Join a panel of experts to explore Ireland’s complex relationship with England in the period before the Great Parchment Book when the Tudor monarchs strove to complete the conquest begun some 400 years previously. The combination of social and cultural assimilation, military force and colonisation by Protestant English settlers has considerable resonance with the 17th century plantation. The panel will look at Ireland before the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558, the impact of her reign and its legacy.

Further details and booking information are here.

Starting Point

Family tradition in the United States records that Samuel Hillhouse, born c.1707, was from Limavady, County Londonderry and came to America as a young man. His parents were John and Rachel and they had a house/estate called Free Hall or Freehall, and his grandfather Abraham came from Failford, Ayrshire, Scotland.

Identifying the location of Freehall

Thomas Raven’s map of the county of Londonderry, 1622 (copyright Trustees of Lambeth Palace Library)

During the 17th century Plantation of Ulster, the townland of ‘Free Hall or Moneyvennon’ in the civil parish of Aghanloo, located three miles northeast of the town of Limavady, County Londonderry, was granted to the Haberdashers’ Company of the city of London. Most of the Haberdashers’ proportion was located in Aghanloo parish. The castle and bawn of the Habersdashers stood on the River Roe at a place known as Ballycastle which was probably the site of a Norman castle. The Haberdashers built a linear village at Artikelly, one mile from their castle, consisting of one street with two rows of thatched single-storey cottages set in rectangular plots. Freehall was located one mile to the east of the castle at Ballycastle and one mile to the northeast of the village of Artikelly.

Church registers

Church registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials, with their ability to build and confirm family links, are the building blocks of family history. However, to the family historian seeking 17th and 18th century ancestors in Ulster, with a few notable exceptions, church registers are frequently irrelevant, owing to their nonexistence, Unfortunately, there are no surviving 17th or 18th century church registers for Aghanloo Parish.

It is always worth checking the registers of the Church of Ireland (Protestant) Cathedral as it was in effect the parish church of the Diocese, and in the case of the Diocese of Derry that is St. Columb’s Cathedral in the city of Londonderry, 16 miles west of Limavady, the registers of which date back to 1642. An examination of its registers of baptisms, marriages and burials (which have been transcribed, indexed and published in three books from 1642 to 1775) reveal seven Hillhouse burial entries (including potential spelling variations of the surname):

Died: 17 November 1700, Mary, daughter of James and Lettis Hillis
Died: 28 August 1702, Henry, son of William and Lettis Hillis
Died: 6 November 1705, Jane, daughter of William and Lettis Hilhous
Died: 4 September 1714, Ann wife of William Hillows
Died: 12 June 1730, Ann, wife of Abraham Hillhouse
Died: 2 June 1730, Forgison, son of Abraham and Ann Hillhouse
Died: 27 May 1732, John Hillhouse

Beyond church registers

A wide range of sources are available, however, and an examination of them confirms that the Hillhouse family were a significant family in the Limavady area throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Indeed, an examination of these sources reveals that two Hillhouse families were settled in County Londonderry from the early years of the Plantation prior to the1641 Rebellion, one in Freehall, Limavady and the other in Dunboe parish, Coleraine.

Wills

Although there is no guarantee that an ancestor made a will or, indeed, that a will has survived, as the bulk of Ireland’s pre-1922 testamentary records (wills, administrations, probates, etc.) were lost in the destruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland during the Civil War in 1922, I would always recommend a search of any indexes that exist.

An examination of the Indexes to Irish Wills: Volume V, Derry and Raphoe, 1612-1858 (edited by Gertrude Thrift, Phillimore & Co, London, 1920) identified the following 17th century Hillhouse entries in County Londonderry: Abraham Hillhous, Ardikelly, parish Aghanloo, proved 1676; Adam Hillhous, Dunboe proved 1635.

Hence, it would appear that Abraham Hillhouse died c. 1676 at Ardikelly (spelt as Artikelly today) in the parish of Aghanloo and that an Adam Hillhouse died c. 1635 in Dunboe parish (just to the west of the town of Coleraine). Of course, what this source can’t do is tell us the nature of the link, if any, between Abraham of Artikelly and Adam of Dunboe.

