Ireland and New England before 1714
On the map of Ireland the province of Ulster gathers into a circle nearly a quarter of the territory of the island. Its southerly bound runs from Donegal Bay on the west to Carlingford Bay on the east. In the centre of Ulster lies County Tyrone, with the counties of Donegal, Londonderry, and Antrim along its northern borders to fend the sea. This is the heart of the Scotch Irish country. South of County Tyrone are Fermanagh, Monaghan, and Armagh, counties not so closely associated with early Protestant migration. South of Monaghan, bordering the Roman Catholic province of Leinster, is Cavan, and to the east, touching Armagh, lies County Down whose shores are less than a dozen miles from Ayrshire in Scotland.
Donegal and Tyrone are drained by the Finn and the Mourne, two rivers which unite at Strabane to form the Foyle. The Foyle flows northward across Londonderry to the sea. From Lough Neagh on the eastern border of Tyrone the Bann flows north also to the sea, separating the counties of Londonderry and Antrim. The source-lands of the Foyle and the Bann had supported a Scotch population for several generations before the year 1718 ; of this population and its interest in America the following pages give some account.
The temperature of Ulster is milder than that of New England, and even warmer than will be found in northern England. Snow rarely lies on the ground over a month in the winter. The gaunt, gloomy mountains and the barren moorlands give some parts of the country a forbidding aspect. There are fine streams which leap down the steeps and gurgle through the rocky foot-hills, sweeping gracefully and sleepily across the moors and mead ows toward the sea.
In the days of the early eighteenth century mills for lumber and grain were dotted over this country, and everywhere in Northern Ireland were the patches of green grass upon which the flax was spread to bleach in the sun.
The villages comprised usually little more than a few houses along a winding country road, with a lane here and there to tie a wayward hut to the mother flock. The better houses were built with thick walls of stone, sometimes with projecting buttresses and old-fashioned turrets. Their windows were leaded, and over the door a carved stone gave the birth-date of the house. Upon this stone was lavished all the art of which the dwelling could boast.
Of the houses at Omagh an English traveller says : "A number of the houses were thatched; being repaired at different periods, as necessity required, the roofs often presented a grotesque appearance, and were decked in all the colours of the year; the fresh straw of autumn on the part lately done, and the green verdure of spring in the plentiful crop of weeds which grew on the more ancient."
Of the people themselves much will be said from time to time in these pages. The Irish or Celts were everywhere, although less numerous than in the Southern provinces. They were largely Roman Catholics and therefore at the time legally deprived of the powers and privileges that the humblest laborer today expects as a matter of right. In the more remote regions the Irish were scarcely above the condition of savages, living upon game and abandoning agriculture to the conquering race.
The Scotch, invited by the King to inhabit confiscated Irish lands, were in almost every village, as their Presbyterian chapels bore witness. But during the century of their occupation of Ulster their thrift and energy had battled with but moderate success against the ravages of war and the burden of hostile laws.
The third element in the population was the ruling class. This class was largely English, supplemented by Scotch and Irish landowners, nearly all of whom through self-interest or conviction upheld the Established Church, and by virtue of this allegiance had access to the magistracy and the army.
Such a population offered endless opportunity for friction and discontent. And yet had there been an eighteenth century Lord Cromer to do for Ireland what the present administrator has done for Egypt, one may feel certain that the Irish question of today would never have existed.
The Scotch Irish who came from Ireland to America are criticised for their personal habits as much as they are praised for their more vital good qualities. That these defects persisted in Ulster is confirmed by a generous and kindly English traveller, John Gamble, who in 1810 saw them in their homes. Stopping at a roadside cottage one day for dinner he decided that he would ask for eggs, as safer than some other foods of unknown composition. The good woman who presided over the home, roasted an egg or two in ashes before her blazing fire. When he asked if they were done "she took a long pin with which she had been picking her teeth and thrusting it into the side of the egg: Ah! weel-a-wot, surr, proceeded she, presenting it to him: it's as weel done an egg as ony in Christendom. " Bread, with butter dexterously spread with the thumb, after the custom of the people, completed the meal. Mr. Gamble then continues:
"A few years ago the Presbyterians in the Country parts of this Kingdom were not much cleaner than their Scottish ancestors. The inside of a vessel was seldom washed and the outside still seldomer."
Confirmation of this view comes from Arthur Lee, who visited Pittsburg in 1784. He describes the town as inhabited almost entirely by Scots and Irish, living "in paltry log-houses, and as dirty as in the north of Ireland, or even Scotland."
