The Linen Industry in Ulster (pt2)

SOME EXTRACTS

FROM THE

RECORDS OF

OLD LISBURN

AND THE

MANOR OF KILLULTAGH.

-- -- -- --

 Edited by JAMES CARSON. 

-- -- -- --

CXX.

-- -- -- --

THE LINEN INDUSTRY 

IN ULSTER.

by WILLIAM LARMOR.

(Continued.)

Many Huguenot refugees settled in Waterford in the south of Ireland. At this point it would be interesting to examine briefly why the linen trade made little or no headway in the south of Ireland, and why it became gradually localised in the North, although by the settlement of skilled artisans in Waterford a splendid opportunity was offered for developing the linen manufacture in the south.

The manufacturers of linen during its earlier stages of development were chiefly subsistence farmers, who had small holdings on which they grew a small patch of flax. This flax was spun and manufactured into cloth by the different members of the family for their own use, or to be sold at the best price it would fetch. The growth of Ulster tenant right and the friendly relations existing between landlord and tenant gave a sense of undisturbed possession. The Ulster tenant felt more or less secure so long as he paid his rent. This sense of security, long leases, and fair rents, encouraged the farmer to accumulate a little capital. This was the basis of prosperity in the north. Gradually the farmer was able to buy imported seed which gave a better crop of flax: As his capital increased, and as trade expanded he could buy another loom or two, and perhaps employ a journeyman weaver.

In the south, on the other hand, owing to the operation of the Penal laws, leases were very short, so that there was no encouragement to accumulate capital for to try to improve the land. Rack-rents and tithes kept the farmers in poverty. Attempts were made at several times to establish the moderate modus, which was in operation in Ulster, instead of the tithe on flax. This proposed change invariably met with relentless opposition from the ecclesiastical authorities and could not be established in the South, to the disadvantage of the flax grower. The crop was unprofitable and was only grown in small patches.

The farmers in the North were in a position to make use of all the improvements that were introduced in linen weaving by Crommelin and his countrymen. The farmers in the South were not so fortunately fixed. Consequently the North drew ahead of the South, and linen weaving found its chief centre in Lisburn and neighbourhood. The knowledge of the markets abroad and the quality of cloth suitable for these markets, together with the technical skill of manufacture and the new capital that was introduced by the Huguenot settlers, were all powerful stimulants to the extension of enterprise. In a short time linen weaving extended so that Armagh and Lurgan became important centres of manufacture. The export of linen in the year 1727 amounted in value to £338,444, having increased by £[201],332 since 1701. This is sufficient evidence to prove the economic importance of the Lisburn settlement at a critical period in the history of the trade.

The English policy in accordance with the promise made by William III helped to stimulate the manufacture of linen. An Act was passed by the English Parliament to allow the export of coarse white and brown linens to the colonies, but this benefit was hampered by the working of the Navigation Laws. No colonial products could be imported direct into Ireland on the return voyage without being first landed in England. The system of bounties granted by the British Parliament on the export of linens operated in favour of English and Scottish manufacturers, because the Irish manufacturers who exported their linens to British ports with the idea of re-exporting them to obtain the bounty, had to undergo an expense amounting to 7 per cent, for freight, factorage, and loss of time incurred. In spite of all these disadvantages, the Irish linen manufacturers increased enormously during the eighteenth century. Between 1745 and 1771 the exportation from Great Britain of Irish linens entitled to bounty increased from 101,928 yards to 3,450,224 yards. This increase, however, was partly caused by the import duties which were levied on the importation of foreign linens. The Irish trade was certainly stimulated by these measures. In 1773 the total quantity of Irish linens imported into Great Britain amounted in value to £1,787,617.

The Linen Board.

The Irish Parliament also did much to stimulate the industry. Early in the 18th century premiums were granted to farmers for the cultivation of flax. In 1711 the Linen Board was set up to encourage and supervise the manufacture. The Board met every year in the White Linen Hall in Dublin, and was entrusted with the disposal of the Parliamentary grants, which varied from £10,000 to £33,000 a year, for the purpose of keeping the manufacture abreast of modern technical improvements, securing the best flax-seed providing the best markets and otherwise encouraging the industry. In 1710 an effort seems to have been made by them for the standardisation of cloth. Particular titles were to be given to each description of goods. These were arranged according to the length and width of the webs. "Ulsters" was the name applied to linens of forty-three inches wide and twenty yards long. Linens twenty-eight inches wide and twenty-eight yards long were to be called "Dungannons"; those of the same' length and thirty-one inches wide "Coleraines"; thirty-six inches wide "Lisburns;" thirty-six inches wide and twenty yards long were to be sold as "Lurgans."

It is interesting to note here that the first piece of fine cambric produced in Lurgan was woven by a weaver named Brown in the year 1714. Although it was only a "sixteen hundred" all who saw the wondrous fabric were astonished at the fineness of its texture. Immense curiosity was stirred up about this web all over the country, and many bleachers and drapers travelled long distances to see it. The weaver of this web was presented with a prize of £10 by the Grand Jury of the County, and had the dignity of "Master Weaver" conferred on him. It is stated that he made a tin case for it and carried it about for exhibition in several towns in the North.