The Great Parchment Book

Abraham Hillhouse (gentleman) was settled in Limavady by 1639 as the Great Parchment Book for the Haberdashers’ Proportion reveals:

On 17 August 1639, the Commissioners concluded and agreed that Robert McLeland, Gavin Kelsoe, Hugh Boyle, Alexander [?], Abraham Hilhouse and John McLeland shall have and hold all those six townlands called Artikelly, [?], Gortamoney, Maheraskeagh, Tullaherrenmore and Tullaherrenbegg in Aghanloo and have one weekly market on Wednesday in the town of Artikelly and three yearly fairs in town of Artikelly.

The minute books of Borough of Limavady

By 1665 Abraham Hillhouse was a serving Burgess of Limavady Corporation and in that same year John Hillhouse and William Hillhouse were ‘admitted and sworn Freemen’ of Limavady.

Sir Thomas Phillips described as “a pushing soldier of fortune” first arrived in Ireland as a military commander in 1599 and in 1610 he was granted 13,100 acres of land at Limavady which included O’Cahan’s castle, on a cliff overhanging the River Roe. One mile from the castle he commenced the building of the “Newtown of Limavady” which was laid out in a cruciform road pattern. By 1622, 18 one-storey houses and an inn had been built centred on the crossroads which contained a flagpole, a cross and stocks.

Newtown-Limavady (known as Limavady from 1870) was incorporated as a town on 31 March 1613 with a charter granted by King James I. According to this Charter the town was to appoint a Provost and 12 Burgesses who were to form the common council or Corporation, and to return two Members of Parliament (which ceased with the Act of Union which created, in 1801, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland).

Corporation records, the minute books of the Common Council of Limavady Corporation, date from 1659. Each set of minutes begins with date of the meeting of the Common Council and list of members in attendance. Edited abstracts from these minute books have been transcribed and published in Records of the Town of Limavady, 1609 to 1808 by E. M. F-G Boyle (published 1912, republished as Boyle’s Records of Limavady, 1609 to 1808 by North-West Books, Limavady, 1989). The following Hillhouse references are recorded:

Corporation Meeting of 24 June 1665: In attendance, Abraham Hillhouse, Burgess of the Corporation of Newtown-Limavady; John Hillhouse and William Hillhouse were ‘admitted and sworn Freemen’.

Corporation Meeting of 24 June 1696: William Hillhouse sworn Freeman.

Corporation Meeting of 29 September 1708: William Hillhouse sworn Freeman.

Corporation Meeting of 14 October 1718: In attendance, William Hillhouse, Constable.

The Registry of Deeds

An examination of the records of the Registry of Deeds confirm that the Hillhouse family were still residing at Freehall, near Limavady in the middle years of the 18th century. In 1745 the estate of Freehall passed from Abraham Hillhouse to his son Abraham James Hillhouse, who was a merchant in London, and a marriage settlement, dated 1717, shows that Abraham Hillhouse of Freehall married Ann Ferguson, daughter of Reverend Andrew Ferguson of Burt, County Donegal.

1641 Rebellion

Thomas Raven’s plan of Londonderry ca. 1622 (copyright Trustees of Lambeth Palace Library)

In 1641 the Plantation of Ulster faced its first serious crisis. On 22 October 1641 the native Irish, under Sir Phelim O’Neill, rose in rebellion in the counties of Londonderry and Tyrone, and the walled city of Londonderry became a refuge for Protestant settlers. A “League of the Captains of Londonderry” was set up to guard the city, with the raising of nine companies of foot soldiers, each assigned with a particular section of the walls of Derry to repair and to defend. By April 1642 the city was close to starvation, with the rebel forces led by Sir Phelim O’Neill camped at Strabane. However, the threatened siege of Derry was lifted on 17 May 1642 by the defeat of the Irish army, led by the O’Cahans (O’Kanes), near Dungiven, County Derry by an army consisting of east Donegal settlers and four companies of soldiers from Derry city.

A fully searchable digital edition of the 1641 Depositions at Trinity College Dublin Library can be searched at http://1641.tcd.ie. The 1641 Depositions consist of transcripts and images of all 8,000 depositions, examinations and associated materials in which Protestant men and women of all classes told of their experiences following the outbreak of the rebellion by the Catholic Irish in October 1641.

A surname search of ‘Hilhouse’ records four depositions relating to the death of John Hilhouse of Gortycavan in Dunboe Parish, County Derry, three miles west of the town of Coleraine.

Seemingly, after defeating and killing a party of English and Scottish men garrisoned at Garvagh, County Londonderry about 20 December 1641, Rory Duffe McCormacke and his brothers Art and Edmund McCormacke and about 30 to 40 men armed with long pikes set upon the British at ‘Gortecavan in the parish of Dunboe’ and killed John Hilhouse.

