Ulster Plantation Research Articles

Colonial appropriation of gaelic urban space: Creating the first ulster plantation town

Abstract Using a diverse range of source material this paper highlights the colonial appropriation of the existing Gaelic market town of Cavan, founded by the O'Reillys, in the establishment of the first Ulster plantation town. In contrast to what may be expected, a reading of the socio‐economic, political and cultural landscape of the newly incorporated town of Cavan in the early years of the 17th century, highlights the dominant position and important civic role played by families of Gaelic origins in the governance of the town. Unlike other plantation towns Cavan town remained ‘unplanned’ in its morphological layout with the colonisers utilising and modifying the existing Gaelic urban fabric. The decision by English colonial powers to use the pre‐existing urban settlement of Cavan town led to success for the colonial project on paper. Unlike other Ulster plantation towns, it also uniquely permitted the retention of a strong and distinct Gaelic presence and character which manifested itself in both the ...

Ulster and Scotland 1600-2000: History, Language and Identity (review)

Reviewed by: Ulster and Scotland 1600-2000: History, Language and Identity E. Brown Ulster and Scotland 1600-2000: History, Language and Identity. Edited by William Kelly and John R. Young. Pp. 189. ISBN 1-85182-808-7. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2004. EUR 50.00. Two tales. Archibald Hamilton, the son of Claud Hamilton of Cochno, Dumbartonshire, rose within the Irish Anglican church in the first half of the seventeenth century. Successively bishop of Killala and archbishop of Cashel, he was driven from the country by the turmoil of the 1641 rising. Initially associated with the exiled Stuart court, he soon affiliated himself with the Prince of Orange, serving as a professor of theology, before moving, finally, to Sweden. In contrast, Robert Blair, who fled Scotland into Ulster to avoid the Five Articles of Perth, planned, but failed to execute, a removal to America in 1634-5, before returning to Scotland when again faced with religious persecution, this time in Ulster. Despite their obvious differences—both in terms of their religious affiliation and the trajectories of their travels—Hamilton and Blair exemplify the travelling spirit that makes the links between Ulster and Scotland so vital a topic of historical research. In this collection of essays, scholars from a wide range of disciplines and temporal periods congregate to confer over the significance of the emotional, familial, cultural, political and linguistic connections between Scotland and its first colony—Ulster. Divided into three substantive sections, as indicated by the subtitle, the book attempts to convey something of the historical and cultural homogeneity of this migrant community. In some cases, the essays are illuminating and successful, notably in the section devoted to migration. The contribution of Steve Murdoch, in whose essay Hamilton appears, illustrates adeptly how the Scots looked east to the Baltic, as well as west to Ulster, when they dreamed of leaving their homeland. The cultural consequences of their migration in such far-flung parts as New England and New Zealand are equally well handled by Kerby Miller and Jock Phillips, while Patrick Fitzgerald offers a useful corrective to the scholarly emphasis upon the Ulster Plantation by highlighting the impact of the years of dearth in 1690s Scotland in buttressing that initial migration with economic refugees fleeing into the more hospitable climes of Ulster. So too is the issue of language reasonably well handled, although Gaelic gets short shrift from many contributors, with Alan Titley's colourful essay on autobiography an honourable exception. Instead many of the authors have chosen to enter the lists in the increasingly polemical debate surrounding Scots and its derivative, Ulster-Scots. David Horsbury, for example, endeavours to tie the use of Scots to a broad national identity in the early modern period, writing of how 'such men ... were regarded as ethnic Scots and not as separate Ulster Scots.' (p. 151). This is contradicted by John Young's evaluation of the evidence of group [End Page 355] depictions in the period, wherein he asserts 'it is clear that a variety of linguistic descriptions was in operation throughout the period; distressed Irish, Irish, Scots-Irish, Scottish nation, Irish Protestants, British Protestants.' (p. 32). However, that contributors feel comfortable to argue within the pages of the book may merely illustrate the catholicity of the volume, as well as the spirited nature of the debate. More problematic, however, is the broken-backed nature of the story that is being told. This is clearest in the section on language, but it is apparent elsewhere also, notably in Graham Walker's reflections on the utility of the Scottish connection in asserting Ulster's British identity. As Michael Montgomery makes plain in an illuminating contribution, the Scots tongue has had an unhappy and irregular relationship with print culture. Although in the sixteenth century it was a language of state, it declined in the face of standard English, at least as a written language, and has only occasionally surfaced since, notably in the late eighteenth century when Burns took pen in hand. That Burns provides a problematic legacy for the language is the central contention of Richard Finlay's contribution. Finlay notes how Burns was at once contaminated by his own skill as a versifier...