Under the Mercantile system there were minute and manifold regulations of industry which in some cases gradually became unworkable and were allowed to lapse. The inspection of linen previous to sale had been established by law for nearly a century before the existence of the Linen Board. This law, like others, was carelessly carried out, and consequently in nearly every market the evil effect of badly-made reeds, short measure, and deficiency in breadth of goods was in evidence. An effort was made by an Act passed in 1719, authorising the trustees of the Board to appoint fit and proper persons in all the market towns to examine linens which were offered for sale. When the goods were found correct in make, length, and breadth, they were to be stamped by persons appointed, called lappers, with their official seal.

These lappers had permission to charge the manufacturer the sum of twopence for each web they examined and stamped. Where goods were disposed of without being examined the seller was liable to a heavy fine. Stringent as this law was, it did not prevent lappers, from accepting bribes to certify as correct, webs which were imperfectly woven and of false measure. In 1723 a new Act was passed for the better protection of buyers but it was also a failure. In 1734 a more penal code received the Royal assent, and like the other it was systematically evaded. In 1757 the seventh Act was passed for stamping and regulating the sale of linens in public markets which also shared the fate of the others.

The matter now appeared hopeless. A great deal of fraud was going on, and in consequence a serious reaction took place in the home and foreign markets against Irish linens. Another effort was made in the year 1762. Mr. John Williamson, who is described as a very energetic and intelligent bleacher, then carrying on a business at Lambeg, had been taking considerable interest in linen manufacture for some years. A meeting of merchants was held in Lisburn, and a committee, with Mr. Williamson at its head, was appointed to proceed to Dublin to lay their case before the Duke of Bedford, then Chief Governor of Ireland. The idea was that lappers should be abolished and inspectors should be chosen from the ranks of manufacturers. As a result a new bye-law was to come into operation on 11th August, 1762, and previous to that date, the trustees were to appoint "fit and proper persons, manufacturers and others" to inspect linens about to be sold in public markets. These officers were to be called "Sealmasters," and they had to produce good securities that they would faithfully discharge their duties.

The first seal was issued under the new law was granted to Mr. W. Dawson, a manufacturer of Hillsborough.

A great outcry was raised all over the country by the weavers. Meetings were held and the following proclamation was issued:--

"This is to give nation to all gentlemen, manufacturers and weavers to meet in a body, like valiant and honest men, at Lisburn, on Tuesday next, that we may oppose the imprudent and oppressive means which are to be used against us by the merchants, and to bring them to reason by fair means, and if that will not do other means will be used, and let us like Demetrius and his craftsmen, stand valiantly up for our Diana, for our craft is in danger."

On the following Tuesday, and for many weeks after on market days, hundreds of weavers paraded the streets of Lisburn armed with blackthorn sticks, obstructed the market, made business impossible, and all the drapers or merchants they could lay their hands on were made to swear that they would not recognise the use of seals for stamping linen webs. No business could be done until Lord Hillsborough took the initiative, and in October in his own town he set the example of personally inspecting and sealing the webs offered for sale, general spirit of conciliation followed, and in a short time the duties of the Sealmaster were found to be of equal advantage to the weaver, the draper, and the bleacher.

This settlement was only shortlived, however. In a short time the same old difficulties cropped up. Weavers evaded the regulation, and the Sealmasters were also accused of accepting bribes. Eventually the whole system became a nuisance and was finally abolished in 1823.

The prosperity of the linen trade in Ireland towards the end of the 18th century is particularly noticeable. This can in some measure be accounted for owing to the modification of the English Commercial olicy. After the American colonies had secured their independence it was evident that the Colonial Policy must undergo a change, and Ireland shared in the benefits of that change. In 1779 some of the principal commercial restrictions were removed, with the result that a thriving trade was opened up with the American States and British Plantations, and exports of linen cloth increased from 18,764,242 yards in 1780 to 53,616,908 yards in 1796, which was enormous.

Although the industry made immense progress during the century it did not increase as rapidly as in England and Scotland, and although some encouragement was given for its development, it was fostered far less than the linen manufacture in England and Scotland. It was a great achievement, therefore, that it should have prospered to such an extent in spite of difficulties and hindrances.

The Irish Parliament had given large premiums for the cultivation of flax, but in spite of all the encouragement given to the growth of flax and the raising of flaxseed, a large sum had annually to be paid away for imported seed, which became a serious drain on the resources of the industry at a time when the accumulation of capital was essential for its development. In 1779 it was calculated that nearly all the seed sown was imported and that it cost the country between £70,000 and £80,000 yearly. Later on flax farming gradually, and imperceptibly became a losing trade owing to competition, caused by the importation of foreign flax from abroad. This gradually became accentuated until at a later date the industry had to be carried on mainly by the importation of raw material from abroad.

(To be continued)

(This article was originally published in the Lisburn Standard on 31 January 1919 as part of a series which ran in that paper each week for several years. The text along with other extracts can be found on my website Eddies Extracts.)

The Linen Industry in Ulster

SOME EXTRACTS

FROM THE

RECORDS OF

OLD LISBURN

AND THE

MANOR OF KILLULTAGH.

-- -- -- --

 Edited by JAMES CARSON. 

-- -- -- --

CXIX.

-- -- -- --

THE LINEN INDUSTRY 

IN ULSTER.

by WM. LARMOR.

As Lisburn has been closely associated with the linen industry from its earliest stages of development in Ireland down to the present time, the history of our staple trade will always provide much interest for the people of the town and neighbourhood. The subject has been rather neglected in the past, and as it affords great scope for research work, it is to be hoped that at some future time an historian worthy of the task will trace with unerring hand the history of the growth and development of the industry in Ireland.