It is possible, but not proven, that John Hilhouse of Gortycavan, Dunboe parish, who died during the 1641 Rebellion, was the son of Adam Hilhous of Dunboe whose will was proved in 1635.

Fighters of Derry

Nearly fifty years later the Plantation of Ulster faced another potential reversal to its fortunes in the events surrounding the 1689 Siege of Derry, and a Captain Abraham Hillhouse of Coleraine is recorded as a ‘defender’ of Derry.

William R. Young’s Fighters of Derry Their Deeds and Descendants: Being a Chronicle of Events in Ireland during the Revolutionary Period 1688-1691 (published by Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1932) is a unique and unrivalled source for tracing 17th century Plantation of Ulster ancestors. This book names and, in many cases, provides biographical detail of 1660 “Defenders” and 352 officers of the “Jacobite Army”.

‘Defenders’ refers to all those people who were named in contemporary sources and accounts as playing an active or supportive role in the successful Williamite campaign of 1689 to 1691, which included the Siege of Derry of 1689.

The Williamite War in Ireland, 1689-1691, was, in effect, the struggle for the English throne between the deposed James II, the last Catholic monarch of the three Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland who had the support of Louis XIV of France, and William of Orange with the backing of the English Parliament.

Young’s book names the prominent supporters of Protestant interests throughout Ireland at this time, including those named on list of attainted in James’s Dublin parliament. James II’s Parliament, which met in Dublin on 7 May 1689 and sat for three weeks, passed ‘The Bill of Attainder’ which confiscated estates and condemned without trial over 2,500 persons, of whom 921 were from Ulster, of high treason. This book lists:

Defender 739: ‘Captain Abraham Hillhouse, of Coleraine, defender, so described, is among the attainted in James’ Dublin Parliament, and his signature is on the address to King William after the relief’ [after the lifting of the Siege of Derry of 1689].

Condemnation of assassination attempt on William III in 1696

In the Corporation of Londonderry minute book of 16 April 1696 (pp132-133, Volume 2, January 1688 to 20 July 1704) are tabulated in three columns, the names of 226 citizens of the city of Londonderry who signed a resolution expressing condemnation of the plot to assassinate King William. A James Hillhouse was recorded as one of these signatories.

William III ruled jointly, from 1689, with his wife, Mary II, until her death on 28 December 1694. There was a considerable surge in support for William, who reigned as King of England, Scotland and Ireland until his death on 8 March 1702, following the exposure of a Jacobite plan to assassinate him in 1696.

The Corporation of Londonderry minute books, which date from 1673, can be browsed online at https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/information-and-services/search-archives-online/londonderry-corporation-records.

Local history publications

Local history publications can provide a wealth of material on the history of families and of place. Charles Knowles Bolton in Scotch Irish Pioneers in Ulster and America (first published in 1910), on page 113, writes:

“The Rev. James Hillhouse was born about 1688, the son of John and Rachel Hillhouse, owners of a large estate called Freehall, in County Londonderry. He studied at Glasgow under the famous Professor Simson and was ordained by Derry presbytery October 15, 1718. Coming to America in 1720, he was called to a church in the second parish of New London in 1722, where he died December 15, 1740. His son William was a member of the Continental Congress, and William’s son James was a Senator of the United States.”

With all this information the following family tree linking the Hillhouse family in Scotland, Ireland and America can be constructed:

In conclusion

It is well known that many people from Scotland migrated to Ulster throughout the 17th century and that many of their descendants settled for a few years or a few generations in Ireland before emigrating to North America in the 18th century.

It is claimed that 56% of Americans with Irish roots are of Protestant stock, whose roots in many cases can be traced back to the Scots-Irish (also known as Ulster-Scots) who settled on the frontier of colonial America in the 18th century –  Pennsylvania, Virginia and the Carolinas. Potentially some 20 million Americans today have Scots-Irish origins.

Compiled by Brian Mitchell, Derry Genealogy, www.derry.rootsireland.ie

Henry Conway was sent to Ireland in 1623 by the Vintners’ Company to resolve the finances of Vintnerstown, formerly Bellaghy, the main settlement of the Vintners’ Portion in the barony of Loughinsholin; the town had been granted to the Company in 1613 as part of the plantation of Londonderry. Henry’s relationship with the company was tenuous but his position was improved by the intervention of the Crown which led to the compilation of the Great Parchment Book. However, it was disrupted again during the 1641 Irish Rebellion when he was accused of acting “most treacherously”. Dr Bethany Marsh from the University of Oxford tells the story of Henry and looks at sources for tracing refugees who travelled to London after the outbreak of the Rebellion.

