The Plantation of Ulster

Donegal before the Plantation

Donegal before the Plantation had changed little in a thousand years. It was ruled by Gaelic chieftains, in a society much like that of the Highland clans of Scotland. There were no towns to speak of, and the tracks that passed for roads were almost impassable in winter, so most significant buildings stood close to the waterways. The chieftains defended their territories with fortresses, the people were Catholic and Irish-speaking, and cultural life centred on the monasteries and the chieftains' halls.

The common people lived in small settlements called clachans and farmed in the rundale fashion: an enclosed infield for crops and a poorer outfield for grazing. These areas gradually became the townlands we know today. The system survived the Plantation and was still in use in many places in the first half of the nineteenth century. The townlands are a lasting memorial to that lost world.

Gallowglass and Redshanks

Scotland and Ulster are less than twelve miles apart at the closest point, and the Scottish islands are visible from the north coast. For centuries before the Plantation there were ties of kinship, language and lordship between the Norse-Gaelic clans of the Highlands and Islands and their Irish counterparts. After the Scottish Wars of Independence (1296–1357), many septs who had found themselves on the losing side settled in Ireland, among them the MacSweeneys, MacDonnells and MacCabes.

The Irish called these fighting men gallóglaigh, "foreign warriors". They gained a fearsome reputation as reliable mercenaries, wielding the great two-handed sparth axe, a throwback to their Norse roots. The name McCorkill is recorded in Donegal and Leitrim as early as 1509, as coming from Scotland, and there is a strong possibility these men were gallowglass. I do not believe they left heirs, or that any of the later Ulster McCorkells descend from them.

In the second half of the 1500s a second wave of Scottish mercenaries appeared in the north of Ireland: the Redshanks, a Lowland Scots term for Highland Gaels, perhaps from their deerskin buskins or their bare legs. Unlike the gallowglass they were usually hired for the summer and returned to Scotland for the winter, and they came mostly from the MacLeods, MacQuarries, MacLeans, MacDonalds and Campbells. In 1569 Turlough Luineach O'Neill married Lady Agnes Campbell, who is said to have brought 1,000 Scottish mercenaries with her.

Were the Laggan settlers Redshanks?

In A Short History of the Laggan Redshanks, 1569–1630, Barry R. McCain proposes that many Plantation settlers in the Portlough area of the Laggan, the McCorkells among them, were Redshanks or their descendants, already living in the area in the previous century. He points to the Highland character of names in the 1630 muster rolls.

I can find little evidence for this. Lady Agnes is recorded as returning to Scotland in 1572 with most of her mercenaries, and the treaty of 1575 allowed O'Neill only 300 Scottish soldiers, on his own lands in Tyrone. Highland surnames were spread throughout Scotland by the late 1500s, so a Highland name in a muster roll says little about where its bearer came from. Some Scots were certainly settled in the area before the Plantation: "above three or four score Scottish families" lived at Strabane in 1598, probably the remnant of Lady Agnes's men. But they were Catholic, unlike the Lowland Presbyterian settlers who followed.

Highlanders appear again in the 1640s on the other side. In the first major battle of the Laggan Army, a MacDonald regiment's ferocious frontal assault almost carried the day for the Irish, one of the earliest recorded Highland charges.⁴ And in December 1688 it was the approach of the Earl of Antrim's regiment of Catholic Redshanks that led the apprentice boys to shut the gates of Derry, the first act of the famous siege.⁵

The Nine Years War and the Flight of the Earls

Queen Elizabeth's attempts to extend English authority into Ulster met stubborn resistance from the Ulster lords, and eventually open war, with Spain supporting the Irish. Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, hired large numbers of Redshanks, among them over 2,000 MacLeods of Lewis and Harris. Despite early victories, including the Yellow Ford in 1598, the Irish were defeated at Kinsale in December 1601.

O'Neill kept substantial estates, but most of his authority was gone, and he was suspected, with some justification, of continuing to plot with Spain. In September 1607 he and the Earl of Tyrconnell sailed from Rathmullan with their families and followers, hoping to reach Spain. They landed in France instead and could never return. Their lands were forfeit to the Crown, and a plan was quickly drawn up to settle them with English and Scottish Protestants loyal to the Crown: the Plantation of Ulster.

The Plantation in Donegal

The Barony of Raphoe was divided into two precincts, Lifford and Portlough. Portlough was granted in 1,000- and 2,000-acre portions to Scottish undertakers, chiefly Cunninghams and Stewarts from Ayrshire, on condition that they settled a set number of British tenants, built a castle or bawn, and kept their men armed. Few of the native Irish received land, and many moved west into Kilmacrenan. The village of Manorcunningham, originally the Manor of Fort Cunningham, takes its name from its first proprietor, James Cunningham. Around the bawns grew villages where tenants could shelter in times of attack, with fairs and markets set up by the undertakers.

