Blog

The Australian Ferns family website notes that the family “can trace their ancestry to the village of Derryvona (Derryvony) near the town of Belturbet in County Cavan, Ireland. They were tenant farmers on land granted to the Earl of Lanesborough as part of the English Plantation of Ulster.” Although there are no surviving birth records for either William Ferns or Charlotte Morton, both were likely born on the Ulster Plantation to English or Scottish parents. The family history is obscured by the violent conflicts and wars that plagued unhappy Ireland through the 17th Century.

Old family stories from their son William Thomas Ferns’ family indicate the Ferns’ were fervent Orangemen. Clearly the Ferns family in Iowa had no love for the Catholic Irish. I Remember being chastised by Grandma Ferns for wearing green on St Patrick’s Day. Dad remembers hearing his Grandmother Amelia saying that it was no more of a sin to kill a Catholic than to kill a mouse. The death of Amelia’s brother-in-law Mark who was beaten to death with a pair of brass knuckles in an argument over religion shows that the family took it seriously. All of which pretty much eliminates an Irish Catholic ancestry.

Anglican ancestry for the Ferns’ family is indicated by Great Grandfather William Thomas Ferns’ Protestant Episcopal Common Book of Prayer. The Protestant Episcopal Church, Church of England and Church of Ireland were all branches of the larger Anglican Church, whose Church of Ireland’s membership was mostly English-Irish families. The Ferns family may have come from the Cheshire region of England, arriving in the 1650’s after the pacification of Ireland by Cromwell’s New Model Army. A later arrival is suggested by the absence of “Ferns” in the 1630 muster roll for County Cavan.

An early arrival for the Morton family is indicated by the name “John Morton” on the 1630 muster roll for Stephen Butler’s force. One of Butler grandsons was later created Earl of Lanesborough. A William Morton was quoted in 1641 deposition in Fermanagh regarding the Catholic uprising of 1641 that destroyed the English settlement at Belturbet. There is a record of the marriage of a Lettice Morton (d. 1835) to a George Ferns (d. 1829) in Stockport, Cheshire England.

The ancestry of William Thomas’ wife Jane Doonan’s family is not quite as obscure. Two articles are attached that shed some light. A 2003 web article by Shane Anderson “The Doonans of Donagh, Fermanagh” claims the Doonans were a native Irish family that had converted from Catholicism. Anderson notes: “There are a relatively large number of sources which state that the Doonans of Fermanagh were hereditary stewards and guardians of church lands, or erenagh, in Donagh, Fermanagh from a relatively early date.” This somewhat fits in with the Ferns family tradition that Jane Doonan was the “landlord’s daughter” who had been sent to the US in attempt to foil the amorous attention of one William Thomas Ferns. The story may allude to the Doonan family’s former status as stewards. The 1622 Commission found that there were many Irish inhabitants on Sir Stephen Butler’s estates in County Cavan and Fermanagh. It is unclear when the Fermanagh Doonans were converted from Catholicism. The 1641 Irish Catholic rebellion put an end to the land tenancies of Irish Catholics in the Ulster Plantation.

Jane Doonan’s parents are believed to be Thomas Doonan and Elinor ‘Ellen” Johnston of Fermanangh. Johnston was one of the four most common names in Fermanagh in 1700. The Fermanagh Johnstons were from the Johnston Clan of Annandale in Dumfriesshire, one of the great reiver clans of the Scottish Borders. Most of the members of the clan were deported or executed by King James IV of Scotland

when he ascended to the throne of England as James I. Their familiarity with weapons and ferocity (they were known as “The gentle Johnstons”) allowed them to fight off the 1641 Catholic Irish rebellion that drove most of their more faint-hearted neighbors from the Ulster Plantation.

