Search Results

Studies of the three kingdoms have focussed chiefly on how between 1603-49 the realms of Scotland and Ireland inter-related with the major realm, of England. Though such studies have enriched the histories of each kingdom, it might also be said that understanding developments across the ‘Three Kingdoms’ in the early seventeenth century has become unduly Anglo-centric because of the sheer coverage given to England. By concentrating on Irish-Scottish relations however, another world can be perceived, where the objectives of England were not as critical as is often supposed. Summarising the recent surge in Irish-Scottish studies Edwards observes how King James’s notion of using Ireland to forge a closer Anglo-Scottish/Protestant union foundered on the divergent aspirations of the thousands of Scottish planters who settled in Ireland and the relationships formed with the Irish and English. Instead of submitting to English power, the Scots advanced their own position in large parts of Ireland, especially in Ulster. Many Scots preferred co-existence and/or co-operation with the Irish, as tenants, business associates, even marriage partners rather than helping the English subjugate them. This exposed the limits of English power in Ireland just as the Anglo-Scottish union was coming asunder precipitating the wider British civil wars.

Historians have traditionally identified Wentworth's viceroyalty (1633-41) as the point when the majority of Scottish Protestants in Ireland were reclassified by the government as potential opponents of the state, because of their adherence to Presbyterianism. This essay traces the origins of Scottish non-conformity to the beginnings of Stuart rule in Ireland. While the Church of Ireland provided a comfortable refuge for English puritans, it did not necessarily serve the same function for the influx of Scottish Presbyterians arriving in Ireland after 1610. Because of the reverses they suffered in the 1580s English puritans became less concerned with church government than with the creation of godly communities at a parochial level. For Scottish Presbyterians, however, an independent kirk was essential to godliness. Accordingly by the 1620s the Scots had failed to integrate into the Puritan-dominated Church of Ireland, remaining separate and apart. Ulster’s proximity to the ‘radical south west’ of Scotland meant their numbers were greatly boosted by Scottish Presbyterians fleeing persecution at home. Ulster became a home-from-home for radicalism and religious innovation. When Wentworth’s crackdown commenced it may have driven many of the most radicalized back into western Scotland to participate in the Covenanting revolution and all that ensued.

This essay examines the evidence behind the brutal reputation of Sir Frederick Hamilton. Drawing upon contemporary pamphlet literature, state papers and private correspondence, it suggests his methods owed as much to prevailing Irish and Scottish military practice as to continental influences. By investigating Hamilton’s pre-1641 Irish career it determines the circumstances that may have moved him to adopt a hard line with the Irish rebels. A scion of a leading Scottish Catholic family in Ireland, Hamilton embraced Protestantism, yet struggled to develop a career of his own under successive English Protestant administrations in Dublin. Awarded a sizeable plantation estate in Leitrim he experienced financial difficulties before departing on military service to Swedish in 1631. Upon returning, he fell out with government officers, but the slow response of servitors to the rebellion in autumn 1641 enabled him to assume the leading role in counter-insurgency measures in northern Connacht and west Ulster. His brutal methods provoked a major rebel backlash against English and Scottish settlers across the region. Though initially his endeavours earned him praise from Dublin, by 1643 his hopes of advancement to a senior command in Derry were frustrated, and he departed for Scotland.

Through political lobbying and royal favour the plantation scheme was intended almost exclusively to reward English-born servitors and to ‘civilise’ Ulster through anglicising it was transformed into an Anglo-Scottish joint initiative. Moreover, combined with the ongoing settlement of Antrim and Down by private Scottish enterprise the Scottish impact on Ulster was even stronger. What is less well known is how the Scottish parts of Ulster evolved in the lead up to the 1641 rebellion. By exploring the Scottish estates, their owners and tenants this essay shows that ‘Scottishization’, not Anglicization, was the main outcome. Geographical proximity aside, the climate and economy of Ulster and Scotland were similar, enabling Scottish incomers to adapt more easily than English arrivals. Initially many Scottish settlers struggled to get started, but by the 1620s numerous economically viable estates and ‘ferme towns’ had been established. Intriguingly, the Scots fared better than some of the English due to their ability to get along with the native Irish. Scottish landowners tended to be quicker to recruit Irish tenants, and even in one case to rely on Irish estate agents, and given their origins in western Scotland the Gaelic language was not a major barrier to lasting settlement.

The majority of Scottish colonists arriving in Ulster after 1610 were mainly Presbyterians but a sizeable minority were Catholics. Their appearance proved significant both for Catholicism in Scotland, and in Ulster. One migration was patronised by Sir Randall MacDonnell, earl of Antrim, whose lordship attracted growing numbers of Gaelic-speaking Catholics from the Isles and western Highlands, but this movement owed as much to political and economic factors as it did to religion. A more novel influx, driven by religious motivation, was that of Catholic Lowlanders fleeing persecution in Scotland and settling on estates of Scots Catholic planters. The most striking concentration of Scots Catholics in Ulster was on the estates of the Hamilton family in Strabane, Co. Tyrone. This essay traces their vigorous promotion of Catholicism in their patrimony of Paisley, in Renfrewshire, as well as on their Ulster lands. Close attention is paid to the Scottish background, revealing the pressures driving Scots Catholic ‘recusants’ to seek sanctuary in Ireland as well as highlighting the role of the Jesuits in the fortunes of the Catholic planter families. By 1641 the dioceses of Derry, and Down and Connor, stood among the best-resourced Catholic dioceses in Ulster due largely to Scottish input.

