I have been looking over maps of the Pale in the past and got to thinking. Where did all the settlers come from?
In the medieval Pale? a grab-bag of English, Flemings, and a sprinkling of Normans.
Why did the English rule Ireland while the Scottish settled the only part to stay British?
England is much bigger and wealthier than the other countries so it's pretty natural that it emerged as the dominant one.
Anyway, Ulster is not exactly a Scottish colony. Scottish settlement was mainly though not exclusively concentrated in Antrim and Down; it's not called Edinburghderry, after all. There are plenty of English and other miscellanious European Protestants in the mix.
As to why we were a disproportionate part of the settlers? Economic life on the edge, mainly. The early 17th century was a lean time, and Scotland in that era was never far from hunger. And when Galloway is what you're used to, free land in Antrim sounds like a good deal; for Norfolk, less so.
All information and discussion on your theories or on possible timelines and points of divergence are appreciated.
I have speculated in the past as to where, if England stayed Catholic and there were no Plantations as we know them, those Scots might have gone. Outside chance of a successful Nova Scotia? More Scots in the English colonies?
You do know that the low land Scots are a colony of Ireland the scotti tribe migrated from Ireland just after the Romans left Britain.
Bah. Clearly there was some population movement - names like Strathern (Srath Eirinn) give witness to it - but the Irish settled in coastal Wales, and who remembers that? Clearly trading links between Antrim and Argyll were ancient, and probably something Goidelicish was being spoken in parts of western Scotland for a long time. The "conquest" of Scotland was, as best we can tell, the gradual shift of a Gaelic kingdom's centre of power from Ulster over here, and the simultaneous decline of the Picts.
And Lothian where I live was one part of Scotland where Gaelic was never the vernacular (alongside Orkney, Shetland, bits of Caithness, some of the rest of the southeast), so I don't know about "Lowlands".