Settlement not Plantation

Not plantation, not conquest, not invasion. Settlement.

Over the years, writers have referred to the Hamilton & Montgomery project with a range of different terms – “Unofficial Plantation”, “migration”, “enterprise”, “colonization” and “private settlement”.

By far the term most used is “Settlement”. For example:

Rev George Hill (ed.),
The Montgomery Manuscripts
(Belfast, 1869)
 - “Settlement” appears over 100 times in the text

T K Lowry (ed.),
The Hamilton Manuscripts
(Belfast, 1867)
- subtitled “The Settlement of the Territories of…”
- the term “settlement” appears 38 times in the text

Cyril Falls,
The Birth of Ulster
(London, 1936)
- chapter entitled “The Settlement of Antrim and Down”

John Harrison,
The Scot in Ulster
(Edinburgh & London, 1888 - reprinted by Books Ulster and the Ulster-Scots Academy, Bangor, 2004)
- chapter entitled “The Scot Settles North Down and County Antrim”

James Barkley Woodburn,
The Ulster Scot, his History and Religion
(London, 1914)
- chapter entitled “The Settlement of Antrim and Down”

Rory Fitzpatrick,
God’s Frontiersmen – the Scots-Irish Epic
(London, 1989)
  - “settlers” and “settlement” are used in the text of the relevant section

The term “settlement” also helps to distinguish the Hamilton & Montgomery project from the later Plantation of Ulster.