The ‘Antrim Plot’ of 1641 – A Myth?

Abstract This is an account of one of the more controversial Irish conspiracies of 1641 which allegedly involved Charles I and the earl of Antrim, a prominent Gaelic warlord with extensive connections in all three of the Stuart kingdoms. No irrefutable contemporary documentation to the plot appears to have survived and so the ambiguous and scrappy evidencefor the conspiracy, dating from the 1640s, 1650s and 1660s, has been examined here in an attempt to establish whether the ‘Antrim plot’ was a myth or a reality.