In order to show intelligibly the importance of the part played in this locality during the development of the industry under the domestic system it will be necessary to make a short survey of its history in general in Ireland.

First of all one must examine briefly the commercial policy of England, and the commercial relations existing between England and Ireland during the early stages of the industry. Next, it will be necessary to trace its growth and development under the domestic system, and which have substituted instead the factory system of manufacture.

It is not known when linen was first manufactured in Ireland, but it is assumed that linen making was practised from the earliest times. It is known to have existed during the thirteenth century, and in the fifteenth linen cloth was exported to England and to Antwerp. In the sixteenth century there are more evidences of the industry, but it was during the seventeenth century that the manufacture of linen first came into prominence.

Suppression of Irish Trade.

At that time England was under the sway of the Mercantalist Policy. Under the Mercantile system, in order to have a stock of gold and silver in the country, the immediate object aimed at was to have a favourable balance of trade. To accomplish this and every encouragement was given to the importation of raw materials, but the purchase of foreign manufactures was for the most part prohibited. Unfortunately, this policy was extended to the colonies, and the Mercantalist attitude of mind towards them was that they were to be treated as sources of raw materials which must be manufactured in England and then resold to the colonies. They were not allowed to compete in foreign markets against the mother country and any industries that showed signs of developing were suppressed. It was intended that the colonies should remain in this condition, and that England should reap all the benefits in return for their defence, etc.

Unfortunately the policy towards Ireland was the same as the colonial policy. In the 17th century at the time of the plantation the natives were regarded in the same way as the Indian natives were regarded, and the idea was to plant colonies and civilize the Irish. Ireland was not allowed to develop and compete with English industries. A series of navigation acts were passed which were aimed primarily against the Dutch, who a- that time were a great carrying power. The principal act passed, in the year 1651 stated that "no goods of the growth or manufacture of Asia, Africa, or America were to be imported into England, Ireland or the Plantations, except in ships belonging to English subjects, and manned by an English captain and by a crew, three-fourths of whom were English; while no goods of any country in Europe were to be imported except in English ships, or ships belonging to the country from which the goods came." This measure was ultimately successful in excluding the Dutch from the carrying trade, but rather unfortunately for Ireland it crippled her shipping, and was hurtful to the linen industry, as we shall see later.

The effect of the English Mercantile Policy on Irish industries will now be noticed, and will see why the linen industry was partially encouraged whilst other industries were crushed.

After the Restoration in 1660 Irish cattle farmers, breeding live stock and shipping them to England to be fattened, for a short time carried on a thriving trade. Soon afterwards English breeders raised a great outcry against the increasing importation of Irish cattle. As England was governed at this period by the land owning classes whose interests were bound up with English farmers, the Cattle Act of 1663 was passed prohibiting the import of Irish cattle. The Irish farmers then turned their attention to sheep farming. Large tracts of land were turned into sheep walks, with the result that wool became very plentiful. The manufacture of woollen goods then became considerable, as the raw material was so cheap, and as the cost of living was so much below that of England wages were low. English clothiers began to feel the competition, so a great outcry was raised against the importation of woollen goods into England, which was said to he ruining their trade. The argument was that as the cost of manufacture was much cheaper in Ireland countervailing duties should be placed on Irish cloth to equalise the prices. As a result of the agitation, and in accordance with the English policy then existing, the famous Act of 1699 was passed placing import duties on Irish cloth, but they were fixed so high as to make the Irish trade impossible; and the result was the ruin of the Irish woollen industry.

This restriction had a most important bearing on the Irish linen industry. It was realised by the English statesmen that in crushing the woollen industry an injustice was being done to the Irish, and that if the manufacture of linen could be encouraged it would in some measure recompense the Irish, and at the same time serve the interest of both countries, for at this time England was importing linen goods from the Low countries and the idea was that the Irish linens would take their place. Accordingly, in 1698 we find that when the English Parliament petitioned William III for the suppression of the Irish woollen trade, his reply contained the following:-- "I will do all that in me lies to discourage the woollen manufacture of Ireland, and to encourage the linen manufacture there."

This clearly marks a very important period in the history of the linen industry, and we shall now consider its effect under the domestic system of manufacture.

Hand Loom Weaving.

Earlier in the century Chief-Governor Stafford had tried to promote the manufacture of linen in Ireland. The extent of this trade at that time can be measured from the fact that in a letter to the King he mentions that he has sent to Holland for £100 worth of flax-seed as he considered the soil good for growing flax, that he had brought some skilled workmen from the Low countries, and that he had already established six or seven looms.

After the Restoration under the administration of the Duke of Ormonde, another attempt was made to establish the linen trade. Messengers were sent to see how the Flemish manufacture was carried out. Some progress was made and when Ormonde returned to England in 1669 two flourishing linen manufacturing centres were in existence, one near Dublin and another at Carrick.

The result of these efforts was swept away during the revolutionary war that followed. In 1698 when the country had slightly recovered, the amount of manufactured linen for export was practically negligible.

The kind of linen manufactured before this period was what is called bandle linen. It was coarse cloth, of narrow width, manufactured without any system of regularity of texture, and only according to the imperfect knowledge and crude ideas of the weaver.

