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.
So, this is interesting. In the dual Referenda in March 2024, the entire Republic of Ireland 'establishment' campaigned and lobbied the population for a "Yes" vote. But the people thought otherwise and returned a landslide 67.69% "No" vote. The shockwaves were enormous, so much so that the immediate aftermath the government postponed its proposed, and controversial, "Hate Speech" legislation.
But, here we are about six months later in October, and with various crises around the world, and a likely election in the next few weeks, guess what? Two days ago, this happens.
Five Bills were considered and passed in the Dáil in under six hours, a process that normally takes weeks. The most contentious was the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill which was amended because of a groundswell of opposition that turned into a backbench revolt, after it had been passed in the Dáil.
The Bill that was passed at speed was amended from the original version, rightly separating "hate crime" from "hate speech", but it has all happened so suddenly that no-one seems to have got into the detail yet. Once the election is over, something closer to the original version will probably be back on the table again.
People - and politicians and political journalists - in Northern Ireland who obsess over the prospect of a "United Ireland" and fill up our heads with identity and nationality as a subject, would be much better to actually scrutinise the substance of the sort of Ireland - and also the sort of UK for that matter - that has developed.
The pathetic Brexit excitement about "blue passports", or chatter about what would the flag be like in a future United Ireland, are exactly the types of cosmetic nonsense that are used to distract populations while the politicians strip their liberty away.
I spoke with an octogenarian, extremely wealthy, Dublin man a few days ago. He likes coming up to Belfast, but openly said to me "in 1921 the unionists were right to go for partition. Who would want to live in the repressive Ireland that I grew up in? I went to London, I went to America".
The Ulster Covenant of 1912 stated that it was right to be concerned that a new Home Rule Ireland would be "subversive of our civil and religious freedom". Whatever the Parliament, in Dublin or London or Belfast, it remains right to prioritise freedom.
The Belfast "Good Friday" Agreement created space for dual nationality. The real issue is liberty, for all people, of all cultures, in all nations.
20 years ago today I was invited to consider becoming the “post Lord Laird” chair of the Ulster-Scots Agency. A senior NIO official came to the boardroom of my workplace, GCAS, and we talked for nearly two hours.
Many people told me to not take the role. But I did accept it, and did what I could for a four year term, from June 2005 - June 2009, squeezed in around my day job and family and all sorts of "real life" stuff.
I didn't get paid for doing it, the few hundred pounds a month for the role was paid directly to GCAS for the inconvenience. Some people from those years are still friends and I thank them all for working with me, and together we did some positive things. But nowhere near enough.
Ireland is an island of cultural variety. Some are still struggling to accept that.
I will always believe that rooted, authentic, community-led heritage and culture is of critical importance to us all.
Without culture, we’re all just consumers or constituents, pawns in the bigger game of finance and politics. We are all more than what we buy, and how we vote.
Wareham on the south Dorset coast has an ancient Saxon era earthwork wall that surrounds the town. On its West Walls is a section known as the "Bloody Bank" because it was where, after the "Bloody Assizes" of King James II and Judge George Jeffreys,at least five men were hung drawn and quartered on 22 September 1685.
"There can have been few villages in Dorset and Somerset, west of a line drawn from Bath to Wareham, which did not contain folk who had seen their friends' flesh displayed in public, or heard of the price paid for a kinsman's living body for toil in the plantations, or for a girl sold to a Court lady for a servant. Jeffreys' chair and a spike on which a rebel's head was set are still preserved at Dorchester in the museum opposite his house: it can hardly have been accident that has distinguished and kept them. Local memories show how deep and intimate was the touch of his work. One man ("Burn-guts") sold furze to the authorities for burning rebel entrails: his horses one by one pined and died. A woman said it did her eyes good to see a very old man called Larke hanged. She lost her sight within a short time.
One man of Wareham, Thomas Delacourt, was present at the final stage in this horrible drama. Quarters of some of the victims were exposed on Bloody Bank at Wareham the place gets its name there from. Delacourt and some friends stole the remains and buried them.
Delacourt was one of the first to join William of Orange, and went to London in his train: and it fell to him to be made sentry over Jeffreys when the judge, in the year of that more successful Revolution, was cast into the Tower, where he died".
- from The Soul of Dorset by F.J. Harvey Darton (1922)
• At the first show trial of the "Bloody Assizes", held at Dorchester on 27 August, Jeffreys had described the people of the south west of England as "lying, snivelling Presbyterian Rescals". Later generations of Delacourts in Wareham belonged to the United Reformed Church in the town, which tends to be the name given in England for Presbyterian.
