Making Ireland part of the Commonwealth of England

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

On the 6th January 1654 - Commissioners were appointed to allot the land of Oliver Cromwell's Connacht plantation to transplant the Irish Oliver Cromwell who had spent nine months in Ireland subduing by force most of the resistance to English rule. However, the job would not be complete to Cromwell’s satisfaction until Ireland was secure for all time as part of the Commonwealth of England , Scotland and Ireland. 

To finish his work, Cromwell returned to England to start the legislative suppression of Ireland while his son Henry Cromwell completed the military campaign. Cromwell and the Parliament passed the Act of Settlement of Ireland in 1653 whose goal was the massive transfer of land from Irish hands to English hands. The map in this article shows the plantation plan for Ireland , including pushing “the habitation of the Irish nation” to Connaught and Clare, giving the still resisting Irish the choice to go “To Hell or to Connaught .” 

The map of Ireland showing the hurtful and cruel settlement of Ireland was a well thought out theoretical plan of diabolic inspiration. Looking at the map from east to west, a reader can see that the least able to resist another Irish rising, i.e., wounded veterans and the widows of those killed in action, were given land in the north of Dublin County and a small portion of Cork around Youghal. The original Pale around Dublin , over the years the securest area in Ireland for the English, was to be extended south from Dublin to include Kildare, Wicklow, Carlow and Wexford. Thought to be relatively secure in their proximity to Dublin and the Irish Sea , these counties were to be for the “special planting” of friends of Parliament. 

Acting as a buffer between the Irish internment counties on the west and protecting the counties on the east, the counties Limerick, Tipperary , Waterford , Kings (Offaly), Queens (Laois), and Westmeath, Armagh , Antrim and Down were settled by both soldiers and Adventurers. Louth was given exclusively to the Adventurers. The soldiers had control of Kerry, Kilkenny, Wexford, Cavan, Monaghan, Fermanagh, Tyrone and Londonderry . They also received as arrears compensation the counties Longford, Leitrim, Donegal and Wicklow. Parts of Mayo and all of Sligo went to the soldiers, as they were on the border of the western counties of Irish internment. All of Clare, Galway , Roscommon and most of Mayo was reserved as an enclave for the surviving Irish. The English plan was to pen in the Irish west of the Shannon River , which was seen as a defensible border, with the ocean to the west. Where the Shannon was not available in the northwest, the military settlement would seal this area. 

All of the islands off the coast of the enclave were cleared of the Irish or used for special purposes, such as the internship camp for priests on Inisbofin. Inside this prison without bars the English hoped to make the hardcore Irish leadership impotent, there being no ports, no war industries, no fortresses, and no natural defenses. All confiscated land was to be transferred on 26 September 1653 and all unauthorized Irish were to be in Connaught or Hell by 1 May 1654. Written by John Walsh and originally published in April 2004) source © Irish Cultural Society of the Garden City Area.