Focusing on the uppermost tier of Scots who gained land and titles in Ireland from the plantations and crown favour, this essay explores the extent to which the ‘Scottish peers’ and their families formed part of an emerging ‘British’ aristocracy in Ireland in partnership with their New English and Old English counterparts, and attempts to locate the chronological point when this became apparent. Investigating their public and private lives, it shows that the founding group of ‘Scottish peers’ in Stuart Ireland amounted to just six titled families, and that despite their obvious attachment to King James they seem not to have shared his enthusiasm for closer political ties with the English. Moreover, they remained apart, forging links with other Scots in Ireland and maintained especially strong links with Scotland. Consequently, by the late 1630s large areas of Ulster had been transformed into a Scottish Pale, much to the alarm of central government. Significantly, it was only after the Restoration that the ‘Scottish peers’ in Ireland began to intermarry and integrate with the New English and underwent process of acculturation in which they diluted their Scottishness. Even so, the Dublin government continued to view them with suspicion into the late 1680s.

This essay examines the Irish Franciscan mission to the Highlands and Islands from a number of perspectives, ranging from power struggles between Irish and Scottish Catholic exiles on the continent to the organisational problems that affected the Catholic Church in the Gaelic-speaking Hebrides and Highlands. While the Irish mission was successful in re-establishing pockets of Catholicism, it was hampered by a range of tensions between Scottish and Irish clergy competing for papal patronage abroad, the mission’s low standing in the increasingly global priorities of the Roman Curia, and, locally, the factionalism of Gaelic western Scotland in the first half of the seventeenth century. Moreover, there was an eight-year lapse between the Scots’ petition for help in 1611 and the initial despatch of Irish friars to Scotland in 1619, the Ulster Plantation helped spread Scottish and English Protestantism into Ulster, and other Scottish Catholic exiles in Europe objected to Irish ‘foreign’ meddling in Scotland. Mounting animosity between Irish and Scottish clergy on the continent proved especially damaging, and discouraged high-level church patronage. Consequently, the momentum of the early 1620s slowed by 1630, and struggled to recover. It was mainly due to the local noble support of the MacDonnells that it survived.

With the emergence of ‘New British History’ in the 1990s historians began to look afresh at the growing Scottish presence in Ulster and other parts of Ireland in the early seventeenth century. Paying particular attention to the Jacobean Irish Council, it has been suggested that from 1603-33 the Scots formed a discernible group on the Irish Council in Dublin, and that their presence indicates King James’s desire to create a new ‘British’/Anglo-Scottish political elite proceeded further, and lasted longer, in Ireland than in England. This essay reviews the documentary evidence in detail to present a rather different view. While James appointed several Scots as Irish privy councillors, few took up their council positions or attended meetings. Examining other sections of the secular government, the essay shows the Scots failed to obtain many positions in central administration or in provincial or local government. In part this was due to Scottish disinterest, but also due to active New English (and Old English) obstruction. By the mid-1620s the Scots’ lack of official clout gave rise to serious political tensions between their leaders and the New English who controlled the kingdom. These tensions were still high when Wentworth arrived as chief governor in 1633.

Rather than stemming from Rome the drive for Catholic renewal in Scotland came largely from within the Gaelic Scottish Hebrides and Highlands. This essay explores the key role played by the MacDonnells in the origins and development of the Irish Franciscan mission sent to western Scotland after 1619. The genesis of the mission is traced to the Campbell acquisition of Islay in 1614-15. Under the banner of Protestantism the Campbells justified aggression against the Clan Donald on the basis that, as Catholics, the MacDonells were rebels ideologically opposed to the Stuart state. Consequently, the MacDonnells drew upon Catholicism to reassert their power in the region. The subsequent Franciscan mission was based at Bonamargy friary, Co. Antrim, under the active protection of Randall MacDonnel, earl of Antrim. Randall’s commitment ensured the project lasted much longer than has been realised. While enthusiasm had diminished among senior Catholic churchmen in Ireland by 1624, the MacDonnells continued to invest the mission in order to consolidate their place in the Scottish Gaidhealtachd. Though the first mission waned in the 1640s, subsequent missions, by the Vincentians (1651-79) and the Franciscans (1665-87), succeeded in maintaining Catholicism in Gaelic Scotland because of the continued support of clan leaders.

It is a measure of the ‘British’ power acquired by the Ulster Scots after 1642 that in 1649 the English parliamentarian forces that had executed Charles I and overthrown the Stuart monarchy feared that Scottish forces in the province might yet determine the outcome of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and bring about an immediate restoration of Charles II. Ìt was reckoned that they might forge a broad royalist coalition with the Irish crown forces under Ormond, or persuade the government of Scotland to follow its lead and declare war against the English Republic. Accordingly, following the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland it was decided as a matter of urgency to neutralise the Scots in Ulster. A variety of plans were discussed, ranging from closer integration within a new church settlement to transplantation to Munster, but successive administrations failed to pursue any one consistently, apart from the banishment of Presbyterian ministers. As a result the majority of the Ulster Scots survived more or less intact into the Restoration, continuing to act as an embedded ‘interest’ in northern affairs and a source of concern to the Restoration government in Dublin.