BOOK REVIEW: Timely study of role played by Scots in the Ulster Plantations
THE narrative of the Ulster Plantations is one which is firmly interlocked with the historic saga of Scotland and as we approach the 400th anniversary of the 'official' plantations it's only apt that academics William P Kelly and John R Young have edited a judicious study of the historical complexities of this remarkable milestone in Scotland and the Ulster Plantations.
But when did the plantations of Ulster really begin? In itself this is a contentious question as many would regard the policy of plantation of having been made piece by piece and by several attempts in across many years and decades. Indeed, an early attempt at plantation in the 1570s on the east coast of Ulster by Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex, had failed.
And then following an extremely costly series of campaigns by the English, the Nine Years War ended in 1603 with the surrender of Hugh O'Neill's and Hugh O'Donnell's forces. The terms of surrender granted to the rebels were generous, with the principal condition that lands formerly contested by feudal right and Brehon law be held under English law.
However, when Hugh O'Neill and other rebel chieftains fled Ireland in the Flight of the Earls (1607) to seek Spanish help for a new rebellion, Lord Deputy Arthur Chichester seized their lands and prepared to colonise the province in a plantation.
Much of the legal groundwork was laid by Sir John Davies, then attorney general of Ireland. This would have included large grants of land to native Irish lords who had sided with the English during the war, for example Niall Garve O'Donnell. However, the plan was interrupted by the rebellion in 1608 of Cahir O'Doherty of Inishowen, who raided Londonderry.
Davies had noted that the defects which had hindered the perfection of the conquest of Ireland were twofold, namely, the weak prosecution of the war, and in the looseness of the civil government.
According to Davies "For the husbandman must first break the land before it be made capable of good seed; and when it is thoroughly broken and manured, if he do not forthwith cast good seed into it, it will grow wild again and bear nothing but weeds. So 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."
So what you have is 'unofficial' plantations which are pre 1610 and the 'official' plantations which took place post 1610.
The policy of planting Ulster was sold to James VI and I as a joint British venture to 'pacify' and 'civilise' Ulster. As is noted in Scotland and the Ulster Plantations it would mean: "A Protestant Ulster would lock up the 'postern gate' to England. A settled Ulster would also rein in the power of the Lords of the Isles, the Macdonalds and their Highland allies."
And who were the best people to implement this policy? Of course, the Scottish (Presbyterian) settlers who had been naturally migrating to the province. Indeed, from 1606 there was substantial lowland Scots settlement on disinhabited land in north Down, led by Hugh Montgomery and James Hamilton. While in 1607 Sir Randall MacDonnell settled 300 Presbyterian Scots families on his land in Antrim.
During the 'official' plantation period which began from 1610 Scots settlers tended to be the most determined in clearing and developing the land and they greatly outnumbered the English, in some areas by as many as five or six to one. The plantation settlers of whatever nationality were made up of undertakers, servitors, churchmen, artisans and under tenants. And the plantations were to incorporate six counties, namely Donegal, Coleraine (today's Londonderry), Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan and Armagh as well as the two 'officially unplanted' counties of Antrim and Down.
The plantation was a mixed success. By the 1630s, there were 20,000 adult male British settlers in Ulster, which meant that the total settler population could have been as high as 80,000. They formed local majorities of the population in the Finn and Foyle valleys, in north Armagh and in east Tyrone. Moreover, the unofficial settlements in Antrim and Down were thriving. What was more, the settler population grew rapidly, as just under half of the planters were women.
So as we reach the 400th anniversary of the Ulster Plantations their legacies still remain with us to this day in the 21st century. One historian has written: "(T]he planters' descendants still live in the area, some of them as keenly aware of the dangers, real and imagined, posed by their Catholic neighbours as were their ancestors during the periods of ferocious warfare that ensued between Catholics and Protestants in the seventeenth century."
The settlers have also left a legacy in terms of language. The Ulster-Scots dialect originated through the speech of lowland Scots settlers evolving and being influenced by both Hiberno-English and Irish Gaelic. Seventeenth-century English settlers also contributed dialect words that are still in current use in Ulster.
Scotland and the Ulster Plantations is a timely and insightful study of the history of the Plantations of Ulster and the Scottish connection. Essays have been written for the collection by leading scholars in the study of the period including Robert Armstrong (Viscount Ards and the presbytery: politics and religion among the Scots of Ulster in the 1640s), Michael Perceval-Maxwell (The duke of Ormond, and Protestant dissent in Ulster) and Raymond Gillespie (Scotland and Ulster: a Presbyterian perspective, 1603-1700).
DARRYL ARMITAGE
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Wednesday 15 February 2012
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