“SCOTCH-IRISH or ULSTER SCOTS,” by David Dobson

Since the 12th century, the kings of England had laid claim to Ireland and had attempted to settle English colonists there. This had been opposed by the indigenous population, who for centuries struggled with the invaders. The only notable Scottish presence in Ireland during the medieval period was from 1315-1318, when Robert Bruce, who had successfully driven the English out of Scotland, sent an army to assist the Irish in their fight. However, the English held firm, and gradually their hold, especially in the south-east of Ireland, was intensified. The Protestant Reformation of the mid-16th century added to the problem, with the native Irish and many of the English settlers (the so-called “Old English”) remaining loyal to Catholicism.

Scottish settlement in Ireland dates from the late 16th century. In that period, warriors from the West Highlands of Scotland, the “galloglasses,” came to Ulster to aid the Irish in their struggle against Queen Elizabeth I’s forces. These “galloglasses” (from the Gaelic “gall-oglach,” meaning foreign warriors) were Gaelic-speaking Catholic Highlanders and thus were almost indistinguishable from the native Irish. Many of them were McDonalds and their septs were largely from Argyllshire.

On the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, the king of Scotland, James VI, became King James I of England as well. He inherited the Irish problem and decided to resolve it by settling substantial numbers of English and Scots in Ulster. In 1607, various Irish lords of Ulster abandoned their lands there and fled to the continent. This property then was returned to King James, who planned an organized settlement in Ulster, as had occurred in Munster in the 16th century.  Under this plan estates ranging between 1,000 and 3,000 acres were allocated to landlords who would be responsible for settling Scots and English immigrants thereon and developing the land by building towns. Many of the landlords, known as “undertakers,” originated in the Scottish Lowlands and in the south-west counties in particular. They in turn recruited settlers largely from their existing estates or places of residence in Scotland. The main counties in Scotlandfrom which the Scots moved were–Kirkcudbrightshire, Wigtonshire, Ayrshire, Renfrewshire, Dumfries-shire and Lanarkshire. Thus, the Crown was effectively driving an English-speaking Protestant wedge between the Catholic Irish and their co-religionists in the Highlands of Scotland. Soon, Scottish settlers could be found throughout the province of Ulster, especially in the counties of Antrim, Londonderry, Tyrone, Donegal, Fermanagh, Armagh, and Cavan.

The next milestone in this process were the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (known to Anglo-centric historians as the English Civil War), that began in 1638 and ended in 1651. In Ireland it began with the Rising of 1641. The initial successes of the “rebels” resulted in a Scottish Covenanter Army arriving in Ulster during 1642 to defend the Protestant settlers there. While a number of the early Scots settlers in Ulster had been Episcopalian, from the 1640s on the vast majority were of the Presbyterian persuasion. The army chaplains that arrived with the Scots army in 1642 established the Presbyterian Church as the predominant church of the Scottish settlers in Ireland. By 1690, the Synod of Ulster was created, which represented 120 congregations and a population of 150,000 Scots and their descendants. These churches were largely staffed by ministers educated at the University of Glasgow.

During the second half of the 17th century, immigrants from Scotland flowed steadily into Ulster. Some arrived as refugees, such as the Covenanters who fled from Scotland during “the killing time,” while others arrived to escape the famines that ravaged Scotland during the 1690s. During the Restoration period, the Stuart kings of England attempted to impose Episcopacy, to which a largely hostile Presbyterian Scotland responded with armed rebellion. The government met the rebellion with draconian methods, such as execution and forced transportation, causing an exodus to America, Holland, and Ireland during the 1680s. 

In England, the Catholic King James II fled to France in 1688 to be replaced by the Protestants William and Mary. In Ireland, the Earl of Antrim raised a Jacobite army in support of King James and besieged Londonderry. James arrived with French support in 1689, but he was defeated by the forces of King William at the Battle of the Boyne.

Although the Presbyterians had given their full support to the Crown during the Williamite Wars, they were subsequently treated as second-class citizens in Ireland by its English rulers. Presbyterian and other Dissenting ministers were not recognized by the State, all public office holders were required to be Episcopalian, while Presbyterians were required to pay tithes to finance the Episcopal Church of Ireland. Such facts, together with changing economic circumstances and rent-racking, contributed to the great Scotch-Irish emigrations of the 18th century, starting with a movement to New England in 1718.

Genealogical.com publishes nearly 40 books about Scots-Irish families.  Here are some of them:

• Genealogy at a Glance: Scots-Irish Genealogy Research
• SCOTS-IRISH LINKS, 1525-1825: CONSOLIDATED EDITION. In Two Volumes
• A New Genealogical Atlas of Ireland. Second Edition
• Searching for Scotch-Irish Roots in Scottish Records, 1600-1750
• The Scotch-Irish in America
• The Scotch-Irish. Two Volumes
• Chronicles of the Scotch-Irish Settlement in Virginia, Extracted from the Original Court Records of Augusta County, 1745-1800
• A History of the Irish Settlers in North America
• Ulster Sails West
• County Antrim, Ireland, 1851 Census (Fragments)
• Irish Names and Surnames
• Pioneer Irish in New England
• The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland [1652-1660]
• The Irish and Anglo-Irish Landed Gentry
• The People of Belfast, 1600-1799