huge fortunes out of amassing Irish lands and developing them for industry and agriculture. The Irish Catholic upper classes were unable to stop the continued plantations in Ireland because they had been barred from public office on religious grounds. By 1615 they comprised a minority in the Irish Parliament, as a result of the creation of "pocket boroughs" (where Protestants were in the majority) in planted areas. In 1625, they gained a temporary halt to land confiscations by agreeing to pay for England's war with France and Spain. In addition to the plantations, thousands of independent settlers arrived in Ireland in the early 17th century, from the Netherlands and France as well as Britain. Many of them became chief tenants of Irish land-owners; others set up in the towns (especially Dublin) – notably as bankers and financiers. By 1641, there were calculated to be up to 125,000 Protestant settlers in Ireland, though they were still outnumbered by native Catholics by around 15 to 1. Not all of the early 17th century English Planters were Protestants. A considerable number of English Catholics settled in Ireland between 1603 and 1641, in part for economic reasons but also to escape persecution in England. In the time of Elizabeth and James I, the Catholics of England suffered a greater degree of persecution than English Catholics in Ireland. In England, Catholics were greatly outnumbered by Protestants and lived under constant fear of betrayal by their fellows. In Ireland they could blend in with the local majority-Catholic population in a way that was not possible in England. English Catholic planters were most common in County Kilkenny, where they may have made up half of all the English and Scottish planters to arrive in this region. Plantations stayed off the political agenda until the appointment of Thomas Wentworth, a Privy Councilor of Charles I, to the position of Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1632. Wentworth's job was to raise revenue for Charles and to cement Royal control over Ireland – which meant, among other things, more plantations, both to raise money and to break the political power of the Irish Catholic gentry. Wentworth confiscated land in Wicklow and planned a full-scale Plantation of Connacht – where all Catholic landowners would lose between a half and a quarter of their estates. The local juries were intimidated into accepting Wentworth's settlement; when a group of Connacht landowners complained to