All Waste and Desolate

Initial researches have indicated that the lands which Hamilton and Montgomery acquired in Antrim and Down were desolate, depopulated and wasted. The English/Irish wars of the late 1500s had caused great devastation before the arrival of the Scots. We hope that this series of quotations provides some useful references to stimulate further study:

“... the beginning of the Hamilton and Montgomery plantation in the Ards Peninsula in 1606 was hardly auspicious. The first planters from the Lowlands of Scotland did not wrest a fertile, cultivated and prosperous region from Gaelic proprietors. They came instead to a country devastated by war and famine, where they had to struggle to survive the first winter, as the Pilgrim Fathers were to do in New Plymouth a few years later … yet within two years, aided by good harvests, the planters had transformed the Ards into a garden. The chief reason was undoubtedly the stream of Lowland tenants who so quickly filled up the colony and then spread into other areas of the plantation in the north and west. Hamilton and Montgomery succeeded where Sir Thomas Smith had failed. They created the bridgehead through which the Scots were to come into Ulster for the rest of the century ...”
ATQ Stewart,
The Narrow Ground
(London, 1977) pages 38–39

“… an extent of desolation seldom produced even by the dire agencies of war. The destruction of all religious houses in the district was the work of sir Brian MacFelim O'Neill … Then came the revolt of O'Neill, during the progress of which that chieftain literally swept the country with fire and sword, burning the abbeys of Bangor, Movilla, and Comber, together with all other structures which might be made available as garrisons for the English, and completing his desolating raid by laying the town of Carrickfergus in ashes. The abbeys and other houses then destroyed were never afterwards repaired, and when Sir Hugh Montgomery and his colonists arrived, only the walls remained …”
Rev G Hill (ed),
The Montgomery Manuscripts
(Belfast, 1869) page 59

"... The province of Ulster, in the early period of the Reformation, was in a condition still worse than the other parts of the country. Those intestine wars which raged during the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth had their chief seat here, and had reduced the province almost to a state of depopulation: most of the towns were destroyed; cultivation had nearly ceased ..."
J Douglas MacMillan
Restoration in the Church, Reports of Revivals 1625–1839
(Worcester, 1989)
Originally published as Narratives of Revivals of Religion in Scotland, Ireland and Wales, Glasgow 1839

“… Sir James Fullerton, a great favourite, who loved ready money, and to live in Court, more than in waste wildernesses in Ulster …”
TK Lowry Esq LL.D (ed),
The Hamilton Manuscripts
(Belfast, 1867) page 16

“… County of Down, in our Province of Ulster, within our Kingdom of Ireland, as for the inhabiting and planting the Northern parts of our said Kingdom, which are waste and uninhabited …”
TK Lowry Esq LL.D (ed),
The Hamilton Manuscripts
(Belfast, 1867) General Appendix lxxvi

“… In 1575, when Sir Henry Sydney visited Ulster, the territory of Upper Clanneboy was held by Nial, son of Brian Fagartach, and father of Con. This chieftain also ruled the adjoining territory of the Dufferin, which Sydney found "all waste and desolate …”
Rev G Hill (ed),
The Montgomery Manuscripts
(Belfast, 1869) page 79

“… Sir Hen. Sidney, in 1575, thus speaks of Kinnelarty: "From thence I came to Kinnelarty, or Mac Cartains Countrie, which I found all desolate and waste …”
Rev G Hill (ed),
The Montgomery Manuscripts
(Belfast, 1869) page 312

“… (especially in and about the towns of Donaghadee and Newton), considering that in the spring time, Ao. 1606, those parishes were now more wasted than America (when the Spaniards landed there), but were not at all incumbered with great woods to be felled and grubbed, to the discouragement or hindrance of the inhabitants, for in all those three parishes aforesaid, 30 cabins could not be found, nor any stone walls, but ruined roofless churches, and a few vaults at Gray Abbey, and a stump of an old castle in Newton, in each of which some Gentlemen sheltered themselves at their first coming over…”
Rev G Hill (ed),
The Montgomery Manuscripts
(Belfast, 1869) page 58

