with most coming from northern England and the Scottish Lowlands. This created a distinct Ulster Protestant community. The Ulster plantation was one cause of the 1641 Irish Rebellion, during which thousands of settlers were killed, expelled or fled. After the Irish Catholics were defeated in the Cromwellian conquest of 1652, most remaining Catholic-owned land was confiscated and thousands of English soldiers settled in Ireland. Scottish settlement in Ulster resumed and intensified during the Scottish famine of the 1690s. By the 1720s, British Protestants were the majority in Ulster. The plantations changed the demography of Ireland by creating large communities with British and Protestant identities. The ruling classes of these communities replaced the older Catholic ruling class, which had shared with the general population a common Irish identity and set of political attitudes. Background There had been small-scale immigration from Britain in the 12th century, after the Anglo-Norman invasion, creating a small Anglo-Norman, English, Welsh and Flemish community in Ireland, under the Crown of England. By the 15th century, English control had shrunk to an area called The English Pale. By the Tudor period, however, Irish culture and language had regained most of the territory initially lost to the Anglo-Normans: "even in the Pale, all the common folk ... for the most part are of Irish birth, Irish habit and of Irish language". At a higher social level, there was intermarriage between the Gaelic Irish aristocracy and Anglo-Norman lords. To varying degrees inside and especially outside of the Pale, the 'Old English' had integrated into Irish society. Edmund Spenser wrote of the old English: "they are more sharpely to be chastised and reformed … for they are more stubborne, and disobedient to the law and government, than the Irish". English discourse on Ireland largely viewed the Gaelic Irish outside the Pale as savages, and compared them with the Native Americans. Early plantations (1556–1576) The first Plantations of Ireland occurred during the Tudor conquest. The Dublin Castle administration intended to pacify and anglicise Irish territories controlled by the Crown and incorporate the Gaelic Irish aristocracy into the English-controlled Kingdom of Ireland by using a policy of surrender and regrant. The administration intended to develop Ireland as a peaceful and reliable possession, without risk of rebellion or foreign invasion. Wherever the policy of surrender and regrant failed, land was confiscated and English plantations were established. To this end, two forms of plantation were