It was in Ulster that the O’Neill clan, allied
with the O’Donnell clan, finally defeated the English in a series of
battles, but in 1602, the British fleet finally crushed even these strong
Irish Chieftains. The fight had lasted eight long years and by the end
the country was so dreadfully wasted that children were killed and eaten for
food. The sufferings inflicted by the war had been so great that there
was no further punishment and most Catholics were left in possession of
their estates. O’Neill himself was granted a pardon. The final
act in the drama came four years later, when O’Neill and the new O’Donnell
chief became unsuccessfully involved in fresh conspiracies against the
English crown resulting in their flight from Ireland and the seizing of
their Ulsterian lands by James I (also James VI of Scotland).
James wanted to populate conquered Celtic
territory with English settlers who would support the English crown, fend
off vengeful raiders, and generate farm profits that could be sent back to
England. James left the native Irish to inhabit bogs and forests and
turned over the choicer lands to Protestants, both English and Scottish.
The low cost attracted many settlers, a 1000 pounds could secure an estate
and a noble title for its owner. From 1608 to 1697, 200,000 people
departed the fertile soil of lowland Scotland and crossed the North Channel
to northern Ireland. There they found productive farmland and took advantage
of it. They bred livestock, cultivated crops and developed a
flourishing textile industry. Ulster promised to be a haven of free
worship for Presbyterians, who outnumbered the English six to one. But
they did not live happily ever after in their new adopted homeland.
The Massacre of 1641
From the very beginning of their tenure in
northern Ireland it was apparent that the Irish Catholics viewed their new
Scottish neighbors with hostility. What was to follow was one of the
gravest events in Irish history, the turning-point on which all later
controversies between England and Ireland hinge. Forty volumes of
depositions are preserved in the library of Trinity College, which tell the
The Irish were in a very bad humor and in such
a humor all that was needed was opportunity. The opportunity presented
itself as the English were otherwise engaged with a near civil war on their
own soil. Ireland for a time had no Viceroy and no army. The
Lord Justices, Parsons, and Borlase, were unpopular even among the English
settlers and had no influence. Eight thousand Catholic soldiers,
having been collected with the view of fighting Calvinists in Scotland, had
been recently disbanded and now were far more willing to undertake the same
fight at home.
At the beginning of October, 1641, the leading
Catholic clergy and laity met at a Franciscan Abbey in Westmeath, to discuss
what course of action was to be taken against the Protestant settlers.
Some advocated banishment while others felt extermination was the answer
because a banished man may come back with a sword in his hand--wiser and
safer to destroy them while they could. Most were against the more
violent approach, but in Ulster another meeting was taking place. At
this meeting were Sir Philip, Lord Maguyre of Fermanagh, Philip O’Reilly, a
lawyer; Hugh McMahon and his brother Elmer the Vicar-General, afterwards
Bishop of Clogher; Roger Moore, one of the Moore’s of Leax; and a friar of
The Bishop of Clogher was the brain of the
enterprise, and in large directed the course which was to be pursued.
They had decided to act independently of the more temperate minded and aimed
for full eviction of the settlers, by any means. The original plan was
to attack only the English settlers and leave the Scots unmolested but this
did not happen.
The end of October was chosen as the time to
put their plan into action. Rents and taxes were paid in Ireland on
November 1 which meant that the rents would still be in the hands of the
tenants and their crops would be housed. The high winds at the fall of
the year made communication with England difficult and in 1641 these winds
were exceptionally wild. They felt that a blow struck simultaneously
and fiercely over the whole North, without a note of warning, might crush
the settlers and their religion at once and forever. Priests were used
to spread the word and organize the assault. The order relayed by the
priests was that on the same day, the Irish people were to rise and dispose
of the settlers and their families. No distinct directions were
probably given about killing them but rather to drive them from their
houses: strip them--man, woman and child--of their property, strip them even
of their clothes on their backs, to take such chances of life as the
elements would allow, in the late autumn amidst sleet and rain, without food
or covering. The plan also included an assault and seizure of Dublin
Castle as it held arms for nine thousand men in its cellars. News of
this part of the plan leaked out and was ultimately stopped but the attack
on the settlers went ahead as planned.