Both Ferns and Doonan are relatively uncommon surnames. Forebears website show 1,308 Ferns in England, 816 in US, 583 in Scotland, 558 in South Africa, 391 in India, 264 in Australia, 255 in Canada, 119 in Ireland, 49 in New Zealand and 48 in Kuwait (rank 101,451); 1,754 Doonans in the US, 378 in Ireland, 321 in England, 275 in Australia, 256 in Scotland, 183 in Canada, 142 in Northern Ireland, 33 in New Zealand, 29 in South Africa and 13 in Wales. (rank 132,490)

Following from http://websitesammy.com/doonans/hist.html

The Doonans of Donagh, Fermanagh

© Copyright 2003, Shane G. Anderson, All Rights Reserved

Doonan is a rare name in Ireland, and hails from the Irish Ó Dúnáin. Ó Dúnáin is one of a class of surnames which is marked by the prefixes “O” meaning “grandson or descendant of.” In Ireland surnames of this type came into relatively common use in the eleventh century, and a few were formed perhaps as early as the beginning of the tenth century.

The literal meaning of Ó Dúnáin is “little fort.” iThis translation is probably a little too precise. The translation of Dun as a noun yields “a fortified place;” however, the primary meaning of the word dun when used as an adjective is “strong” or “firm.” It seems more likely that this root word was used metaphorically as a nickname, and was given to describe a small or perhaps short person who, despite their stature, was remarkably strong. The full translation of Ó Dúnáin might therefore yield “grandson [or descendant] of the little strong one.” In common speech, this might be understood as: “grandson [or descendant] of the stocky one.” This fits a pattern common in Irish naming practices and seems less forced.

The name Doonan, formerly O’Doonan or Ó Dúnáin, lost the prefix “O” sometime in the seventeenth century. The prefixes “Mac” and “Ó” were widely dropped during the period of the submergence of Catholic and Gaelic Ireland which began in the early seventeenth century when English rule and influence in Ireland became really effective.The transformation of Dúnáin to Doonan was also a part of this process, and follows basic, well described principles of anglicizing Irish names.

There is a family tradition among the Doonans of the “Lower East Side, Manhattan branch,” that their forbearers came from Fermanagh. Fermanagh is one of the very few places in Ireland where the surname Doonan appears in any numbers.

There are a relatively large number of sources which state that the Doonans of Fermanagh were hereditary stewards and guardians of church lands, or erenagh, in Donagh, Fermanagh from a relatively early date. Donagh means simply “Church,” and is anglicized and shortened from the ancient name Domhnach Magh-da-claine, the “Church of the plain of the two slopes.”

The manuscript known as TCD MS 1297 ii[15] lists erenagh families from Fermanagh during the very early fourteenth century. Ó Dúnáin is listed as erenagh of Domhnach (Donagh) and Tulach na gCaorthainn (Tullynagaorthainn). The name Ó Dúnáin is clearly associated with a place called Domhnach Magh-da-claine in the Irish annals in the year 1507. In an Annal entry from 1508 which also mentions Domhnach Magh-da-claine, it is clear that the site is a church and that the Patron Saint of the church was St. Patrick.

Donagh is further mentioned as “O’Dunan’s Church of Donagh” in Aenghus O’Dalaigh’s The Tribes of Ireland. This manuscript was written as a narrative of Aenghus O’Dalaigh’s travels throughout Ireland in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, and therefore comprises a first person account that the Doonan were at Donagh at that time. The family Ó Dúnáin is mentioned yet again in the Patent Rolls of James I. This English document from the year 1609 records legal proceedings wherein the English deposed the erenagh families of Fermanagh in an attempt to prove that the lands in the care of those families should be forfeited to the Crown as a part of the wider Plantation of Ulster. In this document, Ó Dúnáin is mentioned as erenaghs of “Donoghmoycline,” a much corrupted and anglicized reference to Domhnach Magh-da-claine or Donagh. Ultimately, the erenagh lands of Fermanagh and the other counties colonized by the English in the Plantation of Ulster were indeed forfeited, and the family Ó Dúnáin, formerly a respected and educated family of church administrators, was put out. Indeed, we are told that in the early seventeenth century the church at Donagh was “seized” by the English planters, and the Catholics were no longer free to worship there and at other churches in the parishes of Drummully and Galloon.