Born fighting: how the Scots-Irish shaped America

More than 27 million Americans today can trace their lineage to the Scots, whose bloodline was stained by centuries of continuous warfare along the border between England and Scotland, and later in the bitter settlements of England's Ulster Plantation in Northern Ireland. When hundreds of thousands of Scots-Irish migrated to America in the eighteenth century, they brought with them not only long experience as rebels and outcasts but also unparalleled skills as frontiersmen and guerrilla fighters. Their cultural identity reflected acute individualism, dislike of aristocracy and a military tradition; and, over time, the Scots-Irish defined the attitudes and values of the military, of working-class America and even of the peculiarly populist form of American democracy itself. Born Fighting is the first book to chronicle the epic journey of this remarkable ethnic group and the profound but unrecognised role it has played in shaping the social, political and cultural landscape of America from its beginnings through to the present day.

Archaeological Explorations of Cultural Identity and Rural Economy in the North of Ireland: Goodland, County Antrim

Renewed examination of an enigmatic settlement site perched atop a cliff above Murlough Bay in Goodland Townland, County Antrim, Northern Ireland calls into question long held ideas about Gaelic rural economy on the eve of the Ulster Plantation by reintroducing the complex cultural and political relationships between the north of Ireland and the Scottish isles. Long interpreted as temporary post-medieval booley huts associated with seasonal transhumance, recent re-evaluation of the site suggests instead that Goodland represents a permanent seventeenth-century Highland Scottish village. Although the medieval linkages between the north of Ireland and the Scottish isles have long been acknowledged, twentieth-century sectarianism has subjugated awareness of the Highland (Roman Catholic) Scots focusing upon the legacy of the in-migration of Protestant Lowland Scots during the Ulster Plantation. Material evidence at Goodland re-introduces the Highland Scot to the contested landscape of contemporary Ulster identity, while also facilitating analysis of continuity, change, and cultural complexity in the rural economy of early modern Ireland.

The Northern Subject Rule in Ulster: How Scots, how English?

In diffusionist accounts of the Northern Subject Rule (NSR), this subject–verb concord system spread from Scotland via Ulster to North America and elsewhere. Thus, the NSR in Mid-Ulster English dialects of districts originally settled from England is attributed to diffusion from Ulster-Scots. But the NSR was also a feature of dialects of the North and North Midlands, the regions that contributed most of the English settlers to the Ulster Plantation. Since English and Scottish settlement patterns established in the seventeenth century have been reflected in Ulster dialect boundaries since then, the founder principle provides an alternative account of the persistence of the NSR in Northern Irish English. Usage in nineteenth-century emigrant letters indicates that the NSR was as strong in English-influenced dialects of Mid-Ulster as in Ulster-Scots and suggests that the NSR in Ulster may be a direct import from England as well as Scotland.The author thanks Anniken Telnes Iversen, Toril Swan, and Hilde Sollid for reading and commenting on various drafts of this article; Herbert Schendl, Graham Shorrocks, and Dieter Stein for providing references, questions, and answers; and Laura Wright and Lukas Pietsch for offering both kinds of help as well as furnishing copies of forthcoming work that proved interesting and useful. Thanks also to Jack Chambers for copies of his papers. I am also grateful to the anonymous referees for LVC. Their comments, objections, and suggestions have been accommodated as far as possible and the responses to them have, I hope, improved the result. In the usual way, responsibility for any remaining errors lies with me.

