of their pastors, the Scots of Ulster had
already declared for democracy.

It was shortly after James VI of Scotland became James I of England
and while the English were founding Jamestown that the Scots had first
occupied Ulster; but the true origin of the Ulster Plantation lies
further back, in the reign of Henry VIII, in the days of the English
Reformation. In Henry's Irish realm the Reformation, though proclaimed
by royal authority, had never been accomplished; and Henry's more famous
daughter, Elizabeth, had conceived the plan, later to be carried out by
James, of planting colonies of Protestants in Ireland to promote loyalty
in that rebellious land. Six counties, comprising half a million acres,
formed the Ulster Plantation. The great majority of the colonists
sent thither by James were Scotch Lowlanders, but among them were many
English and a smaller number of Highlanders. These three peoples from
the island of Britain brought forth, through intermarriage, the Ulster
Scots.

The reign of Charles I had inaugurated for the Ulstermen an era of
persecution. Charles practically suppressed the Presbyterian religion
in Ireland. His son, Charles II, struck at Ireland in 1666 through its
cattle trade, by prohibiting the exportation of beef to England and
Scotland. The Navigation Acts, excluding Ireland from direct trade with
the colonies, ruined Irish commerce, while Corporation Acts and Test
Acts requiring conformity with the practices of the Church of England
bore heavily on the Ulster Presbyterians.

It was largely by refugees from religious persecution that America in
the beginning was colonized. But religious persecution was only one of
the influences which shaped the course and formed the character of the
Ulster Scots. In Ulster, whither they had originally been transplanted
by James to found a loyal province in the midst of the King's enemies,
they had done their work too well and had waxed too powerful for the
comfort of later monarchs. The first attacks upon them struck at their
religion; but the subsequent legislative acts which successively ruined
the woolen trade, barred nonconformists from public office, stifled
Irish commerce, pronounced non-Episcopal marriages irregular, and
instituted heavy taxation and high rentals for the land their fathers
had made productive--these were blows dealt chiefly for the political
and commercial ends of favored classes in England.

These attacks, aimed through his religi