Ulster Protestant
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| Total ambiguous (900,000-1,000,000) |
|
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Northern Ireland | 873,464 |
| Republic of Ireland | 27,234 |
| Languages | |
| Ulster English, Ulster Scots | |
| Religion | |
|
Protestantism (mostly Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, and Methodism) |
|
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Ulster Scots, Irish people, Scottish people, English people | |
Ulster Protestants are an ethnoreligious group in the Irish province of Ulster, where they make up about 54% of the population. Many Ulster Protestants are descendants of the Protestant settlers involved in the early 17th century Ulster Plantation, which introduced the first significant numbers of Protestants into the west and centre of the province. These settlers were mostly Lowland Scottish and Northern English people and predominantly from Galloway, the Scottish Borders and Northumberland.
Begun privately in 1606, the Plantation of Ulster became government-sponsored in 1609, with much land for settlement being allocated to the Livery Companies of the City of London. Colonising Ulster with loyal Scottish and English settlers, the vast majority of whom were Protestants, was seen by the ministers of King James as a way to prevent further rebellion in the province, which had been the region of Ireland most resistant to English control during the preceding century. By 1622 there was a total settler population of about 19,000, and by the 1630s somewhere between 50,000 and as many as 80,000. Ulster Protestants descend from a variety of lineages, including Scots (some of whose descendants consider themselves Ulster Scots), English, Irish, and Huguenots. Another influx of an estimated 20,000 Scottish Protestants, mainly to the coastal counties of Antrim, Down and Londonderry, was a result of the seven ill years of famines in Scotland in the 1690s. This migration decisively changed the population of Ulster, giving it a Protestant majority. While Presbyterians of Scottish descent and origin had already become the majority of Ulster Protestants by the 1660s, when Protestants still made up only a third of the population, they had become an absolute majority in the province by the 1720s.
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