ATQ Stewart The Narrow Ground

"Hamilton & Montgomery,did not wrest a fertile, cultivated and prosperous region from Gaelic proprietors. They came instead to a country devastated by war and famine... they created the bridgehead through which the Scots were to come into Ulster for the rest of the century.”

The Montgomery Manuscripts
"... in the spring time, of 1606, those parishes were now more wasted than America (when the Spaniards landed there)… 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...”

Were there many people here? In Colonial Ulster, Raymond Gillespie estimated the population of Antrim and Down at just 243 families (p55), and in The Scottish Migration to Ulster, Michael Perceval Maxwell estimated the entire population of nine county Ulster at between 25,000 - 40,000 people, but that was "before the Irish debacle at Kinsale and before the devastating campaigns waged in the north by the English which caused widespread famine and ensuing plague..." (p17).

It's probably impossible to know for sure to know how many people there were before the huge influx of lowland Scots, but these references clearly suggest a very small population.

However, in terms of buildings, the often-questioned reference that "30 cabins could not be found" might actually be pretty accurate. In the missing chapter of the Montgomery MSS, it gives further information that shines a light on the situation, under the Savages and the O'Neills:

'...Sir Robert Savage (1272 - 1360)... declared his entire faith in the ancient proverb or tradition that "a castle of bones, with the strength and courage of valiant men, was better than the strongest castle of stones that could be erected. "Never," said this daring youth, "shall I by the grace of God, cumber myself with dead walls... the O'Neill's afterwards adopted the same policy of the Savages, and, instead of attempting to strengthen their territories with castles, absolutely prohibited the erection of such buildings. Carrying out this policy of making Ulster untenable to an invader for want of cover and supplies, they are said to have discouraged agriculture, and encouraged people to keep together in creaghts, thus living a wandering pastoral life. Con O'Neill, the first Earl of Tyrone, cursed all of his posterity who should learn the English language, sow wheat, or build houses...'

So before the arrival of the Scots it seems there was a policy of not building houses. So not suprising then that there were very few buildings to be seen.

The Politics Of Antagonism
Brendan O'Leary & John McGarry 1993
Unlike its predecessors in Ireland the plantation of Ulster 'worked': the settlers were neither rapidily outnumbered,nor culturally absorbed by the natives,and a large-scale building programme led to the construction of over twenty new towns,which became both garrisons and centres for the diffusion of the settler culture. These ordered towns and villages of Ulster were visable outposts of Scots and English culture: P 56

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