The Vintners Company and the Plantation of Ireland

On the 17 December 1613 a meeting was held at the Guildhall in London to determine which parcels of land would be allocated to the livery companies of London for the plantation of Londonderry in Ireland. The Vintners’ Company, one of the Great Twelve livery companies, was granted 32,600 acres of land in the barony of Loughinsholin. The first agent to be employed by the Company was named Henry Jackson, who arrived in Ireland in 1614. Jackson chose the town of Bellaghy to be the main settlement of the Vintners portion and renamed the town Vintnerstown. The construction of new houses began in 1615, but progress was slow. Consequently, the Company employed John Rowley to continue the work.

Rowley had been an eminent figure in the early years of the plantation. In 1610 he had been appointed as the Chief Agent for the Honourable the Irish Society of London (the consortium of livery companies invested in the plantation of Ireland) and served as the Mayor of Londonderry. Rowley, however, was known to be a sly character. He was found guilty of defrauding city expenses in Londonderry to line his own pockets, though surprisingly he was never dismissed from office.

In 1617 Rowley died and his land in Bellaghy devolved to Baptist Jones, who had been an Agent for the Salters’ Company. Like Rowley, Jones was also of questionable character. In 1616 he was arrested by the Salters’ on the charges of misappropriating funds and failing to fulfil the duties of his commission. The court found him innocent, but the Salters’ Company pushed him to vacate his land and paid him £291 11s 8d in settlement costs. Shortly following his dismissal, Jones formed a partnership with Rowley. Upon Rowley’s death, the Vintners’ Company granted Jones a new fifty seven year lease of land at an annual rent of £120.

While Jones’s trustworthiness as an Agent was dubious, significant building work was completed in Bellaghy under his supervision. In a survey of the Londonderry plantation, conducted by Captain Nicholas Pynnar between 1618 and 1619, it was noted:

“[Bellaghy] is in the Hands of Baptist Jones, Esq., who hath built a Bawn [fortified house or castle] of Brick and Lime, 100 feet square, with two round Flankers, and a good Rampart, which is more than any of the rest have done.”

In 1618 Jones also secured funds to build a church, though his financial troubles meant the building of the church was not completed for several years. Regardless, Jones received a knighthood in 1621 for his work on the plantation. By 1622 many of the buildings in Bellaghy were complete. Thomas Raven’s map of the town shows fifteen timber-framed houses with brick gables, the Bawn at the top of the main street, a market cross and a church.

The appointment of Henry Conway

In 1623 Jones died leaving debts of over £300 to the Vintners’ Company. These debts were taken up by Henry Conway, who was sent to Ireland by the Company to resolve the town’s finances. Conway married Jones’s widow, Elizabeth, and was granted a lease of fifty one years in 1625, on the condition that he pay off Jones’s debts.

Conway was likely appointed due to his military background. The Native Irish were regarded widely in England as barbarous and needed to be bought under control. It was believed that this could be achieved by “rooting out or transporting the barbarous or stubborn sort, and planting civility in their rooms”. In practical terms this meant imposing English laws and customs through the plantation of English and Scottish Protestants. As Edmund Spenser, a poet and advocate of the plantation scheme, wrote: “Nothing doth sooner cause civility in any country than many market towns by reason that the people repairing often thither for their needs will daily learn civil manners”. Military men were essential for protecting the new plantations, particularly following outbreaks of violence against settlers in 1623. Conway had served as a cornet under Sir Arthur Chichester making him an attractive Agent for the Company.

Henry Conway and the Great Parchment Book

Conway’s position with the Vintners’ Company, however, appears tenuous. Throughout the 1620s and 1630s he failed to pay back the money owed to the Company, leaving him dependent on the support of his influential relatives to secure his future. Conway particularly relied on his kinship with Sir Edward Conway, appointed Secretary of State in England in 1623. Sir Edward wrote to Sir William Blake, “being a chief Instrument for the plantation of Ulster in Ireland”, in 1628 requesting Blake to use his connections with the Vintners’ Company to extend Conway’s lease in Londonderry. The implication being that Conway was possibly in danger of losing his estate for failing to pay Jones’s debts.