“… because of their Scottish upbringing and background, be permitted to labour in the barren north of Ireland …”
J W Lockington,
Robert Blair of Bangor
(Belfast, 1996) page 18

“… It has also to be remembered that the land they came to held few attractions. It had been desolated by war, and was infested with wolves and robbers. It possessed few fortified towns or castles. For the most part it was covered in bogs and forests. The physical state of the land was a reflection of its spiritual condition …”
J W Lockington,
Robert Blair of Bangor
(Belfast, 1996) page 7

“… Ulster therefore … during the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth, it had been reduced almost to a state of depopulation …”
Rev John Weir,
The Ulster Awakening
(Belfast,1860) page 11

“… in a few years there flocked such a multitude of people from Scotland, that these northern counties of Down, Antrim and Londonderry, &c, were in a good measure planted, which were waste before …”
Rev John Weir,
The Ulster Awakening
(Belfast,1860) page 11

“…the desolated parish…the deserted parish…”
Rev Hugh McNeill,
The Annals of the Parish of Derrykeighan
(reprinted by Mid Antrim Historical Group, 1993) page 13

“… these colonists has their houses to build, and found their farms merely a wilderness…”
Rev Hugh McNeill,
The Annals of the Parish of Derrykeighan
(reprinted by Mid Antrim Historical Group, 1993) page 15

“…Dalriada (alias the Route) was reduced to abject poverty, and its populations almost annihilated by war, famine, and pestilence, continuously from 1544 till 1602 …”
Rev Hugh McNeill,
The Annals of the Parish of Derrykeighan
(reprinted by Mid Antrim Historical Group, 1993) page 13

Sir Arthur Chichester reported to Lord Burleigh, in 1601, that he had made a raid into ‘The Route’, ‘… marchinge by nyght until I came thither… made my entrance almost as far as Dunluce where I spared neither house, corne, nor creature …’”
Rev Hugh McNeill,
The Annals of the Parish of Derrykeighan
(reprinted by Mid Antrim Historical Group, 1993) page 13

“… Til 1611 it was contrary to law for any Scotch, especially those of the ‘Outer Isles’, to settle in Ireland. Queen Mary passed an Act treating the Scotch as pirates and foreign enemies, making it a penal offence for any Scotchman to settle in Ireland, or to intermarry with any of the Irish …”
Rev Hugh McNeill,
The Annals of the Parish of Derrykeighan
(reprinted by Mid Antrim Historical Group, 1993) page 13

“… The said Sir James Hamilton to have liberty to import all such corn and commodities from England, Scotland or from any friendly State, at the accustomed duties, into the said territories, to enable him to perform his undertaking of inhabiting the same, being now depopulated and wasted, with English and Scottish men …”
The King to Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy
Carte Papers, vol 61 p.145, April 16 1605

“… Unfortunately for himself Con was a drunken sluggish man and a weakling, who found himself elbow to elbow with two neighbours very far from sluggish or weak and well able to hold their liquor. His lands were desolate, almost worthless as they stood, and he had neither the means nor the energy to re-people and restock them. Gradually he sold them to the two enterprising Scots. Finally, in 1616, he disposed of the last of them, together with his ancestral home of Castlereagh …”
C Falls,
The Birth of Ulster
(London, 1936), page 157

“…Sir Brian MacPhelim O'Neill of Clandeboye, who laid waste the Ards…”
C Falls,
The Birth of Ulster
(London, 1936), page 35

“… Montgomery was annoyed, but could reflect that he had got on the wrong side of the law regarding Con's escape and that his grant was still a fine one, of excellent, though, as in the case of Antrim, completely devastated land ...”
C Falls,
The Birth of Ulster
(London, 1936), page 156

“ ‘the whole region of the county Antrim’, began a patent of 1604, was ‘wasted by rebellion.’”
M Perceval Maxwell,
The Scottish Migration to Ulster in the Reign of James I
(London & New York, 1973) page 47

“… of Ulster, he (Sir John Davys, the Solicitor General) says that it is a very waste or wilderness and that there are only a few significant towns – Knockfergus (Carrickfergus), Carlingford, Newry, Dundalk and the Derry …”
W.D. Bailie,
The Six Mile Water Revival of 1625
(Belfast, 1976) page 2