“Throughout the revolted Colonies, and therefore probably in the first to begin the struggle, all evidence shows that the foremost, the most irreconcilable, the most determined in pushing the quarrel to the last extremity, were the Scotch-Irish, whom the Bishops and Lord Donegall and Co. had been pleased to drive out of Ulster.”
Mr. Lecky declares the outbreak “was mainly attributable to the oppression of a single man—the Marquis of Donegall.... The conduct of Lord Donegall brought the misery of the Ulster peasantry to a climax; and in a short time many thousands of ejected tenants, banded together under the name of Steelboys, were in arms.”
Their “formidable insurrection,” he says, caused “the great Protestant emigration” from Ulster to America. “In a few years the cloud of civil war, which was already gathering over the Colonies, burst; and the ejected tenants of Lord Donegall formed a large part of the revolutionary armies which severed the New World from the British Crown.”
Benn’s “History of Belfast” states:—
“An estate in the County Antrim, a part of the vast possessions of the Marquis of Donegall (an absentee), was proposed, when its leases had expired, to be let only to those who could pay large fines; and the agent of the marquis was said to have extracted large fees on his own account also. Numbers of the former tenants, neither able to pay the fines nor the rents demanded by those who, on payment of fines and fees, took leases over them, were dispossessed of their tenements and left without means of subsistence. Rendered thus desperate, they maimed the cattle of those who had taken the lands, committed other outrages, and, to express a firmness of resolution, styled themselves ‘Hearts of Steel.’ One of their number, charged with felony, was apprehended and confined in Belfast in order to be transmitted to the county gaol. Provided with offensive weapons, several thousands of the peasants proceeded to the town to rescue the prisoner, who was removed to the barrack and placed under a guard of soldiers (23rd December, 1770).... Being delivered up to his associates, they marched off in triumph.... So great and wide was the discontent that many thousands of Protestants emigrated from those parts of Ulster to America, where they soon appeared in arms against the British Government; and contributed powerfully, by their zeal and valour, to the separation of the American Colonies from the Crown of Great Britain.”
On the 6th April, 1772, George III. wrote to the Lord Lieutenant (Townshend):—
“His Majesty’s humanity was greatly affected by hearing your Excellency’s opinion that the disturbances owe their rise to private oppression, and that the over-greediness and harshness of landlords may be a means of depriving the kingdom of a number of his Majesty’s most industrious and valuable subjects. The King does not doubt but that your Excellency will endeavour, by every means in your power, to convince persons of property of their infatuation in this respect, and instil into them principles of equity and moderation, which, it is to be feared, can only apply an efficient remedy to the evil.”
In November, 1772, the Lord Lieutenant proclaimed a pardon to “the wicked and dangerous insurgents who in July, 1770, assembled themselves in arms in large numbers in the counties of Antrim, Down, Armagh, Derry, and Tyrone.” It was too late.
The Belfast “News Letter” of the 16th April, 1773, computed that “within forty years past 400,000 people have left this kingdom to go and settle in America.” In the three years from 1771 to 1773 alone, 101 ships left Ulster ports, carrying over 30,000 emigrants.
On the 15th June, 1773, John Wesley in his diary writes: