So political strife, resentment toward governmental authority, hatred toward individuals acting for the rulers developed into feuds. In some such way the making of poteen and feuds were linked hand-in-hand long before the Anglo-Celtic and Anglo-Saxon set foot in the wilderness of America.
They were pawns of the Crown, used to suppress the uprisings of the Irish Catholics and in turn themselves even more unfairly treated by the Crown. They could not--these Presbyterians--worship as they chose; rather the place and form was set by the State. Their ships were barred from foreign trade, even with America; they were forbidden to ship products or cattle back to England, though after the Great Fire of London, Ireland generously sent thousands of head of cattle to London. Barred then from engaging in profitable cattle trade, they turned to growing wool. This too was defeated by prohibitive duties, and when Ireland undertook to engage in producing linen, England thwarted that industry too. They were forbidden to possess arms, they were expelled from the militia, and what with incessantly being called upon to pay tithes, added rents, and cess they had little left to call their own, little to show for their labors. Then adding insult to injury, the Crown declared illegitimate the children born of a marriage performed by the ministers of these Presbyterians, so that such offspring could not legally inherit the lands of their parents.
Oppressed and persecuted for a century, they could bear it no longer; these transplanted Scotch-Irish (as America came to call them) turned their faces to the new world.
The massacres of 1641 sent them across the uncharted seas in great numbers. And to stimulate and spur their continued migration to America these "adventurers" and "planters" were offered land in Maryland by Lord Baltimore--three thousand acres for every thirty persons brought into the state, with the provision of "free liberty of religion." But Pennsylvania offered a heartier welcome and "genuine religious liberty" besides.
Oppression and unfairness continued to grow in Ireland. Protestants there had never owned outright the land which they struggled to clear and cultivate. Moreover they toiled without pay. Protest availed them little. And the straw that broke the camel's back was laid on in the form of rent by Lord Donegal. In 1717 when their leases had expired in County Antrim, they found themselves in a worse predicament than ever. Their rents were doubled and trebled. Now, to hand over more than two thirds of what they had after all the other taxes that had been imposed upon them left them with little or nothing. How was a man to pay the added rent? Pay or get out! demanded Lord Donegal. Eviction from the lands which their toil had developed--a wasteland converted into fertile productive fields--stirred these Scotch-Irish to fury. They didn't sit and tweedle their thumbs. Not the Scotch-Irish.