The Irish Baronial Maps of 1609-10, otherwise the ‘Maps of the Escheated Counties,’ shows the church at Donagh as Donaghmoychinny. There are several other Plantation documents from 1603 and 1608 which mention the chapel at Donagh. In the maps the church is apparently intact though it may have been missing its roof, perhaps due to a fire that was set in 1508. Today, the ruins of the church at Donagh are still visible in what has come to be known as Donagh Old Cemetery. Given that the church was in use in 1609 and was apparently intact, the condition of the ruins today suggests that the church may have been pulled down after 1609 and used as building materials; this was a common practice at that time. There are tombstones now within the church foundation, and one tombstone dates to 1710. By this date, the church must have been wholly in ruins, and was certainly no longer in use as a church.

The documentary evidence surveyed above clearly demonstrates that that the Doonans were an erenagh family at Donagh in Fermanagh from at least c. 1300 A.D. Yet there are other documents and references to the Doonans which suggest that Doonans were at Donagh at or before 1000 A.D. A

genealogy for the “Doonans of Donagh” appears in the Fermanagh Genealogies, a manuscript which appears to have been compiled over the period 1350 to 1800. The genealogy for the Doonans mentions, among other things, “Thomas ie: Ó Dúnáin of Donagh.” The use of the location Donagh as a sort of address may signal that Thomas was the first ancestor to come to Donagh. Certain interpretations of that genealogy would place this ancestor at circa 1000 A.D.

This document, on its own, might only serve as yet another manuscript source tying Ó Dúnáin to Donagh. However, the well other manuscript evidence which places Doonan at Donagh as early as 1350 A.D. certainly opens the door to the interpretation that Doonans may have been at Donagh earlier, and the Fermanagh Genealogies seems to hint that this may be so.

Indeed, an Annal entry at 943 A.D. mentions “Maeltuile, son of Dunan, successor of Tighear-nach.” The “successor of Tighear-nach” would make Maeltuile the abbot of Clones, a famous early monastery about eight miles from Donagh. The mention of Dunan is very interesting given that surnames generally arose between 900 and 1000 A.D.; the form of the name, given without the “O” prefix, suggests that Maeltuile’s father was the man for whom the Ó Dúnáin family was named. Given the rarity of the name, the proximity of Clones to Donagh, and the fact that the office of abbot of a monastery is exceedingly analogous to that of erenagh, it is not beyond reason to suggest that in this Annal entry we see the eponymous ancestor of the Doonans of Fermanagh. At least one highly respected source has stated that Maeltuile, abbot of Clones, was an early Doonan, and that he was one of a family of hereditary church officials and priests that gave rise to the great 12th Century church reformer Mael Muire Ua Dunain.

This 12th Century church reformer, Mael Muire Ua Dúnáin, “noble bishop and chief senior,” presided over the ceremony held in 1101 A.D. when the Cashel was given to the Church by the King of Munster. He may have held formal papal authority at this meeting, which was called the Synod of Cashel. Among other things, this meeting was convened to start the process of reform. This process continued, and another meeting, called the Synod of Rath Breasail, was held in 1111 A.D. to “to prescribe rules and good morals for all, both laity and clergy.” Among the accomplishments of the reformers at this meeting was the imposition of a diocesan structure on the church which had been previously been organized along monastic lines. Mael Muire Ua Dúnáin retired to Clonard in Meath in 1117 A.D. and died on December 24th, 1117 at the age of 77. In 1152, the Synod of Kells was held to continue the work of reform. Ultimately, the Norman invasion of 1169 interrupted this important work, but not before the reform movement had forever altered the organization of the church in Ireland.

Returning to the Fermanagh Doonans, it follows that, if Maeltuile abbot of Clones was one of a line of Ó Dúnáin churchmen that culminated in the career of the reformer Mael Muire Ó Dúnáin, the connection between the Ó Dúnáin family of Fermanagh and this family is almost certain. The name Doonan is exceedingly rare throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries and is rare even today. Yet evidence of an early member of a hereditary church family called Ó Dúnáin at Clones in 943 A.D., eight miles from Donagh where another hereditary Ó Dúnáin church family resided as early as perhaps 1000 A.D. seems too close in terms of geography, chronology, and circumstances to be a mere coincidence.

