Introduction. In 1685 there was another political shift that affected the lives of the Scots living in Ireland. James, duke of York, a catholic convert, succeed to the thrones of the three kingdoms and those Catholics in Ireland who had lost their estates under the Cromwellian and Restoration land settlements saw an opportunity to regain them. On William of Orange’s invasion of England in 1688, James fled to France, but landed in Ireland the next year from where he hoped to regain his thrones. In Ireland he called a parliament which had a substantial catholic majority and which passed legislation returning land, which had earlier been acquired by Protestants, to Catholics. William responded to James’s action by sending an army to the north of Ireland led by the duke of Schomberg, who was a Protestant born in Germany, but who had served Louis XIV until protestant rights were revoked in France. He then switched sides to serve William who was seen as the leader of the protestant cause in Europe. Protestant landowners were obviously the group most adversely affected by the Irish legislation of 1689, which helps to explain their enthusiastic support for William when he himself went to Ireland in 1690, but the story of Barbara McDonald reminds us that every change in high politics had repercussions at all levels of the social scale though the records seldom reveal the plight of such people. McDonald happened to be a Scot living in Ireland, but her suffering was undoubtedly replicated among thousands of Irish and English in Ireland as the fortunes of one side or the other rose or fell. It will be noted that she was helped by the Scottish council, as indeed were other refugees, but it may also be remarked that by recommending that the cost of her passage back to Ireland be paid, the council was shifting the responsibility of looking after her and her family from Scotland to the authorities in Ireland.

Source. Register of the privy council of Scotland, 1690, third series, vol. 15 (Edinburgh 1967), p. 227.

Session held 5 May 1690.

Anent [concerning] a petitione given in to their Majesties High Commissioner and Lords of Privy Councill be Barbara McDonald, relict [widow] of William Hamilton, seaman at Balfast in the kingdome of Ireland, shewing that wher the petitioners husband in the late revolutione haveing all that he hade taken from him by the Irish stay still in Ireland till the arryvall of their Majesties [William and Mary] forces under the command of the Duke of Schonberge at which tyme he did cheerully engadge in their Majesties service and wes killed at the takeing in of Carrick Fergus, so that the petitioner was left behind a poor widow and thrie fatherles cheldrein, as ane testificat under the hands of Mr John Hamilton, minister of Newtoune [Newtownards] in Ireland…, and lykwayes under the hand of Mr Heugh Claincy therwith produced would testifie. And seing the petitioner is now in a very miserable and sterving [starving] condition and her thrie small cheldreen, not having quherupon to maintaine them and being forced to come to this kindome to seek bread to [feed] her cheldrein, it was hoped the saids Lords would think it both charity and justice to allow the petitioner some small subsistence to supply her present necessity. And therefore humbly craveing the saids Lords to take the petitioners sad and missserable conditione to the petitioners (sic) serious consideratione and to ordaine her what in justice they should think fitt to preserve her and her small cheldrein from sterving as they have been in use to doe to others in her circumstances, as the petitione bears. Their Majesties High Commisssioner and Lords of Privy Councill having heard the above petitione, they recommend to the Lords Commissioners of the Thesaurie to take the samen into their consideratione and to allow the petitioner what they shall think fitt for transporting her hence to the kindome of Ireland.

Michael Perceval-Maxwell