Up to 1641 it is certain that the Irish element greatly outnumbered the two others combined. The total of Protestants in Ulster at that date is estimated by Carte at 120,000 and by Latimer at 100,000.
The war of extermination which followed on the rising of 1641 must have gone far to alter the balance of races.[1] Yet in 1659 the Irish in all Ulster were to the combined English and Scots as 1½ to 1.[2]
The years between the Restoration and the Revolution were marked by a large immigration from Scotland.[3] The Scots however took little foothold in Cavan and Fermanagh. The emigration of Presbyterians to America in the eighteenth century must have seriously weakened the Scottish element, as that of the 19th century has weakened the Irish. Woodburn holds that 200,000 people left Ulster for America between 1700 and 1760.
- ↑ One English regiment counted among its exploits during^ a very short period that in Fermanagh it had "starved and famished of the vulgar sort, whose goods were seized on by this regiment, 7000."
- ↑ Petty's Census, as quoted by Hardinge. But it is hard to believe that the total population of Ulster at that date was only 104,000.
- ↑ Also, according to Prendergast, there was a great immigration from Scotland between 1690 and 1698. He estimates it at 80,000 persons into different parts of Ireland, but chiefly into Ulster. (Ireland from the Restoration to the Revolution, p. 98). Petty thought 80,000 Scots had come in since the Restoration. Woodburn appears to disbelieve in these figures, and with reason.Archbishop Synge thought that 50,000 Scottish families had come in since the Revolution. This is hard to believe. The Hearth money returns give 62,624 Protestant families as against 38,459 Catholic families in 1732—33 (Bonn, Vol. II., p. 163). Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Donegal, Down and Fermanagh had then a Protestant majority. This one can hardly credit for Donegal and Fermanagh.