The first McCorkell planters

The first McCorkells whose records survive are Andrew and John McCorkill, in the 1630 muster roll for the Barony of Raphoe. They may have been brothers, or father and son. They appear together under Lady Katherine Cunningham, widow of Sir James Cunningham of Glengarnock in Ayrshire, undertaker of 2,000 acres in the Portlough precinct. Men on the muster rolls were aged 16 to 60, and Andrew and John are listed with sword and pike, which suggests they were of some means compared with those who carried neither.

The undertakers were required to keep "a convenient store of arms" in their houses and to muster their tenants every half year. The rolls survive for Donegal and Londonderry between 1622 and 1642, in varying detail. A William McCordall appears in the Londonderry roll of 1630, possibly another of the name.

The proportion is described as Dacastrose and Portlough. Portlough is a townland in the modern parish of All Saints, in the fertile Laggan valley, bordering the parish of Burt. Pynnar's survey of 1619 describes it:

Sir James Cunningham hath 2000 acres called Decatrose and Portlogh. Upon this Proportion there is no more built than there was three years past; which was a little Bawne of lime and stone, and a small house in it, in which the Lady and her daughters do now dwell; but near the Bawne there is a small village consisting of 12 houses, inhabited with Brittish Tenants. There is good tillage, and no Irish that I saw.Pynnar's Survey of Ulster, 1619

Pynnar counted 30 families on the Cunningham lands, with their undertenants able to make 80 men, of whom only five had taken the Oath of Supremacy, meaning most were probably Presbyterian. The village near the bawn was almost certainly Carrigans. Later McCorkell records in Donegal in the 1600s almost all centre on this small area, within a few miles of Derry, and McCorkells were living at or near Carrigans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Tracing Andrew and John back to Scotland is almost impossible given how few records survive. As tenant farmers they were probably illiterate and left little trace beyond the muster roll. But I know their landlord came from Glengarnock in Ayrshire, so I have searched for the name there and in Ayrshire generally; some of those records are in the previous chapter.

Inishowen and Burt

North of Portlough lay the Barony of Inishowen. In 1608 Sir Arthur Chichester put down the rising of Sir Cahir O'Doherty, and in 1610 King James granted him the whole peninsula. Chichester leased it in large blocks to about sixteen principal landlords, mostly English, who in turn let to tenants. English tenants were hard to find, so Inishowen, like other planted areas, saw a large influx of Scots alongside the native Irish from the earliest years.

Among the names in the 1630 muster roll for Inishowen is Agney (or Aghey) McCorkey. I suspect this is Archy, short for Archibald, mistranscribed or misspelt; Black's Surnames of Scotland gives MacCorkie as an abbreviated form of MacCorkill. He may be the Archibald McCorkell who appears in the 1650s and 1660s, and perhaps the father of some of those in the Burt kirk session book.

Burt lies within Inishowen but has more in common with the fertile Laggan to its south than with the rugged country to the north. The parish is dominated by the Grianán of Aileach, the great stone fort on the hill. Bordering Raphoe and lying just west of the new city of Londonderry, it was a prime candidate for settlement.

The 1641 rising and the Laggan Army

In October 1641 the native Irish rose across Ireland, and especially in Ulster, where many settlers were killed and many more driven from their homes in the depth of winter. Thousands died, men, women and children alike, and the rising left deep scars on those who survived. Against this background the settlers of Donegal and Derry raised the Laggan Army. Outnumbered and surrounded, it became a formidable force, and Lord Ernest Hamilton later called it one of the most remarkable armed forces in history.⁶ Thanks to the skill of its commanders, the Laggan was spared the worst of the rising.

One of its regiments was Sir Audley Mervyn's, a thousand strong. A muster held at Elagh in the parish of Burt on 20 July 1643, now at PRONI, lists a Robert Corkell, private, in Lieutenant Colonel Robert Galbreith's company. The Galbreiths held land near St Johnston. He may well be the Robert who appears in later records of the area.

McCorkells in Londonderry

The city sits right on the Donegal border and was the gateway to the Laggan. Scottish settlers landed at its port before moving on, and some stayed in or near the city, which served as a fortress in troubled times. The London companies who held County Londonderry were also glad to let land to Scots, since they struggled to find enough English settlers.

Although all the early records show the McCorkells as Presbyterian, there were no separate Presbyterian churches in the area until the second half of the century, and Presbyterians worshipped in the parish churches. Archibald McCorkell may have been the father of John the cooper, but without further records we will never know.

