Belfast and Carrickfergus

Belfast and Carrickfergus were the two most important towns on the east coast of Ulster. Carrickfergus, on the northern side of Belfast Lough, had been an important military outpost and naval base since the Anglo-Normans built a castle there in the twelfth century. The town had been granted a new charter in 1569, and thereafter continued to prosper, especially under the auspices of its Jacobean patron, Sir Arthur Chichester. P. Robinson, Carrickfergus (Irish Historic Towns Atlas, no. 2, Dublin, 1986), 1-4. According to Sir William Brereton*, who visited the town in 1635, Carrickfergus was a ‘pretty little town ... governed by a mayor, sheriff and alderman, endowed with great privileges’. Brereton’s Travels ed. E. Hawkins (Chetham Soc. i), 127. Belfast, situated eight miles upstream, on the River Lagan, was at this time still an outpost of Carrickfergus. Indeed, Belfast owed its very existence to the entrepreneurial efforts of a number of Carrickfergus freemen, and especially of Sir Arthur Chichester, who promoted the new settlement, built a ‘dainty stately house’ there, and gained the borough its own charter. Brereton’s Travels, 128.

The contrasting political situation in the two boroughs can be seen in the elections for the Irish Parliaments in 1634 and 1640. The MPs for Carrickfergus were either associates of the Chichesters, such as Henry Upton, or officials from the borough, including the mayor, John Davies*. The confidence of the Carrickfergus corporation could not be matched by its neighbour. Although Belfast returned its ‘sovereign’ (or mayor) in 1634, its other MPs were outsiders imposed either by the government or by powerful local landowners, including Edward Conway†, 2nd Viscount Conway. H. Kearney, Strafford in Ire. (Cambridge, 1989), 250-1; McGrath, Biographical Dict. Economically, both Belfast and Carrickfergus relied on importing supplies, mainly from Scotland and northern England, for the nascent plantations in Ulster. The picture was not entirely rosy, however. By 1637 Carrickfergus and its sub-ports had been pushed into second place in the Ulster rankings by the newly re-established borough of Londonderry, which was better situated to take advantage of the formal plantations in the north and west of the province. In the later 1630s Carrickfergus was also under economic pressure because trade was increasingly being drawn to Belfast – a process that would eventually lead the merchants of the latter, having calculated that they handled seven times the trade passing through the old port, to seek autonomy in the administration of customs revenue. Robinson, Carrickfergus, 4-5; CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 336.

The 1641 rebellion highlighted the strategic importance of both towns. Carrickfergus, with its strong fortifications and sheltered harbour, was important for naval operations; and Belfast provided a base for Protestant land forces to strike south and west into the heartland of the Ulster rebels. Both towns stood firm against the first wave of rebellion in the autumn of 1641, with Viscount Chichester directing operations from Carrickfergus Castle and organising the townsmen and refugees alike into military companies; the sovereign of Belfast soon followed suit. CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 210, 341-2, 345; R. Armstrong, Protestant War: the ‘British’ of Ire. and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (Manchester, 2005), 28-9, 32. With the arrival of the Scottish army in Ulster in April 1642, Carrickfergus became their headquarters, while Belfast was garrisoned by English troops loyal to the marquess of Ormond. In May 1644, however, Belfast was surprised by Robert Monro, with support from the inhabitants, who readily took the Covenant. CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 393-4; Armstrong, Protestant War, 115. Neither town was threatened by the Irish rebels during the wars, but the increasing tension between the English and Scottish settlers – especially over the thorny problem of the Covenant – and the growing political differences between Parliament and the Scots, in part caused by the refusal of the Scots to cede Belfast, created unease in eastern Ulster during the mid-1640s. The decision of the Scots to join the king in 1648 prompted the parliamentarian commander in Ulster, George Monck*, to march on both towns, which he captured without a fight in September of that year. CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 27; HMC 7th Rep. 52; K. Forkan, ‘The Ulster Scots and the Engagement, 1647-8’, Irish Historical Studies xxxv. 471. Monck had been forced out by the summer of 1649, but the advance of the Cromwellian brigade under Colonel Robert Venables* immediately after the fall of Drogheda proved too much for the Scottish garrisons, which soon surrendered. CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 30.