On the morning of October 23, 1641
there appeared, before the houses of the settlers and their tenants, gangs
of armed Irish, who demanded instant possession, on being admitted, ejected
the entire families, and stripped most of them to the skin. Many
resisted and were killed; many, the young vigorous men especially, who could
save their own lives by flight, sought shelter for their women and little
ones in the houses of their Irish neighbors, with whom they had lived in
intimacy. The priests, however, had so charmed the Irish, and laid
such bloody impressions on
as it was held a mortal sin to give relief or protection to the settlers.
These helpless ones were often betrayed or murdered by their hosts, although
there were many exceptions, as in the case of the Blair and Crawford
families who were saved by the brave warning of a dear Irish servant girl.
(Thousands are alive today because of that one act of kindness!) Naked
men flying for their lives, carried the alarm to Derry, Coleraine and
Carrickfergus, and the inhabitants there had time to close their gates.
Within the next two weeks, with the
exception of the places mentioned above, every town, village, fort or
private house belonging to a Protestant in six northern counties and in Down
and Monaghan was in the hands of the Irish insurgents, while the roads were
covered with bands of miserable, fugitives dragging themselves either toward
Dublin, or Derry, or Carrickfergus. In the wildest of remembered
winters the shivering fugitives were goaded along the highways stark naked
and foodless. If some found a few rags to throw about them, they were
instantly torn away. If others, in modesty, twisted straw ropes round
their waists, the straw was set on fire. Many were buried alive.
Those who died first were never buried, but were left to be devoured by
dogs, and rats and swine. Some were driven into rivers and drowned,
some hanged, some mutilated, some ripped with knives. The priests told
the people "that Protestants were worse than dogs, they were devils and
served the devil, and the killing of them was a meritorious act." They
flung babies into boiling pots, or tossed them into the ditches to the pigs.
They put out grown men’s eyes, turned them adrift to wander, and starved
them to death. The towns could not hold the numbers which flocked into
them, and the plague came to add to the general horrors. In Coleraine,
in four months, six thousand are said to have died of the pestilence alone.
Rallying from their first surprise,
the Protestants gathered into bodies and made fight; and from that moment
the conduct of the rebellion fell entirely into the hands of the most
violent. With the aid of forces sent by Scotland the rebellion was
eventually quelled six months later and the equally bloody reprisals
commenced. The property of every Catholic landowner became subject to
confiscation. All who were accused of plotting against the English
crown were executed while others were banished. It is impossible to
ascertain the actual number of deaths that occurred on both sides of the
revolt. Estimates range from 30,000 to roughly one-third of Ireland’s 1.5
The Hearts of Steel
Land in Ireland was not owned by individuals
the way we know it to be in America. The Crown was the sole owner of
all lands, which was divided into large holdings, often of several thousand
acres and title given to nobles as a reward for some service they may have
provided to the crown. These lands were again divided by the nobles
and leased to smaller holders. Often there were several layers of
leasing and subletting between the nobles and the men who actually worked
the land. The nobles and larger landholders profited from the
collecting of rents and the labors of the smaller leaseholders who actually
worked the land. Often the landlords did not even live in the country.
In the early 1770’s one such absentee landlord,
Lord Donegal, had become enormously wealthy on the fruits of other men’s
labors but still found his income to be unequal to his yet more enormous
expenditures. Many of his Antrim leases having come due at about the
same time, he decided to use the event as an opportunity to add to his
coffers and demanded a outrageous and unprecedented fine for their renewal--
a hundred thousand pounds. The tenants, all Protestants, offered the
interest of the money in addition to the rent, but it could not be.
Speculative Belfast capitalists paid the fine, and took the lands over the
heads of the tenants to sublet. A precedent so tempting and so
lucrative was naturally followed. Other landlords finding the trade so
profitable began to serve their tenants with notices to quit until all at
once thousands were driven from their homes. The sturdy Scots, who in
five generations had reclaimed Antrim from the wilderness, saw the farms
which they and their fathers had made valuable let by auction to the highest
bidder; and when they refused to submit themselves to robbery, saw them let
to others, and let in many instances to Catholics who would promise anything
to recover their hold upon the soil.
The farmers and peasants combined to
defend themselves. Where law was the servant of oppression, force was
their one resource. They called themselves "Hearts of Steel" and were
sometimes referred to as "Steelboys." Their object was to protect
themselves from universal robbery. Their resistance was not against
the Government--it was against the landlords and the landlords’ agents, and
nothing else. They made a petition to the government but a corrupt
Parliament (many landlords themselves) saw their demands as an invasion of
the rights of landlords and reported that the increase of rents demanded was
Unjust laws provoke and compel resistance.
