Over the last four decades a number of important studies have been written about the landed elites of England and Wales, at both national and regional levels, and more recently historians have begun to consider the gentry in Ireland. As yet, however, there has been no study of the Presbyterian gentry of Ulster. Presbyterian landowners in the province were not numerous, and numerically as a proportion of the Presbyterian population were almost insignificant. Nevertheless, as a result of the influence and prestige that their wealth and social status afforded them, and also because of the political power that it enabled them to exercise, the Presbyterian gentry are worthy of research. In this chapter I will examine the social, private and religious lives of the Ulster Presbyterian landed elite, their commitment to Presbyterianism, the importance of the Scottish connexion, and their role as landlords.

There was not always a clear distinction between the landed elite and the wealthiest and most successful of those engaged in trade and the professions. The upper branches of the medical and legal professions both received the majority of their recruits from gentry families. Some of the gentry families dabbled in trade and apprenticed their younger sons to merchants. Wealthy merchants often purchased land, such as William Crawford of Belfast who purchased Florida Manor, County Down, in 1692, and there were marriage alliances between the landed elite and leading mercantile families.