The nominal religion of the native majority and its clergy; the Catholic Church in Ireland; was actively persecuted by the state and a set of Penal Laws in favour of the Anglican Church in Ireland, highly damaging to the native Irish Catholics, although a similar experience happened to English, Scottish and Welsh catholics during the same period. There is some perceprio that during Tudor times, elements within the government at times engaged in and advanced a genocidal policy against the Irish Gaels, while during the Plantations of Ireland (particularly successful in Ulster) the local population were displaced in a project of ethnic cleansing where regions of Ireland became de-Gaelicised, which led in turn to bloody retaliations, which drags on to modern times. Some of the native inhabitants, including their leadership were permitted to flee into exile from the country following ending up on the losing side in conflicts (i.e. the Flight of the Earls and the Flight of the Wild Geese) or in the case of the Cromwellian regime were forced into indentured servitude (although the same happened to English persons involved in the Cromwellian regime) in the Caribbean, following mass land confiscation for the benefit of New English settlers.