In any event, this material does support the idea that Doonans were at Donagh before the early fourteenth century. All indications from the site of Donagh itself support this idea, since the foundation of the church itself might well be quite ancient. Certain well accepted criteria have been defined for church foundations pre-dating the year 1111. These include the following elements: 1. A church in ruinous condition, of apparently late medieval date; 2. a cemetery surrounding the ruin, which is still in use; 3. the enclosure is curvilinear and is in the form of a curving wall incorporated into the graveyard boundary; 4. the placename includes an ecclesiastical element. Donagh meets or exceeds each of these criterion, and generally only three criteria are required in order to raise strong suspicions that the church in question is an early medieval church. Of particular interest here is the criterion that the placename includes an ecclesiastical element. In the case of Donagh, or “Church,” there is consensus that this name comes from a very early stratum of words and tends to strongly indicate an early medieval foundation.

In summary, the documentary evidence clearly demonstrates that the Doonans were hereditary stewards of the church lands at Donagh from the early fourteenth century (1300 A.D.) up to the time of the plantation of Ulster in 1609. It should be stressed that, in any event, the current ruins at Donagh are probably are no older than this. However, further evidence in the form of the Fermanagh Genealogies and Annal entries for Doonans at Clones in the mid-tenth century suggests strongly Doonans were at Donagh by at least 1000 A.D. This conclusion is supported by evidence which suggests that the site can be assigned a date prior to 1111 A.D., and, in fact may be much older. Since surnames first appeared in Ireland between 900 and 1000 A.D., the reference to a Doonan ancestor at Clones in the mid-tenth century may well be to one of the very first Doonans; the geography, the chronology, and the circumstances of both families as a hereditary church families strongly support this conclusion.

Since the church site of Donagh itself may have been founded as early as the fifth century, it is quite possible that the ancestors of the Doonans were associated with this church from a very early date, literally before the family was called Doonan, and the Doonan of Clones was just one in a long line of Doonan precursors who happened to be captured in the Annals at a pivotal moment.

Certain well respected sources have shown that the Doonan at Clones was a part of a hereditary church family whose claim to fame includes the career of Mael Muire Ua Dúnáin, the great twelfth century archbishop and church reformer. If the Doonan at Clones was, in fact, and ancestor of both the Fermanagh Doonans and the sept which gave rise to the archbishop Ua Dúnáin, then the Fermanagh Doonans may claim that he was perhaps the most famous of their ancient Doonan line.

After the Plantation of Ulster commenced in 1609, the English wholly dispossessed the Doonans. The church was taken by the English and the congregation was denied the right to worship there. The church itself may have been pulled down and used for building material. Yet the foundations of the church remain. The Doonans, it seems never recovered their former status, and for a time were not even visible in the various census and census substitutes. Yet the family persists in Fermanagh, and some of their cousins are yet to be found among the Doonans, Lower East Side, Manhattan branch.

[If you have enjoyed this brief summary of the Ancient Doonans of Donagh, or if you have any questions, please feel free to contact shane.anderson@yale.edu.

TIMELINE OF EVENTS IN CAVAN AND FERMANAGH COUNTIES

1579 – 1582 Establishment of County Cavan and County Fermanagh under Queen Elizabeth. Counties held by Irish Earls Sir John O’Reilly and Sir Hugh McGuire.

1595 -1603 Nine Years War, between an Irish Alliance led by Earl Hugh O’Neill of Tyrone and earl Hugh Roe O’Connell of Tyrconnell on one side and the English Crown and another group of Irish nobles on the other. War was fought mostly in Ulster. The Irish Alliance was supported by Spain and included Spanish mercenaries. The war ended in the defeat of the Alliance following an English scorched-earth policy that ravaged Ulster. Over 30,000 English and perhaps as many as 100,000 Irish perished in the conflict, largely from disease and famine. The end of the conflict left a depopulated Ulster and a nearly bankrupt England that restored lands and granted pardons to the Irish Earls.

1607 Flight of the Earls Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone and Rory O’Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell and about 90 followers set sail for the European Continent, seeking support for an invasion that would restore rights to the Earls that had been lost following the Nine Years War. King James issued a declaring their actions treasonous, laying the groundwork for the forfeiture of their rights to lands in 1614 through a bill of attainder.