But there were characteristics of these Scotch Irish husbandmen more racial and permanent than mere habits of cleanliness. Gamble was a shrewd observer of these: "It is astonishing," he says, "how little idea Presbyterians have of pastoral beauty; the Catholic has ten times more fancy but a Presbyterian minds only the main chance. If he builds a cottage, it is a prison in miniature; if he has a lawn, it is only grass ; the fence of his grounds is a stone wall, seldom a hedge. ... A Presbyterian has a sluggish imagination : it may be awakened by the gloomy or terrific, but seldom revels in the beautiful."
These were the people whom we call Scotch Irish, a term which was in use as early as the seventeenth century. They came to America, not as discoverers, but as the pioneers of their race ; they defended the frontiers against Indians, and their numbers in the South so much augmented the forces in the Revolutionary army that they may fairly be said to have saved Washington from defeat. To these people the British Colonies in America were not unknown. Intercourse between Ireland and New England has gone on with little interruption from very early days. During the first century after the settlement of Boston, non-conformist ministers of Ireland and New England were in close touch; members of the Mather family were as familiar with the streets of Dublin as they were with the three green hills in the Bay colony's chief town; and more than one early attempt was made to transplant Ulster settlers. Another century witnessed a steady migration of the Protestant inhabitants of Ulster, until by estimation a third of the population had crossed the Atlantic. During the last fifty years central and southern Ireland have sent so many Roman Catholic emigrants that our American cities one and all feel the power of their numbers. The Atlantic States are today a New Ireland, influenced in the rural districts by those of Scotch Irish descent, and governed in the cities by the Celtic Irish.
In 1636 a desire to emigrate took firm hold upon the people in the towns near Belfast. Their leaders were four able men : the Rev. Robert Blair of Bangor, county Down; the Rev. James Hamilton who preached at Ballywaiter, a little village a few miles east of Belfast ; the Rev. John McLellan of the neighboring town of Newtownards; and the Rev. John Livingston who had been deposed from the church at Killinchy in the diocese of Down.
These earnest clergymen, living within the radius of a few miles of Bangor, became more and more dissatisfied with the Established Church and its order of service. Blair was their leader, a man of " majestic, awful, yet amiable countenance" who gradually drew into his circle the clergymen of eight or nine adjoining parishes. He was suspended from his charge, and by the varying authorities reinstated and twice deposed for non-conformity, and finally his followers suffered a like fate. They found it difficult to preach in Ireland, and asked Livingston, a very eloquent speaker, to visit Boston in company with William Wallace, to obtain favorable terms from the Governor living there for a settlement in New England.
Mr. Wallace delayed so long to bid farewell to his family that the two agents lost the desired ships then sailing from London. Meeting Mr. John Humphrey they agreed to go in his ship, and so were unable to accept Mr. Bellingham's later offer of passage in a larger ship. At Dorchester, England, they tarried to listen to the Rev. John White, a promoter of the colony of the Massachusetts Bay; at last setting sail they encountered head winds and were forced to put in at Plymouth. There Wallace fell ill, and they decided to abandon the voyage. Livingston never became an emigrant, but his son Robert settled later upon the Hudson, and the soil of Livingston manor nurtured a race of American statesmen and soldiers.
Persecution still continued in Ireland, and a kindly invitation from the Governor and Council in New England determined the leaders to order a ship to be built for them near Belfast, of about one hundred and fifty tons burden. Full of hope they named her the " Eagle Wing," from that beautiful passage in Exodus where the Lord said to Moses: "Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine."
One cannot but wonder, recalling the little settlement at Boston, what would have been the effect of the arrival of four or five very able Presbyterian ministers at that time. Blair and Livingston, McLellan and Hamilton were men of education, property, and family. Hamilton's uncle, Lord Clandeboye, had befriended them; McLellan and Livingston were by ties of marriage or descent closely allied with the Scottish aristocracy. Blair was a prince among leaders, and rose to be moderator of the General Assembly in Scotland ; in 1648 he represented it in an endeavor to have Cromwell impose Presbyterianism upon England.
The "Eagle Wing" set sail September 9, 1636, from Lough Fergus, but was soon compelled to put in at Lough Ryan in Scotland to stop dangerous leaks; she then turned her prow westward. Tempestuous weather during the three or four hundred leagues which the ship covered weakened and at last crushed the rudder, "brake much of our gallionhead, our fore-cross-tree, and tare our fore-sail; five or six of our chainplaitts made up; ane great beam under the gunner-roome door brake ; seas came in over the round-house, and brake ane plank or two in the deck, and wett all them that were between decks." Thus Livingston tells of those trying days when men worked incessantly at the pumps, and repaired the damage from wave and wind as rapidly as they could find opportunity. Meanwhile their leader Blair lay ill in the cabin; some of the company of one hundred and forty passengers died, and a baby came into that storm-tossed world of water. When the captain, who did not dare to face another hurricane off the New England coast, turned the little ship toward Ireland the courageous Blair fell in a swoon, unable to think of failure after so much distress. Through it all Blair's infant son, who had been ill at departure, lived and even grew stronger, so that, in the quaint language of the chronicle, "it pleesed the only wise God to twist in this small ply in Mr. Blair's rod."
