One of the things about the Scots coming to Ulster in 1609 / 1610, was that they received grants of Plantation lands in the teeth of opposition of many English servitors in Ireland. The English and the Scots had not got on for 300 years, and the Ulster Plantation didn’t really improve things. James VI and 1, hoped that the Ulster Plantation would become the focal point for the formation of a new British elite which was essentially Anglo-Scottish and Protestant in character: unfortunately for the King, things didn’t pan out so well. Yes, a significant proportion of the Ulster Plantation was set aside for Scottish courtiers and Scottish servants of King James and their descendants, but one of the more unusual features of Jacobean politics is the way in which land goes to Scots but not political office.

Very few Scots receive office in Ireland: there are very few Scottish sheriffs of any of the Ulster counties as far as we can tell, although records are incomplete; there are no Scottish Provosts Martial; there are no Scottish Martial Law Commissioners; there is only one or two Scottish commanders of garrisons (and they’re only minor garrisons with four or five soldiers rather than a sizeable garrison of 50 or 100 soldiers).

The Scots have very little control over government of Ulster and it is interesting that the MacDonalds and the Montgomerys who were in Antrim and Down, as the Ulster Plantation kicks in by, say, after 1609/1610, they seek and receive exemption from the authority of the sheriffs of Antrim and Down - because those sheriffs are going to be English. They already feel excluded, even before the Plantation and this was mirrored in the subsequent experience of other Scots in the Plantation lands themselves.

In Dublin as well there are a few Scots who receive membership of the Irish Privy Council, the Executive in Dublin Castle who decide Crown policy: but their emergence in Dublin Castle does not lead to the creation of a British government of Ireland, an Anglo-Scottish government of Ireland, an Anglo-Scottish Executive.