• Here is a pic of the Old Meeting House in Church Street (formerly Meeting House Lane) in the town - a datestone on the front of the building says "Founded 1662".
• At Dorchester, Jeffreys condemned 251 people to death
The original 1768 Paul Revere Bowl is in the collection of the MFA in Boston. And here is yet another example of pre-Revolution America pointing to the ancient liberties of their ancestral British Isles, through Magna Carta and King William III and Queen Mary II's Bill of Rights of 1689.
The Liberty Bowl honoured ninety-two members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives who refused to rescind a letter sent throughout the colonies protesting the Townshend Acts (1767), which taxed tea, paper, glass, and other commodities imported from England. This act of civil disobedience by the "Glorious Ninety-Two" was a major step leading to the American Revolution. The bowl was commissioned by fifteen members of the Sons of Liberty, a secret, revolutionary organization to which Revere belonged; their names are engraved on the bowl as are references to Englishman John Wilkes, whose writing in defence of liberty inspired American patriots
Last week I was in England, and visited the Museum of Somerset. It is in the superbly restored Taunton Castle, which was one of the locations in 1685 of imprisonment, fast-tracked show trials, and horrific public executions of those suspected of involvement in the Duke of Monmouth's failed rebellion. We had just missed a two hour walking tour of the town, all about the 1685 rebellion. One of the tour guides was keen to point out to us a cauldron from the era, and she speculated that it may even have been one of those which were used to boil quartered human remains.
A blood-red exhibition about the 1685 Bloody Assizes:
• Queen Mary and John Locke Also in the Museum of Somerset is an original portrait of the future Queen Mary, and one of Somerset-born political theorist John Locke. Locke is said to have been "a comrade of Monmouth" but had fled to the Netherlands in 1683. The Netherlands made sense as a destination – Dutch-born Monmouth and Dutchman William Prince of Orange were cousins (they were both grandsons of the late King Charles I), they were war hero compatriots defending the Netherlands from French invasion. Here's an engraving of them together from the Rijksmuseum - captioned as:
“Large representation of the Battle of St. Denis on 14 August 1678. On the left in the foreground Prince William III beside the Duke of Monmouth on horseback with other members of his staff.”
They were in the Netherlands together on 8 February 1685, when news reached them of the death of Monmouth's father, and William's uncle – King Charles I. The French Ambassador at The Hague wrote that:
"the letters from England arrived yesterday ... they brought the sad news of the death of the King of England ... the Duke of Monmouth was also there, then retired to his home, and did not return to the Prince of Orange until ten o'clock in the evening. They remained locked up alone until midnight".
Undoubtedly Monmouth and William were mourning, but also plausibly making plans to try to stop the late King's ambitious brother James' accession to become King James II. Monmouth's summer 1685 rebellion failed and the reprisals were butchery and slavery. During the months of executions which followed 'Bloody Assizes', on 20 November 1685 James suspended or 'prorogued' Parliament and ruled the nation by himself.
William's revolution, which began in November 1688 succeeded. On 13 February 1689, John Locke accompanied William's wife, the future Queen Mary II, from the Netherlands back to her native London, on board this shallop boat. Mary and Locke arrived at Greenwich where she and William were offered the Crown, as joint monarchs, and a draft of a new Bill of Rights for the people which had been prepared by a 'Convention Parliament'.
Locke's writings shaped the philosophy of the Glorious Revolution of Mary and her husband William Prince of Orange, and then in turn inspired the ideas of the 1776 American Revolution. The wording of the Bill of Rights would also impact the future United States.
So, let's criss-cross the Atlantic...
• From Declaration to Constitution to Bill of Rights Like the American 1776 Declaration of Independence, the first edition of the United States Constitution was also printed by the Ulsterman John Dunlap. An earlier version, called the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, had been printed by another Ulsterman, Francis Bailey.
In the years that followed, various amendments to the Constitution were proposed, some by County Antrim born William Findley. Thesewere then captured in an additional document, the name of which was another direct reference back to King William III’s and Queen Mary II’s first act of Parliament at their coronation. The new, American, Bill of Rights was ratified in December 1791.
• The Eighth Amendment: "Cruel and Unjust Punishments" The Eighth Amendment of the American Bill of Rights “has long been treated as an enigma”*. It states:
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
The wording of this has baffled later American writers, not realising that it was directly lifted from King William III and Queen Mary II’s original 1689 Bill of Rights:
That excessive Baile ought not to be required nor excessive Fines imposed nor cruell and unusuall Punishments inflicted.
