Ulster’s Black Oath
Thomas Wentworth, Charles I’s lord deputy in Ireland, regarded the Scottish revolt of 1638–39 as more than a foreign disturbance. The Scottish presence in Ulster was substantial, commercially connected to western Scotland and religiously diverse. Many settlers had Presbyterian sympathies; many also maintained kinship, trading and pastoral links across the narrow sea. A Covenanting victory in Scotland therefore raised an alarming prospect for the Dublin administration: a politically mobilised Protestant population within Ireland which rejected the episcopal order favoured by the crown.