Forgetting the Ulster Plantation: John Speed's The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain (1611) and the Colonial Archive

Forgetting the Ulster Plantation: John Speed's <i>The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain</i> (1611) and the Colonial Archive

The Honourable the Irish Society and the Plantation of Ulster, 1608-2000

The Honourable the Irish Society and the Plantation of Ulster, 1608-2000

“Another Britain”?: Bacon'scertain considerations touching the plantation in Ireland (1609)

The body of a text is like the frame of a kingdom. There is always the potential for growth. In the case of a marginal text which addresses the culture at large, this power of expansion is especially pronounced. Having examined in some detail the twists and turns of Spenser’s View, I want now to look at a minor treatise by Francis Bacon which captures in an even more condensed form the tensions and texture of the Irish problem in a British context, or, perhaps more accurately, the British Problem in an Irish context.1 Where Spenser is one of the foremost poets of the period, Bacon is a writer known chiefly for non-fiction, one of the most important essayists and political theorists of the English Renaissance, a figure who straddles disciplines and genres, and who participated in the making of policy. Bacon’s belief in progress and the possibility of change, and the frequent analogies he draws in his writings between the acquisition of knowledge and the politics of empire, conquest and discovery, make his pronouncements on Ireland sharply relevant. His Certain Considerations Touching the Plantation in Ireland (1609), a short essay of some 4,500 words, has received scant notice either from students of Bacon or historians of early modern Ireland, and yet it is arguably one of the most articulate statements of the politics of plantation in the period.2 Bacon’s Irish treatise appeared on the eve of the Commission of 1609 which was crucial in laying the groundwork for the Ulster Plantation, and anticipated the publication of the Conditions to be observed by the Brittish Undertakers of the Escheated Lands in Ulster (1610).

Providence and exile in early seventeenth-century Ireland

The depth of change which the country experienced in the reign of James I has become an axiom of early modern Irish historiography. The extension of crown government throughout the island, the flight of the northern earls, the subsequent plantation in Ulster and the putative religious reformation of the indigenous inhabitants contributed to a climate of flux and tension. The burgeoning scholarly interest in this phase of Irish history has resulted in a more detailed understanding of administrative, political, regional and religious trends in the period. Progress has also been made in the study of contemporary mentalities. An interesting development has been the use of sources in the Irish language for the reconstruction of previously obscure intellectual currents amongst the Gaelic élite. The recent appearance of Michelle O Riordan’s monograph on the Gaelic reaction to the collapse of traditional society represents the fullest exposition yet of an interpretation which has characterised the early modern Gaelic ideological response to conquest and social change as fundamentally passive and backward-looking. O Riordan has, in effect, elaborated upon the conclusions of preceding commentators, notably Tom Dunne and Bernadette Cunningham, in portraying the Gaelic understanding of socio-political transformation as lacking in critical perception. This essay is intended as a further contribution to the elucidation of the mental climate of the time. More particularly, it will focus on two themes which figured prominently in the separate, but in this instance similar, communal reactions of the Gaelic Irish and the New English settlers to their respective political and social environments.

The Origins of the Scottish Plantations in Ulster to 1625: A Reinterpretation

There is no question that the plantation of Ulster during the reign of James I had a profound effect on the course of British history. However, the nature of that plantation has been either misrepresented or misunderstood. In order to overcome this problem, we must address two provocative questions: (1) Were the Scots-Irish, the largest group of settlers, predominantly Celtic or non-Celtic ethnically and culturally? and (2) If they were mainly Celtic, why were they better able than non-Celts to establish viable settlements in Ulster, a predominantly Celtic area? A reexamination of the origins of the pre-1625 Scottish settlers and their methods of settlement indeed casts the problem of the Ulster Plantation in a new light.For the last two decades, historians have begun to question the portrayal of the Scots-Irish, or Ulster Scots, as frugal, hardworking, anglicized Presbyterian Lowlanders who brought the light of civilization to a benighted Celtic backwater. For example, Nicholas Canny correctly dismisses the “myth” of Ulster's material transformation by pointing out that the province, unlike Leinster and Munster, was settled by British planters from less economically advanced areas of the archipelago. But, again, he does not adequately examine the cultural and ethnic background of the dominant Scots-Irish. Traditionally, they have been classed as “Lowland,” non-Celts rather than as “Highland,” Celtic Scots. These designations are misleading because they oversimplify Scotland's historical and cultural divisions that had been in place as early as the Norman invasion.

