Cliffs of Moher, southwest of Galway.
photo Elroy Christenson
Cliffs of Moher, southwest of Galway.
photo Elroy Christenson
The island of Ireland has had a turbulent history much before the
vikings (see viking history)
invaded and settled on the island. It had once been a rugged
tree covered wind-swept land in the north Atlantic.
Successive populations cut the trees for firewood, timber for
ships and buildings without allowing for regrowth to cover the
demands. Further clearing of the land for crops that
had to hold their place in the thinning or rocky soil frequently
eroded anything that remained. The introduction of sheep
grazing exacerbated the problems of the short growing season and
wet climate. The one crop that seemed to grow particularly
well here was the exotic south American plant of the potato which
became a prominent crop after the 1600's. The seventeenth
century Ireland "was utterly wretched, and broken-hearted.
Its agriculture was miserable, and chronic scarcity alternated
with actual famine; it had little commerce, and no manufacturers,
save the slowly increasing linen manufacture of Ulster." [Hanna
621]
Around the 1600's Dublin had a population of about thirty
thousand. The Provence of Ulster in Northern Ireland had no
single town with more than five thousand people. The
scarcity of people also made immigration to Ireland a good
destination for cheap help needed for the large English
plantations under development. It also was a good way to get
rid of the trouble making Scots who refused to obey the kings
commands. Although Charles I was trying to re-establish the
Catholic church in England in the mid-1600's, Cromwell takes
over the government and has Charles executed in 1649. The
Presbyterians that had been fighting so fiercely in Scotland
against Charles I now in Northern Ireland came out opposing the
death penalty and the tyrannical methods of Cromwell. John
Milton who was a sworn Covenant, was angry at the Westminister
Assembly for condemning his dangerous doctrine of divorce.
"He published a reply to the Presbyterian protest when he calls
Belfast a "barbarous nook of Ireland," and exhibiting "as much
devilish malice, impudence and falsehood as any Irish rebel could
have uttered and would judge them to be "a generation of Highland
thieves and red-shanks."
Oliver Cromwell
------ In 1649 Cromwell came to Dublin and ordered the
town surrender. Upon rejection of the offer he took the town
by force and slew many of the defenseless inhabitants. The
Presbyterians were watched for their possible allegiance to
Charles. Cromwell allowed the Catholics freedom to worship but
punished the Presbyterians. After 1658 and death of Oliver
Cromwell, Henry Cromwell in five years had subdued the rebellion,
rendered life and property safe, given liberty to independent
thinking, and brought many settlers from England and Scotland to
southern Ireland. The Catholic lands were confiscated and
almost three quarters become owned by Protestants after
Cromwell. Popish priests were banished and Roman Catholic
worship repressed. James II (r.1685-89), son of Charles I,
comes into Ireland from France to restore Catholic rule and the
Monarchy. After marching northward without many problems he puts
Londonderry under siege. It is filled full of Presbyterians
who feared they would be slaughtered. They gathered courage
and arms to break the siege and help defeat the French from taking
Ireland. They assumed that rewards would also come from their
loyalty to saving the region for the English and Protestants.
With the restoration of the monarchy this was thrown into
doubt. The plight of the Irish was well recognized by the 1700's by Jonathan Swift, the author famous for his Gulliver's Travels, wrote in his short satirical essay, "A Modest Proposal," the option that the English may as well use Ireland's people as a food source.By the simplest definition, to sell someone is to enslave them. Slavery was used to rid the British of unsavory and dangerous characters. It has recently come to my attention that some of the first slaves in the colonies were not black Africans but Irish men, women and children. Coming out of the Middle Ages being a serf was considered normal so it was probably not much of a leap to send folks off to the colonies for such crimes as stealing a handkerchief. It is referred to in most history books as "indentured servants". Indentured servants died by the thousands due to cheapness of their labor and poor care provided by their masters. The "indentured" term tends to diminish the dire straits that many Irish found themselves. Not to undervalue the depravity of the African slave trade, the Irish were not much better off in the early 1600's. Often English and colonialist historians want to put the Irish in the category of "indentured" servants which implies that they can buy their way out of their indenture or find freedom in some other manner. This may have been the case with some Irish servants but this may have also been the case with some African slaves, who came later, especially those in Pennsylvania. It seems some of the first Irish exported in the 1600's were of the Irish military and religious establishment, who left their families at home, and were forced to enlist in Spanish, French or Italian armies. Refusing that they were sent to the colonies. Their wives and children remained at home impoverished and became the next wave to be sold to the Barbados sugar plantations.
"It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town(Dublin) or travel in the country (Ireland), when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes."....
"I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve years old is no salable commodity; and even when they come to this age they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and half-a-crown at most on the exchange; which cannot turn to account either to the parents or kingdom, the charge of nutriment and rags having been at least four times that value.
I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout."
"The Irish slave trade began when James VI sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies.
By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.
From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade.
Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.
During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia.
Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.
As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.
African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (£50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than £5 Sterling). If a planter whipped, branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African.
The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce."
