ABSTRACT
When James VI of Scotland became king of England and Ireland in 1603 there were already a few Lowland Scots who had become well acquainted with conditions in the smaller of his two new kingdoms. He and a fellow Scot, James Fullerton, arrived in Ireland about 1587. The history of Scottish migration from the Isles and Highlands to Ireland reaches as far back as the thirteenth century, when the so-called gallowglass or mercenary soldiers from the Isles crossed over, drawn by the Irish chiefs who wished to bolster their military strength. During Elizabeth’s reign, the government’s attitude towards the Scots oscillated between a reluctant acceptance of their position in the north and determined efforts to dislodge them, either by direct force or by employing the tactics suggested by the archbishop.
