TRAILL, James (1600-63), of Tallachin, co. Down.

The Traill family came from Fife in Scotland, where the senior branch were lairds of Blebo. James Traill’s grandfather, Colonel Andrew Traill, had fought on the continent before becoming gentleman of the privy chamber to Prince Henry in England; his father, also James, had been one of the original undertakers in the Jacobean plantation of co. Fermanagh.13Burke’s Landed Gentry of Ire. 601; CSP Ire. 1611-14, p. 88; 1615-25, p. 152; M. Perceval-Maxwell, The Scottish Migration to Ulster in the Reign of James I (1973), 357. As a young man, the MP was able to capitalise on his family’s courtly and Hiberno-Scottish connections. Having enjoyed a Protestant education at Leiden University and at Geneva (where he was an associate of the scholar, Joachim Camerarius), from the late 1620s James Traill became a professional tutor and companion to the aristocracy.14Eg. 3039, f. 15. In 1628-9 he accompanied Viscount Doncaster (the son of the Scots-born courtier, the earl of Carlisle) on his tour of France and Italy, spending time at Turin, Rome and Florence, where his charge became proficient in Italian, and Traill himself tried to make contact with the aged Galileo.15CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 398, 405, 446, 450, 452, 469, 494, 531. By the early 1630s, Traill had acquired the reputation of being ‘a very learned, discreet, and religious master’ – qualities which appealed to the Ulster Scottish landowner, Viscount Claneboye, who employed him as tutor for his eldest son, James Hamilton.16Hamilton Manuscripts ed. