Punitive Legislation
They made the short sea journey to Ireland on the promise of land and a better life. They were given low rent leases to entice them to make the journey. They replaced the Gaelic culture with their own and brought their own religion with them. What is not widely known is that these people were discriminated against by existing legislationl
Under the Test Act of 1704, only those accepting the religious practice of the Anglican Church were entitled to hold civil or military office.
Everyone, regardless of religion was expected to pay tithes, a tenth of their earnings to the Anglican Church. This was resented bitterly as the Scots regarded the Bishops of the Anglican Church as being corrupt and many were in fact absentee landlords , living in England or abroad.
Until 1737, marriages within no-Conforming Churches were not recognized as being valid and Dissenters were excluded from holding positions of trust and profit under the Crown and particularly in town corporations.
The Land Takes its Toll
The leases the Scots received were 21 year leases and when these expired rents were raised arbitrarily. Jonathan Swift touched on rent increases in his 1727 essay, ‘A Short View of the present state of Ireland.’ In it he estimated that half the net revenues of Ireland were taken out of the country and spent in England.
‘Increasing rent,’ he wrote, ‘is squeezed out of the very blood, and vitals and clothes and dwellings of the tenants, who live worse than English beggars. The families of farmers who pay great rents live in filth and nastiness upon buttermilk and potatoes, without a shoe or a stocking to their feet, or a house so convenient as an English hog sty to receive them.’ (1)
Between 1714 and 1719 there was a succession of bad harvests. Poor rainfall reduced crop yields and raised food prices. Poor crops meant unemployment for many labourers. Dearer provisions slashed the real wages of those were still employed. The flax crop was hit which in turn reduced linen production.
In 1716 there was an outbreak of disease which killed off whole herds of sheep and as a consequence ruined many farmers.
In 1718 there was an outbreak of smallpox and fever raged throughout Ulster until 1720.
During the 1720s, those settlers who had received 31 year leases during the Plantation , found these now expiring and the subsequent rent increases caused further hardship.
There was a famine in 1740 during which half a million people perished. Although the Great Famine , or ‘An Gorta Mor’ of 1845 is known by almost everyone, few are aware there were 20 more failures of the potato crop in the hundred years leading up to 1845.
The Great Escape
Following a successful voyage of ‘The Friend’s Goodwill’ in April 1717 from Larne to Boston, the floodgates for the Scots opened and by the time of the American War of Independence in 1775-1783, Benjamin Franklin reckoned that a third of all of the people in Pennsylvania were Ulster-Scots and their descendants ; over 350,000. (2)
As most of these people had spent only one or two generations in Ulster, they should more rightly be considered Scots in transition. Whatever their genealogy, this group made a major impact on the growth of the United States as can be gauged by the number of American leaders, thinkers , entrepreneurs, military men, and American Presidents who had ancestral links with the hills and glens of Ulster.
Sources:
(1) ‘A Short View of the present state of Ireland’. Jonathan Swift
(2) Irish Emigration to USA during the 18th and 19th centuries. Michael Durkin