• England 1685: Over 300 victims of "cruel and unusual punishments"
The Fordham Law Review periodical (Volume 47, issue 5, 1979) made the connection crystal clear:
The phrase itself, "cruel and unusual punishments" first appeared in the English Bill of Rights of 1689 which prohibited such sanctions. Historians generally have perceived the prohibition to be a reaction to the treason trials of 1685 - the "Bloody Assize" caused by the abortive rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth. The penalty for treason involved hanging by the neck, being cut down while still alive, and then being disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered. (I omit some of the more grisly details.) That the methods of punishment employed by the English then and later were cruel and barbarous by today's standards is quite apparent.
The way that the 1688 Revolution era is presented in England is different than Ireland's highly tribalised and sectarianised version. They are less focussed on King James II's Catholicism, and far more on his tyranny. The carnage of 1685 is critical context.
The 1689 Bill of Rights was directly crafted in response to the extreme brutality of 1685. It was the bloody experience of "absolute monarchy" and tyranny in the British Isles that fuelled the desire for liberty in the 13 British Colonies of America.
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Further Reading:
• The Duke of Monmouth's veteran John Oldmixon wrote up a detailed account of the Monmouth & Prince of Orange collaborations in The Secret History Of Europe : Part II: Treating Of The Following Particulars: Of The Duke Of Monmouth's Reception At The Hague By The States, And The Prince Of Orange, which was published in 1713. It's refreshingly complex in its account - Online here.
• * "A Century in the Making: The Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, and the Origins of the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment" in William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal Volume 27 (May 2019) online here
• "Cruel and Unusual Punishments: The Proportionality Rule" in Fordham Law Review Volume 47 (1979) online here
• "Glorious Revolution to American Revolution: The English Origin of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms" by Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in Notre Dame Law Review Volume 95 (2019) online here
• In his 2007 book Our First Revolution, Michael Barone gives a fuller account of the similarities between the two Bill of Rights, listing the Third Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment, as well as the Eighth Amendment, saying:
“as an affirmative statement of individual rights, however limited, the Bill of Rights broke new ground, ground that would be extended in the New World”.
Ballad sheet below from the English Broadside Ballad Archive (online here):
This painting, of the failed summer 1685 Duke of Monmouth 'Pitchfork Rebellion', is entitled The Morning of Sedgemoor and was painted by Edgar Bundy in 1905. It shows a group of Somerset farmers, to invert a Biblical figure of speech, "forging their ploughshares into swords", preparing to face King James II's army at the Battle of Sedgemoor - often referred to as England's Last Battle - on 6 July 1685.
The leader of the 500 'scythemen' at Sedgmoor was William Thompson, who was described as "an officer and linnen draper of London". Two of the customised scythes that were found after the battle are in the collection of the Royal Armouries.
Monmouth had already begun plans to expand his rebellion into Ireland, at Carrickfergus and also other garrisons in the south, but the disastrous defeat at Sedgemoor ended the rebellion. King James II reigned on, and his brutal "Bloody Assizes" reprisals began. 1400 arrests, about 350 public executions.
Little wonder that when William Prince of Orange arrived at Brixham on 5 November 1688, the Devon population flocked to him - William's diarist recorded that the people said 'If this should fail, we are all undone' They told me about the invasion of Monmouth, when many people were hanged in Plymouth and elsewhere'. They had lived through it before, and saw hundreds of their friends and neighbours chopped up in public.
The following spring, the men that Henry Hunter would gather around east Down and Killyleagh for his "insurrection" against King James II's army would have been much the same as these Sedgmoor men - armed mostly with modified farm implements. Courageous to the end.
PS: Numerically, the opposing forces at the Battle of Sedgemoor, and the Break of Killyleagh, were the same. At each, King James II's army numbered 3000 soldiers. Against them, at Sedgemoor, a civilian militia of 4000 had been assembled. At Killyleagh, the highest reported estimate was 3000-4000 civilians.
"most of the Founders, in contrast to Jefferson, were horrified by the secularism of the French Revolution, and did not see it as the successor to the American one" (go to 1:04:00)
There's an irresistible simplicity in saying that all of the late 1700s revolutions - America, France and Ireland - were in some way inspired by each other. On closer scrutiny that's not quite the case. Video below is a recent conference from the American Enterprise Institute.
In 1795, William Drennan wrote:
"...You will be told , that the people in the North of Ireland are deeply infected with what are called French principles ... I do believe them most obstinately attached to the principles of Locke, as put in practice at the (Glorious) revolution... ... the very same principles of Locke were illustrated in the plains of America..."
