Ulster at the moment of the Flight of the Earls. By law the present counties of Derry, Donegal, Tyrone, and Armagh were, except for the Church lands, practically owned in fee simple by five individuals, viz., the earls of Tirconnell and Tyrone, O'Dogherty, O'Hanlon, and O'Neill of the Fews. In these four counties then. Royal grants together with the greed of the chiefs had combined to deprive the clansmen of all legal titles to land. Rory O'Donnell had no sooner obtained a grant in general terms of Tirconnell than he induced all his subject chiefs to make surrenders to him, and to acknowledge him as owner in fee of the whole county. Even Mac Swiney na Doe, who, as a reward for his desertion of the Irish side during the rebellion, had got a grant of all the lands of his clan from Elizabeth, was induced to surrender this grant to O'Donnell.