The Hearth Money Rolls

The Hearth Tax was introduced in Ireland in 1662, at two shillings on every hearth. The rolls are arranged by county, parish and usually townland. Some householders were exempt and others evaded the tax, so the lists are not complete, but they are the best census of the period. Four McCorkells appear for Donegal:

Ballyhaskey borders the village of Newtowncunningham, prime farmland in the Laggan, and Andrew and James were probably small farmers or labourers there. James is probably Andrew's son, since Andrew does not appear in 1665. Andrew may be the Andrew of the 1630 muster roll; these lands belonged to the Cunninghams then. The village later became part of the Forward estate, and an Andrew McCorkell is still recorded at Ballyhaskey in 1727. Corcy, in Raymochy, was assigned at the Plantation to James Cunningham, cousin of Sir James.

All these men lived within about ten miles of one another, so it is not unreasonable to think they were related, perhaps brothers, or a father and sons. Lecky, in The Laggan and its Presbyterianism (1905), noted that in several townlands families of the same name still lived where the old residents had, and were no doubt their descendants.

The Subsidy Roll of 1667–68 for Taughboyne lists James McCorkle, his land valued at £10 a year. Subsidies were voted by the Irish Parliament in the 1660s to help Charles II with the cost of the army, and anyone with goods worth £3 or more was taxed. James must have been a substantial tenant, and he is probably the James of Ballyhaskey in 1665.

The kirk session book of Burt

The congregation at Burt dates back to the early Plantation, when it was joined with Derry. It became a separate ministry in 1673, called Bert, Inch and Elagh in the minutes of the Laggan Presbytery. Its first minister was William Hampton, licensed in Scotland, and Francis Makemie, later the founder of Presbyterianism in America, preached there on 2 April 1682. The old meeting house, whose centre section dated from the 1600s, was demolished in 1895.

A kirk session book survives from these early years, covering 1670 to 1715, which makes it almost unique in the north-west. It was extracted in 1995 by Oliver D. Cresswell for the Clan Ewing association, and the original is held by the Presbyterian Historical Society in Belfast. Among its many Lowland Scots names are several McCorkells:

Baptisms are recorded only up to 1683. Nothing more was entered until after the siege, and when the book resumes in 1691 it records only marriages. That gives nine or so McCorkells in about thirty years from a single congregation. Since there were few Presbyterian churches in the north-west, they may have come from a wider area than the parish itself. Linking these names to other records in Ireland or America is difficult, though some of them surely emigrated in the eighteenth century.

Lecky's In the Days of the Laggan Presbytery (1908) lists the ruling elders and commissioners who attended the presbytery between 1672 and 1700. Among those representing Inishowen is a "Da. M'Corkle". Lecky's Inishowen congregation was not Burt, which had its own elders, but the north of the peninsula: Donagh, Moville, Culdaff and Redcastle. So a McCorkle was a leading Presbyterian in north Inishowen before 1700, sitting alongside such names as Moore, Wallace, Riddle and Colhoun.

The siege of Derry, 1689

I have found no direct record of the family at the siege, but I am almost certain some McCorkells were there. Upwards of 30,000 people took refuge in the city, and records survive for fewer than a thousand. The family's presence in the area before and after the siege is strong circumstantial evidence. After the siege and the Boyne, the settlers' hold on the lands they had colonised was secure for the foreseeable future.

Robert McCorkle, gent, 1691

Robert McKorkel, whose son George was baptised at Burt in 1681, is probably the Robert McCorkle who left a will in 1691. Only the index entry survives; the will itself was almost certainly destroyed in the Four Courts in 1922.

McCorkle, Robert (gent.), Hill of Cullmactraine, p. Taughboyne… 1691

"Gent" suggests a man of independent means. Cullmactraine is the Culm'atraine of the 1665 Hearth Money Roll in Taughboyne, the same parish as Andrew and James. It also links to the Cunninghams: Pynnar records Cuthbert Cunningham's 1,000 acres as "Dromagh alias Coole McTreene", and Sir James Cunningham died at Coole McTreene in 1623, leaving Katherine and a nine-year-old son, George. The land was granted to Sir William Stewart in 1631. I have identified Cullmactraine as the modern townland of Cole Hill, close to Newtowncunningham, and a John McCorkle was living at Colehill in 1860, when he appeared at the Newtowncunningham petty sessions. A survey of 1727 shows an Andrew McCorkle still farming at Ballyhaskey in the same manor; see Chapter III.

A second wave: Inishowen in the 1690s

There is an alternative route into Donegal for my own branch of the family, the McCorkells of Moville. I do not yet have enough evidence either way, but it deserves a place here.

No McCorkells appear in the Hearth Money Rolls for Moville in the 1660s, when most of the parish was native Irish. By the Protestant census of 1740 there is a Robert McCorkill at Ballymacarthur, and the parish had changed: of the 186 surnames on the 1740 list, 104 do not appear in the 1660s, and about 80 of those new names are Scottish. Something brought a large number of Scots into north Inishowen between those dates. But the McCorkells were there before the 1740 census: "Da. M'Corkle" sat in the Laggan Presbytery as an elder for the Inishowen congregation of Donagh, Moville, Culdaff and Redcastle at some point between 1672 and 1700.