One of the things I discussed in my October 2004 "interview" conversation with a very senior civil servant, ahead of accepting the offer to become Chair of the Ulster-Scots Agency, was the tantalising prospect of an Ulster-Scots Academy which would have some kind of university affiliation(s) and would be tasked to deliver a generation of projects at the very highest level of scholarship. Unsurprisingly it never happened. 20 years of vital work has not been done. But perhaps that was always the real plan...
Regardless of the many failures of 'the system', community volunteers and enthusiasts have reassembled and unearthed a lot of important material. Being immersed in the local historical literature helps to join the dots. Even a rank amateur like me, through enough reading, can find some good stuff.
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John Young (1826-1915) of Galgorm was one of the Mid Antrim representatives at the Ulster Unionist Convention of 1892, along with other many other members of the family. Over 20 years later he was one of six signatories to the Ulster Proclamation of 24 September 1913 (see previous post here).
The Young family were also funders and supporters of Mid Antrim Ulster-Scots poetry:
• The Given Brothers' guarantors and subscribers for their 1900 Poems from College and Country included the Right Hon John Young PC, DL, Galgorm Castle and also his son William Young JP Fenaghy.
• Adam Lynn's 1911 Random Rhymes frae Cullybackey was dedicated to "Mrs Young, Fenaghy House, Cullybackey".
• Agnes Kerr's 1914 Poems from Ahoghill subscribers list included Mrs Wm Young, Galgorm Castle and also Mr G C G Young of Galgorm Castle.
• David Herbison's poetry also includes two addressed to members of the Young family
The Young family had various cultural interests. This recent BBC TV programme highlighted the photography of Mary Alice Young. Rose Maud Young is renowned for her interest in Gaelic language and culture. The 1892 Ulster Unionist Convention which the Youngs took part in is usually only ever talked about these days for its (apparently surprising) use of the Gaelic Irish slogan "Erin Go Bragh", but it was a slogan which was entirely mainstream and was also used by Adam Lynn within his Ulster-Scots poetry.
The Youngs, like their contemporaries the Milligans that I have mentioned here before, were comfortably multi-faceted in their cultural interests. It was an era long before our present-day divisions.
"A corporation, or a government department isn't a conscious being, but it is an artificial intelligence. It has the capability to take decisions which are completely distinct from the intentions of any of the people who compose it. And under stressful conditions, it can go stark raving mad..."
I had a text last week to ask me to do an interview. I was busy. This subsequent article and a tv broadcast appeared. The Ulster-Scots Agency - which I attempted to Chair from June '05 - June '09 - issued a statement, saying something like 'Ulster-Scots is always the poor cousin'. This is correct. It was October 2004 (coming up on 20 years ago) when I was approached to become the Chair of the Agency. I still have some correspondence from that time, and lots of thoughts on that. Maybe a subject for a future post here.
This 2 minute clip from Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, formerly of the New York Times, is pretty remarkable on the circus of the US election and the ruling class. "Our political class does not govern, it entertains. It plays its assigned role in our fictitious democracy, howling with outrage to constituents and selling them out".
Check this out. The authorities reported a sighting of James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth, near Dublin in 1683, and wanted him to be apprehended. "they knew by his pretty black brows that it was the Duke of Monmouth, he had seen his pretty sweet face fourty times on the picture on horseback". The Duke and William were a similar age, they were first cousins, with the same grandfather, King Charles I. How history could have been different.
What was 'the picture on horseback'? Below is a 1675 painting of Monmouth, showing him during the 1673 Siege of Maastricht. From the collection of the National Portrait Gallery.
I was in Devon last weekend and went to Lyme Regis where, in June 1685, the ill-fated James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, rebellion began. I walked along Monmouth Beach, marvelling at the huge ammonite fossils that can be seen there at low tide.
Lyme Regis Museum has a small display about the story, including a wooden panel from the bed that Monmouth slept in (pic above).
In many ways Monmouth's attempt was the exact precursor to what his cousin, William Prince of Orange, would succeed with just over three years later in winter 1688. Monmouth was the bastard son of King Charles II, and was something of a megastar of his era, who believed that he should be the next King. However, the King's brother - James - got to the crown first. So Monmouth tried to oust him, and for a few days that June it looked like the plan just might work.
During the rebellion, he planned to open a new front in Ireland - Monmouth sent two of his key men, Venner and Parsons, back to Holland to organise boatloads of arms to equip an invasion of Carrickfergus which were to be landed there by a John Waltere. The army forts at Cork, Kinsale, Limerick and Dublin were all ready to rise in mutiny. But it all failed.
"... J. Tillier, in his examination, stated that Colonel Venner and Major Parsons ... were sent by Ferguson, Major Wade, Captain Tyley, and others, to Amsterdam, to buy arms and ammunition to send to England.