In the 1630s Conway’s position significantly improved due to the intervention of the Crown. In a case held in the court of Star Chamber it was declared that the London Companies had failed to fulfil their duties of plantation, resulting in the forfeit of all livery company estates to the Crown. By claiming these estates, King Charles I gained the power to create new and more profitable contracts for leases. The Great Parchment Book outlines these new contracts, including a new lease created for Henry Conway [ff. M6r-M7v]. Conway was granted lands in Bellaghy, including the town’s Bawn, and lands in the surrounding area. In return for these lands Conway had to build two “good and sufficient houses of timber, stone or brick in the manner and fashion of English houses”, plant “fifty young trees of oak, ash, and elm fit and likely to grow to be timber trees”, and keep five muskets, five corselets and pikes.

Henry Conway and the 1641 rebellion

On the evening of the 23 October 1641 armed rebellion broke out in Ulster. Members of the Catholic Irish gentry sought reparations for the loss of their lands to Protestant settlers, but the violence soon spread amongst the rest of the Irish Catholic population. The upheaval caused by the rebellion affected everyone in Ireland in some form, including Henry Conway. The vicar of Bellaghy, Charles Anthony, recounted that upon hearing news of the rebellion Conway persuaded all the residents of the town to retreat to the safety of his Bawn. Charles Anthony’s full account can be read on the 1641 Depositions website – MS 839, ff. 096r-097v, Deposition of Charles Anthony (12 June 1642).

It would be a mistake, however, to regard Conway as heroic. From the outset of the rebellion he denied military assistance to neighbouring towns who needed help resisting the rebels. Secret letters were also sent by Conway to rebel leaders to arrange terms of surrender. According to Robert Waringe, a resident of the nearby town of Magherafelt, Conway was in communication with Sir Pheilm O’Neill, an Irish nobleman who was one of the rebellion’s chief conspirators. They agreed that the town would surrender and in exchange the town’s inhabitants would be allowed to leave safely and Conway could retain his personal possessions. For Waringe, Conway acted “most treacherously” and “basely suffered this deponent and the rest that were protestants to be despoiled of their arms and ammunition and left all the other arms and ammunition…to the rebels” [MS 839, ff. 108r-111v, Deposition of Robert Waringe (12 August 1642)].

Refugees and the London metropolis

It is unclear where Conway and his family fled following the surrender of Bellaghy. Like many refugees, it is possible they travelled to England, Scotland, Wales or the Continent for safety and relief. Between 1641 and 1651 thousands of refugees fled to England in the wake of the Irish rebellion and subsequent Confederate Wars, with a large number fleeing specifically to London. The London metropolis was the economic and political hub of the nation, including within its environs the city of Westminster, the Royal Court, the Court of Burgesses, both Houses of Parliament, Guildhall, the Royal Exchange and the port of London. London’s political and economic importance attracted thousands of economic migrants, both foreign and domestic. Consequently, the population of the capital grew significantly during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. By the 1650s London was the largest urban centre in Western Europe, with a population of around 400,000. In perspective, Norwich was the second largest city in England at this time and had a population of only around 20,000 to 30,000. London was a popular destination for wandering refugees by virtue of its size. The large migrant population in the capital made it easier for refugees to find permanent settlement, in comparison to smaller towns and villages where they would be recognised more readily as strangers and likely asked to move out of the area. The presence of Parliament was also attractive to refugees as those of a higher social status were able to petition Parliament for financial assistance.

The accounts of parish officers – churchwardens, constables and overseers of the poor – held at London Metropolitan Archives give an indication of the number of refugees who travelled to London after the outbreak of the Irish rebellion. Churchwardens in the parishes of St. Dunstan in the West and St. Dunstan in the East, for instance, provided relief to a minimum of 502 and 305 refugees respectively between 1641 and 1651. In some accounts the parish officers included interesting details about the people who fled Ireland. Mary Langhon, for example, received 2s 6d on 7 June 1644. She was travelling with her daughter and two grandchildren, their husbands having been “slain in Ireland” [P69/DUN2/B/011/MS02968/003, f. 678v, St. Dunstan in the West Churchwardens’ Accounts (1641-1645)]. On 11 September 1648 Elizabeth Leader received 1s. Elizabeth was a “poor widow whose husband and 2 of her children were killed at Waterford in Ireland by the Rebels and she herself so wounded that a piece of her skull was taken out of her head and lay a long time in the hospital for cure of her wounds” [P69/DUN2/B/011/MS02968/004, f. 100r, St. Dunstan in the West Churchwardens’ Accounts (1645-1651)]. Moreover, on 24 January 1642 Ellen Bourke received 2s in relief, her “husband was burnt in Ireland” [P69/DUN1/B/008/MS07882/001, St. Dunstan in the East Churchwardens’ Account Book (1635-1661), p. 174].