The Highlanders of Moville and Clonmany

After the siege of Derry, many of the native Irish of Inishowen left with the Irish army as it retreated south, and families from the Highlands of Scotland settled in their place. They were Protestants but spoke only Gaelic, and they petitioned the Bishop of Derry, William King, for ministers who could preach to them in their own language. He sent two, and a congregation of four or five hundred people was formed, with many of the native Irish attending too.

Several families, having migrated from Highlands of Scotland, settled in their places. These Highlanders being Protestants, but not understanding the English language, presented a petition to the Bishop of Derry, praying that a minister might be sent to perform divine offices amongst them in their own tongue.A History of the Church of Ireland, vol. 2 (1840)

Patrick McLachlin of Moville wrote to King in 1695 that the Highlanders used the Irish prayer book and "answered the litany extremely well". Moville and Clonmany were the two parishes where they settled. Donegal: History and Society describes an "influx of West Highland episcopalians in the 1690s, fleeing from religious pogroms in Scotland", with 22 such families newly settled in Culdaff in 1695, and Irish-language preaching at Moville from at least 1693 into the 1720s. It also notes that some of the Highlanders had gone home long before then. Almost all of this comes from one source, the correspondence between Bishop King and his clergy.

The famine years

The 1690s brought a second, larger movement. Famine in Scotland, the "ill years" of 1695 to 1699, drove tens of thousands across to Ulster. Karen Cullen estimates that about 50,000 Scots settled in Ulster by 1698, 20,000 of them in the famine years alone, and that land deserted by the Irish during the war in Donegal and Antrim was taken up by families from the Highlands and Western Isles. Presbyterian congregations doubled between 1660 and 1715, and by about 1700 it was said that "the dissenters measure mighty in the north". Inishowen, which had few Presbyterians before, gained congregations of its own: in 1692 the people of Culdaff and Moville applied to the Laggan Presbytery for a minister, as a stone at Clar burying ground in Moville records.

Weighing it up

Inishowen was never planted in the same way as the Laggan. Sir Arthur Chichester was under no pressure to bring in British tenants, so its settlers came later and less formally. A 1690s arrival in Moville would fit the gap between the Hearth Money Rolls and the 1740 census. The elder Da. M'Corkle shows the family was in north Inishowen by 1700 at the latest, and possibly as early as the 1670s. If he served before the 1690s, the McCorkells of Moville were there before the Highlanders and the famine migrants arrived, and more likely came north from Burt or the Laggan in the later 1600s. Finding the year he attended would help settle it.

Two things make me doubt the Highland episcopalian story for the McCorkells. Later generations of the family were firmly Presbyterian, not Anglican. And the established church in Donegal, under pressure from a growing Presbyterian community and a Catholic majority it had failed to convert, had every reason to make the most of a congregation of loyal Highland episcopalians, so their numbers may have been exaggerated. The famine migrants of the late 1690s, many of them Presbyterian, seem a likelier fit.

Sources

1. Muster Rolls, Counties Donegal and Londonderry, 1622–1642.
2. Rev. George Hill, ed., An Historical Account of the Plantation in Ulster (1877), including Pynnar's Survey of 1619.
3. Burt Kirk Session Book, 1670–1715, extracted by Oliver D. Cresswell (1995). Original at the Presbyterian Historical Society, Belfast.
4. G. A. Hayes-McCoy, Scots Mercenary Forces in Ireland (1565–1603) (1937).
5. Richard Doherty, The Siege of Derry 1689 (2008), p. 28.
6. Lord Ernest Hamilton, The Irish Rebellion of 1641 (1920).
7. Hearth Money Rolls, Co. Donegal 1663–65 and Co. Londonderry 1663; Subsidy Rolls 1662–68.
8. Alexander G. Lecky, The Laggan and its Presbyterianism (1905) and In the Days of the Laggan Presbytery (1908).
9. Barry R. McCain, A Short History of the Laggan Redshanks, 1569–1630.
10. George F. Black, The Surnames of Scotland (1946).
11. Muster of Col. Audley Mervyn's regiment, Elagh, 20 July 1643, PRONI.
12. T. H. Mullan, Derry, Londonderry (1986), citing the correspondence of Bishop William King.
13. A History of the Church of Ireland, vol. 2 (1840).
14. William Nolan, Liam Ronayne and Mairead Dunlevy, eds, Donegal: History and Society (1995), chapter on Inishowen.
15. Karen J. Cullen, Famine in Scotland: The 'Ill Years' of the 1690s (2010).
16. Scots in Ulster: A Pocket History.