1609 Establishment of the Ulster Plantation A joint English – Scottish commercial venture was established in 1607 with the goal of planting English and Scottish settlers on lands forfeited by the Ulster Earls. The principal landowners were to be “Undertakers”, wealthy men from England and Scotland who undertook to import tenants from their own estates. They were granted around 3000 acres (12 km2) each, on condition that they settle a minimum of 48 adult males (including at least 20 families). Of this territory 20% was granted to “deserving” native Irish lords and clans. The new settlers were required to be English-speaking and Protestant. The undertakers were required to provide long-term leases of smaller tracts of ground to Protestant settlers from the interior of England and Scotland. Some of the new settlers from the Borderlands had been very strongly encouraged, sometimes at the point of the sword, to take up tenancy in the new Ulster Plantation. Some planters settled on uninhabited and unexploited land, often building up their farms and homes on overgrown terrain that has been variously described as “wilderness” and “virgin” ground. In the early years there were not enough new settlers to lease all of the land and some of the undertakers turned to leasing land to the displaced Irish. Over the next 30 years the undertakers would compete with the new North American colonies for settlers.

1641 Irish Rebellion On 23 October 1641, the Ulster Catholics staged a rebellion, turning on the British colonists, massacring about 4000 and expelling about 8,000 more. The 1641 uprising destroyed the Ulster Plantation as a mixed settlement. Although the first leader of the rebellion, Felim O’Neill, had benefitted from the Plantation land grants, many of his supporters’ families had been dispossessed. Many surviving colonists, including some of the Morton’s rushed to the seaports and went back to Great Britain. Their stories of suffering at the hands of the Irish Catholics fanned the flames in Scotland and England. The Irish Catholic Confederation was formed to control the rebellion, and in the ensuing wars it held most of Ireland against the Royalists, English Parliamentarians and Scottish Covenanters. Both the King and parliament sought to quell the Irish rebellion, but neither trusted the other with control of the

army. The Scottish Parliament sent some 10,000 soldiers to quell the Irish rebellion in the summer of 1642. In revenge for the massacres of Scottish colonists, the army committed many atrocities against the Catholic population. Colonists In the northwest of Ulster organized the Laggan Army in self defence. All sides committed atrocities against civilians in this war, exacerbating the population displacement begun by the Plantation.

1638 – 1653 The Wars of the Three Kingdoms This series of wars began with the Bishops’ Wars of 1639– 1640, when Scottish Covenanters who opposed the King’s policies took over Scotland and briefly occupied northern England. The English Civil Wars began in earnest in 1642 with England divided between forces loyal to King Charles I and forces loyal to the English Parliament. It is estimated that as much as 20% of the male population in England Wales fought in the wars and around 4 % of the population died from war-related issues. Between 1649 and 1652, the Parliament’s New Model Army under Oliver Cromwell defeated the Scots and Royal forces and completed the Conquest of Ireland. The Irish campaign was particularly brutal. The war, associated famine and outbreak oof Bubonic Plague reduced the Irish population by as much 620,000. A significant number (50,000) Irish were involuntarily transported to the British West Indies and American colonies as ‘indentured servants’.

1688 – 1691 Jacobite War was fought between forces loyal to Catholic King James II of England and forces commanded by his Protestant daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange. On one side; the Irish army in Ireland which had remained loyal to James and was supported by French and the other, Irish protestant militias and a force of English, Dutch, Danish and Scottish troops commanded by William. The war, which ended in victory for William, claimed an estimated 100,000 lives in Ireland and ensured Protestant and English domination in Ireland. The Jacobite army was allowed to depart for France, about 19,000 Irish ‘Wild Geese’ left for a life of service under the French.

‘Sheep stealers from the north of England’: the Riding Clans in Ulster by Robert Bell

The troubles of the last twentyfive years have served to focus the minds of Ulster people on their history. They are more conscious than ever of their ancestors-Gaelic, Norman, English, Huguenot, Lowland Scot, Highland Scot. But that consciousness has neglected and all but forgotten one particularly influential immigrant group.

