palatines

palatines, Protestant refugees from the Rhineland palatinate in Germany who arrived in England in 1709. Eight hundred and twenty‐one families, containing more than 3,000 persons, were sent on to Ireland. By 1720 only 162 families remained. Of these 103 were settled on the Southwell estate in Co. Limerick, and 35 on the estate of Abel Ramm in Co. Wexford, with smaller groups in Co. Cork and in Dublin. The relative failure of the project was attributed by some to fraud on the part of the commissioners entrusted with the settlement's finances. A more important reason, apart from the inherent difficulties of promoting settlement in an underdeveloped and unwelcoming environment, was possibly that the settlement of foreign Protestants was a Whig enthusiasm; Tories were less susceptible to appeals for international Protestant solidarity, and suspicious of potentially dissenting incomers. The Limerick Palatines, despite some defections to Catholicism, remained culturally and religiously distinctive, with high rates of endogamy. They responded enthusiastically to early Methodist preaching, and Wesley visited them several times. In the 1820s they became the targets of sectarian hostility from local agrarian societies. This exacerbated an already high propensity to emigrate, and by the end of the 19th century they had largely ceased to exist as a separate group.