The early appearance of Scotch names in America is due largely to the wars between England and Scotland. Many prisoners taken at the battles of Dunbar and Worcester were sold into service in the colonies. These men worked out their terms of servitude at the Lynn iron works and elsewhere, and founded honorable families whose Scotch names appear upon our early records. No account exists of the Scotch prisoners that were sent to New England in Cromwell's time; at York in 1650 were the Maxwells, Mclntires, Junkinses and Grants. The Mackclothlans, 2 later known as the Claflins, gave a governor to Massachusetts and distinguished merchants to New York city. In Prendergast's "Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland" reference is made to attempts to strengthen the Protestant population of Catholic Ireland by offering inducements to New England families to migrate. These efforts of 1651, 1655 and 1656 led to the transplanting of many Yankee families to Limerick and Garristown, where their descendants perhaps still reside.
During Charles the Second's time the harshness of the laws in Scotland as well as in Ireland led to many plans for removal to America. Hugh Campbell, a Boston merchant, obtained permission from the Bay colony in February, 1679-80, to transport settlers from Scotland and establish them in the Nepmug country in the vicinity of Springfield.
None of these Scotchmen, however, can properly be associated with Ulster, and their interest in America is not germain to our subject.
What object the captain of the ship George of Londonderry had in his voyage to Boston in 1675 we now have no means of knowing. The records of the Court of Assistants 2 show that the mariners of the ship appealed to the authorities for payment of wages. The names of the members of the crew were Philip Owen, Charles Frost, John Bell, Arthur Richards and William Maxfeild.
The next effort to establish a colony originated in Ireland. Wait Winthrop in Boston wrote to his brother Fitz-John of Connecticut December 29, 1684, that a gentleman had lately come over, "a man of some interest there," and was looking out for a plantation for about one hundred families. Winthrop talked with him of Quinnebaug 3 and was told that an abundance of people would come over if they could be assured that they could have liberty of conscience, their views being "much of the same stamp " as those in New England. We know that conditions in a large part of Ireland were distressing ; this was especially true in the counties of Derry and Donegal, where many ministers of the presbytery of Lagan resolved to emigrate to America. But the fever for migration that was rising subsided upon the death of Charles II, February 6, 1685; no movement to New England took place, although a few settlements were made in Maryland, Pennsylvania and the Carolinas, where ships engaged in the tobacco trade found their ports of destination.
With the coming of James II to power, Roman Catholic influence began to be felt, and the Protestant population of Ireland was sure to suffer. In 1686 and 1687 high offices in the church and army were given to Papists, and an effort was made to bring English universities under Catholic rule. The Earl of Tyrconnel, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and an influential member of the Roman Catholic party at Court, at once " purged " the army in Ireland of its Protestant officers. But perceiving an opportunity to show loyalty to King James by sending to England three thousand men to aid him in his encounter with William, Prince of Orange, "it pleased God to so Infatuate the Councils of my Lord Tyrconnel," as "Walker, historian of the siege, puts it, that he sent out of Ireland the Catholic regiment quartered at Derry. Tyrconnel soon saw his error in withdrawing this force from Derry, and dispatched the Earl of Antrim to the north. When the news of Antrim's approach reached the city there was great indecision; but caution soon gave way before hotter blood, the bridge was drawn up and the gates were locked. Thus began the defence of Derry, April 20, 1689. Incident at once crowded upon incident ; sally and assault, plot and treachery, vacillation and courage gave to each day a new sensation, until Colonel Lundy, commander of the besieged forces, having advocated a secret withdrawal of officers and gentlemen, leaving the citizens of Derry to the mercy of the enemy, was forced to flee in disguise with a pack on his back. Then in truth began the famous days of waiting and fighting, under the leadership of a militant clergyman, the Rev. George Walker, rector of Donaghmore in County Tyrone. To add to the distress of the besieged their enemies drove thousands of women and children from the neighboring towns under the walls of Derry where they had,to be rescued and fed by a garrison already short of stores. Then came the days when horse flesh was served to the soldiers, while dogs "fatned by eating the bodies of the slain Irish " sold by the quarter for five shillings and six pence, and cats brought four shillings and six pence each. On the 30th of July, in the time of their direst extremity, two ships ladened with provisions came up the Lough, broke the boom and reached the town amid hysterical tears and thanksgiving. They had but one pint of meal for each man and nine lean horses left for food.