Conclusion

By 1659 Henry Conway had reclaimed his property in Bellaghy, amounting to 508 acres, which he likely retained until his death. On the surface Conway’s life appears to have left very little mark on the history of the Londonderry plantation or indeed the history of seventeenth century Ireland. His inability to pay the debts of his predecessor, Baptist Jones, meant his relationship with the Vintners’ Company waned over the course of the 1620s. The intervention of the Crown in the 1630s allowed Conway to retain his land under a new contract, but the disruption of the 1641 rebellion meant he was unable to fulfil the terms of his lease and improve the town of Bellaghy any further. Conway’s actions during the 1641 Irish rebellion, however, have left one significant legacy. Conway’s agreement with Sir Pheilm O’Neill ensured the survival of the Bellaghy Bawn. While most plantation castles and fortified houses were destroyed during the rebellion, the Bellaghy Bawn was spared and stands today as a monument to the history of the Jacobean plantation scheme and the 1641 rebellion. The Bawn is now a museum and is open to visitors all thanks to the “treachery” of Henry Conway.

Further reading

Hill, An Historical Account of the Plantation in Ulster at the Commencement of the Seventeenth Century 1608-1620 (Belfast, 1877), p. 586.

C. Dickinson and G. Donaldson (eds.), A Source Book of Scottish History (3 vols., Edinburgh, 1961), III, p. 261.

B. Grosart (ed.), The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Edmund Spenser (9 vols., London 1882), IX, p. 247.

The Down Survey of Ireland, accessed 30.03.2020.

Stedall, Men of Substance: The London Livery Companies’ Reluctant Part in the Plantation of Ulster (London, 2016).

Clarke, ‘The Colonisation of Ulster and the rebellion of 1641’, in T. W. Moody and F. X. Martin (eds.), The Course of Irish History (Revised and enlarged edition, Dublin, 2001), pp. 152-164.

Colin Salter has previously shared his research about his ancestor, Paul Brasier who first brought the Brasier family to Ireland and was involved in the building of a riverside wharf in Coleraine.

And you can read the story of another settler, George Canning, the Ironmongers’ Company’s first agent here.

There must be lots of other stories out there about people and places in the Great Parchment Book – if you have one, please let us know!

And it you want help with tracking down online resources, we’ve got lots of articles and links to help you find your way around on the Great Parchment Book website. For example, have you checked out PRONI’s guides? Or do you know about other records online such as the 1641 Depositions – witness testimonies, mainly by Protestants, but also by some Catholics, from all social backgrounds, concerning their experiences of the 1641 Irish rebellion?

And finally, if you are not already a subscriber, please do consider subscribing to the blog, so you can keep up to date.

Did you know that the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland has published many information leaflets online in its family tree and local history series, several of which might be useful for those researching Irish history and delving into sources such as the Great Parchment Book? The leaflets outline what records are available, what information can be found in the records, and how and where the records can be accessed.

The following are particularly recommended as directly relevant to the Great Parchment Book or introducing complementary sources, but it’s worth taking a look at the full list.

Your family tree leaflet 14: 17th century census substitutes lists a number of sources for tracing individuals between 1610 and 1698 including: Summonister rolls, 1610-84; Muster Rolls 1630; the Civil Survey of Ireland, compiled between 1655 and 1667 for County Londonderry and County Tyrone; Hearth Money Rolls from 1662; Subsidy Rolls listing nobility, clergy and laity from 1666; and Poll Tax Returns from 1660. (See also More 17th century Irish history online from the Great Parchment Book blog).

Your family tree leaflet 12: Militia, Yeomanry Lists and Muster Rolls list the most useful sources for tracing Protestant males between the ages of 16 and 60 liable to service in the militia from 1631 to 1832. (See also More 17th century Irish sources online: muster rolls from the Great Parchment Book blog).

Local history leaflet 1: The Townland outlines the origin of the townland, a small local land unit and sub-division of the parish, which had existed in Ireland since ancient times and was the basis for plantation grants in the 16th and 17th centuries. The leaflet also looks at other land measurements which you will find in the Great Parchment Book such as the ballyboe and bally or baile. (See also Puzzling Place Names from the Great Parchment Book blog).

Your family tree leaflet 24: A simple guide to Ireland is a very useful run through of the things to watch out for when researching Irish history and a must for those new to the subject.

