Personal blog of Mark Thompson. Formerly Managing Director of GCAS Design in Belfast, Northern Ireland (from 1999 - 2006) and Chairman of the Ulster-Scots Agency (from June 2005 - June 2009). Thoughts on Ulster-Scots heritage, identity, evangelical Protestant faith, music and other stuff I stumble upon.
Almost 250 years ago, on 19 April 1775, the famous battle of Lexington and Concord took place in rural Massachussetts. The official National Parks Service website provides a summary. What of the Ulster-Scots dimension? A man from Londonderry (Ulster) had emigrated to Londonderry (New Hampshire), and became a key figure in the aftermath –
"At the breaking out of the Revolution, (Matthew) Thornton held the post of colonel in the New Hampshire militia, and had also been commissioned a justice of the peace by Benning Wentworth, acting under British authority; but after Lexington and Concord, on the 19th of April, 1775, John Wentworth, then governor, retired from the government of New Hampshire and went to England.
Under these circumstances the colony called a "Provincial Convention" of which Thornton was appointed president. There was no state constitution as yet and no declaration of independence, but there was no other constituted government in the province besides this provincial convention, and I am fond of thinking, and believe it to be historically correct to affirm, that this extemporized but indispensable New Hampshire convention, presided over by a Scotch-Irishman, Ulsterborn, was the first independent sovereignty upon this continent! It certainly assumed the functions of an independent government in the name of the people of the colony."
- from Scotch-Irish in New England by Rev. A. L. Perry, Professor of History and Politics, Williams College, Williamstown, Mass.. Taken from The Scotch-Irish in America: Proceedings and Addresses of the Second Congress at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, May 29 to June 1, 1890.
YouTube sent me this – published 4 days ago and has 422,000 views already. It's a pretty good summary of some of the connecting themes. Jump in at 10:27.
• ALICE LISLE BEHEADED IN WINCHESTER, 1685 The last woman to be beheaded by the British state was Alice Lisle, on the orders of King James II, and found guilty in a show trial by his Lord Chief Justice, Judge George Jeffreys. She was 71 years old; a plaque in Winchester commemorates where she met her barbaric end - today, it's the Eclipse Inn (pic below from Flickr here)
Jeffreys (biography from 1898 is online here) was notorious, having presided over imprisonments and executions of enemies of the state, such as Algernon Sidney, William Russell and Thomas Armstrong (all executed in 1683, for their reputed involvement in the Rye House plot) and Richard Baxter. But to go after an old woman was a new horror.
Killed because of her kindness. Her alleged crime was to provide accommodation in her home of Moyles Court to John Hickes and Richard Nelthorpe, two of those who had been supporters of the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion of summer 1685; she claimed to have had no knowledge of such involvement, she'd never met Nelthorpe before, and Hickes hadn't yet been put on trial so his involvement was only an allegation. Some histories say that Jeffreys pressured the jury into finding Alice guilty only after they had twice, or maybe three times, found her innocent.
But King James II wanted blood, and Alice Lisle's was to be the shocking, barbaric, first in his series of 'Bloody Assizes' in the south west of England in Autumn 1685. Alice was originally sentenced to burning at the stake, but this was (mercifully?) reduced to a mere public beheading.
(The painting below of Alice being arrested in her home, painted by Edward Matthew Ward in 1857, is in the UK Parliament art collection). Alice Lisle was posthumously pardoned by King William III and Queen Mary II upon their accession to the crown in 1689.
• KINGS CAN BE TYRANTS Monarchy is not an end in itself, because kings can be tyrants. So said the publishers of the 1560 Geneva Bible, refugees from England. They wrote this advice into the Bible's marginal notes - some say over 400 times. The Bible was used by English non-conformists - and those who sailed on the Mayflower, seeking religious freedom in the New World, had it with them. Kings can be tyrants.
So when Charles II reclaimed the throne in 1661, and through his authoritarian Clarendon Code laws ejected over 2000 non-conformist ministers from the churches in which they preached, doubtless many of them recalled that the Geneva translators had prepared them for such times as this. Kings can be tyrants.
