Competing Scottish and English Colonization and Influence of Ireland

I have been looking over maps of the Pale in the past and got to thinking. Where did all the settlers come from? Why did the English rule Ireland while the Scottish settled the only part to stay British? All information and discussion on your theories or on possible timelines and points of divergence are appreciated.
 

Sior

Banned
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.
 
The Normans were powerful, they had a huge empire, Ireland was a convenient place for lords to go and carve out some lands for themselves.
Scotland was weak, its main concern was not having England conquer it.

Have no Normans and its likely Scotland will be the one who keeps the most interest in Ireland with England not being as bothered with it, as long as it doesn't become too much of a pirate nest.
 
Scotland was weak, its main concern was not having England conquer it.

What?! Great Leader Alex Salmond tells me on SNPState Radio that the Glorious Scottish Supermen could never have been laid low by the dastardly Englishmen! Clearly you are not reading approved state histories!
 
I have been looking over maps of the Pale in the past and got to thinking. Where did all the settlers come from? Why did the English rule Ireland while the Scottish settled the only part to stay British? All information and discussion on your theories or on possible timelines and points of divergence are appreciated.

Well, the English and Scottish settlers arrived in Ireland at completely different times. Most of the settlers in the Pale were Normans (as already stated) or English who arrived in the earlier Middle Ages. Most of the Scots in Ulster didn't arrive until the 17th century, and IIRC that colonization only really picked up after the Civil Wars. So the Pale and the Ulster plantation were two unrelated events.
 
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".
 
Last edited:
Thank for your information. Do you know of any official settlement policies? It seems to me, from what I read which explicitly pointed it out, that only the unsponsored colonization around Ulster stayed around, though it could merely be because all the others integrted completely due to religion.
 
Thank for your information. Do you know of any official settlement policies? It seems to me, from what I read which explicitly pointed it out, that only the unsponsored colonization around Ulster stayed around, though it could merely be because all the others integrted completely due to religion.

There was quite a lot of integration (many of Cromwell's soldiers were bought out by their officers, married Irish women, and within a couple of generations were as Irish as their neighbours), but there were also Protestant communities less militant and organised than in Ulster. The Munster Plantation wass less able to defend itself during the Confederate War - fortified towns held out for a while, but unlike in Ulster there was no troublemaking Scottish army that needed to be disposed of to come to the rescue - and even then there were still Cork Protestants centuries after. World War 1 and the Irish War of Independence were both bad for that demographic.

An appendum to what I said about the connection between Scotland and Ireland historically: the ties between Irish and Scottish Gaeldom did manifest during the Confederate War in about the worst possible way. The MacDonald-Campbell feud was at its height in Scotland at this time and was exported to the O'Donnells of Antruim by both parties. That thoroughly nasty character Alasdair MacColla MacDonald was adoptively Irish, and Campbell troops in the Scottish army, for their part, apparently made a habit of chucking people over cliffs on Rathlin Island.
 
Another thing that may be of interest: Robert the Bruce tried to install his brother as High King with the help of friendly magnates in Ulster, but the campaign was aiming high and they found no support in the other provinces so the idea was chucked. Ireland and Gaelic Scotland as this time largely shared the same literary language: the Scottish vernaculars were written in some contexts, but didn't really displace "Classical Gaelic", which is Early Modern Irish, until the 18th century and the first popular Gaidhlig bible.
 
When saying, quite truthfully, that the Scots and the Irish were fellow Gaels, it pays to remember what sort of a crew the Gaels in those days in fact were. ;)

Oh yes, the Irish were perfectly willing to slaughter fellow Catholics who wanted the English/Scots/Protestants out just as much as they did. A similar language/culture means nothing when the sacraments are at stake!
 
Interesting differences existed between the Pale and the Ulster Settlements. Much of what is stated in these postings above is quite correct but I suggest considering the Pale as an enclave and the Ulster Settlements as a colony - or even further - as a plantation (by which is meant the complete replacement of one population by another).

Initially the Northern Ireland colonisation By James I of England was a question of killing two birds with one stone. On the one hand Ulster under the O'Neills had been the most contentiously and stubbornly Irish of the provinces; on the other James had a clearing out of the borders between England and Scotland and a parcel of rogues in the border clans to park somewhere out of the way. Since they were both contentious and stubborn too, he shipped them across to Ulster.

As others have remarked these settlers came from a starvation subsistence farming background - as did the native Irish.

The Mid-17th Century conflicts with Cromwellian England involved the theft of all the land of these subsistence peasants by English Law which is why the Irish still hate Cromwell.

But as with any other isolated population, by the end of the eighteenth century the Protestants in Ulster (who were a different and inimical type of Protestant to those in England at that time) took the leading role in the revolt of the United Irishmen in the 1790s. (Check out Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone.) Even in the run-up to the First World War the Ulster Protestants were quite happy to contemplate being ruled by the Kaiser rather than the King.

Populations have different interests at different times after all.
 
I hadn't been aware of a connection between Ulster and the Jeddart justice: interesting. I'm pretty sure the biggest sources of settlers were Galloway, Ayrshire, and Lanarkshire, but I can certainly see the sense of sending some of the Bordermen over.
 
Another thing that may be of interest: Robert the Bruce tried to install his brother as High King with the help of friendly magnates in Ulster, but the campaign was aiming high and they found no support in the other provinces so the idea was chucked. Ireland and Gaelic Scotland as this time largely shared the same literary language: the Scottish vernaculars were written in some contexts, but didn't really displace "Classical Gaelic", which is Early Modern Irish, until the 18th century and the first popular Gaidhlig bible.

True, though they only stopped fighting in Irelnad once Edward Bruce was killed during a battle. Robert was planning to reinforce Edward but Edward acted to hastily and lost his life due to it. The Bruce's actually had a weak claim to the High Kingship of Ireland so it is not impossible for them to manage to control Ireland. They had already crowned Edward High King. However this was ultimatly for Robert a sideshow that could be used to keep the English busy after Bannockburn, but with the survival of Edward it could have been something more than a sideshow.
 
Another thing that may be of interest: Robert the Bruce tried to install his brother as High King with the help of friendly magnates in Ulster, but the campaign was aiming high and they found no support in the other provinces so the idea was chucked.

Yeah, that was the bit I was going to remind people of, Edward Bruce IIRC

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Top