Early development After some minor settling during the late
Tudor and early
Stuart periods, the first major influx of Lowland Scots and Border English Protestant settlers into Ulster came in the first two decades of the 17th century. Before the
Plantation of Ulster (and even before the
Flight of the Earls), there was the 1606 independent Scottish settlement in east
Down and
Antrim. It was led by adventurers
James Hamilton and
Sir Hugh Montgomery, two Ayrshire
lairds. Montgomery was granted half of
Lord of Upper Clandeboye Conn McNeill O'Neill's land, a significant Gaelic lordship in Ulster, as a reward for helping him escape from English captivity. Hamilton forced himself in on this deal when he discovered it and, after three years of bickering, the final settlement gave Hamilton and Montgomery each one-third of the land. Starting in 1609, Scots began arriving into state-sponsored settlements as part of the
Plantation of Ulster. This scheme was intended to confiscate all the lands of the
Gaelic Irish nobility in Ulster and to settle the province with Protestant Scottish and English colonists. Under this scheme, a substantial number of Scots were settled, mostly in the south and west of Ulster. While many of the Scottish planters in Ulster came from southwest Scotland, a large number came from the southeast, including the unstable regions right along the border with England (the
Scottish Borders and
Northumberland). These groups were from the Borderers or
Border Reivers culture, which had familial links on both sides of the Anglo-Scottish border. The plan was that moving these Borderers to Ireland would both solve the Borders problem and tie down Ulster. This was of particular concern to
James VI of Scotland when he became King of England, since he knew Scottish instability could jeopardise his chances of ruling both kingdoms effectively. During the
Irish Rebellion of 1641, the native Irish
gentry attempted to extirpate the English and Scottish settlers in revenge for being driven off their ancestral land, resulting in severe violence, massacres and ultimately leading to the deaths of between four and six thousand settlers over the winter of 1641–42. Native Irish civilians were massacred in return. The Ulster Scots population in Ireland was probably preserved from destruction during the subsequent
Irish Confederate Wars, when a Scottish
Covenanter army was landed in the province to protect the Ulster-Scottish settlers from native Irish landowners. The war itself, part of the
Wars of the Three Kingdoms, ended in the 1650s, with the
Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. At the head of the army,
Oliver Cromwell conquered all of Ireland. Defeating the Irish Confederates and
English Royalists on behalf of the
English Parliamentarians, he and his forces employed methods and inflicted casualties among the civilian Irish population that have long been commonly considered by contemporary sources, historians and the popular culture to be outside of the accepted military ethics of the day (see more on the
debate here). After the Cromwellian war in Ireland was over, many of their soldiers settled permanently in eastern Ulster. Under the
Act of Settlement 1652, all Catholic-owned land was confiscated and the
British Plantations in Ireland, which had been destroyed by the rebellion of 1641, were restored. However, due to the Scots' enmity to the English Parliament in the final stages of the
English Civil War, English settlers rather than Scots were the main beneficiary of this scheme. There was a generation of calm in Ireland until another war broke out in 1689, again due to political conflict closely aligned with ethnic and religious differences. The
Williamite war in Ireland (1689–91) was fought between
Jacobites who supported the restoration of the Catholic
James II to the throne of England and
Williamites who supported the Protestant
William of Orange. The majority of the
Protestant colonists throughout Ireland but particularly in Ulster, fought on the Williamite side in the war against the
Jacobites. The fear of a repeat of the massacres of 1641, fear of retribution for religious persecution, as well as their wish to hold on to lands which had been confiscated from Catholic landowners, were all principal motivating factors. The Williamite forces, composed of British, Dutch,
Huguenot and Danish armies, as well as troops raised in Ulster, ended Jacobite resistance by 1691, confirming the Protestant minority's monopoly on power in Ireland. Their victories at
Derry,
the Boyne and
Aughrim are
still commemorated by the
Orange Order into the 21st century. Finally, another major influx of Scots into northern Ireland occurred in the late 1690s, when tens of thousands of people fled a famine in Scotland to come to Ulster. It was only after the 1690s that Scottish settlers and their descendants, the majority of whom were
Presbyterian, gained numeric superiority in Ulster, though still a minority in Ireland as a whole. Along with
Catholics, they were legally disadvantaged by the
Penal Laws, which gave full rights only to members of the
Church of Ireland (the
Anglican state church), who were mainly
Anglo-Irish (themselves often
absentee landlords), native Irish
converts or the descendants of English settlers. For this reason, up until the 19th century, there was considerable disharmony between
Dissenters and the ruling
Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. With the enforcement of
Queen Anne's 1704
Popery Act, which caused further discrimination against all who did not participate in the
established church, considerable numbers of Ulster-Scots migrated to the colonies in
British America throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. In fact, these 'Scots-Irish' from Ulster and Lowland Scotland comprised the most numerous group of immigrants from Great Britain and Ireland to the American colonies between 1717 and 1775, with over 100,000 leaving Ulster at the time. Members of the Church of Ireland mostly consisted of the
Protestant Ascendancy, Protestant settlers of English descent who formed the
elite of 17th and 18th century Ireland. For this reason, up until the 19th century, and despite their common fear of Irish Catholics, there was considerable disharmony between the Presbyterians and the Protestant Ascendancy in Ulster. As a result of this, many Ulster-Scots, along with Catholic native Irish, ignored religious differences to join the
United Irishmen and participate in the
Irish Rebellion of 1798, in support of
Age of Enlightenment-inspired
egalitarian and
republican goals influenced by the
French Revolution. ==Scotch-Irish Americans and Canadians==