The Brasier name crops up in several marriages in the pedigrees of my ancestors who were part
of the Protestant Ascendancy – the English settlers sent to colonise Ireland
and prevent rebellion among the Catholic Irish. The act of implanting
such settlers was known as plantation, as if they were some alien species of
tree being unnaturally introduced to the landscape by a political Forestry
Commission. There were several waves of plantation in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries starting with the Tudor conquest of the island in the
1550s.
Plantations
tended to follow periods of unrest. Two rebellions by the Irish Earl of Desmond
in the 1570s and 1580s resulted in the plantation of his lands in Munster, in
southwestern Ireland. A decade later an Ireland-wide rebellion led by O’Neill
of Tyrone drove out the Munster incomers. But when that rebellion was squashed
in 1603, the Munster plantation was resurrected; and plans were made by James
VI/I for a much larger one in the north of the country, in Ulster, which had
seen the fiercest resistance to English rule.
James VI of Scotland and I of England (c1606, after
John de Critz)
The union of the two countries’ crowns spawned the
idea of a plantation of Ulster by equal numbers of Scots and English incomers
The plan
required landed gentry from England and Scotland to take on confiscated Ulster
land and populate it with workers from their estates back in Britain – Irish tenants
were banned, and those undertaking the plantation (who were known as
undertakers) were each obliged to introduce 48 adult males, 20 of them with
families and all of them Protestant.
Veterans of the
war were also rewarded with parcels of land. In cases where the new land owners
were unwilling or unable to deliver the required level of Protestant population,
the king turned in 1607 to the powerful trade guilds of the City of London.
They had the manpower, the wealth and (perhaps most importantly) the skills required
to sustain the venture; but they had grave reservations about getting involved.
One worshipful company recorded in its minutes that “it would be very foolish
to entermeddle in this busynesse, for it will be exceedingly chargeable.”
The arms of The Honourable The Irish Society, formed
in 1613 and still active today
James overcame their
lack of enthusiasm with the threat of fines and imprisonment. The companies
fell into groups headed by one of the twelve “Great Companies”, all under the umbrella
of a sub-committee of the Corporation of London which came to be called The
Honourable The Irish Society. Each of the twelve was allocated an area of
Ulster, on which they must build a castle, villages and churches, all ruled by
English law, customs and religion, using the English language.
The Clothworkers
for example, (whose group included butchers, bakers, bow- and arrow-makers, upholsterers
and merchant tailors), were given the area around Killowen on the west bank of the
River Bann. They faced the site on the east bank on which the Irish Society now
began to plan and build the fortified town of Coleraine. Paul Brasier arrived
in Ireland in 1611, the first of his family to do so. Although I don’t know which company brought him, he was an
alderman of Coleraine by July 1639, when he and a business partner John
Hatton were renewing the lease of a tannery in the town.
Coleraine, 1611
Paul seems to
have been a prominent and successful citizen by then. In September that year he
was one of five members of a consortium allowed by the King’s Commissioners to
build a new wharf for the town. As further proof of the Brasiers’ status in the
new colony, Paul’s son (also Paul) married Sarah Beresford, a granddaughter
of Tristram Beresford, the man appointed by the Corporation of London to manage
the Ulster Plantation. Sarah's father was Sir Tristram Beresford, Baronet. Talk about connections in high places.
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