After Limerick
1728.20 There had been three successive bad harvests, and in consequence great distress everywhere. The scarcity and high price of corn was felt more especially in Ulster where the standard of comfort was higher, and this helped forward the tide of emigration. Many of the Presbyterians who emigrated to the West Indies were shipwrecked or died of famine when they landed. Those who went to the American colonies fared better. They generally landed in Pennsylvania. and from there some of them migrated to Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina.21 The refusal to tolerate any but the Episcopalian form of worship supplied another powerful motive in urging these Ulster Presbyterians to leave their country and emigrate to America. The Irish Dissenters were shut off from all political rights. In the Anti-Popery Bill of 1704 the sacramental test was inserted, and this, of course, excluded the Dissenters as well as the Catholics from municipal office. In 1713 the provisions of the Schism Act were extended to Ireland, and so no Dissenter could be a schoolmaster, while the Toleration Act, which was passed in England in 16089, allowing freedom of worship to Dissenters, was never extended to Ireland. The Presbyterians formed the bulk of the Ulster settlers; they were the most thrifty and industrious of the
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