(See also Great Parchment Book retrospective: historical importance and synergy with other sources from the Great Parchment Book blog).

Between 1966 and 1975 PRONI published a series of facsimiles covering various aspects of Irish history from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries intended to introduce school students to archival material and to encourage further research in the archives. The pack covering the plantation period was meticulously edited by R.J. Hunter, a scholar who specialised in the history of Ireland in the early modern period, especially the Plantation of Ulster in the early 17th century. Containing 20 documents, it first appeared in 1975 and was reprinted in 1989, but it was then unavailable for many years.

In 2018 a new edition was published by PRONI and the Ulster Historical Foundation prepared by Ian Montgomery and William Roulston containing an additional ten documents making 30 in all. The documents are mainly sourced from collections in PRONI, but also include printed material and documents from the British Library, the Huntington Library California, Lambeth Palace Library, the National Library of Ireland, The National Archives, Trinity College Dublin and West Yorkshire Archives Service, a memorial inscription and a plaque. 

Each reproduction is accompanied by a description, a commentary and in some cases a transcription of the text. There is also a short accessible introduction to the Ulster Plantation, and a handy list of further publications including online resources such as the Great Parchment Book, the 1641 Depositions and the Down Survey of Ireland.

Highly recommended.

Interesting to read alongside Plantations in Ulster, 1600-41, is “The Significance of Landed Estates in Ulster 1600-1820” by W. H. Crawford in Irish Economic and Social History Vol. 17 (1990), pp. 44-61 (18 pages). Crawford’s article develops themes found in Hunter’s introduction and takes the story into the 19th century. Users of London Metropolitan and Guildhall Library can view the article free of charge online at https://www.jstor.org/stable/24341088, and you may be able to access it either onsite or online through your own library service.

The rest is history. The website which hosts the Great Parchment Book went live on 30 May 2013 and the exhibition Plantation: Process, People, Perspectives opened in June 2013 in Derry Guildhall. Both are still going strong.

But we have another commemoration this year and that is the 400th anniversary of the completion of the city walls in March 1619. To celebrate the anniversary a full and vibrant programme of events, entitled Walled City 400 Years, will run until March 2020. The programme is being led by our partners on the Great Parchment Book project, The Honourable The Irish Society and Derry City & Strabane District Council, as well as the builders and owners of the Walls and The Department for Communities’ Historic Environment Division. The celebration aims to provide a great opportunity or both visitors and locals alike to experience the Walled City at its very best and includes historical exhibitions, symposiums, and living archaeology demonstrations and workshops.

The Tower Museum in Derry has curated an exhibition using a treasure trove of objects and archive materials from its collections to tell the story of the Walls, the city and its people. Some of the objects on display have never been seen before, including pottery, ceramics, leather and currency unearthed in archaeological digs in 1970s & 1980s. These objects not only tell us about life and events within, without and around the walls from the last 400 years, but also help us to understand how people would have lived day to day. It is a fascinating story of social history that spans war, rebellion, peace and culture. The exhibition runs until 26 January 2020.

In tandem with this, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), located in the Titanic Quarter in Belfast, is displaying a selection of material from the archaeological archive (from 2 August 2019).

You can find out more about the events here

Thomas Raven’s plan of Londonderry ca. 1622 (copyright Trustees of Lambeth Palace Library)

The Derry city walls are the largest ancient monument in state care in Northern Ireland and have the longest, complete circuit of ramparts of any of the remaining 30 walled towns in Ireland. The Friends of the Derry Walls is a voluntary organisation whose mission is to give a voice to the Walls, raising ambitions for their care and presentation, driving public engagement with the Walls and ensuring that the walls are fully exploited as a resource for educational, cultural and economic development. The Friends have been running a series of activities over the six-year period 2013-2019 of the quadricentennial. If you want to learn more about the walls, they have a website to help you explore this heritage site of national and international significance here

The symposium brings together historians of medieval and early modern Ireland to discuss continuity and change across six centuries of Irish history. The event will put into sharper focus the collections with relevance to pre-modern Ireland at The National Archives and consider the archival context and history of this vast collection.

The keynote speakers are Professor Robin Frame (Durham), Professor Patricia Palmer (NUI Maynooth), and Professor David Hayton (Queen’s University Belfast).

Other speakers include Dr Annaleigh Margey from Dundalk Institute of Technology whose talk is entitled “Thinking geographically: cartography and state administration in early modern Ireland”. Dr Margey has written previously for the Great Parchment Book blog on the Livery Company Maps of the Londonderry Plantation.