John Waltere, pilot to the Duke of Monmouth's ship, was to pilot those ships that were to carry the arms for Ireland, and to land near Carrickfergus, and there to take a castle. Waltere said there would be men to receive the arms.
Some Cromwellian officers were to take the forts of Cork and Kinsale and the city of Limerick by treachery; and if his Majesty drew his forces from Scotland, they would rise in Cheshire; and if the King sent his forces to Ireland, London would rise.
Mr. Hooke was sent for this purpose; and all the prisoners were to be set at liberty, and to assist in setting up a commonwealth. They looked to have all the arms and ammunition in the storehouse at Dublin. There was a plan about blowing up a magazine. John Cragg was to kill the King at Windsor, or at the Lord Mayor's show, and have for doing the deed 1000l. from Ferguson..."
After the rebellion failed, the unimaginable cruelties of King James II’s army in 1685 sent a clear message to continental Europe that James had to be deposed. Some of those cruelties were inflicted by renowned figures who would eventually defect to William of Orange, such as Percy Kirke:
"... But they were so called some time before Kirke's cruelties in the west. When Jeffreys opened his bloody commission at Taunton, this regiment composed his guards, and was cantoned on the piece of ground west of the castle, which has, ever since, been called Tangier, from the name of this regiment.
The colonel, one day, invited his officers to an entertainment, and, after dinner, commanded thirty men to be executed, by ten at a time, while the glass went round in three healths; one to the king, the second to the queen, and the third to judge Jeffreys, of whom news was just then received, that he was to try the rebels. When, in the last agonies of departing life, the feet of the dying were observed to shake, he would cry out, “They shall have music to their dancing" and commanded the trumpets to sound, and the drums to beat, surrounded by the soldiers, with colours flying." "This," observes bishop Burnet, "was both so illegal and inhuman, that it might have been expected that some notice would have been taken of it ;" whereas Kirke was only chid for it.
But the most shocking outrage against all decency, generosity, and humanity, with which, if it be true, the character of colonel Kirke is blackened, is his conduct to a beautiful young woman, whom he is said to have decoyed to his embraces, with the promise of sparing the life of a person, endeared to her by blood or affection, and to have conducted, in the morning, to see the person, for whom she had made the sacrifice of her virtue, hanging on the sign-post of the inn, where he had glutted his brutal lust. Shame, remorse, and distraction are said to have seized the unhappy, injured fair one, and she died within a few days…
… One writer says, that the young woman yielded herself to Kirke's desires, for the sake of her husband, another for her father, and a third for her brother; and though jealousy might have urged the execution of a husband, yet, in case the person were a father or a brother, it is not to be conceived what end his death would have answered: that it is incredible, that a man who could have committed such an inhuman action, such a wanton barbarity, could afterwards have been consulted with the Sidneys and the Cavendishes, on the plan for the revolution; or that the glorious William could have armed such a wretch in the cause of LIBERTY ..."
Even though a failure, the Duke of Monmouth provided a template to show King James’s son-in-law, William Prince of Orange, what he needed to do to succeed in 1688. William arrived three years later, just a few miles along the same coastline, with a similar flag, and a similar Declaration, and the same intent – but with the biggest Armada ever assembled.
As Tony Robinson says in the video below:
"... Such brutal retribution did little more than prove everyone's worst fears about the tyrant James II... Monmouth's mistake was to rebel to early. Instead, he laid the stage for the real winners of this whole saga, his cousins, William and Mary... the joint monarchs were crowned in 1689 and swiftly signed the Bill of Rights. The Glorious Revolution had occurred... enshrined the notion that never again could the monarch rule without the will of its people ... I believe that, above all, they followed the Duke because they wanted to see a Britain that was ruled by Parliament, not by an absolute monarch. And in that respect their legacy is very great indeed..."
This story caught my notice recently, it's my own local Council, but it was the concept rather than the geography or even the specific issue that I found interesting. The Council - made up of elected representatives voted for by local people - made a decision which it (correctly) thought would be controversial, and so therefore it also took a policy position to not disclose which councillors had voted for it. Undoubtedly they were navigated through these waters by senior staff.
For a few days there was a minor media kerfuffle about it, but that seems to have fizzled out now.
However, Northern Ireland's obsession with politics makes us all think that politicians run the place, but they don't. Northern Ireland is mostly run by public sector 'officials', not unlike the colonial era British Raj which my father-in-law was born under in Lahore in 1942.
