John McCullagh

Scientists recently identified as the greatest danger to Ireland, Britain and Northern Europe, the possibility of the failure of the massive under-ocean current, the North Atlantic conveyor, which – by diverting the ‘Gulf Stream’ to our direction – gives us a much warmer climate than our latitude would normally merit. Ironically, in this part of the world, the first, most-dramatic and irreversible effect of rampant global warming will be much lower temperatures overall.

Read more18th Century Famine

There had been considerable cross-Channel migration – from Scotland to Ulster – even in Tudor times, but the trickle became a flood in the first decade of the seventeenth century, when the Scottish King James (VI) became King James I of England. Indeed it was the success of two Ayreshire Scots in pioneering an Ulster Settlement in 1606 that inspired King James’ Virginia (Jamestown) settlement in the New World; and the Plantation of Ulster that began just a few short years later.

Read moreMontgomery & Hamilton

At the time of the Ulster Plantation, immediately following the Flight of the Earls, Owen MacHugh O’Neill, son of Hugh M

But it was not to be an easy or long-lasting settlement. The fragile relationship between the conquering English and the ‘co-operating’ leaders of the old Gaelic Order was repeatedly riven over the course of the seventeenth century. Remaining clan leaders, including the O’Neills of Glasdrumman and the descendants of Oghie