The article highlights how the Commonwealth’s power in 1654 depended not only on military victory but on administrative practices: deadlines, classifications and surveys translated conquest into lasting changes in ownership. The uneven enforcement of transplantation is particularly striking, since economic dependence on Catholic tenants and disputes over exemptions complicated an apparently uncompromising policy. Petty’s forthcoming Down Survey suggests that measurement could make dispossession more durable, while preserving evidence of the older landscape. This raises question about bureaucracy and power: how should we interpret the relationship between practical local constraints and the long-term effectiveness of survey-based confiscation in reshaping Irish society?