By remaining in Protestant hands throughout the 1640s, and escaping sieges, Belfast and Carrickfergus emerged from the Irish wars with their buildings and populations largely intact. Moreover, prolonged conflict had brought new trading opportunities, and men such as John Davies of Carrickfergus became rich through provisioning and supplying the parliamentarian and Scottish armies in the 1640s. From 1650 Carrickfergus and Belfast were still important ports for supplying the army in Ulster, and they remained the principal embarkation points (and supply depots) for Parliament’s campaigns against the west of Scotland in the mid-1650s. CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 77-368, 526-98; 1654, pp. 150, 261, 270, 382. The government of the two towns was dominated by the military. Although Carrickfergus retained its nominal jurisdiction as a ‘town and county’, the establishment of the Belfast precinct (which covered counties Antrim, Down and Armagh) in 1651 removed any pretence of independence. Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 484. Carrickfergus became the residence for Robert Venables and his successor, Thomas Cooper II*, as commanders of Ulster, and Belfast was heavily garrisoned throughout the period. The civil administration of the region was divided between the two towns, with the Ulster revenue commissioners and (in the later 1650s) the Antrim justices and assessment commissioners sitting as often in Belfast as in Carrickfergus, despite the ‘hereditary’ claims of the senior port as the seat of local government. Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 40-1; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 383, 569, 594, 623, 641, 665. This loss of administrative independence was exacerbated by the religious changes ushered in by military rule. Carrickfergus, in particular, became a centre for Independency, promoted by the influential figure of Timothy Taylor, who was in post by October 1651. StJ.D. Seymour, The Puritans in Ire. 1647-1661 (Oxford, 1921), 58. In the mid-1650s, Colonel Cooper refused to allow any Scottish Presbyterian ministers to reside in either town, and his subordinate, John Duckinfield, was a vigorous champion of Independent congregations in their struggles against the Antrim presbytery. Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 669.

The ambiguity of the attitudes of a merchant class dependent on, but at the same time resentful of, the military occupation of their ports, is revealed in the electoral history of the combined borough from 1654-9. Controversially, the protectoral council decided to site the borough election in the newer port of Belfast. CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 800. The MP chosen in August 1654 was the military place-man, Daniel Redman. C219/44, unfol.; Mercurius Politicus no. 219 (17-24 Aug. 1654), 3710 (E.809.5). As an important commander in Ulster, Redman was prevented from attending the session by order of the lord deputy, Charles Fleetwood*. TSP ii. 558. In 1656 the burgesses elected John Davies, a key member of the Carrickfergus corporation and a Presbyterian sympathiser of doubtful loyalty. TSP v. 336, 343. The reaction of the government to this election suggests that the townsmen intended to make a political statement through Davies’s election. Secretary John Thurloe* complained to Henry Cromwell*, that Davies ‘had been as great an intelligencer to the royal party as any man; and therefore he is by no means fit to serve in Parliament’. Henry replied that he had ‘scarce ever heard of the gentleman before’ but on investigation had ‘taken care for the present stop of him’. TSP v. 398, 443. The election of a suspected royalist, rather than a godly soldier, sent clear signals to the government, and it was no surprise when, in January 1659, the army once again intruded its own man – John Duckinfield, Cooper’s lieutenant-colonel, who had been acting governor of Carrickfergus since 1657. Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 664.

The two towns took little part in the crisis which preceded the restoration of the monarchy, although two of Cooper’s companies at Carrickfergus rebelled against their military commanders in December 1659 and sided with the Old Protestants who had seized Dublin in support of the Rump Parliament. Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 669-70. With the military ousted, Belfast and Carrickfergus returned to their pre-1641 patterns of government and influence fairly rapidly. In the elections for the General Convention in the spring of 1660, Belfast returned Sir Jerome Alexander, probably on the Chichester interest, while Carrickfergus chose Hercules Davies, son of John Davies. Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 170-2. After the restoration, Viscount Chichester (now earl of Donegal) continued to have considerable influence both Belfast and Carrickfergus; and the constableship of Carrickfergus Castle was soon returned to its pre-1641 incumbent, Sir Faithful Fortescue. CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 199, 217, 242-3, 439, 442; 1666-9, p. 111. In the elections for the Irish Parliament of 1661, old families re-emerged, with Arthur Upton, William Knight and John Davies’s two sons monopolising the burgess-places at Belfast and Carrickfergus respectively. CJI i. 588; The Rawdon Papers ed. E. Berwick (1819), 200. The Presbyterian churches, with their Scottish and English adherents, also recovered their position in the towns after the Restoration. CSP Ire. 1666-9, pp. 111, 115. The 1660s also saw a return to the economic trends which had already become clear before the rebellion. By the end of the seventeenth century Carrickfergus, although still an important military centre, had been eclipsed by Belfast, which had become the dominant trading town of eastern Ulster.