In the years leading up to the Plantation, Ireland had been in conflict, as the Gaelic chieftains held out against colonisation and the English Crown. Ulster had become the last bastion of Gaelic Ireland, until finally the O'Donnells and the O'Neills were defeated at the end of the Nine Years War.

To ensure that this hard-won land remained loyal, and caused no more costly and bloody trouble to the Crown, a planned process of colonisation took place. This was during the early years of the reign of James I, which had united Scotland and England, and so while English and Scottish settlers were granted lands in Ulster, the planters who arrived in 1609 were mainly Scottish Presbyterians. The settlers fell into different groups. The Undertakers were English and Scotsmen, who undertook to bring English-speaking Protestant tenants from their own estates to populate the land. Meanwhile, the Servitors, who had fought on the English side in the Nine Years War, lobbied successfully to be added to the list of beneficiaries.

The Plantation was carefully thought out, and yet this led to mixed results: 'Orders and Conditions' prevented the settlers renting land to people of a Gaelic or Catholic background, but this meant there were not enough people to effectively work the land, and so the Plantations were never as segregated as intended. Nevertheless, the original dispossessed population, and those in sympathy with them, eventually took part in the Irish Rebellion of 1641, in which four thousand planters were murdered. Reprisals were equally bloody, and as we know today, the consequences spread forward into modern history.

The stamp design concept and calligraphy is by Timothy O'Neill. The first day cover was designed by Ger Garland. First day cover image, Ms 2656 (v) by Richard Bartlett - Map of Dungannon, Tullaghoge and a Crannóg © National Library of Ireland.