• REV JOHN HICKES One of them was Rev John Hickes (1633-1685) a former Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. He had qualified as a clergyman and took a post at Stoke Damerall near Plymouth, but he was one of those that Charles II 'ejected'. So he then crossed the River Tamar into Cornwall and became one of six ministers to serve the non-conformist community at Saltash - in 1665 they were all reported as being 'notoriously disaffected to ye government of ye Church established in ye Kingdom of England' (online here).
The church buildings are still there today. Ramping things up, in 1671 Hickes authored a pamphlet entitled A sad narrative of the oppression of many honest people in Devon, &c. He was also involved in illegal outdoor church services, known as conventicles, at nearby Kingsbridge. In 1672 he personally petitioned King Charles II on behalf of the nonconformist population of the 'West Country'.
Following his arrest at Alice Lisle's home, Hickes was sentenced at Wells on 23 September 1685, and hanged, drawn and quartered with five others at Glastonbury on 6 October 1685. A plaque there reads:
......
On this site stood the medieval White Hart Inn
Somerset 1685
The Pitchfork Rebellion
On Monday June 22nd 1685 James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, having previously landed at Lyme Regis, marched in wet weather from Bridgewater to Glastonbury with his rebel army. They lodged in the two parish churches and camped in the Abbey ruins before continuing to Shepton Mallet the next day.
On Friday July 3rd 1685 Lord Feversham leading the royal troops passed through Glastonbury from Shepton Mallet to camp at Somerton in pursuit of the rebels, then back in Bridgewater.
On Tuesday July 17th, the day after the battle of Sedgemoor, the Wiltshire militia leaving for home marched to Glastonbury where 6 unnamed rebels were hanged from the sign of the White Hart.
The following rebels were later hanged in the town:
Israel Bryant of Glastonbury, Yeoman
John Hicks, Minister of Religion
William Meare of Bridgewater
Richard Pearce
James Pyes of Colyton, Carpenter
......
• Many of John Hickes' surviving letters and his last speech were compiled after his execution, and published by his son-in-law John Tutchin. A selection of them can be found in various later books, such as J.G. Muddiman's The Bloody Assizes, published in 1929 (from page 104 onwards, online here).
PS: Edward Matthew Ward also painted the moment when tyrannical King James II realised his reign was over, entitled King James II Receiving the News of the Landing of William of Orange in 1688, (which he painted in 1851.)
Here's the press release. To apply for this position you'd have to have some astonishingly optimistic expectation, against almost all other evidences, that 'the system' that runs Northern Ireland will - or has ever wanted to - advance Ulster-Scots in any substantial way.
For the past 25+ years, many excellent people have worked very hard within the few Ulster-Scots entities, pouring their energies into trying to make those effective - only to find that 'the system' is content for those few entities to exist (under-resourced in every conceivable way), but not for those entities to prosper.
As the old saying goes, better tae hae nane than a bad yin. I wish the successful applicant well.
Thomas MacKnight (1829-1899) was editor of the Northern Whig newspaper (DIB entry here). The first volume of his series Ulster As It Is was published in 1896, as a retrospective on his almost 30 year career, and is online here.
MacKnight advocated a non-sectarian Ulster, an alternative to the entrenched "two tribes" mentality which came to dominate around 1885/6. In the first chapter he says of himself, "I can scarcely be accused of having much sympathy with the evil spirit of sectarian and party intolerance with which Belfast and the North of Ireland have perhaps been much too indiscriminately associated".
A quick glance through shows him to have been equally critical of both extremes that were emerging.
Here are two quotes from Ulster As It Is about the United Irishmen and the 1798 Rebellion, and how that story was being claimed by Irish nationalism on the cusp of its centenary commemorations.
“I have never been able to find that the Presbyterians in the North of Ireland and others who might be considered either United Irishmen or sympathisers with them entertained what are now called Irish National views. The descendants of these men ought to know what political convictions their fathers and grandfathers held on the great Irish question of the time. They one and all told me that their ancestors at the end of the last century were not Irish Nationalists but that the most advanced of them contemplated setting up a cosmopolitan republic based on the principles enunciated in Paine's Rights of Man. … Irish Nationalists as they are now known the United Irishmen could scarcely be at that time."
