Wales Starting in the reign of
King Edward I of England, the English Crown began a policy of castle building and settlement building in Wales to control the population, and strategically surround the newly conquered
Kingdom of Gwynedd. Most of these castles were built with an integrated fortified town, which was designed to be provisioned from safer territories and hold out against Welsh attacks, an idea that the Normans had developed from the
bastides of
Gascony. These bastide towns were defended by stone fortifications some designed by
James of St. George d'Esperanche. The towns were exclusively populated with English or Flemish settlers, who depended on the crown for their survival in Wales. The Welsh themselves were not permitted to enter the town after dark, held no rights to trade and were not allowed to carry arms. Today, the Iron Ring is a contentious part of Welsh history. In 2017, when plans were announced for an iron sculpture of a giant ring as part of a restoration project of
Flint Castle, the project was met with criticism and accusations that it was commemorating the Edwardian conquest of Wales, a contentious event among the Welsh public. The plans were ultimately cancelled after social media campaign and petition.
Ireland The
Plantations of Ireland occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries and involved the English Crown confiscating lands owned by the Irish people, starting in the 1550s with Queen Mary I who was Catholic, with British Catholic settlers. Later plantations involved redistributing them to
Protestant settlers from
Great Britain. Though there had been periodic immigration from Great Britain to Ireland since the
Anglo-Norman invasion, these immigrants had largely assimilated into
Irish culture or were driven off from what little land they controlled by the 15th century, and the direct area controlled by the English Crown had shrunk mostly to an area known as
the Pale. Beginning in the 1540's, the
Tudor conquest of Ireland began, and roughly a decade later the first English plantations were established by British settlers on Irish soil. These plantations began during the reign of
Queen Mary I of England in the
counties of
Laois and
Offaly. However, these efforts at establishing plantations largely failed due to attacks from the local Irish clans. The next wave of plantations began during the reign of
Queen Elizabeth I of England and were spearheaded by the
West Country Men. Elizabeth's policy in Ireland was to grant land to prospective planters and prevent the Irish from giving
Spain a base from which to attack England. The
plantation of Ulster began in the 1610s, during the reign of
James I. Following their defeat in the Nine Years' War, many rebel Ulster lords
fled Ireland and their lands were confiscated. This was the biggest and most successful of the plantations and comprised most of the province of Ulster. While the province was mainly
Irish-speaking and
Catholic, the new settlers were required to be English-speaking and
Protestant, with most coming from England and Scotland. This created a distinct
Ulster Protestant community. == North America ==