settlements were confined to counties Down and Antrim, which were not
included in the scheme of the plantation. Their existence facilitated
Scottish emigration to the plantation and they were influential in
giving the plantation the Scottish character which it promptly
acquired. Although planned to be in the main an English settlement,
with one whole county turned over to the city of London alone, it soon
became in the main a Scottish settlement."

The Scots were not long settled in Ulster before misfortune and
persecution began to harass them. The Irish rebellion of 1641, said by
some to have been an outbreak directed against the Scottish and
English settlers, regarded by the native Irish as intruders and
usurpers, caused them much suffering; and Harrison says that for
"several years afterward 12,000 emigrants annually left Ulster for the
American plantations." The Revolution of 1688 was also long and bloody
in Ireland and the sufferings of the settlers reached a climax in the
siege of Londonderry (April to August, 1688). They suffered also from
the restrictions laid upon their industries and commerce by the
English government. These restrictions, and later the falling in of
leases, rack-renting by the landlords, payment of tithes for support
of a church with which they had no connection, and several other
burdens and annoyances, were the motives which impelled emigration to
the American colonies from 1718 onwards. Five ships bearing seven
hundred Ulster Scots emigrants arrived in Boston on August 4, 1718,
under the leadership of Rev. William Boyd. They were allowed to select
a township site of twelve miles square at any place on the frontiers.
A few settled at Portland, Maine, at Wicasset, and at Worcester and
Haverhill, Massachusetts, but the greater number finally at
Londonderry, New Hampshire. In 1723-4 they built a parsonage and a
church for their minister, Rev. James MacGregor. In six years they had