British
James did not create a British Crown but he did, in one sense at least, create the British as a distinct group of people. In 1607 large tracts of land in Ulster fell to the crown. A new Plantation was started, made up of Protestant settlers from Scotland and England (and Wales), mostly from the Border country (the "middle shires" between the Firth of Clyde and the Mersey Estuary), with a minority from Bristol and London. Over the years the settlers, surrounded by the hostile Catholic Irish, gradually cast off their separate English/Welsh and Scottish roots, becoming British in the process, as a means of emphasising their 'otherness' from their Gaelic neighbours (Marshall, T., p. 31). It was the one corner of the United Kingdom where Britishness became truly meaningful as a political and cultural identity in its own right, as opposed to a gloss on older and deeper national associations.
Though, over time, Britishness also took some root in England (and Wales) and Scotland – especially in the days of Empire – by and large people were English/Welsh or Scottish first, and British second. In Northern Ireland the Protestant communities were to be British first, second and last. It was James's most enduring – and troublesome – legacy.
Read more about this topic: Union Of The Crowns
Famous quotes containing the word british:
“Swans moulting die, snow melts to tears,
Roses do blush and hang their heads,”
—Henry Noel, British poet, and William Strode, British poet. Beauty Extolled (attributed to Noel and to Strode)
“All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it’s your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.”
—June Jordan (b. 1939)
“I think there’s a difference between a gamble and a calculated risk.”
—Edmund H. North, British screenwriter, and Lewis Gilbert. Captain Shepard (Kenneth More)