Violence followed and the Hearts of Steel destroyed cattle and farmsteads of
the intruding tenants. They attacked gentlemen’s houses and lawyers’
offices chiefly in search of deeds and leases; of theft they were never
accused. One of their number being confined at Belfast, a large body of
Steelboys, accompanied by many thousands of peasants, who neither before nor
after took any part in the insurrection, marched upon that town and
succeeded in obtaining his surrender. Soldiers were soon sent to the
disturbed districts and several boys were tried at Carrickfergus, but by the
supposed partiality of the juries they were acquitted. The trials were then
moved out of the offenders home turf and still the feelings were so strong
that they were acquitted. Eventually, however, as the insurrection
subsided and after some fierce conflicts with the soldiers many insurgents
were taken, tried and executed.
In the two years which followed the
Antrim evictions, thirty thousand Protestants left Ulster for a land where
there was no legal robbery, and where those who sowed the seed could reap
the harvest--America. They went with bitterness in their hearts,
cursing and detesting the aristocratic system. They were soon heard of
again. The ejected tenants of Lord Donegal formed a large part of the
revolutionary armies which severed the New World from the British forever.
See Samuel Blair, A "Hearts of Steel" man.
How Linen is Made From Flax
The field in front of the Ulster farmstead was
planted in spring with flax, the source of linen, a major product of Irish
farms. In summer, the long-stemmed plants were pulled up, bundled and
soaked in a pond for several weeks so the outer covering rots away,
producing a famously disgusting stench.
The Ulster farmer dried the flax stems on low stone walls around his house.
Dried bundles of dingy, gray stems were "scutched" in a wooden apparatus to
break up the unwanted pith binding the desired fibers and then drawn through
a "hackle," a forest of sharp metal points, to comb out the pith. The
result was a long tress of soft, golden fibers that could have graced the
head of any flaxen-haired girl. Women on the farm would have spun the
fibers into thread and stored it until an itinerant weaver came to turn it
The Edmonstone family has a long pedigree as
landowners, and servants of the Kings of Scotland. In 1445 they were
granted the lands of Duntreagh in Stirlingshire, and to this day the family
still reside at the Duntreagh Castle in Scotland.
At some date, shortly before 1607, William
Edmonstone, together with his brother James, came over to Ulster to join Sir
Hugh Montgomery in the Newtownards area. In August 1607 they were
granted lands in that area. Then on May 26, 1609, William Edmonstone
leased part of the "Tough of Braidenisland", comprising the parish of
Templecorran, some 2,870 acres, from John Dalway. Shortly afterwards
William made over the townland of Bentra to his brother James. William
died in 1626 and was succeeded by his son Archibald; there is evidence that
about this time Redhall House, perhaps already a building of some age, was
substanitally remodelled and enlarged.
The Edmonstone family were responsible for
shaping the community of Ballycarry. They brought over Edward Brice,
the first Presbyterian minister in Ireland, and it was doubtless their money
and organization that re-built the old parish church for him in 1622.
As staunch Presbyterians the family were actively involved in the local
congregation and were generous benefactors to it.
It is said that the estate was well settled
with tenants, both farmers and tradesmen. They built flour mills for
local convenience which were one of the keys to local prosperity.
It must be borne in mind, however, that the
main estates of the Edmonstone family lay at Duntreagh in Scotland.
Thus the owners of Redhall had dual interests, which at times must have been
difficult to reconcile. Finally, Sir Archibald Edmonstone decided that
he would have to choose between the two and , as he lived chiefly in
Scotland and the great bulk of his activities and concerns were there, he
sold the Ballycarry estate to Richard Ker in 1779 for the sum of $25,000
One curious enigma remains, The Edmonstones
were by far the most prominent family in the community for 175 years, yet no
monument or inscription marks their graves. It is known that the
family burying ground was in what was once the north aisle of the old
Templecorran church, and that in the eighteenth century the family erected
an enclosed vault there. However, it fell to the Fletcher family
of Mount Pleasant, Carrickfergus, which inherited the vault after the last
of the Edmonstones went to live in Scotland, to erect a memorial stone.
It is sad that this monument refers only to the Fletcher family and not to
their kinsfolk, the Lairds of Duntreagh, who were for so long the occupants
of Redhall and the landlords of Ballycarry. Article from "The
Templecorran Project," An historic Guide to Ballycarry Old Cemetery: by
David Hume & John W. Nelson