Another very important event happened about this period (1698) which had a very powerful and beneficent influence on the development of linen weaving.

Owing to the revocation of the tolerating Edict of Nantes, a number of Protestant linen weavers fled from France and established themselves, some at Waterford, and some, who preferred to live with their co-religionists, at Lisburn. Amongst those who established themselves in our town was the famous Louis Crommelin. It appears that he came at the invitation of William III, to superintend the linen manufacture.

Crommelin's family had carried on the industry in France for more than four hundred years, and he himself had been head of an extensive linen manufacture in Picardy. The King had appointed him "Overseer of the Royal Linen Manufactory of Ireland," and granted him a patent. He was also given £800 a year for ten years as interest on £10,000 advanced by him for starting the business, an annuity of £200 for life, and also £120 a year for his assistants who were to help him to Superintend the cultivation of flax, and instruct in the latest methods of bleaching. Crommelin on his side agreed to advance sums of money without interest to workmen and their families coming from abroad to enable them to embark on the industry, and also to local workmen destitute of means and anxious to work at the trade. Once Crommelin had started his linen industry at Lisburn he invited over Protestant artisans from France and the Low countries. As a result, a great settlement of weavers was made in Lisburn. Although it had been burnt in the civil wins, the establishment of Crommelin and the other Huguenot refugees soon made Lisburn one of the most flourishing towns in Ireland.

Crommelin faithfully carried out his part of the bargain and did marvels to improve the industry. Under his direction a thousand looms and spinning wheels were imported from Holland, and he gave a premium of £5 on every loom at work. He introduced improvements of his own and was the means of finer linen being made in our neighbourhood than had ever been made in the King's dominions.

(To be continued.)

(This article was originally published in the Lisburn Standard on 24 January 1919 as part of a series which ran in that paper each week for several years. The text along with other extracts can be found on my website Eddies Extracts.)

The Making of the Ulsterman (pt5)

SOME EXTRACTS

FROM THE

RECORDS OF

OLD LISBURN

AND THE

MANOR OF KILLULTAGH.

-- -- -- --

 Edited by JAMES CARSON. 

-- -- -- --

CXVIII.

-- -- -- --

THE MAKING OF THE ULSTERMAN.

By Rev. Dr. J. S. MacIntosh.

From "The Scotch-Irish in America." 1892.

(Continued.)

The Ulsterman's sense of uttermost wrong grew month by month more strong and fiery, until the old, long-surviving loyalty to England died out, and was replaced by the calm, settled, and fearful hatred felt toward the oppressor by the robbed and outraged man whose active, educated conscience told him that he had "his quarrel just."

When his righteous anger was, in the opening years of the eighteenth century reaching its whitest heat, Holland began to call upon him, but more movingly still the stirring American colonies. The transplanted Scot is now ready to become afresh a colonist as the transplanted Scotch-Irishman. What a changed man is he, however. Before, he leaves the shores of Antrim, and the hills of Down, and the shadow of Derry walls, for the Forks of the Delaware, the woods of the Susquehanna, and the hills and dales of Virginia and Tennessee, let us plant him over against the Lowlander that still was the untransplanted Scot.

How like, yet how much unlike! How like; in both Lowlander and Ulsterman is the same strong racial pride, the same hauteur and self-assertion, the same self-reliance, the same close mouth, and the same firm will -- "the stiff heart for the steek brae." They are both of the very Scotch, Scotch. To this very hour, in the remoter and more unchanged parts of Antrim and Down, the country-folks will tell you: "We're no Eerish, bOt Scoatch." All their folk-lore, all their tales, their traditions, their songs, their poetry, their heroes and heroines, and their homespeech, is of the oldest Lowland types and times.

In both Lowlander and Ulsterman there is the same shrewd hard-headedness, the same practical sagacity in affairs, the same tough purpose, the same loyalty to friends, the same moral firmness, the same stiffness in religion. In both there is the same grim caustic humour, reflective and suggestive, rather than explosive or broadly told; the same cool self-measurement and self-trust -- each clearly and honestly knowing just what he can do and going quietly to the doing, neither asking nor wanting help. But the dour Scot and the sturdy Northern have grown to be two distinct men. Yes! the Ulsterman is best called by our own phrase, the Scotch-Irishman; he lays his hands on both, yet stands on his feet apart from the Scot and the Celt. He has the toughness of the one and the dash of the other; but while the Scot has the toughness of the oak -- breaking, not bending -- the Ulsterman has the toughness of the yew; he has the dash of the Celt, but while the dash of the Celt is the leap of the wild horse, the dash of the Ulsterman is the rush of the locomotive -- there's a hand on the lever.

Than the Transplanted Scot --

The Ulsterman has larger versatility. He is more plastic. He adapts himself more quickly to strange places and folks. There is in him more "come and go." The Scot is dour; he is sturdy. He has gained through his exportation and his enforced fight for existence in an alien mass strangely large powers of self-adaptation. He is more thoroughly and speedily responsive to outside influences; the environment tells more rapidly, and completely on him. In a few years the Ulsterman will become the Londoner, New Yorker, or Philadelphian; but the Lowlander is Scot often for life.

The Ulsterman is less insular; he is less the man of a land -- he is the man of a nation; he is less traditional, less provincial; he is not an islander, but an imperialist -- not Scotch nor Irish, but rather British; he is cosmopolitan rather than countrified.

