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By George McBratney
Have You ever wondered what impression a stranger to Your town might
receive about its history if he were to spend an afternoon
examining its. public memorials and statues?
To take an example, the busy and prosperous Lagan valley
town of Lisburn has had a history as exciting and dynamic as
any in the British Isles. Yet what evidence is there to
demonstrate that this town was once a frontier post of great
strategic importance and the scene of out standing industrial
achievements?
 In
Market Square there is a permanent fixture of John Nicholson,
who lived in Lisburn for a time before he found glory in
India. In Castle Street there is a monument to the dead of two
world tears and on the high ground in the Castle Gardens
stands a gun which has seen service against the Russians at
Sevastopol.
In fact the people of Lisburn seem to be encouraged to
remember their military heroes. A notable exception is the
homely bronze inscription on a playground in Bridge Street:
"And the child went forth, ` and what he: saw he became."
MUNROE
Suppose now that the stranger were to venture among the
people of Lisburn and try to discover from their conversation
something about the people whose efforts made the town what it
is. He would almost certainly learn something about Harry
Munroe, hanged in Lisburn for his part in the 1798 rebellion.
Perhaps he would hear about the piper whose head was shot
off in the Battle of Lisnagarvey - the old name of the town -
the head which, rolling down a hill, caused the place to be
known as Piper Hill. (The stranger might well wonder whether
some confused person mistook a cannonball for a head).
He would hear many anecdotes about people remembered
because they were involved in a spectacular context. And
sooner or later someone would mention the economic development
of and tell of the technical skills brought to the Lagan
Valley by Louis Crommelin and the Huguenots.
The odd thing is that the stranger might learn least about
the man who, more than any other, established Lisburn as a
community in Ulster.
RAWDON
George Rawdon was born in 1604. At that time Lisburn was
little more than a break in the woods valued by the native
Irish for its proximity to the Lagan. And around it, in that
part of South Fast Antrim known as Killultagh, the forces of
the British crown battled to clear the area of Irish and to
make it sate for the coming of English settlers.
The king granted land to those who had proved they could
defend it, and one captain whose ferocity was rewarded, Sir
Fulke Conway, received the territory of Killultagh among his
gains. He encouraged the establishment of a small settlement
of about 52 immigrant families and by the time George Rawdon
arrived in the early 1630s to manage the Conway estate a
castle had been begun, a church had been built and plans were
afoot for a school.
These early settlers, whose job it was to stay, farm and -
fight in the Lagan Valley, faced two great problems.
The first problem was to ensure that the area developed
economically. Sir William Brereton defined it very clearly
when he wrote in 1635:
"The town belongs to my Lord Conway, who hath there a good
handsome house . . . Here aboutes, my Lord Conway is
endeavouring a plantation; though the land hereaboutes be the
poorest and barrenest I have yet seen, yet may it be made good
land with labour and changed.
STRUGGLE
In their continuing struggle to change their environment by
their labour, the settlers were led by George Rawdon. From
the, letters which passed between the Conways and Rawdon it
appears that their main concern in the thirties was to create
a well stocked estate from which cattle could be exported.
Much of the burden of organising the estate fell upon
Rawdon, who was continually attending to the wants of tenants
and employees. Letters relating to the estate followed him,
wherever he went, and since the Conways tended to be absentee
landlords, the early successes in establishing trade in
salmon. butter and cattle may be traced to his efforts.
It is interesting to note that the Irish parliament of 1661
frequently called upon his services, especially to give
information on the horse trade between Ireland and England.
But Rawdon was more than a skilful estate manager and a
successful farmer. He was also an enterprising industrialist.
Although his name is linked with the early establishment of
iron works near Lisburn, it was not until after the stormy
period of the .civil war and Commonwealth that Rawdon could
plan to manufacture with any confidence.
SECURITY
Then, during the comparative security of the Restoration he
turned with greater vigour to the production of glass, soap,
stockings and potash, and there is ample evidence that he
encouraged the local manufacture of the material for which the
Lagan Valley, and Lisburn in particular, was to become world
famous:
"I got four barrels of hemp seed and four of flax from
Ostend to furnish our neighbours with" he informed Conway in
1667.