“Dr Drennan who might be regarded as the poet of the United Irishmen lived near Belfast. The study in which he wrote is still pointed out in the grounds of a solicitor Mr Dinnen at Cabin Hill three miles from the town in the county of Down. Not long ago a number of Nationalists who visited Belfast thought of paying a visit to Dr Drennan's tomb but his son who recently died pointed out that his father had in 1818 made a remarkable speech in favour of Parliamentary reform. In that address the poet of the old United Irishmen stated that with Parliamentary reform and other recognised Liberal reforms granted he would be quite satisfied. His son was also always a reformer and a Liberal and when he died a decided Liberal Unionist having no sympathy with the present race of Irish Nationalists.”
• this 1992 article by Brian Walker '1641, 1689, 1690 and All That: The Unionist Sense of History' published in The Irish Review mentions MacKnight - it's excellent in showing how history here has been selectively celebrated over the centuries (you'll need JSTOR access).
• Here are two examples from it: in 1789 a cross-community procession marked the centenary of the Siege of Derry, but "rather than being seen simply as a Protestant victory, the siege was celebrated as a triumph of liberty"; the procession "included the Catholic bishop Dr Philip McDevitt and his clergy". and in 1790 the centenary of the Battle of the Boyne was "celebrated not as a great Protestant triumph but as a constitutional victory".
Maybe MacKnight's work and thinking deserves to be re-discovered. Few today even know that there ever was a vision for an "alternative Ulster" back then.
A culturally complex society, cleaved in two, divided and radicalised, and subtle histories then 'claimed' and appropriated by the two new opposing factions...
There's been a lot of water under the bridge since 1873, but it's often illuminating to go back and see what our predecessors thought and wrote down. Over the past year or so I've occasionally dipped into an excellent book by Thomas Witherow, who was Presbyterian moderator and also a Professor of Church History and Pastoral Theology (Wikipedia here).
In his 1873 book Derry and Enniskillen in the year 1689, there is a chapter entitled 'Reflections' (online here) where he goes beyond the chronological history and gets into what was for him present-day application. He says this:
Every admirer of King William should remember that, as that great monarch often said, he had come over "to deliver the Protestants, but not to persecute the Papists."* To tolerate honest difference of opinion, is the spirit that William always aimed to promote.
Under these circumstances, is it a duty which we owe to God and our country, to celebrate the victories of our ancestors in any form that is calculated to excite the prejudices and provoke the ill-will of neighbours, with whom, though we differ in religion, yet we come into contact on the everyday business of life, and to whom we are bound by ties of citizenship and of mutual service and obligation?
Is it not quite possible to cherish the remembrance of great actions, without doing anything that living men may justly regard as a provocation and an insult? Christianity positively enjoins us to love our neighbour as ourselves; but is the discharge of that obligation consistent with doing something else not commanded by God, but which, as we know for a fact, will hurt our neighbour's feelings, stir up in his heart evil passions, and thus tempt him to sin?
Is it generous to remind, without necessity, any section of our countrymen, that on one occasion our ancestors won a victory over theirs; and would not a noble adversary show more of true greatness and merit by disdaining to stoop to any such unworthy boast? A brave man fights if he must fight, and shakes hands with a gallant foe when the fight is over; but no truly brave man ever insults the vanquished, by reminding him and his, years afterwards, of the defeat. Were he in a thoughtless moment betrayed into such an act, he would, on reflection, feel no little ashamed; certainly he would not desire that the pen of history should record it of him. Is it wise to do an act, not required by the authority of God or of the law, which is known from repeated trial to stir up bitter feelings in our neighbours, which withdraws our own attention from our everyday business, which gives such an unfavourable picture of our own religion, and confirms others in the prejudices which they entertain against our faith?
If to taunt our neighbours with the defeats our ancestors inflicted on theirs, is therefore neither wise, nor manly, nor generous, nor Christian, how can we honestly in the sight of God do such an act, or encourage others to do it?
* Witherow quotes this from Walter Harris' 1745 The History of the Life and Reign of William-Henry, Prince of Nassau on page 175. Whatever the history, as Witherow understood, it's the present-day application which matters. Our generation could learn much from Witherow, even 152 years after he wrote those words.
