Londonderry Air

Five generations after the story of William Graham, whom we looked at in the last post, we encounter one of his descendants, Alexander Leckie (one of several spelling of the name), 12th Laird of Leckie, located north-northeast of Glasgow and northwest of Edinburgh. 

Much of what I can find about him comes from a timeline posted on the Family Search website, but ferreting out the exact events referred to can be a bit confusing.

Take this reference: "Emigrated Londonderry, Londonderry, Ireland along with his father, he left Scotland after the Jacobite rebellion, due to being on the side of the Stuarts, lost his title and lands in Leckie."

Now you might think from the phrase "the Jacobite rebellion" that only one rebellion took place. In fact, a more precise and profitable reference would be to the Jacobite Risings, attempts by the Scots to restore a Stuart to the throne after James VII of Scotland, who was also James II of England. He is the son of James VI of Scotland, also James I of England, having taken the throne after Queen Elizabeth I died without a son or daughter to inherit.

Now, you've read a lot of numbers in those names, so going forward, I'll use the English designations, with apologies to the Scots.

James II, a Catholic, was deposed by his Protestant son-in-law and forced to flee to France and was replaced by William III and Mary II, whom we most often refer to as William and Mary. William was a Dutch prince who married James II's daughter. Parliament engineered the whole coup, inviting William to bring an army to England and toss James II out. James abdicated, leaving Mary to take the throne. But Mary didn't want to rule by herself, and William wanted to rule by right instead of might, so Parliament declared them to be joint rulers. 

The pair were devoted Protestants, which didn't really go over well with the Scots, who had mostly converted to the presbyterian system of John Knox. In 1689, followers of James II united under the Viscount Dundee and tried to take the kingdom back. The effort failed. 

Here's where the timeline's information gets tricky. It shows Alexander Leckie living in Londonderry and serving as high sheriff of the city in 1677, when James I was still on the throne. Other Jacobite risings took place when James III attempted to take the throne in 1708 and 1715. Another attempt took place in 1719. None of those dates work with the timeline. 

So how did Alexander Leckie and his crew wind up in what is now Northern Ireland? Hard to know. James I initiated a planned immigration program to Ireland about two decades before Alexander was born. Other programs, called "Plantations," funded by the government and private concerns followed well into the 17th century. The government confiscated the land from Gaelic chieftans and sending settlers from Scotland and England seemed like a good way to bring Ireland into the fold. The term "Scots-Irish" refers to these immigrants. 

I would guess that the Leckie clan, and from what I can find several of them moved to Ireland, were part of this immigration program. Just as a side note, one book I downloaded about the lairds of Leckie claimed that members of the clan at one time owned the Giant's Causeway, a well-known place of legend in Ireland, which is composed of thousands of hexagonal basalt columns that are mirrored on the Scottish shore. The legend is both fascinating and funny. If you want to read more, Google Finn McCool.

At the time of the migration, Londonderry was called Derry and given the tensions between Ireland and England through the centuries, it was inevitable that conflict over the name would arise. I believe the city and county are still legally named Londonderry, but when we were there the locals tended to called them Derry. The whole name issue is complicated and political. Go figure. 

Given that the timeline's reason for Alexander being in Ireland seems flawed, you can take the rest of this information with a grain of salt, if you'd like, though the book I mentioned earlier confirms some of the details and may be one of the timeline's sources.

The timeline shows Alexander being involved in the public life of the city, serving as high sheriff for a time, then mayor and alderman after his sheriff gig. In 1704 something called the Test Act of 1704 passed that required everyone who held public office in Ireland to take communion in the Church of Ireland. 

We don't know for sure what denomination Alexander belonged to, but I would say the safe bet would be that as supporter of the Stuart kings, he was probably a Catholic. Had he been Presbyterian, the Act still would have held sway. In either case, he refused to fulfill the law and was stripped of  his public offices. 

Test acts were common in the British Empire through the 17th century, becoming less common in the 18th century, and were finally done away with in the 19th centuries. If you didn't know or the light bulb hasn't come on yet, these acts lie behind the Constitutional provision in America that bans religious tests for holding public office. 

Image: Guildhall in Londonderry. It was built a couple of hundred years after Alexander Leckie lived and served in the town.