Excerpt from another list: William of Orange was asked by the Scots and Scots- Irish for his support. According to their petition they were truly concerned for their lives. He did not come over on his own looking to beat up on James II, although he probably didn't have to be asked twice. The plight of the Scots in Ireland: By 1490 Scots had gained political control of Antrim in Ireland - if I recall correctly an Irish MacDonnell married a Scottish lass and her family eventually ended up with the reigns of power in Antrim. Northern Ireland in the 1500's was a sparsely settled part of the island. I believe that the Plantation settlements started somewhere back in the mid-1500's with Queen Elizabeth of England being the spark behind that move. She was quite upset by the somewhat legitimate Scottish presence in Antrim. She meant to dislodge them and eventually take over all of Ireland. One way was to give large Irish plantations to English nobles. Hopefully they would introduce modern agricultural methods, become indispensable, and take over everything. Financially it was a bust. James I in the early1600's continued with a program to stop the Scots from settling in Northern Ireland. He is said to have remarked that they might be harder to dislodge than the native Irish (in his opinion, and he was Scottish born). He encouraged English settlers. Again they didn't fare too well. Then he turned around and exiled Scottish Protestants from the Borders because he felt that they might not support his crown because of religious differences. As it happened they were among his most loyal supporters up until then. He just didn't realize it. He rounded up literally 10's of thousands of Maxwells, Armstrongs, Johnstones, Nixons, Grahams, Carrutherses, Irvings, Elliots, Scotts, and other Border clansmen as part of his Borders pacification plan and exiled them to Northern Ireland. Still more fled to Northern Ireland to escape his "justice". So we now have a situation where there are 3 distinct populations in Northern Ireland. The English wanted the land but not the Irish. The Irish wanted their own land back but not with the English. They were not overly fond of the Scots and would have liked to have seen them gone, but there was greater toleration of them as most of them were on the "outs" with the English too, plus many of the Scots from the highlands were descendents of Irish from Northern Ireland and Roman Catholic, so they were kind of like cousins. The Border Scots were looked upon with some understanding as the Irish knew that many of them were forced to come over. That didn't mean that they loved them though. Meanwhile the Scots were just trying to survive, having been caught between the English and the Irish. After one or more generations many Scots-Irish simply moved on to North America because the "friction" was just too much for them to accept. Their relatives who stayed behind then became concerned for their rights when the troubles started and the Irish Republic was set up. They became even more concerned when the IRA escalated the troubles and the English (British by now) made some waves about pulling out and leaving them to the mercy of the Irish Republic. Can you imagine how they must have felt at that point? Small wonder that they started fighting even harder to maintain what religious freedom that they had. It's truly a complicated quagmire.