They had led simultaneous rebellions, both of which began in the Netherlands and had a degree of reach into Ireland. King James II had hardly warmed his claimed throne when these rebellions were both planned. Both attempts were short-lived, ending within weeks in summer 1685. James II had a medal struck, made by Regnier Arondeaux. Wikipedia here.
My parents took me to this rally and we stood pretty close to the speakers platform. Over 100,000 others were there. It was a mass protest in defiance of what was perceived to be undemocratic UK government policy, opposing what the Thatcher government had done. 1985 was a great example of "liberty before loyalty" - and through which the convenient Northern Ireland current affairs shorthand of "loyalist" is shown to make no sense. A nation can have an anti-democratic Prime Minister, Monarch, Taoiseach, President, Vice President - whatever high office title, and in whatever nation. Shorn of liberty, nationality is merely a cosmetic label.
A choice between an undemocratic UK and an undemocratic Republic of Ireland is no choice at all. It's merely a choice between United and City, you can choose whether to have red shirts or blue shirts, but you're still playing the same game.
However, what if you object to the game itself? Defining yourself by who rules you, and how they rule you, is madness. As with 1776 in America, it is community and personal liberty which should always be the criteria.
Here's a useful discussion, between Dr Guy Chet (author of the 2019 book The Colonists' American Revolution; Preserving English Liberty, 1607-1783;publisher page here), in conversation with Professor Bob Allison - about the American Revolution as a British rebellion for liberty. I met Professor Allison when visiting Boston in December 2023 for the 'Tea Party 250' commemorations.
One of the challenges in telling the American Revolution story to a present-day audience is that we have all grown up with competing nations or competing nationalities as our only paradigm. Movies and war comics and the current affairs media have reduced our capacity to think, because they present everything as a contest between "two teams". And so the American Revolution has often been retro-fitted with these kinds of simplistic, easy-sell, nationalisms.
So, we need to work pretty hard to try to forget about ingrained nationalisms, of conflicts between nations, and think instead about liberty within the nation, or liberty which is worth more than the nation.
Not Americans v British, or Patriots v Loyalists, but rather Liberty v Tyranny. People on each side of the Atlantic were on each side of the cause.
An American on Twitter recommended that I look at Cato's Letters - I'd heard of them, but had never taken the time to dig. Even though they were written in 1720s England (Wikipedia here) by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, they were a regular reference in 1770s America for the British 'colonists' who were preparing for a new Revolution.
This was the era when Ulster-Scots emigration to America began at full speed, starting in 1718 and surging throughout the century to around 200,000 people. Cato's Letters are a fascinating new insight into the era, and of how liberty-oriented communities in 1720s Britain regarded the corrosive corruption of their own ruling classes.
"How did they behave towards King William, whom they themselves invited over? As soon as he gave liberty of conscience to Protestant dissenters; let them see that he would not be a blind tool to a priestly faction, but would equally protect all his subjects who were faithful to him; had set himself at the head of the Protestant interest, and every year hazarded his person in dangerous battles and sieges for the liberty of England and of Europe, against the most dreadful scourge and oppressor of mankind that ever plagued the earth"
Presumably that "scourge and oppressor" was the genocidal Louis XIV of France. The following extract describes how the Church of England establishment had first benefited from the achievements of 1688, but later, out of self-interest, eroded those achievements away –
"It is certain that there was almost every where a general detestation of popery, and popish principles, and a noble spirit for liberty, at or just before the Revolution; and the clergy seemed then as zealous as the foremost.
But when the corrupt part of them found themselves freed from the dangers which they complained of, and could not find their separate and sole advantage in the Revolution, they have been continually attacking and undermining it; and since they saw that it was impossible to persuade those who were witnesses and sufferers under the oppressions of the former governments, wantonly, and with their eyes open, to throw away their deliverance, they went a surer and more artful way to work, though more tedious and dilatory; and therefore have, by insensible degrees, corrupted all the youth whose education has been trusted to them, and who could be corrupted; so that at the end of near forty years, the Revolution is worse established than when it began.
