Ulster Plantation, Scots-Irish Americans & Canadians, & the Border Reivers of Scotland & England
Channel: Celtic History Decoded
Date: 2023-01-03

Please Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/CelticHistory 

Please support this channel on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/historydecoded

Please donate through PayPal using this link: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=QFB9ZECHZJDF6 – you can also send money through PayPal straight to chdecoded@gmail.com if you don’t want to use the link.

Subscribe to Celtic History Decoded: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCS3M_uNHH2iOJkpGhkO2SA?sub_confirmation=1

Chapters:
0:00 Border Reivers and Ulster Plantation
2:57 Scots-Irish in North America 
5:30 Support

Ulster Plantation, Scots-Irish Americans & Canadians, & the Border Reivers of Scotland & England

The border reivers of the Anglo-Scottish border have a fascinating history that connects to the history of so many other countries. In fact, Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th President of the United States in the 1960s, is of part Scots-Irish ancestry and bears a variation of the clan name of a notable Scottish border reiver clan, clan Johnstone. He was not the only Johnson to be President of the US however, more on that later, and also on the heritage of Andrew Jackson. 

The border reivers were raiders along the Anglo-Scottish border from the 13th to the 17th century. I will link a video above and in the description below where I go into more detail on the border reivers which I suggest you watch if you haven’t already. 

In the early 17th century however, regal power under King James VI, also known as King James I, who became King of Scotland, England and Ireland in 1603, had finally had enough of the instability caused by the reivers. As a side note, King James even tried to abolish the use of the word border, and replace it with middle shires, to help unify his emerging regal kingdom, which wasn’t politically unified yet, as Scotland, Ireland and England were still separate kingdoms. King James also wanted to strengthen his position in Ireland. 

Thus, to kill two birds with one stone, deal with the border reivers and improve his position in Ireland, many reivers or descendants of reivers from the lowlands of Scotland and north of England were incentivised to migrate to Ulster in Ireland, to serve the crowns own ends of increasing its stronghold in Ireland, as most of these migrants were protestant.

Ulster at the that time was a strong Gaelic area, and these settlers, colonisers, imperial pawns or however you view them were given lands of the native population. A number of people from the Johnstone clan for instance, a clan associated with the border reivers, moved as part of the Ulster Plantation. Other surnames associated with the border reivers included Armstrong, Elliot, Dixon and Bell. Incidentally, this wasn’t the first time border reivers were in Ireland, as they were employed as mercenaries by regal authority at times, including in Ireland, given their skills as light cavalry.

The point of this video is not to go in depth into the Ulster Plantation, a highly complex historical event. It’s simply to highlight the geopolitics of power, and how royal and political authority could move hordes of people that were causing issues in one location into another location for their own ends. 

For regal power, people were pawns on a grand chessboard, forced or incentivised to uproot their lives and settle in new lands for regal ends, and this is an angle on the history of the border reivers that is rarely discussed. 

There is more to the story however. Many of these people and their descendants who moved into Ulster did not stay long, around a century or so if that. As, in the 18th and 19th centuries, vast amounts of people from Ulster migrated across the Atlantic Ocean to North America, to both America and Canada. 

Sources:

Plantation of Ulster - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantation_of_Ulster 

‘Sheep stealers from the north of England’: the Riding Clans in Ulster by Robert Bell (History Ireland) https://www.historyireland.com/sheep-stealers-from-the-north-of-england-the-riding-clans-in-ulster-by-robert-bell/
 
A Fractious and Naughty People: The Border Reivers in Ireland By Trevor Graham https://sasmm.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/A-Fractious-and-Naughty-People.pdf 

Top 60 Surnames of Derry City https://www.rootsireland.ie/derry-genealogy/top-60-surnames-of-derry-city/ 

Border reivers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_reivers 

Historic UK - The History of the Border Reivers ¬ https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/The-Border-Reivers/

Scotch-Irish Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch-Irish_Americans 

Scotch-Irish Canadians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch-Irish_Canadians 

Johnson https://www.ancestry.co.uk/name-origin?surname=johnson 

Clan Johnstone, The Johnson Family https://clan.com/family/johnson 

CHD - The Wild West of Scotland and the Border Reivers: Clans and Chaos on The Scottish-English Border https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSCvfhB3tA4 

#history #ulster #america