He is more human, less clannish: more genial, less reserved; more accessible, less suspicious of strangers; more neighbourly, less recluse. He has more "manners" than his Scotch cousin, though he makes no pretensions to the polish and suavity and fascination of his Celtic neighbour, whom the dogged Northern thinks "too sweet to be wholesome." He has more fun than the Lowlander, but he dislikes the frolics of the Celt. While the Scot is stern, he is sedate; while the Irishman is poetical, he is practical. The Scot is plain; the Celt is pleasing; the Ulsterman is piquant.

He is more fertile in resource; his colonist life taught him to be ready for any thing; he is handy at many things; he is the typical borderer, pioneer, and scout. He will pass easily from one work or trade or business to another; to-day farmer, to-morrow shop-keeper, and third day something else. But with all his readiness to change, he is ever firm, "locked and bolted to results," with a singularly large gift and power for organization and association.

He is more the man of common sense than a metaphysical subtlety, practical rather than severely logical; he studies use rather than reasons, faces common things more than philosophies, deals with business more than books.

He is democratic rather than monarchical, loyal to principal rather than to persons, attached to institutions rather than families or houses; he sees through the Stuarts quickly, and follows the new house of Orange because it will serve him in his political struggle.

His pugnacity is defensive rather than offensive; his heraldic device is rather "the closed gates" of the threatened town than the old Scot's "spurs and bared blade."

And as he was found at Derry, Enniskillen and the Boyne, and as he is to be found still in the broad lands of Ulster, so to-day and forever when his country, wherever that may be, calls, he will be found, the first to start and the last to quit.


Next Week -- Lisburn Linen Industry.

(This article was originally published in the Lisburn Standard on 17 January 1919 as part of a series which ran in that paper each week for several years. The text along with other extracts can be found on my website Eddies Extracts.)

The Making of the Ulsterman (pt4)

SOME EXTRACTS

FROM THE

RECORDS OF

OLD LISBURN

AND THE

MANOR OF KILLULTAGH.

-- -- -- --

 Edited by JAMES CARSON. 

-- -- -- --

CXVII.

-- -- -- --

THE MAKING OF THE ULSTERMAN.

By Rev. Dr. J. S. MacIntosh.

From "The Scotch-Irish in America." 1892.

(Continued.)

Fresh fusions. There come to Ulster two sets of colonists belonging to allied and yet distinct races. The transplanted Scot is joined in Ulster by the Puritan and the Huguenot. While along the shores of Down and Antrim, and by the banks of the Six Mile Water and the Main, the colonists are almost wholly from the Lowlands of Scotland; upon the shores of Derry and Donegal, and by the banks of the Foyle and the Bann, were planted by the action of the same farseeing James Stuart, bands of English colonists. Large grants of land in the escheated counties of Ulster were bestowed upon the great London companies, and on their vast estates by the Foyle and the Bann were settled considerable numbers of fine old English families. The Englishman may be easily traced to this very day in Derry, and Coleraine and Armagh and Enniskillen. Groups of these Puritans dotted the whole expanse of Ulster, and in a later hour, when the magnificent Cromwell took hold of Ireland, these English colonists were reinforced by not a few of the very bravest and strongest of the Ironsides. To this very hour I know where to lay my hands on the direct lineal descendants of some of Cromwell's most trusted officers, who brought to Ireland blood that flowed in the purest English veins. The defiant city of Derry was the fruit of the English settlement, the royal borough of Coleraine, the Cathedral city of Armagh, the battle-swept Enniskillen, the district between Lisburn and Lough Neagh, and several towns and hamlets along the winding Bann. Among these English settlers were not a few who were ardent followers of George Fox, that man who in many respects was Cromwell's equal and in some his master; these Friends came with a man of great force of character. Thomas Edmundson, who bore arms for the Parliament, and has left behind him a singularly interesting diary. The Friends came to Antrim in 1652, and settled in Antrim and Down; hence come the Pims, the Barclays, the Grubbs, and Richardsons, with many another goodly name of Ulster.

The name of this Irish province was spreading over Europe by the second decade of the 17th century as the "shelter of the hunted;" and soon the Puritan and the Quaker are joined in Ulster by another nobleman of God's making -- the Huguenot from France. Headed by Louis Crommellin they came a little later and settled in and around Lisburn, founding many of the finest industries of Ulster, and giving mighty impulse to those already started. And still later, following the "Immortal William" came some brave burghers from the Holland and the Netherlands. Thus Ulster became a gathering ground for the very finest, most formative, impulsive and aggressive of the free, enlightened, God-fearing peoples of Europe.

Under the influences of the Puritan, the Huguenot, and the Hollander, the Ulsterman began to show a new side to his activity; he grew a busy trader, a man of business, a man of commerce. Ulster became a very hive of busy industries and activities. The coast-traffic with Scotland was weekly increasing, large trade sprang up with England, and soon the Ulster products and the Ulster merchants and skippers were known in the ports and towns of France and Holland. The men of thought and strong convictions are becoming the pushing men of affairs.

These five forces, his chartered rights, his strangerhood, his fierce feuds, his call to self-adaptation, and his marrying and mixing with Puritan, Quaker and Huguenot -- were all willingly accepted and gladly yielded to as either beneficial or unavoidable in his new situation. They left the Ulsterman largely modified inside the sweep of the three-quarter century from his planting, but they left him still the favoured and on the whole well-contented colonist.

