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The history of Scottish migration to Ireland can be traced to the
middle ages when Scottish gallowglass or mercenary soldiers were
employed by Gaelic lords. Some settled permanently in Ulster, a
process which was intensified in the late 14th century when the
MacDonnell clan acquired property in the Glens of Antrim through
marriage to a local heiress. The increasing Scottish settlement in
north east Ulster in the first half of the 16th century alarmed the
Tudor monarchy concerned that a Scottish-Franco alliance could
invade Ireland as part of a wider continental war against England.
The Plantation of Ulster was the organised colonisation (or
plantation) of Ulster by people from the British Empire. Private
plantation by wealthy landowners began in 1606, while official
plantation controlled by King James I of England and VI of Scotland
began in 1609. All land owned by Irish chieftains the Ó Neills and Ó
Donnells (along with those of their supporters) who fought against
the British in the Nine Years' War (Ireland) were confiscated and
used to settle the colonists. The Counties Tyrconnell, Tyrone,
Fermanagh, Cavan, Coleraine and Armagh comprised the official Colony
however most of the counties including the most heavily colonized
Counties Antrim and Down were privately colonised. These counties,
though not officially designated as subject to Plantation, had
suffered violent de-populatation during the previous wars and proved
attractive to Private Colonialists from nearby Britain.
The
official reason for the Plantation is said to have been to pay for
the costly Nine Years' War (Ireland) but this view was not shared by
all in the British establishment most notably the British
Attorney-General of Ireland in 1609 Sir John Davies (poet):
A barbarous country must be first broken by a war before it
will be capable of good government ; and when it is fully subdued
and conquered, if it be not well planted and governed after the
conquest, it will eftsoons return to the former barbarism
The Plantation of Ulster continued well into the 18th century,
interrupted only by the Irish Rebellion of 1641, This Rebellion was
initially led by Phelim O'Neill, and was intended to overthrow
British rule rapidly, but quickly degenerated into attacks on
Colonialists, in which dispossessed Irish slaughtered thousands of
the Colonialists. In the ensuing wars (1641–1653, fought against the
background of civil war in England, Scotland and Ireland), Ulster
became a battleground between the Colonialists and the native Irish.
In 1646, an Irish army under command by Owen Roe O'Neill inflicted a
defeat on a Scottish Covenanter army at Benburb in County Tyrone,
but the native Irish forces failed to follow up their victory and
the war lapsed into stalemate. The war in Ulster ended with the
defeat of the native army at the Battle of Scarrifholis on the
western outskirts of Letterkenny, County Donegal in 1650, as part of
the Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland conducted by Oliver Cromwell and
the New Model Army, the aim of which was to expel all native Irish
to the Province of Connaught.
Forty years later, in
1688-1691, The Williamite war in Ireland began, the belligerents of
which were the Williamites and Jacobites. The war was partly due to
a dispute over the rightful head of the British Monarchy, and thus
the ruler of the British Empire, but also part of the greater War of
the Grand Alliance fought between King Louis XIV of France and his
allies, and a European-wide coalition the Grand Alliance, led by
William of Orange and Leopold I of the holy Roman Empire, supported
by the Vatican and many other nations, the Grand Alliance was a
cross-denominational alliance designed to stop French eastward
colonialist expansion under King Louis XIV with whom James II was
allied.
The majority of Irish people were ("Jacobites") and
supported James II due to his 1687 Declaration of Indulgence or as
it is also known, The Declaration for the Liberty of Conscience,
that granted religious freedom to all denominations in England,
Scotland and Ireland and also due to James II's promise to the Irish
Parliament of an eventual right to self determination. However James
II was (deposed in the Glorious Revolution) and the majority of
Ulster Colonialists (Williamites) backed William of Orange. It is of
note that both the Williamite and Jacobite armies were religiously
mixed; William of Orange's own elite forces, the Dutch Blue Guards
had a papal banner with them during the invasion, many of them being
Dutch Catholics.
At the start of the war, Irish Jacobites
controlled most of Ireland for James II, with the exception of the
Williamite strongholds at Derry and at Enniskillen in Ulster. The
Jacobites besieged Derry from December 1688 to July 1689, ending
when a Williamite army from Britain relieved the city. The
Williamites based in Enniskillen defeated another Jacobite army at
the battle of Newtownbutler on July 28, 1689. Thereafter, Ulster
remained firmly under Williamite control and William's forces
completed their conquest of the rest of Ireland in the next two
years. The war provided Protestant loyalists with the iconic
victories of the Siege of Derry, the Battle of the Boyne (1 July
1690) and the Battle of Aughrim (12 July 1691), all of which the
Orange Order commemorate each year.
The Williamites' victory
in this war ensured British rule in Ireland for over 200 years. The
Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland excluded most of Ulster's
population from having any Civil power on religious grounds. Roman
Catholics (descended from the indigenous Irish) and Presbyterians
(mainly descended from Scottish Colonialists) both suffered
discrimination under the Penal Laws, which gave full political
rights only to Anglican Protestants (mostly descended from English
settlers). In the 1690s, Scottish Presbyterians became a majority in
Ulster, due to a large influx of them into the Province.
Despite the failed colonial projects and the massacre on Rathlin,
Scottish migration to north east Ireland continued throughout the
late 16th century and intensified in the early 17th century when
George Douglas of Shiel, James Douglas of Clappertoun and William
Douglas of Pumpherston acquired property which they developed as a
private Plantation. James
Douglas of Spott also acquired land, but soon sold it.
See also:
Scottish
Undertakers
The Ulster Scots
Story of the North West of Ireland |
