Planters' covenant

With the "planters' covenant," Stephen jumps two hundred years farther back in time, to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, when the plantation system was being pursued as a way of subjugating the Irish population and consolidating control of land. "Covenants" were made between newly enriched Protestant "planters" and the English crown.

John Hunt 2012

Irish plantations established from the 1550s through the 1610s. Source: Wikimedia Commons.