Rawdon never found his task easy. Throughout the collection
of his letters to Conway, he complained continually about the
lack of money, about the difficulty of getting in rents and
the poverty of the people. He had many failures, as he
confessed to Conway in 1665:
"I have been burnt in the hand with projecting the setting
up of manufactures here".
Nevertheless, the change which Sir William Brereton had
anticipated in 1635 occurred within the lifetime of George
Rawdon. By 1697, another writer found it possible to invoke
the Conways' plantation as a model of what settlers could
achieve:
"There is in the North of Ireland an estate which was the
Lord Conway's. 'I'his estate was first purchased by Sir Foulke
Conway for about £500. The rent roll is now about £5,000 per
annum. 'Twas altogether a wood, as the name of Kilulta (the
wood of Ulster) denotes, and yet in the memory of men now
living has been improved by a colony of Yorkshire people and
others brought over and settled by lord Conway and managed by
Sir George Rawdon".
PROBLEM
 The
second problem that faced the settlers brought over by Conway
was how to secure the conditions in which this process of
change might be begun and continued. It must be remembered
that for much of the 17th century, Lisburn was a frontier
post, a settlement of immigrant families in an area described
by Sir Arthur Chichester in 1601 as "one of the strongest
holds of the native Irish in Ireland."
The only claim of the settlers to the land lay in military
conquest, and it would have been most surprising if the native
Irish had not turned against the invaders the methods by which
the land had been gained.
The Irish uprising came in1641, and in that year George
Rawdon added another role to that of estate manager. The Irish
were thwarted in their attempt to take Lisburn, and of the
battle Sir Arthur Tyringham wrote to Conway:
"You shall from others what has been done and by whom in
the defence of your town of Lisnagarvey. Captain Fisher
behaved incomparably as did Mr. Rawdon."
Then of course, the struggle between King Charles and his
parliament became a civil war, and in the period of divided
loyalties that followed, Lisburn was occupied by the soldiers
of both parties to the fighting.
But even when Charles II came to the .throne in 1666,
George Rawdon, now a major for his services, refused to relax
his vigilance. He still feared retaliation by the native
Irish.
"We are, my Lord" he wrote to Conway in 1666, "at present
very, apprehensive of some trouble this year and the Irish are
much discontented.'"
SUSPENSE
And once, when the suspense became too great for him Rawdon
went so far as to arm 20 of Conway's tenants. He was not to
know that Lisburn had already survived the greatest threat to
its existence in its history.
Lisburn was in fact, a town of some strategic importance. A
defending force there controlled a section of the river Lagan,
and it lay on the vital communication route between
Carrickfergus and Dublin.
Rawdon knew this and it was part of his life's work to
fight like a proud imperialist to retain military control of
the town.
POWER
It would hardly be fitting to conclude this survey of
George Rawdon's work without saying something about the part
he played in the affairs of the town itself. As the Conways'
land agent, the permanent official of t he great estate,
Rawdon had an amount of power that we today do not even give
to our councils.
We have no way of assessing the injustices that Rawdon may
have been a party to, but there is no doubt that he did much
valuable work in 17th century Lisburn.
His attention to the roads for example, won him this
tribute from a traveller of 1683:
"All the highways within eight or ten miles of Lisburn are
very good - not only for the nature of the soil, which
generally affords gravel and sand, but Sir George Rawdon's
care, who is, I believe, the best highwayman in the
kingdom, and the industry of the inhabitants."
Rawdon worked extremely hard for his position as first
citizen.
"I seldom see Mr. Rawdon but noon and night" his wife
complained in a letter to Conway. But the office had certain
compensations. When Conway was away Rawdon enjoyed a social
eminence and it seems to have been a custom for townspeople to
gether at his house at Christmas.
It was his privilege to dispense Conway's venison at
intervals. But such details of personal enjoyment occur rarely
in the family papers. 'The people were, after all, members of
an imported culture enclosed within a frontier town, and the
native Irish were never far away.
