was greatly aggravated by the imposition of religious
disabilities upon the Presbyterians, who, in addition to having
to pay tithes for the support of the established church, were
excluded from all civil and military office (1704), while their
ministers were made liable to penalties for celebrating
marriages.

This pressure upon a high-spirited people resulted inevitably in
an exodus to the New World. The principal ports by which the
Ulsterites entered America were Lewes and Newcastle (Delaware),
Philadelphia and Boston. The streams of immigration steadily
flowed up the Delaware Valley; and by 1720 the Scotch-Irish began
to arrive in Bucks County. So rapid was the rate of increase in
immigration that the number of arrivals soon mounted from a few
hundred to upward of six thousand, in a single year (1729); and
within a few years this number was doubled. According to the
meticulous Franklin, the proportion increased from a very small
element of the population of Pennsylvania in 1700 to one fourth
of the whole in 1749, and to one third of the whole (350,000) in
1774. Writing to the Penns in 1724, James Logan, Secretary of the
Province, caustically refers to the Ulster settlers on the
disputed Maryland line as "these bold and indigent strangers,
saying as their excuse when challenged for titles, that we had
solicited for colonists and they had come accordingly." The
spirit of these defiant squatters is succinctly expressed in
their statement to Logan that it "was against the laws of God and
nature that so much land should be idle while so many Christians
wanted it to work on and to raise their bread."

The rising scale of prices for Pennsylvania lands, changing from