[Irish: the Forgotten White Slave, Peoples Trust Toronto, 12/27/2014]
Countering
arguments state that the Irish were not slaves but part of political
problem that the English was trying to solve by exporting the rebel
leaders and their families is far too kind. This can likely be said
for the many emigrants from many countries who were threatened with
bodily harm or death if they remained in original homeland. -
Pilgrims, Mennonites, Brethren, Moslems, Catholics, etc. Even
the African slaves may have been the targets of their captors for
money as well as ethnic cleansing or tribal warfare as witnessed in
recent history. There are no or few documents that can confirm
that. Taking away a person's freedom of choice is
slavery. An indentured servant later on, at least, is a
personal choice that is individually made for a limited period of
time. King William dies in 1702 and was succeeded by Anne, the daughter
of James. She was a tried and true Tory and interested in
invoking revenge on the Presbyterians and Covenanters for her
father's death. The Presbyterians were somewhat protected by
the reigning power of the Whigs who saved the dissenters. By
this time the Irish Presbyterian Church congregations numbered one
hundred and twenty. They were divided into nine areas of
Belfast, Down, Antrim, Coleraine, Armagh, Tyrone, Monaghan, Derry,
and Convoy. [Hanna 617]
Queen Anne introduced the bill "to prevent the further growth of
Popery" in Ireland. It contained many clauses which were
focused against the Roman Catholics in direct violation of the
Treaty of Limerick. One was that all public officials
had to take the Sacrament according to the rites of the Episcopal
Church. The Presbyterians assented to the demands because
they had few seats in parliament or official standing
anywhere. The bill was passed 4 March 1704 besides the
Catholic restrictions it also excluded Presbyterians from the
magistracy, customs, excise, post-office, courts of law, and
municipal offices. So not only were Presbyterians
denied positions of law and influence but also minor governmental
offices that afforded at least a small continuous source income
for their families. "Some Presbyterians residing in Lisburn
were excommunicated by the Episcopal authority for the crime of
being married by ministers of their own church." They were also
forced to pay tithes to the Episcopal church that they never
attended and whose beliefs they never adhered. In spite of
this the Presbyterian churches continued to thrive. [Hanna
618]
In 1710 the Duke of Ormond took over the government. He
exerted his power to appoint primates and commander of forces to
be Lords Justices. A recently passed law which was used
against the Roman Catholics now was forced on the
Presbyterians. This was the infliction of severe
penalties for refusing to take the Abjuration Oath. The law
came down on the Rev. Alexander McCracken, of Lisburn, in
1713. Mr. McCracken was fined five hundred pounds and
condemned to six month in prison but because he refused to swear
an oath stayed in prison for two years after George was crowned
king in 1716. School teachers were imprisoned for up
to three months and doors of Presbyterian churches were "nailed
up".
The emigration from Ulster is a remarkable feature of Irish
history. The Scots who came to Ireland were looking for
better opportunities for themselves and their families.
There was no loyalty of the Presbyterians to the ruling groups of
Ireland. They left Ulster in crowds. Whole families
and congregations of churches, including the ministers, migrated
at one time. In 1728, Archbishop Boulter states that "above
4200 men, women and children have shipped off from hence for the
West Indies, with three years," The "West Indies" was another word
for the American colonies. A famine struck in 1739-40 during
which time about 400,000 starved to death. Continuing the
emigration cycle "several years afterwards, twelve thousand
emigrants annually left Ulster for the American
plantations", From 1771 to 1773 about thirty thousand
emigrants left Ulster which included ten thousand weavers.
Accounting for the increases in population from 1731-1768 the
number of emigrates that went to North America in this period was
proportional to one third of the entire Protestant population of
Ireland. [Hanna 622]
The deprivation of the land and the people of Northern Ireland is
recorded in a number of documents in the Public Records of
Northern Ireland. One quote from the Murray papers gives at
least some clues from the perspective of the land owner by James
Hamilton in 1728-29,
America or stories of America brought thousands of immigrants
from both Northern and Southern Ireland. By the mid-1700's a
thousand wagons of Irish a year were making their way from
Pennsylvania down into North Carolina. One letter from John
Dunlap, who was responsible for the printing of the Declaration of
Independence, wrote on 12 May of 1785 to his brother-in-law in
Ireland, "People with a family
advanced in life find great difficulties in emigration, but the
young men of Ireland who wish to be free and happy should leave
it and come here as quick as possible. There is no place
in the world where a man meets so rich a reward for good conduct
and industry as in America." [PRONI, emigration series:1]
Many of the families in my background were part of this group
which is largely known as the Scotch-Irish. They were forced
out of Scotland and then forced out of North Ireland through
economic and religious inequities. Because the records of
Ireland have been decimated by the burning the census records in
1922 during the Civil War, it is very difficult, if not impossible
to track the families back to the 1600's. Some parish records and
probate records are available but like in the colonies a person
had to have property to leave a will. Researchers have been
working to rebuild the lost information. Although I have a number
of relatives that have Scottish names I can't prove when or where
they originated. We know they continued a religious
tradition that would have been outlawed in Ireland and England.
Several were so dedicated to their religious beliefs that they
came to the colonies to preach the gospel to their new
congregations, often they were made up of other new Irish
immigrants. This includes, among others, Reverends John and John(jr) Renwick,
David Bothwell and Meridith Moon. We have been able
to identified by DNA that the Graydon family in South Carolina is
associated with the Graydons of Canada and have origins in
Fermanagh Co., N. Ireland.[Graydon DNA project] The records of
Freeholders there give us a pretty good idea about this
family. Other families that did not hold land and may have
worked as serfs have no records to trace. The Spann family
seems to be the only one that came from southern Ireland.
The fact that several Span/Spann originating in England were
educated in Trinity College in Dublin indicates to me that Rev.
Benjamin Spann and his sons were part of the English colonization
of Southern Ireland. DNA has proved a connection to the Span/Spann
family of Ireland and South Carolina. See the following families
for their lives.
- Family Members -
Northern
Ireland (proved or suspected immigrants)
- Bothwell, Burns, Campbell,
Jones,
McDowell, Renwick, Graydon , Moon
Southern
Ireland - Spann
Elroy's History of the
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History including Viking Settlements in Ireland
History Index || Elroy's Family Index || Ancestor Chart #1 || Early Irish History
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