With the duties of `mayor' Rawdon sometimes combined those
of sheriff. On one occasion, he wrote that he sent two horse
thieves to jail, then to their death by hanging. He also felt
himself to be guardian of the population's beliefs, which is
the greatest temptation of power.
"Our neighbours here that conform not to the Church" he
informed Conway in 1669, "grow very confident. They have built
oratories for themselves almost in every parish."
He had no misgivings about enforcing the `Five Mile' Act,
and it is no coincidence that the Presbyterians of Lisburn
made their first application for a permanent minister after
Rawdon had died.
Perhaps I ought to add that intolerance, at that time, was
church policy and had the approval of Jeremy Taylor, the most
renowned churchman ever to have lived in Lisburn.
It would have taken rare qualities in a man of that to have
confined his local powers to patronage, the throwing of
occasional parties and the upkeep of roads.
Some of you may by now have formulated the question: if
George Rawdon was so important in the early history of
Lisburn, why has Louis Crommelin replaced him in popular
memory as the greatest hero of the town's economic advance?
There are a number of reasons for this. First, the arrival
of Crommelin and other Huguenots in Lisburn is a well
documented event. You have to go grubbing for facts about 17th
century Lisburn, but the flight of the Huguenots from France
and their dispersal is a story that has been told many times
by historians.
People can learn more about Crommelin than about Rawdon.
Secondly the Huguenots are associated with that industry
for which Lisburn later became famous - linen. Naturally, we
remember the man who was responsible for introducing the
technical skills that were to lead to economic prosperity and
win the acclaim of the world for the produce of Lisburn.
Thirdly, it has been widely believed that Lisburn was a
place of no importance before the Huguenots came, and
historians have done little to contradict this assumption. G.
L.. Lee, for example, a historian of the Huguenots in Ireland,
writes that:
"The venture - of the linen industry - was started in the
ruined town of Lisnagarvey, rebuilt for the purpose by the
refugees."
Such a statement must be read with care. It is quite likely
that the town of Lisburn and the area around it suffered
during the Williamite wars. But some Huguenots arrived there
before the wars in Ireland began, and one of them Pierre Goyer,
established the manufacture of silk in Lisburn in 1688.
It is certain that Lisburn was not devastated as it had
been in 1641, or a historian who accompanied Schomberg could
hardly have written in 1689:
"On Monday the second of September we marched through
Lisburn . - . This is one of the prettiest inland towns in the
North of Ireland, and one of the most English like places in
the Kingdom."
DEVELOPMENT
We shall never know for certain whether Lisburn Was a
ruined town or a living community when the Huguenots arrived.
But what we can say is that of all the factors that made
possible the tremendous economic development of Lisburn under
the Huguenots, the life's work of George Rawdon was one of the
most important.
We can also be certain that Rawdon would have approved the
policy of bringing over workers with special skills, since he
himself had suggested that course many times, though it is
interesting to reflect what would have been his reaction to
their type of Protestantism.
No doubt many of you would like to know what Rawdon was
like as a person. It is more difficult to discover anything
about this aspect of his life than any other, since we can
only rely on the record of his labours.
The papers of the time do not tell us whether Rawdon had
the warmth of personality that success in everyday
relationships requires. No novelist or playwright would
attempt a character sketch on the evidence available.
The historian, at any rate, can admire his foresight, his
acceptance of responsibility in many forms and his use of
power for the public good. His motto, like that of his
contemporary, Wentworth, might have been `thorough'.
SETTLEMENT
As soldier, citizen and economist he attended to everyday
details without ever failing to plan for the future. It ought
to ' be impossible to 'overlook the
importance of George Rawdon in the history of Lisburn. He died
in 1684.
Within 50 years of his arrival in Lisburn the -tiny and
vulnerable settlement surrounded by wood and bog had become a
centre of civilisation and economic activity.
In our own time, when there is so much interest in economic
affairs and personalities, it seems odd that we should have
forgotten George Rawdon.
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