Most often they are lumped in with the Lowland Scots. But while a majority of them were nominally Scottish, they were in fact a distinctively homogenous race who stemmed from a very particular region, with its own unique history and culture. Today, the only trace of them in the popular consciousness is that many by the name of Armstrong or Elliott, Graham, Johnston or Bell are dimly aware, to their mock chagrin, that their ancestors were ‘sheep stealers from the north of England’. Perhaps handed down through the generations, the phrase is a cosy blanket thrown over a wild and bloody history. The ancestors in question were the Riding Clans of the Scots Borders. Their official, and most accurate, designation was the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers but these rustlers were known by a host of names: the Borderers, the Raiders, the Steel Bonnets, the Riding Clans, the Reivers.

Principal names

They began to arrive in Ulster during the seventeenth-century plantation. Among them were Sir John Hume and his brother Alexander who were granted 3,000 acres in Fermanagh. John bought out his brother and several others and became the greatest landowner in seventeenth century Fermanagh. However the vast majority of the Borderers did not come to Ulster as Undertakers or landlords, but as poor tenants. There is thus very little known about their migration. But their names start appearing on plantation records immediately. And by 1659, in Pender’s census, they are listed as ‘principal names’ throughout the settlement: Armstrong, Johnston, Elliott, Irvine, Graham, Nixon, Crozier, Bell, Kerr. And nowhere in the census are they more concentrated than in Fermanagh.

Pull was the operative factor for many of the tenant settlers who came to plantation Ulster; the attraction of plentiful land at cheap prices or no, or low, rents. For very many others, it was push; dissatisfaction with their conditions in Scotland or England. In the first two decades of the seventeenth century, no other migrants felt the push so forcefully as the Borderers. For English and lowland Scot settlers, plantation Ulster must have seemed a very dangerous place. For the Borderers, it represented a refuge compared to what they sought to escape-the ‘pacification’ of their homeland by James VI of Scotland/ James I of England. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Scots Borders had been home to a unique and distinctive social system for three hundred years. Throughout that period wars were fought between Scotland and England over and through the Borders, which were ravaged· and laid waste repeatedly by advancing and retreating armies, now of the English Crown, now of the Scottish. Partly because of the instability this caused and partly because of the kind of opportunities open to the inhabitants of any borderland anywhere, the Scots Borders quickly became, and then remained, lawless. Three centuries before, when the region had become the killing ground of an endemic national war, the Borderers found that a sense of patriotism was not only a luxury ill-afforded, it was an impediment to survival. Under such conditions the only social structure that could offer security was kinship. There then arose in the Borders a complex network of greater or lesser families, not clans in the Gaelic sense, steeped in ancient culture, but clans more in the mafia sense, existing by intrigue and force of arms.

Predators

The clans became predators, routinely raiding deep into the northern counties of England or the southern counties of lowland Scotland and by blackmail, extortion, kidnapping, terror and murder, coming away with cattle, sheep and horses, with money and household goods, denuding the settled citizens of both countries. On their run back to the border they could evade pursuit in Bewcastle Waste or in the folds of the Cheviot Hills. And if all else failed they could simply cross the border, beyond the jurisdiction of pursuing officers. Raiding parties would be small or large, would involve only one clan, or an alliance of two, three or more, and would be Scottish or English, or a mixture of both. Scots or English would as easily raid their own as the other’s country. Indeed, raiding was not only directed out of the Borders, but within it, with clans preying on each other. To give some idea of scale, the Armstrongs, at their height in the sixteenth century, could put 3,000 men in the saddle at forty-eight hours-notice, a sizeable force, well versed in guerrilla warfare. And if the Armstongs were to ride out with their confederates, the

Elliots, Nixons and Croziers, nothing less than a royal army could send them home again. Between national wars, the civil powers in Edinburgh and London made efforts to control their respective sides of the region. The Borders were divided into six Marches – a West, Middle and East March on each side. Each March was nominally under the authority of a royally designated Warden. The Warden of the Scottish West March was empowered to co-operate with his counterpart in the English West March in the pursuit of fugitives. In practice, the intricacies of border c1anship were more than any outsider could fathom and invariably one strong clan within a March was granted the Wardenship and left to get on with policing the rest. The authority of national law was corrupted into the hands of clan leaders who were themselves active in raiding. Competition for the Wardenship was fierce and this fed into the already endemic propensity of the clans to feud. The problem was deeply intractable and had remained so for three hundred years, until the death of Elizabeth I in March 1603.

