Page 181 - Demo

Chapter Six 181
people into the country. Theoretically, these colonies would then be able to inluence the natives to adopt English ways, or, they might, just as the Spanish colonists were doing at the time in both Mexico and Peru, spread throughout the land and forcibly oust the natives.
Queen Mary by Antonis Mor, 1554
The plundering policy of Plantation, truthfully an early form of ethnic cleansing, was begun in 1556 when the territories of the two proud Irish clans, the O’Moores of present- day Laois and that of the O’Connors of Ofaly were coniscated and divided into shire- land. Laois and a portion of Ofaly were afterwards called King’s County in honour of Mary’s husband, King Philip11 of Spain; the remainder was called Queen’s County in honour of Mary; while the towns of Campa-modern Portlaois and Daingean were named as Maryborough and Philipstown.
The chieftains of the aforementioned clans had always opposed English rule, and now their people were savagely driven from the fertile lands of their forefathers to make room for the Planters. The O’Moores and O’Connors, however, did not abandon their ancestral lands without a doggedly-ierce struggle, and the Plantation was not easily efected. The Irish fought long and gallantly against the Planters, and it was almost ifty years later before the Plantation was inally accomplished and the inhabitants forced to take refuge in the bogs and mountains.
The reigns of Henry V111, his son Edward V1, and his daughter, Mary, mark a cru- cially important era in Irish history. It is probably true to say that diferences in religious