New generations are risen up, which knew nothing of the sufferings of their fathers, and are taught to believe there were never any such."
The Cato Institute (online here) says this of the letters: "These essays popularised (John) Locke's ideas and were profoundly influential in both England and America. They are the inspiration for the Cato Institute. Published anonymously in the London Journal from 1720 to 1723, the 144 letters provide a compelling theoretical basis for freedom of conscience and freedom of speech. Virtually half the private libraries in the American colonies contained bound volumes of Cato’s Letters."
Cato's Letters are another treasure trove in understanding the era between the two Revolutions of 1688 and 1776, and how they connect to each other. The Letters are online at Libertyfund.org, as text-searchable PDFs via the links below (click on the download button, and then the 'eBook PDF' button)
In Joshua Toulmin's 1791 The History of Taunton in the County of Somerset, this account of Colonel Percy Kirke includes his breathtaking bloodlust inflicted upon the people of Taunton during the Bloody Assizes of Autumn 1685, yet also of them toasting him following his role in the Relief of Londonderry:
... the people of Taunton, in commemoration of his relieving Londonderry, when besieged by James II in 1689, devoted an evening to the drinking of his health in public, the expenses of which may be now seen in an old church-book... (page 543)
The events of 1688-90 are not restricted to Ireland and connect communities across our islands.
"... And there was worse than this: there were rumours of civil war in England, where the people had grown weary of the bigoted tyranny of King James. It was reported that William of Orange had been invited to come over.Weeks passed, and every ship from home brought additional news. William had crossed to England, and in March of that year 1689 they learnt in Jamaica that he had accepted the crown and that James had thrown himself into the arms of France for rehabilitation..."
- from "Captain Blood" by Rafael Sabatini (1922)
The 1922 novel Captain Blood is fictional, but based on history. In the 1935 movie version, Errol Flynn starred as Dr Peter Flood, a medic from Ireland who helped some of the Duke of Monmouth's 'rebels' of 1685, for which he was transported to the West Indies as a slave. After various adventures there, news reaches him of the 1688 Glorious Revolution and Blood is pardoned by the new King William III.
The real history is just as interesting. Henry Pitman was a real doctor to Monmouth's men, and he was also sold to the Carribean; he returned to England after the Glorious Revolution and his memoirs - A Relation of the Great Sufferings and Strange Adventures of Henry Pitman, Chyrurgion to the late Duke of Monmouth - was printed in 1689.
An associate was Rev Timothy Cruso a Presbyterian minister in London, who died in 1697 (Wikipedia here); one of his published sermons celebrated the Glorious Revolution, entitled The Mighty Wonders of a Merciful Providence in a Sermon preached on January 31 1688/9. Being the Day of Publick Thanksgiving to God for the Great Deliverance of this Kingdom by His Highness the Prince of Orange (online here). And yes, the surname Cruso is believed to have been the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, the novel by another of the Duke of Monmouth's rebel, Daniel Defoe.
• DR PETER BLOOD / THOMAS BLOOD THE DOCTOR? So who was the real Blood? Thomas Blood was the Ireland-born Presbyterian planner of what became known as "Blood's Plot", an attempt to storm Dublin Castle in 1663 against the government of King Charles II.
According to Rev Patrick Adair's True Narrative (in chapter 17) the discussions for what became "Blood's Plot" began in Newtownards at the home of Rev John Greg. Also present were Thomas Blood, his brother in law Rev William Leckey, Rev Andrew Stewart and a Captain James Moor(e) of Ballybregah (Ballybredagh, between Killinchy and Killyleagh).
The plot was exposed by an informer on 22 May 1663. Numerous Ulster Presbyterian ministers were arrested on suspicion of involvement - RevJohn Crookshanks of Raphoe, RevAndrew McCormick of Magherally and RevWilliam Richardson of Killyleagh to name but three, as well as Adair himself.
In a footnote, Adair explains that Thomas Blood later fled to England where he became a doctor - "he lived for some time at Rumford, where he followed the medical profession, under the assumed name of Dr. Clarke. He then attempted to take the Crown and Crown Jewels out of the Tower..."