My (limited) experience of years interacting with the public sector here is that - when it deems it necessary - it specialises in anonymity, making decisions and issuing directions - but redacting and camouflaging the names of the individuals who did so. I have seen numerous examples of this.
Over the years, senior civil servants have openly told me how incapable they think most politicians here are. And no surprise – particularly at even a small local council like ours - the idea that 40 elected councillors (all of whom already have proper full time day jobs) can in their spare evenings somehow manage the labyrinthine policies and decisions and activities of say 900 full-time salaried staff is lunacy.
The local councillors that I know, and also those whose social media I follow, seem to spend most of their time as an interface between the public and 'the system' - roads, bins, environmental improvements, etc - a lot of the time expending their energies trying to get the people within 'the system' to do the jobs that they are already salaried to do.
James Burnham wrote about The Managerial Revolution in 1941. This is our world. The politics is a sideshow.
PS: The German-American writer Hannah Arendt's superb definition of bureaucracy was "rule by nobody".
West Yorkshire isn't on the radar for our stories from 1689-90, but here are two, showing both Protestant civilians and also defeated Jacobite soldiers fleeing there.
"... The handful of Protestants in Ireland took the alarm, and every ship that came over was full of families who had fled for their lives, leaving all their possessions behind them.
When these fugitives landed at Liverpool and other ports they were often destitute, and had to get the customary passes from the authorities there, and with the aid of little sums given to them by the chief constables of every village through which they passed, gradually made their way to the places at which they had determined to settle.
Thus the entries in the towns’ books come thick and fast : “Paid to nine Protestants fleeing from Ireland, 2/6” “Paid to Irish Protestants travelling with a pass, 1/9” &c..."
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"... This was a stirring time in our national history, and the year 1690 especially was one of mingled disaster and victory for King William. The struggle of the bigot James to regain the throne he had so ignobly deserted was not over, but William, by the crowning victory of the Boyne, had destroyed his power in Ireland where sympathisers had mustered in strong force, and we find after this date no more entries of frightened Protestants fleeing through this district for their lives. There are, however, passes for wounded soldiers and destitute seamen in plenty. Here is one that speaks volumes, “Paid for two men and a horse for William Dwyer, an old wounded soldier who had seen thirty years service to hurry him on a sled through Heckmondwike, 1/6.”"
- both extracts are from Spen Valley, Past and Present by Frank Peel (1893)
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Interestingly, it seems that they were to be dissuaded from going to London:
"... The number of Protestants fleeing from Ireland to England was so great that the April 25–29, 1689, edition of the London Gazette included instructions to them not to try to make their way to the capital as it was already over-burdened with the influx of refugees:
"These are to give Notice to all Poor distressed Irish Protestants who came lately from Ireland, and are at present in several remote parts of this Kingdom, That they keep their respective places of abode, unless other necessary Occasions draw them to London then [sic] the Charity of the Brief, seeing they may live much cheaper elsewhere, and many of them cannot find Employments fit for them in the City. The notice indicates that if they comply, “speedy care will be taken to send them Relief out of the Monies that shall be given by virtue of Their Majesties [charity] Brief granted for that purpose.”
I am deeply thankful to a transatlantic and distant relative - or as we say in Ulster-Scots, a far-oot-freen - who recently sent me typescripts of some family letters from ancestors we share, which are correspondences written between an emigrant who had gone to Philadelphia, and his family back home.
The letters date from 1797 (written to Ballygarvan and Nunsquarter near Kircubbin) and there's a further one dated 1821 (to Ballybally, which I suspect is a typo for Ballyboley, between Carrowdore and Greyabbey).
The 1797 letters give fascinating community context to the era before the 1798 Rebellion, and position the 'United Men' rather differently than the nationalistic way in which they have come to be presented.
We are usually shown them in the simplistic national duality of "British v Irish". However, these letters show them as being one of three elements within a complex community dynamic, made up of the Catholic agrarian "Defenders", Protestant agrarian "Peep O Day Boys" and then the "United" as a different strand altogether. For example:
"this country still continues the war against France contrary to the general wish of the people. There was a great talk of peace the while past but no, found to our cost it was too good news to be, the peepaday men and Defenders still continue at war in this country and are making great depradations the folly of these parties makes a union next to impossible" (letter, 23 April 1797)
"our rulers continue to oppress and lode us more and more and they are at present persecuting the peasable and well disposed for being united in the case of liberty" (letter, 24 April 1797)
There is much to think about in the content of these letters, which are very much in line with the Canadian academic Donald Harman Akenson's enlightening book about the Islandmagee community entitled Between Two Revolutions. In it he takes a 'bottom up' community perspective to explain the seeming contradictions of how the Ulster-Scots acted in 1798 compared with 1916, rather than the usual 'top down' national perspective.
