The partition of Ireland was not inevitable. Ireland had been a coherent political unit since medieval times. That unity, however, was under the domination of first England and then Britain. The northern part of the island was always geographically remote from the rest of Ireland and, therefore consequently, remained the most Gaelic and difficult to subjugate. This is what motivated a newly unified British state to plant loyal Protestant English and Scottish settlers in this disputed region in the early seventeenth century. Despite this Ireland remained a single political entity throughout the religious and political upheavals of the period through to the Act of Union and into the nineteenth century.