John Potter Gets Rich

The Burning Bush. Symbol of the Presbyterian Church
From: http://www.presbyterianireland.org/

Whilst Lieutenants John and Seneca Hadzor had carved out military careers and served King and God and country (more or less the same thing since Henry VIII), John Potter seemed to have a finely-honed sense of the business opportunities and investments that the times provided, and made himself an extremely rich man. 

The eighteenth century saw mass emigration of some quarter of a million Irish to America. For the most part, these were not the native Irish Catholics, but the Scots-Irish Presbyterian settlers, who had come to Ireland as part of the English plantation policy. Like the Anglo-Normans, the Presbyterians, although Protestant, were somewhat resistant to efforts to make them assimilate into the Anglican paradigm, and they too thereby incurred the wrath of the establishment.  The 1704 Sacramental Test Act, for example, required Presbyterians to take the Sacrament 'according to the rites of the Church of Ireland as a condition of holding any office, civil or military, under the Crown.' It was not to be until 1782 that Presbyterian ministers were to be allowed to marry their own members.

Compared to the Irish Catholics however, these Scots-Irish were better resourced and in a better position to respond. With the British economy of the time very much based on encouraging exports and discouraging imports through taxation and regulation, opportunities for enrichment by importing popular products through more informal means presented themselves. 

Alert to these possibilities, and with contacts in the USA and the Caribbean, John Potter set to work smuggling his tobacco, sugar and brandy up through Strangford Lough no doubt, past the carefully averted eyes of the customs houses and into Downpatrick. 

Maria Hadzor can have wanted for very little.