But the sky now begins to darken. To those natural or desirable forces, modifying and transforming were now, alas, to be introduced unnatural and repulsive and iniquitous influences, and forces as unjust, unwise and unexpected, as they were irritating and ultimately infuriating.

The dark and wicked forces change the Ulsterman from the contented colonist to the exasperated emigrant.

The Ulsterman an exasperated Emigrant.

There had been known in Ulster what has bean called beautifully and with a sad lingering regret at its too early vanishing -- "The Golden Peaceable Age." It was the age of Usher and Echlin as bishops, and Chichester as deputy. But the clouds rose on the horizon; and the master of the coming tempest is one of those greatest and smallest of men ever being thrown up out of the deeps of English lite. He is Thomas Wentworth, that strange, strong, weak man, friend and foe at once, of England's best.

Wentworth started the Ulsterman's grievance; it was a black day for Ireland, and blacker still for England. The world is hearing a vast deal of the "Irish Question." That political porcupine, in its later form, came forth to the light in Ulster; and it was selfish English statesmen and most despotic churchmen started it. Though the Ulstermen, as a body, refuse to join with the Nationalists of to-day, Ulster and its wrongs and fierce revolt are the beginning of the later land and folk fights. The Ulsterman was the brewer of the storm. He became the "Volunteer" for freedom.

But he was right to let the fiercest hurly-burly play; the air was made foul and stifling; he was a stifling, and the tempest only could give him life breath.

From 1633, when Wentworth opened his star chamber of despots and his high commission courts of persecuting prelates, till 1704, when the sacramental test grew unbearable, Ulster was distracted by English tyrants and Laudian prelates. Cavalier and churchman sowed the wind; and at Marston and Yorktown they reaped the whirlwind.

The wrongs of the once-contented colonist were five-fold: 1. He was wronged by the State. 2. He was wronged by the Church. 3. He was wronged in his home. 4. He was wronged in his trade. 5 He was wronged in his very grave.

By The State.

As Limerick is the city of the violated treaty, so is Ireland the land of broken compacts and dishonoured promises. England wonders at the restlessness of the Green Isle. Nations have long memories. And disbelief that has grown for generations into settled no-faith cannot change into smiling and contented assurance of hope in a decade. Of all parts of Ireland Ulster for a half century has the longest tale of lies and deceptions to present, and the dark catalogue belongs to English parties and politicians. From 1633 to 1714 you have nothing but promises and falsifications; the promise made when England was afraid, or her plotting parties had something to gain; and the falsification, with scoffing laugh and galling sneer, when the fright was gone or the greed was gutted. No wonder the exasperated emigrant said at Carlisle, "I believe England least when she swears deepest." He was the son of a Derry Presbyterian, and he knew how England rewarded her saviours.

By The Church.

Working with Wentworth in the state was Laud in the Church. There had been an Usher and an Echlin, and there was the "golden age of peace," when there seemed the nearest approach of presbyter and prelate in generous trust and respect known since or before; but these great souls of sweetness and truth passed and after came Bramhall and King, and Taylor, who kept all his charity for books and great-sounding periods. The Jacobite bishops of distracted Ulster divided their time pretty equally between cowardly plotting against the Whig rule and the pitiless robbing of the non-conformists of all religious freedom. No one him put this sad tale into plainer nor more honest words than the Rev. Dr. M'Connell, the eloquent rector of St. Stephen's, Philadelphia, who said: "In the early years of the last century there were living here Scotch Presbyterians whose ears had been cut off by Kirk's lambs, whose fathers had been hanged before their eyes, who had worn the hoot and thumbkins while Leslies stood by and jeered, who had been hunted from their burning homes by that polished gentleman and staunch Episcopalian, Graham, Earl of Claverhouse, who had been brow-beaten by Irish bishops and denied even the sympath of the gentle Jeremy Taylor, who had been driven from their livings, fined, imprisoned, their ministerial office derided, the children of the marriages which they had celebrated pronounced bastards.

He Was Wronged in His Home.

Here State and Church joined together. Landlords and bishops made common cause to spoil the Ulster yeomanry. As the thrifty and toiling farmer improved his funds he was taxed on his invested capital by the ever-swelling rent till he was rackrented; and then if he would not pay the legalised robbery he was mercilessly evicted. His father and he had made a waste a garden while the proprietor idled. Then by law the idler claimed the fruits of hard toil; and English law wrung the "pound of flesh" forth; and suffered no Portia to plead for the defrauded. Added to these agrarian wrongs, were the denial of education, the shutting of schools, the barring of college by sacramental tests, and the legalized filching of great endowments for common education.

The right of free and independent voting was refused, and a gag law of the worst kind maintained.

The baptism of his children was made a laughing-stock, and the legality of marriage by non-episcopal clergy officially denied. I have seen calm men, not many years back, grind their teeth as they spoke of this bastardising of the non-conformists' children. Do you wonder at this intense, burning exasperation?

He was Wronged in His Trade.

Ulster was on the very high road to the finding of one chief cure for Ireland's troubles; that is, the diversion from too prevalent farming life of part of her population to trade, business, and manufactures. One reads with wonder of the rapid growth of Ulster industries and trade inside some thirty years, but the admiration changes to hot anger as you see the young life strangled by selfish and jealous interference on the part of English traders and statesmen. The Letters of Lord Fitzwilliam, and Dobbs's History of Irish Trade, tell one of the saddest tales. Act after Act was passed forbidding the exportation of wool, of horses, of cattle, of butter and cheese, and dead meats. Ireland was excluded from the Navigation Act, shipping was ruined, and business failed.