King William relieved the Presbyterians of some of their burdens by obtaining through his influence the Toleration Act (May 24, 1689). The waste lands soon began to respond to the plow, and thrifty settlers from the Scottish lowlands and Lancashire came over the water to aid those that had survived the war.
Under Queen Anne (1702-1714) the Presbyterians in Ireland again lost almost every advantage that had been gained, and became by the Test Act of 1704 virtually outlaws. Their marriages were declared invalid, and their chapels were closed. They could not maintain schools nor hold office above that of a petty constable.
The commercial acts of 1698, restricting the Irish woolen industry and encouraging the manufacture of linen, brought ultimate improvement in Ireland because lands formerly devoted to grazing could now be devoted in part to tillage; but for some years immediately following the passage of the acts there was great industrial depression. Distress due to the lack of work, together with the want of religious freedom and political opportunity, excited the sympathy of non-conformists beyond the bounds of Ireland.
During these years the Rev. Cotton Mather was in close touch with religious and political affairs in Scotland and Ireland. His father was a Master of Arts of Trinity College, Dublin, and his two uncles, Nathaniel and Samuel, were well known in Dublin as preachers. To the University of Glasgow the Rev. Cotton Mather sent books and pamphlets from time to time, and had received there the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1710. He was therefore interested both in Ireland and in Scotland. More over he was a far seeing patriot of broad views and sympathies, to whom New England owes much. He was the leading clergyman in a colony where his religion was the foremost force in education, in society, and in official life.
On the 20th of September, 1706, Mather records : "I write letters unto diverse persons of Honour both in Scotland and in England; to procure Settlements of Good Scotch Colonies, to the Northward of us. This may be a thing of great consequence." It was Mather's plan to settle hardy families on the frontiers in Maine and New Hampshire to protect the towns and churches of Massachusetts from the French and Indians. In his Memorial of the Present deplorable state of New England he suggests that a Scotch colony might be of good service in getting possession of Nova Scotia.
With the death of Queen Anne in 1714 and the accession of George I the period of ferment in Irish emigration may be said to begin. In that year two clergymen set out for New England, and their residence in America probably had more to do with the great migration of 1718 than we can as yet demonstrate. They were the Rev. William Homes of Strabane in County Tyrone who settled on Martha's Vineyard, and the Rev. Thomas Craighead, his brother-in-law, of the town of Donegal, who lived for some years in Freetown, a village about ten miles east of Fall River. There was, however, no immediate migration resulting from their arrival in New England. A few passengers had arrived in the year 1716 in the Truth and Daylight, the Mary Ann, and the "Globe"; but in 1717 when piracy was rife along the New England coast the records, as communicated by Governor Shute to the Lords of Trade, show that only fourteen male servants or apprentices arrived from Dublin, in August, 1717, and nine from Belfast in September of that year. None arrived at Boston from January to June 29th of the year 1718, although Captain Gibbs brought a few persons from Dublin to Marblehead in May. In less than two years from the arrival of the Rev. William Boyd in July, 1718, five or six hundred men, women and children had come over to settle.
But before considering the careers and influence of Homes and Craighead, the economic and religious condition of Ulster at this time should be made clear. Dean Swift, in speaking of tyrannical land lords, wrote in 1720, "Whoever travels this country [Ireland] and observes the face of nature, or the faces, and habits, and dwellings of the natives, will hardly think himself in a land where law, religion, or common humanity is professed." And he explains that the landlords by "screwing and racking " their tenants had reduced the people to a worse condition than the peasants in France or the vassals in Germany and Poland. The property owners were pressed by debt incurred often in London or on the Continent. They felt forced to exact the last penny from their tenants, and too often turned a thrifty Scotch Protestant farmer from the land he had by incessant toil brought into good condition so that the land might go to two or more Catholic families who, while living together in poverty, could by their united efforts pay a greater return. The Irish were not fond of the plow and the land suffered under their hands. Sir Thomas Phillips told King Charles I that the native Irish would give increasing rents rather than move ; therefore the landlord could hope to reap only half the profit from English and Scotch farmers that might come from the Irish.
As late as 1790 Lord Chancellor Clare again repeated the explanation: "The great misfortune of Ireland, and particularly [of] the lower classes of its inhabitants is, that at the expiration of every lease, the farm is put up to auction, and without considering whether it is a Protestant or a Papist whether he is industrious or indolent whether he is solvent or a beggar, the highest bidder is declared the tenant by the law agent of the estate, I must say to the disgrace of the landlord, and most frequently much in his advantage."
These were the conditions in Ulster which turned the eyes of the intelligent Protestant farmer toward the American colonies. The desire to emigrate had deeper and more immediate sources than a century of intercourse and sympathy between Ireland and America.