[420:B] In the colony, residence was not necessary to render a candidate eligible to a seat in the house of burgesses. The same practice continues to this day in England.
[421:A] Hening, ii. 453.
[421:B] Va. Hist. Register, i. 61.
[421:C] Westover MSS., 107.
CHAPTER LVI.
1733-1749.
Scotch-Irish Settlers—Death of Sir John Randolph—Settlement of the Valley of Shenandoah—Physical Geography of Virginia—John Lewis, a Pioneer in Augusta—Burden's Grant—First Settlers of Rockbridge—Character of the Scotch-Irish—German Settlers of Valley of Shenandoah.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the disaffected and turbulent Province of Ulster, in Ireland, suffered pre-eminently the ravages of civil war. Quieted for a time by the sword, insurrection again burst forth in the second year of James the First, and repeated rebellions crushed in 1605, left a large tract of country desolate, and fast declining into barbarism. Almost the whole of six counties of Ulster thus, by forfeiture, fell into the hands of the king. A London company, under his auspices, colonized this unhappy district with settlers, partly English, principally Scotch—one of the few wise and salutary measures of his feeble reign. The descendants of these colonists of the plantation of Ulster, as it was now called, came to be distinguished by the name of Scotch-Irish. Archbishop Usher, who was disposed to reconcile the differences between the Presbyterians and Episcopalians, consented to a compromise of them, in consequence of which there was no formal separation from the established church. But it was not long before the persecutions of the house of Stuart, inflicted by the hands of Strafford and Laud, augmented the numbers of the non-conformists, riveted them more closely to their own political and religious principles, and compelled them to turn their eyes to America as a place of refuge for the oppressed. The civil war of England ensuing, they were for a time relieved from this necessity. Their unbending opposition to the proceedings of Cromwell drew down upon them (1649) the sarcastic denunciation of Milton.[423:A]