End of an era

In the days that followed Robert Carey’s famous ride from London to Edinburgh to inform James of his accession to the throne of England, the Scots Borders erupted. In what would long be famous as’ ‘III Week’, the clans took advantage of the interregnum, broke loose all along the border and raided deep into England in search of plunder. The Grahams in particular were noted as taking the greatest liberties. Ironically this last great expression of the riding clan way of life coincided with the submission of Hugh O’Neill and Gaelic Ulster to the authority of the English crown at Mellifont. What now happened between London and Edinburgh was to send the broken rump of what had been the clans to Ulster and, in particular, to Fermanagh. Lawlessness on the Scots Borders was over. To James, the Scots Borders now represented his ‘Middle Shires’, through which he must needs travel between his courts. All six Marches now fell under his single jurisdiction. It is instructive that, faced with the daunting task of uniting two nations, his first policy decision was for the ‘pacification’ of the Borders. They had been a thorn in his side throughout his reign and having always had a ‘special regard to the Marchis and Bordouris’, he decreed that ‘the verie hart of the cuntrey sail not be left in ane uncertaintie’. The ‘pacification’ was ruthlessly pursued. The clans replied in their time-honoured fashion but against the powers of two states gathered in a single authority, it was only a matter of time. What had been ‘a lawless people, that will be Scottish when they will, and English at their pleasure’ had nowhere to hide. It took seven years to fully impose the rule of law on the Borders but the back of the job was broken in only four. In the first year alone almost 200 of the principle offenders, clan leaders, were dealt with. Thirty-two Armstrongs, Batys, Elliots, Johnstons and others were hanged. Fifteen more were sent into exile and 140 outlawed and in that year alone a force of 2,000 Scots left the region to fight for the Dutch in their war with Spain.

Transplantation

In this terrible pogrom, no family suffered like the Grahams. Partly because they were the most hated clan on both sides of the border, and partly because their lands in Eskdale were among the most fertile in the Marches, they were singled out for the most severe treatment. The Border Commission had special instructions to deal with ‘the malefactors of the name of Graham’. Their lands were confiscated and they were hunted down, executed and transported in their hundreds. They were tried and hanged for their activities during ‘Ill Week’, for which a general pardon had supposedly been granted, and the Commission searched far back in the records for any crime that

they could be arraigned for. In 1606, of the pitiful remnant of Grahams remaining in Eskdale, the Commission transported fifty families to Roscommon. Within two years their plantation there had disintegrated and the Grahams had scattered. Though many returned home, enough of them caused such problems throughout Ireland that a suggestion was made that they be rounded up and re-transported to Ulster. The Irish lord deputy had the sense to leave them ‘dispersed’ for if they should be ‘placed upon any land together, the next country will find them ill-neighbours’.

Those Roscommon Grahams who sought out kinsmen in Ulster must have been solaced by the numbers of Borderers they found already ensconced in the plantation counties, and in Antrim and Down, and the stream of others steadily arriving. Though a number of these were English Borderers, a first glance at a surnames map of the Borders reveals that the majority of those who came to Ulster were from the Scottish Marches, and in particular the West and the Middle, the toughest and most turbulent of the whole frontier.

A new frontier

Their numbers are very difficult to gauge, but they were large. During the 1641 rising, for instance, there were 260 Johnstons alone enlisted under Sir William Cole in Enniskillen. Fermanagh had been filling with borderers for thirty years. Their names appear everywhere in Ulster records of the first half of the seventeenth century but why did they so concentrate in Fermanagh? True, two of the family of the great Border Lords, the Humes had been granted land there. But, uniquely, the Humes were royal favourites and had implemented the pacification in the East March. Perhaps it was that Fermanagh, being on the frontier of the Plantation, suited the mentality of the Borderers. Perhaps too, it was as far as they could get from their homeland and from Edinburgh and London. The influence that they had there, and elsewhere in Ulster, can only be surmised. Two stories suggest that it was great. Firstly, where the plantation settlement in the other five planted counties was destroyed in the 1641 rising, at its end Scots Border names still predominated in Fermanagh. Either holed up in Enniskillen throughout the rising, or by going to the fern as their ancestors had done for generations, they survived. To a young, undermanned garrison of civil Lowland peasants and English yeomen, they brought, in their blood, the skills of low intensity warfare, of the construction of weapons and the design of fortifications.

