The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland holds a wide range of documents about the plantation in Ulster during the period 1600 to 1641. You can now access a digital copy of a new edition of Plantations in Ulster, 1600-41, reproducing 30 documents relating to the Ulster Plantation.

Between 1966 and 1975 PRONI published a series of facsimiles covering various aspects of Irish history from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries intended to introduce school students to archival material and to encourage further research in the archives. The pack covering the plantation period was meticulously edited by R.J. Hunter, a scholar who specialised in the history of Ireland in the early modern period, especially the Plantation of Ulster in the early 17th century. Containing 20 documents, it first appeared in 1975 and was reprinted in 1989, but it was then unavailable for many years.

In 2018 a new edition was published by PRONI and the Ulster Historical Foundation prepared by Ian Montgomery and William Roulston containing an additional ten documents making 30 in all. The documents are mainly sourced from collections in PRONI, but also include printed material and documents from the British Library, the Huntington Library California, Lambeth Palace Library, the National Library of Ireland, The National Archives, Trinity College Dublin and West Yorkshire Archives Service, a memorial inscription and a plaque. 

Each reproduction is accompanied by a description, a commentary and in some cases a transcription of the text. There is also a short accessible introduction to the Ulster Plantation, and a handy list of further publications including online resources such as the Great Parchment Book, the 1641 Depositions and the Down Survey of Ireland.

Highly recommended.

Interesting to read alongside Plantations in Ulster, 1600-41, is “The Significance of Landed Estates in Ulster 1600-1820” by W. H. Crawford in Irish Economic and Social History Vol. 17 (1990), pp. 44-61 (18 pages). Crawford’s article develops themes found in Hunter’s introduction and takes the story into the 19th century. Users of London Metropolitan and Guildhall Library can view the article free of charge online at https://www.jstor.org/stable/24341088, and you may be able to access it either onsite or online through your own library service.