In this blog we have also looked at the maps of Ireland in the 16th and early 17th centuries held by The National Archives. Of the 68 maps depicting plantations, fortifications and townships in Ireland during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, more than 40 relate to Ulster in the years of the Plantation leading up to the formation of the Irish Society and the period covered by the Great Parchment Book.

Other speakers at the symposium will be looking at more general themes such as governance, administration and record keeping, politics and the economy.

Further details and booking information are here.

And it’s also good news for our partners Derry City & Strabane Museum and Visitor Services. Statistics recently received record that to 31 December 2017 nearly one and a half million visits (1,479,598 to be precise) had been made to the to the Plantation, People, Perspectives exhibition in Derry Guildhall. Just to put this in perspective and indicate the impact of the exhibition, this figure is many times the population of Derry itself and more than three quarters of the population of Northern Ireland. The exhibition is still going strong and we look forward to this year’s figures.

So, if you have done research based on the Great Parchment Book, why not share it more widely on this blog? Please contact the editor via ask.lma@cityoflondon.gov.uk for more information.

And finally, here are the updated statistics for the Great Parchment Book by numbers:

• 1 Great Parchment Book of The Honourable The Irish Society
• 165 folios and fragments, stored in 30 bespoke boxes (originally 16)
• 11 Great Twelve livery companies’ holdings recorded (should be 12, but the Merchant Taylors’ portion is missing)
• 1095 personal names indexed on the website including variations in spelling
• 992 place names indexed also including variations
• 49 occupations and titles recorded such as barber-surgeon, fellmonger, muster master and winecowper
• 120 entries in the glossary including occupations and titles, but also terms such as ballibetagh, creete, kill house, rampier, standall and vayle
• Over 160,000 page views of Great Parchment Book website and blog to 9 November 2018
• 148 blog posts published including this one
• 270,000 visitors to Plantation, People, Perspectives exhibition in Derry Guildhall in the first year (opened 30 May 2013) when an original folio of the Great Parchment Book was on display. Nearly one and a half million visitors (1,479,598 to be precise) to the exhibition to 31 December 2017 (many times the population of Derry and over three quarters of the population of Northern Ireland). Still going strong.
• 37 downloads in 7 countries across 3 continents of the Open Access set of 326 XML documents containing encoded transcriptions of the individual folios (2.56MB of data)
• 6 presentations about the project in countries outside the UK across 3 continents, and innumberable links from other websites across the world
• 20 project partners including 14 funders
• 4 awards, 3 shortlisted/finalist, 1 highly commended
• 1 inscription on UK Memory of the World Register (inscribed on 21 June 2016)

All summed up as 1 unique record of the 17th century Plantation of Ulster.

To mark the anniversary, we’re again taking a look at the project through numbers, from the names in the surviving folios of the book itself to the visitors to the website with some interesting facts along the way.

• 1 Great Parchment Book of The Honourable The Irish Society
• 165 folios and fragments, stored in 30 bespoke boxes (originally 16)
• 11 Great Twelve livery companies’ holdings recorded (should be 12, but the Merchant Taylors’ portion is missing)
• 1095 personal names indexed on the website including variations in spelling
• 992 place names indexed also including variations
• 49 occupations and titles recorded such as barber-surgeon, fellmonger, muster master and winecowper
• 120 entries in the glossary including occupations and titles, but also terms such as ballibetagh, creete, kill house, rampier, standall and vayle
• Over 150,000 page views of Great Parchment Book website and blog to 30 May 2018
• 147 blog posts published including this one
• 270,000 visitors to Plantation, People, Perspectives exhibition in Derry Guildhall in the first year (opened 30 May 2013) when an original folio of the Great Parchment Book was on display. Almost 960,000 visitors to the exhibition to 30 May 2016 (several times the population of Derry and nearly half the population of Northern Ireland). Still going strong.
• 33 downloads in 6 countries across 3 continents of the Open Access set of 326 XML documents containing encoded transcriptions of the individual folios (2.56MB of data)
• 6 presentations about the project in countries outside the UK across 3 continents, and innumberable links from other websites across the world
• 20 project partners including 14 funders
• 4 awards, 3 shortlisted/finalist, 1 highly commended
• 1 inscription on UK Memory of the World Register (inscribed on 21 June 2016)

All summed up as 1 unique record of the 17th century Plantation of Ulster.