As if all these wrongs in life were not enough to heap on a man singularly high-minded, brave, loving right and hating a lie, he was wronged in death.

He was Wronged of a Grave.

For him no sacred "God's Acre," if his own beloved minister was to read simple words of Holy Writ and utter from the heart the spirit-born, free prayer. Why, even in my own late hour, I have seen the passage of a coffin through the gates of a church-yard that belonged to a common parish, and that had been originally donated by Presbyterian owner, barred, in the name of God and true religion, against a Presbyterian minister, by a self-styled guardian of hallowed ground.

And the Ulsterman who endured all this shame and wrong and open robbery, was the very man who had made and who had kept the land. He had made it. When he came 'twas a war-wasted desert; when he was driven to our shores from it, he left behind him homesteads and fertile fields.

He had kept it, and Derry is the proof.

Derry, whose salvation belongs not to Walker, but to the Rev. James Gordon and his Presbyterian "boys;" for Gordon led to the closing of the gates, and Gordon led the ships to the breaking of "the boom" and the relief of the garrison.

Yet, after that very siege and that very defence, guarding and saving Saxon freedom for the world, the men and the party that were the real saviours of the country and the keepers of the pass, were wronged and wronged, till their hearts blazed with fierce anger.

(To be Continued.)

(This article was originally published in the Lisburn Standard on 10 January 1919 as part of a series which ran in that paper each week for several years. The text along with other extracts can be found on my website Eddies Extracts.)

The Making of the Ulsterman (pt3)

SOME EXTRACTS

FROM THE

RECORDS OF

OLD LISBURN

AND THE

MANOR OF KILLULTAGH.

-- -- -- --

 Edited by JAMES CARSON. 

-- -- -- --

CXVI.

-- -- -- --

THE MAKING OF THE ULSTERMAN.

By Rev. Dr. J. S. MacIntosh.

From "The Scotch-Irish in America." 1892.

(Continued.)

THE USTERMAN WAS A STRANGER AMONG STRANGERS.

This is the second of the forces working on the transplanted Scot. Though he had come again to the home of one of his ancestors, the Dalriadan Scot who gave to Scotland her abiding name, still was in very sooth a stranger among strangers; and he was the stranger brought in by the ever hated Englishman. He was an alien to the alien Celt. Who, what, whence were the resistless Scots of Dalriada coming so early into the Strathclyde, no ethnologist has yet shown; but we know enough to affirm they were not of the South-Irish Celts. The indubitable strain of Celtic blood in the Ulsterman of the Plantation was brought to, not taken from Ireland.

This fact, that the Ulster colonist was a stranger, and the favourite, for the time, of England and her government, wrought in a two-fold way; in the Ulsterman and against him. It wrought in him at once the sense of ownership, the belief in his agrarian rights, the firm faith of heritage, the idea of coparceny as existent between the undertaker and the colonist; and out of these faiths grew the thought that the land was the settler's own on fulfilled conditions; that tenure was a fixity; that a home had been pledged if that were made and held against all comers and accruant profits were shared with his chief. The roots of Ulster tenant-right run far back and go deep.

Again, the fact that he was the royal colonist wrought in him the pride, the contempt, the hauteur and swaggering daring of a victorious race planted among despised savages. What at a later day was seen here may be seen down all the stretch of Ulster history. I have myself seen it, and heard time and again he would "lord it" over the mere Eerish. And the rulers of that hour both cultivated that feeling and enforced it. The Celt of that day had nothing to make him winsome or worthy of imitation. Romance and sentiment may as well be dropped. We have the hard facts about the clansmen of the O'Neill. The glory and the honour were with England. The times were big with the fresh British life. The men and women of that age and the age just closed are mighty by their witching force of greatness in good and evil. It is the era of Britain's bursting life and greatening soul. Song and statemanship, the chiefs of the drama, and the captains of daring are telling mightily on our forefathers in England and in Ulster. The new "Plantation" itself is full of enchantment when contrasted with the old state of internecine war. Let the historian wave his magic wand, and let the dead live, and the yesterday be our own to-day. We are in the Down-lands, fair lands of the circling sea, and rolling hills and silvery streams; and right before us are hoary ruins. It is the Grey Abbey. It is a genial day of early July, 1605, and four men and three women drink from the old well. They are worth more than we can give a swift glance, for they are the fathers and mothers of history. There is the Con O'Neale, wild, wicked, funny Con O'Neale, MacBryan Feartagh O'Neal, and round him gathers the very richest romance -- that wild dash on the easy English garrison in the clachan at Laganford, now known as Belfast -- that all adroit whisking off from the sleepy soldiers of every winebutt -- the arrest of the raider and his imprisonment in Carrick Castle -- the arts and wiles of the Jailer's daughter under the tutelage of Tom Montgomery -- the flight to London -- the amusing meeting with royal Jamie. Beside Con stands his friend in need, the bluff, half-smuggler captain Tom Montgomery, who made love to the jailer's daughter, Annie Dobbin, and carried off both Con and Annie as his own wife. Beside Tom rests on his strong staff Hugh Montgomery, of the noblest house of Eglinton, that soldier of fiery soul but rarest forethought, whom Prince Maurice, of Orange, had trusted as a very right arm. And the fourth man is the ancestor of the great Dufferin; he is one James Hamilton, the brainiest of them all, who came from a Scotch Manse and from the side of a great souled Presbyterian minister to be one of the world-makers in his deep-stamping of Ulster life and Ulster men.

