"In 1562 Gilbert gained his first experience of warfare, serving under the earl of Warwick at the siege of Le Havre. He served under his mentor Sidney in Ireland in 1565, and returned there in 1569 as governor of the province of Ulster. He went on to plan an extensive English colonial settlement around Baltimore, near Cork, in the southern province of Munster, as part of the Elizabethan policy of replacing the independent Irish feudal lords with ‘lord presidencies’, military governors loyal to Elizabeth, a policy accompanied by the confiscation of land from local clans."