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Facts about the Ulster Scots - Part Two

Members of the Roman Catholic Church, who in the main constituted the native Irish population in Ireland, also bore the brunt of the discriminatory Test Act. However, in the administering of religion Roman Catholic priests were at least recognised by the High Churchmen as being lawfully ordained.

Presbyterian ministers were in no such position and right across Ulster they were turned out of their pulpits and threatened with legal proceedings should they defy the Episcopal edict from London. Ministers had no official standing; they were unable to sanctify marriage; unable to officiate at the burial of their congregation and prevented from teaching in schools on any aspect of the faith.

This narrow ill-thought-out piece of legislation left the Presbyterian population, by then a highly significant section of the Ulster community, deeply resentful and almost totally alienated from their political masters in the English Established Church. The Act had the effect of making the Presbyterian people think increasingly of starting a new life in America. Their protests had been ignored and there was, from the pulpit to the pew in some congregations, the feeling that this might be the only way to ease the suffering.

The harsh economics of life in Ireland in the early 18th century was another factor which made immigration more appealing. Four years of drought made life almost unbearable for the small peasant farmers on the hillsides of Ulster and with the High Church landlords staking claims to exorbitant rents and the textile industry in recession, the movement of the Scots-Irish to America began in earnest.

The Eagle Wing is believed to have been the first ship to set sail from Ulster's shores for America, but its 1636 voyage from the little Co. Down port of Groomsport was aborted after heavy storms in mid-Atlantic. Some 140 Presbyterians from congregations on both sides of Belfast Lough in North Down and East County Antrim sailed on September 9 bound for Boston but the journey ended back in Carrickfergus Bay on November 3 with the ships shrouds asunder, mainsail in ribbons, and rudder badly damaged.

It had been a traumatic experience for the voyagers who had completed three- quarters of the journey when one of the Presbyterian ministers accompanying them, the Rev. John Livingstone advised, in the face of the continuing storm, that it was God's will that they should return home. The ship's captain was also of similar mind and the 150-tonne vessel was turned around.