Nominally Catholic

The second fact provides the twist in the tale and goes some way towards explaining the religious history of Fermanagh, for the Scots Borderers were Catholics. The Reformation had been unable to penetrate so lawless a region. To be more accurate, they were nominally Catholic. In practice, they were godless. A sixteenth century traveller in what was known as the ‘cockpit’ of the Borders, on finding no churches, asked a Borderer ‘Are there no Christians in Liddesdale?’. To which he was answered ‘Na, we’s all Elliots and Armstrongs’! For the Borderers, religion can have played no part in their contribution to the early events of the Ulster conflict. Indeed, in some parts of Fermanagh settled by Borderers, no churches at all were built until the end of the seventeenth century. So we have them, godless, nominally Catholic, in a political environment where neither relationship with the Almighty could be tenable forever. Over the century it would have become a political necessity for them to become Protestant. Being a political decision, unfettered by articles of faith, the church wherein all power lay was the obvious place to worship. This goes some way towards explaining why Protestant Fermanagh

became and remains solidly Church of Ireland, the only one of the northern counties not dominated by Presbyterianism, to the continuing puzzlement of historians. The tenacity of these people in riding out the 1641 rising and beyond in Fermanagh is borne out by the surname statistics of the plantation counties in the present day. In Cavan, Donegal and Tyrone, all the top five most numerous names are Irish. In Armagh and Derry there is, at most, only one planter name in the first five. In Fermanagh, by sharp contrast, three of the most numerous county names stem from the Scottish West or the Scottish Middle Marches of the Scots Borders. In order, the five names are Maguire, Johnston, Armstrong, MacManus and Elliott.

A forgotten heritage

Why should the memory of this people have disappeared from the Ulster folk consciousness? In the case of many of them, the names were not particular to the Borders and were soon mingled with namesakes from Galloway or Yorkshire, or indeed with those Gaelic Irish families who adapted their names by anglicisation. The Borderers were a pragmatic people and, unlike the Gaels, Normans and Huguenots, were not noted for their literacy nor interest in lineage. They may have thought that the bad reputation which preceded them was best forgotten. Their history as nominal Catholics may have been one that they thought was better suppressed. Perhaps the memory of the seven years of ruthless pacification of the Borders was one which was only to be healed by a communal forgetting of the past, and a hard-headed digging in, as farmers, husbandmen and Protestants, in a new land with a new body politic. Poachers turned gamekeepers, they were no longer outlaws and had become key foot soldiers in a garrison. In general, Protestant people in present-day Ulster are relatively unaware of the history of their own names. There are none so unaware as those who still bear the once feared names of the Riding Clans of the Scots Marches. While the pacification destroyed the clan system and the entire social and economic infrastructure of the region, it did not rid the Borders of the names. Today, the most common name in the Carlisle phone book is not Smith, it is Graham and the Riding Clans themselves are remembered, especially in Scotland, thanks to the Border novels of Sir Walter Scott. He, himself, was a descendant of the Scotts, last Wardens of the Scottish West March, who implemented the pogrom there as the Humes did in the East March. But Ulster does not recollect them and equally, the Border people have forgotten that they have many cousins in the north of Ireland. It is as if this host departed their homeland, immediately forgot it and were immediately forgotten by it.

Hard men

There is surely enough in this story to suggest a working hypothesis that the Scots Borderers were the hard men of the plantation and provided the crucial leavening of an otherwise mediocre garrison throughout the settlement. More specifically, they held Enniskillen in the 1640s and their sons and grandsons held it again during the Williamite campaign. If Enniskillen had fallen then, would Londonderry have held out?

Robert Bell is supervisor of the Northern Ireland political collection at the Linen Hall Library, Belfast.