It was when reading Akenson (see post here) that the penny finally dropped with me that our era's binary fixation on nationality in Ireland is a dead end. In reading Between Two Revolutions, community, and community liberty, emerged as a more fluid and vivid way to think.
However, our ongoing political context in Northern Ireland, and 'hybrid non-linear warfare', remains focussed upon concepts of nationality; every issue ends up there, by design.
Or, as the old adage says, when the only tool you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.
The American Presidency is seldom out of the news, but in recent weeks it's been relentless. The forthcoming election, the assassination attempt on Trump, the Biden withdrawal, the introduction of Harris and also the selection of Vance (who I have blogged about here a few times). The Ulster dimension of the Presidency has been well known for over 100 years, but it also has been exaggerated and over-stated too.
The 1942 book Ulster Links with the White House shown above proposed a list of 14 Presidents that it claimed were of Ulster Scots descent (replete with wonderful pencil portraits of each by Frank McKelvey). However the research was dubious in places, as the first three it featured - John Adams, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams - were not of Ulster descent at all, and were dropped from the 'canon' by later writers. And, as time went on, subsequent Presidents were added. We're at about 20 now.
Excellent genealogists have meticulously traced roots, but amateur ones have overstated them.
The strongest case can only be made for those Presidents who in their own writings or speeches self-identified their Ulster-Scots roots. That might make the Ulster Presidents list shorter, but also stronger.
For example, in recent years I have read people insisting that the controversial President Andrew Jackson only ever described his ancestry as 'Irish', not 'Scotch-Irish', as a wedge from which to de-legitimise the concept of Scotch-Irishness. But, this is merely a present day retro-fitting of a modern idea, a culturally narrow and exclusive definition of what is meant by 'Irish'. 'Irish' does not have to be a mono-cultural and ethnic term, which is sadly what it has often become. Regardless of that issue, during Jackson's own lifetime, one of his closest friends wrote a biography of him, in which it said –
“The family from which General Andrew Jackson is descended were ... among the emigrants from Scotland to the province of Ulster. They were strict adherents to the Church of Scotland, and transmitted their religion, as well as their dialect, to their descendants of the present age.”
– From Life of Andrew Jackson, by Amos Kendall, 1843. (Kendall was one of Jackson’s ‘Kitchen Cabinet’).
So, in an era where self-identification is all-important, self-identification is the only credible way to list the Presidents of Ulster-Scots descent. They were the ones who were aware of it themselves, and for whatever reason, regarded it as culturally and politically important.
This view, expressed here by Rev James Shaw in 1899, was almost exactly 100 years after the rebellion - "The Presbyterians in the north got frightened, withdrew after a few fights, and the rebellion collapsed". Scullabogue and Wexford Bridge are what Shaw is referring to – I posted this about those events, back in 2020.
Rev James Shaw was a Methodist minister, born in Co Longford. He emigrated from Limavady in 1854 and settled in Indiana, USA. He became a major figure in the Scotch-Irish Society of America. His book from 1899 has tonnes of content - I think some of you will find this reference to William III and Mary II interesting - “he would have given to the Catholics emancipation, as he had the Presbyterians, but he was hindered by the prejudices of his Parliament”.
This echoes precisely what figures like Henry Grattan and Rev William Steele-Dickson had written too. William of Orange wasn't the real villain - the 1700s Dublin Parliament was.
• The Scotch-Irish in History (1899) is online here
• Twelve Years in America (1867) is online here
Joseph Reed (1741–85) was one of America's 'Founding Fathers', as George Washington’s First Adjunct General and Secretary During the American Revolution.
His grandfather, also called Joseph Reed, was from Carrickfergus and emigrated to West Jersey.
In a letter to the Earl of Dartmouth written from Philadelphia on 25 September 1774, Reed said:
“No king ever had more loyal subjects ; or any country more affectionate colonists than the Americans were. I, who am but a young man, well remember when the former was always mentioned with a respect approaching to adoration, and to be an Englishman was alone a sufficient recommendation for any office of friendship and civility. But I confess with the greatest concern, that these happy days seem passing swiftly away, and unless some plan of accommodation can be speedily formed, the affection of the colonists will be irrecoverably lost...
... all the principles of the (1688) Revolution show that there are certain cases wherein resistance is justifiable”.