The end of Gaelic Ulster: a thematic interpretation of events between 1534 and 1610

The period between the Kildare rebellion and the plantation of Ulster marks the final phase of a distinct political system. During these years the English administration in Ireland made strenuous efforts to reform Gaelic society. This paper aims to show that indigenous society was not inevitably doomed to submit before a superior Renaissance state. Indeed it proved flexible in responding to the challenge and was itself in the process of ‘modernisation’. This process was most marked in Ulster which was the strongest Gaelic region and the crown’s most intractable problem. The northern province was differentiated from the other Gaelic regions of Ireland by its political and physical geography. Ulster was an homogeneous cultural zone and contained the powerful polities of Tyrone, ruled by the O’Neills, and Tirconnell, ruled by the O’Donnells. Guarding the southern approaches of the province was a barrier of rough terrain interrupted by lakes and passes.

The New New Irish History - Natives and Newcomers: The Makings of Irish Colonial Society, 1534–1641. Edited by Ciaran Brady and Raymond Gillespie. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1986. - The Upstart Earl: A Study of the Social and Mental World of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, 1566–1643. By Nicholas Canny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. - Reform and Revival:

The New New Irish History - Natives and Newcomers: The Makings of Irish Colonial Society, 1534–1641. Edited by Ciaran Brady and Raymond Gillespie. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1986. - The Upstart Earl: A Study of the Social and Mental World of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, 1566–1643. By Nicholas Canny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. - Reform and Revival: English Government in Ireland, 1470–1534. By Steven G. Ellis. Studies in History, no. 47. London: Royal Historical Society, 1986. - Tudor Ireland: Crown, Community and the Conflict of Cultures, 1470–1603. By Steven G. Ellis. London and New York: Longman, 1985. - Colonial Ulster: The Settlement of East Ulster, 1600–1641. By Raymond Gillespie. Cork: Cork University Press for the Irish Committee of Historical Sciences, 1985. - The Munster Plantation: English Migration to Southern Ireland, 1583–1641. By Michael MacCarthy-Morrogh. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. - Sir John Davies and the Conquest of Ireland: A Study in Legal Imperialism. By Hans S. Pawlisch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. - The Plantation of Ulster: British Settlement in an Irish Landscape, 1600–1670. By Philip S. Robinson. Dublin: Gill &amp; MacMillan, 1984. - Volume 27 Issue 1

« In the shadow of one another the people live ». Irish Folk Songs and Human Rights : 1600-1880

After the passing of the old Gaelic order following the Flight of the Earls, the Ulster Plantation and the Cromwellian settlement, the sense of identity of the people took refuge in the folk tunes and the new music which originated in the 17th century. These songs sometimes reflected contradictory aspirations like the rights of man as distinct from the rights of the people, or the land-hunger as more powerful than the desire for freedom. Pernicious in so far as they glorified death, war and martyrdom for « the Cause », the Irish songs reminded the people of their distinctive cultural inheritance and helped to keep alive a tradition of freedom, a sense of national community and a deep respect for human rights which is largely positive.

English villages in the Londonderry plantation

The English adventurers who created a ‘plantation’ throughout much of Ulster in the first quarter of the 17th century did so by seeking to transform the cultural landscape. The flowering of English cultural institutions could be enhanced within the appropriate environment, reasoned the plantation planners, and the ‘planting’ of villages was perhaps the most fundamental element of the programme to create that environment. The Ulster plantation provides an excellent opportunity to define early 17th-century English standards for the creation of a domestic settlement abroad, and perhaps also at home.