And their wives; yes, they too are worthy; that jolly, mischievous Annie Dobbin, without whom there would have been no freed Con O'Neal in London making compact before King James with both Montgomery and Hamilton for the earliest settlement of Down. With her is Mistress Hamilton, that gentle mother to her loved folks. And noblest perhaps of the three is the mother of Ulster industry, the "clever and capable" Lady Montgomery, who built the water-mills to do away with "quairn stanes"; who overlooked her own model farms; who encouraged and guided the growing of flax and potatoes; who went around teaching spinning and weaving, both of flax and wool; who began the weaving of "the Ulster breakin;" and who lent money to the struggling till they were able to stand alone -- let her live forever -- "the mother of Ulster manufacture."

But these proud and haughty strangers with high heads and their new ways, were hated as aliens and harried from the beginning by "the wild Irish."

The Scorn of the Scot was met by the Curse of the Celt.

The native chiefs and their clansmen did not distinguish between the government and the colonists; nor had they right, nor did the colonists give them any cause. The hate and the harrying of the Irish were returned, and with compound interest, by the proud Ulsterman. To him the "redshanks'* of the "wild Earl" of Tyrone were exactly as the redskins of our forests to the men of New England and the Susquehanna and the Ohio. The natives were always "thae Eerish!" and the scorn is as sharp to-day on the tongue of a Belfast Orangeman as two centuries ago. It has been said that the Ulster settlers mingled and married with the Irish Celt. The Ulsterman did not mingle with the Celt. I speak, remember chiefly of the period running from 1695 to 1741. There had been in Ireland before the "Plantation" some wild Islanders from the West of Scotland, whose descendants may be found in the Antrim "Glynnes;" they did marry and intermarry with the natives; but King James expressly forbade any more of these Islanders being taken to Ulster; anil he and his government took measures that the later settlers of the "Plantation" should be "taken from the inward parts of Scotland," and that they should be so settled that they "may not mix nor inter-marry" with "the mere Irish." The Ulster settlers mingled freely with the English Puritans and with the refugee Huguenots; but so far as my search of state papers, old manuscripts, examination of old parish registers, and years of personal talk with and study of Ulster folk -- the Scots did not mingle to any appreciable extent with the natives. With all its dark sides, as well as all light sides, the fact remains that Ulsterman and Celt were aliens and foes.

III. Hence Came Constant and Bitter Strife

This feud made race fights, and they were bitter and bloody. And it was that kind of man-making war where everyman must be scout, and picket, and keeper of the pass -- general and private all at once. Our own story makes us too familiar with that sad, but man-making state of things. There is one sweetly fair spot in New England, where a very special training gave us very special men -- we know them as the Green Mountain Boys: there is a range where Sevier wrought that made the King's Mountain men; Ulster made at once Green Mountain and King's Mountain men out of the peaceful Lowlander, transplanted to Ulster. For years Scotland had been at peace. That peaceful Scot would not have done for our opening struggles; so the transplantation comes, and the Scot must, in Ulster, keep watch and ward. They must keep the pass. It is useless for Prendergast, Gilbert, and others to deny the massacres of 1641. Reid and Hickson and Fronde, the evidence sworn to before the Long Parliament and the memories of the people, prove the dark facts. The sword and the sickle went together in Ulster. Soon the hardy settlers had their trained bands; and we have documentary evidence that, fifty years after their landing, December 3, 1656, they could put into the field forty thousand fighting men -- many clad already in the distinctive garb of Ulster the "breakin," which was a kind of a shepherd plaid made of homespun. Already you see the peaceful Lowlander is falling behind the armed and aggressive Ulsterman. The old warriors are revived in their sons, and the forerunners of the revolutionary soldiers appear in Down and Antrim.

The fourth force changing the transplanted Scot was

The Necessity for Self-Adaptation.

There gradually arose in Ulster stronger reasons for finding out or making some modus vivendi with the native Irish. If they could not be quite warred out or worn out or worked out, then the colonists must discover some way by which they could fully hold their own with the Celt and yet be relieved from the necessity of perpetual battle. They began to try to adapt themselves to wholly other conditions from those known in Scotland. Their shrewdness was now exercised in a new direction -- the power of so far changing their fixed habits as to live alongside an alien and largely hostile race, make them serviceable, and gain from them the largest amount of help possible. The very causes that were at work on the Puritan to change him from the stolid and uncompromising John Bull into the pliant Yankee, full of his smart notions, are found in Ulster changing the overstiff Scotchman into the Ulsterman, who joins the bull-dog tenacity of the Briton to the quick-wittedness of the Celt. Under this force the Ulsterman is gaining what soon will mark him very strongly -- plasticity, versatility, nimbleness, and above all, staying power.

These four changing forces work for a time together on the settlers of the plantation, and then they are joined by another force of a somewhat different nature, but a force of the utmost value to the Ulsterman.

(To be continued.)

(This article was originally published in the Lisburn Standard on 3 January 1919 as part of a series which ran in that paper each week for several years. The text along with other extracts can be found on my website Eddies Extracts.)