250 years ago, on 12th July 1774, a committee chaired by a John Montgomery met in Carlisle First Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania to publish the 'Carlisle Resolves'. The church held some events last week to mark this: https://www.facebook.com/firstprescarlisle.org
The committee members were James Wilson, John Armstrong, John Montgomery, William Irvine, Robert Callender, William Thompson, John Colhoon, Jonathan Hoge, Robert Magaw, Ephraim Blaine, John Alison, John Harris and Robert Miller. The community of Carlisle expressed their "common cause" with the other "British Colonies in North-America" due to the Parliament of Great Britain annulling the Rights and Liberties of the people of Boston and Massachusetts when it revoked or 'abrogated' the 1691 Charter of William and Mary (see Wikipedia article here).
The Carlisle Resolves were just one of a series issued from Ulster-Scots communities in Pennsylvania. Some of the others from June & July 1774 were the Hanover Resolves, the Middletown Resolves, the Lebanon Resolves and the Lancaster Resolves.
"Scotch-Irish districts were firm yet dignified in their demands for justice and in the denunciation of British tyranny and wrong. These Hanover Resolves ... (show that) the liberty-loving Scotch-Irish of Pennsylvania were the head and front of the American rebellion of 1776”
- quoted from ‘History of the counties of Dauphin and Lebanon: in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania' (1883) page 78
One of those who was present at the meeting that authorised the 'Carlisle Resolves' was Ulster-born James Smith. Two years later he would sign the Declaration of Independence.
One of my sons knows this guy, as you'll see in the video below he has undergone a complete faith transformation in recent months and is using his skills as an online influencer to now do evangelistic work and voxpop interviews. It's an insight into the condition of our society and deeply embedded narratives.
On 12 June 1775, a few weeks after shots had been fired at Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress published an appeal for a national day of fasting and prayer on 20 July (full text online here). On that day, the Presbyterian Synod of New York and Philadelphia published a 'pastoral letter' to its congregations across the 13 Colonies:
"... The Synod cannot help thinking, that this is a proper time for oppressing all of every rank seriously to consider the things that belong to their eternal peace. Hostilities, long feared, have now taken place; the sword has been drawn, in one Province, and the whole Continent, with hardly any exception, seem determined to defend their rights by force of arms.
... If, at the same time, the British Ministry shall continue to enforce their claims by violence, a lasting and bloody contest must be expected ...
... Surely, then, it becomes those who have taken up arms, and profess a willingness to hazard their lives in the cause of liberty, to be prepared for death, which to many must be the certain, and to every one is a possible or probable event... let every opportunity be taken to express your attachment and respect to our Sovereign King George, and to the (1688) Revolution principles by which his august family was seated on the British throne ..."
This is a lesson that would serve Northern Ireland well - various commercial brands have been revived here in recent years, whiskeys especially. This allows the companies who have renewed these defunct trademarks to effectively also acquire the emotional heritage of those brands too.
Various "organisations" here have appropriated names from the distant past. You'll see their brand names, and their laying claim to the imagery, insignia, accomplishments and events of that past, on flagpoles during July - during the season when the original men, who would also serve with unimaginable courage in the Great War, are annually commemorated. My grandfather's cousin James Thompson was one of them, killed at the Battle of the Somme aged just 20. Below is my grandfather's memorial poem about him.
Valour stolen generations later by those with little or none. We live in a very messy society.
“They call themselves Scotch-Irish ... and the bitterest railers against the church [Church of England] that ever trod upon American ground.” • Rev. George Ross, Rector of Immanuel Church, New Castle, Delaware, September 1723
"The first settlers of this County were for the far greatest part originally English. Some few however there are of Dutch families, but of late years great numbers of Irish (who usually call themselves Scotch Irish) transported themselves and their families from the North of Ireland unto the Province of Pennsylvania and have distributed themselves into the several Counties where lands were to be taken up. Many families are settled in the County Sussex. They are Presbyterians by profession" • Rev. William Becket of Lewes, Delaware, 1728
You might need a subscription for this, but worth a read.
I know various people who are full-time within the sector across our islands and they have said similar things in conversation. "Luxury beliefs" have always reduced the working classes, or treated the working classes as totemic exotic pets – online here.
I have seen this in my own lifetime in the way that the white collar bureaucracies here in little Northern Ireland have behaved with Ulster-Scots. Generations ago it was the schools which purposefully eroded the Ulster-Scots speech of children; now it's the patronage of funders and departments that control the 'sector' and therefore filters what 'content' is permissible.
The full extract is "The arts and culture sector, along with other spheres of British life, is increasingly characterised by a toxic combination of old-fashioned class-based snobbery and contemporary US-inspired racial identity politics".
"Diversity through homogeneity" is a bizarre concept, one that Orwell would be proud of.