Review: The Plantation of Ulster: British Settlement in an Irish Landscape, 1600–1670

Review: The Plantation of Ulster: British Settlement in an Irish Landscape, 1600–1670

The Scotch-Irish Influence on American English

T IS GENERALLY ADMITTED that some linguistic influence must have been exerted on American speech by people known as Scotch-Irish, who were second largest national group in colonial America, after English. It has been estimated that up to 300,000 Scotch-Irish emigrants went to America in eighteenth century (Doyle 1981, pp.59-60, 73-74). Most of these were Presbyterians, descendants of Lowland Scots who had settled in Ulster as part of seventeenth-century Plantation of province. While Scotch-Irish have been eulogized for their contribution to spheres of religion, education, and politics, enjoying an almost mythical reputation as patriots, pioneers, and Indian fighters, full extent of their influence on American folk speech (and indeed folk culture as a whole) has yet to be assessed. This is a difficult subject, calling for detailed knowledge of dialects on both sides of Atlantic, and it is attended by several problems which will be outlined here. There are many differences from standard British English which are shared by Ulster and America. One difficulty is to decide whether a feature common to both varieties of language is attributable to influence of one on other, or merely a result of what Marckwardt calls the colonial lag(1958, pp. 60-80; cf. Braidwood 1969, pp. 22-32). The English language was transplanted to America and Ulster at same time. Jamestown in Virginia was founded in 1607, and plan for Plantation of Ulster was issued in 1609. Consequently, both America and Ulster have been able to preserve scattered features of Elizabethan English which died out in England. Archaisms which were once standard, such as deck of cards (Standard British pack), use of quit meaning 'to stop', and predicative use of sick for 'ill', have survived independently in American and Ulster (and such archaisms survive also in other British dialects). They do not indicate Scotch-Irish influence on American English. Another problem can be illustrated by American and Ulster dialect

R.J. HUNTER. (Ed.) The Plantation in Ulster in Strabane Barony, CoTyrone c.1600-41. (Derry: Institute of Continuing Education, New University of Ulster. 1982. Pp.vii + 61. £1.25.)

R.J. HUNTER. (Ed.) <u>The Plantation in Ulster in Strabane Barony, CoTyrone c.1600-41</u>. (Derry: Institute of Continuing Education, New University of Ulster. 1982. Pp.vii + 61. £1.25.)

‘English’ houses built at Moneymore, County Londonderry, c. 1615

SUMMARYFew houses constructed by English settlers in Ulster during the early 17th century survive, although the influence of this period of innovation on local building traditions has proved to be both permanent and widespead. The examination of archives relating to the erection of some such houses in south Londonderry by the Drapers' Company enables an assessment of their original construction and form. When building contracts, accounts, receipts, workmen's wage sheets and contemporary plans relating to the erection of these houses are collated from the archives at Drapers' Hall, London, and then contrasted with the descriptions of the corresponding houses in the better-known surveys of the Ulster plantation, additional observations on the reliability of the latter can be made.

URBANISATION IN NORTH-WEST ULSTER, 1609–1670

A central problem confronting most Irish urban historians is the extent to which the evolution of the urban network has been influenced by Tudor and Stuart plantations. The official plantation of Ulster by James I from 1609 to 1625 was not responsible for the first introduction of towns, even to west Ulster, but because of the survival of adequate source data it is not possible to observe some of the most important processes of urbanisation in operation until this period. In north-west Ulster these processes include the emergence of an urban hierarchy where town size was related to function and to the density of the adjacent rural population, and the development of an urban network whose spatial relationships were closely governed by the pattern of dispersed rural settlement. Although these developments were associated with plantation settlement, this does not necessarily imply that they were brought about intentionally by the official plantation scheme.

The Anglo-Irish livestock trade of the seventeenth century

‘ … it is most certain that from I Jacobi to this day so long as Ireland hath had any degree of peace there hath been every year as great an importation of Irish cattle as there is now, and this he that will take the pains to examine the customs books shall find … ’Sir Heneage Finch, in the house of commons, 18 October 1665The Tudor subjugation of Ireland which was accomplished by the very end of Elizabeth's reign left the Irish economy in a depressed condition. But conquest brought more than economic dislocation. The success of English arms involved the destruction of the old Irish social system and permitted the development of a much more thorough programme of plantation than had been possible during the sixteenth century. The Ulster plantation, which followed the flight of the earls in 1607, was succeeded by smaller plantations in Leinster, Connaught, Wexford and King's County before 1641.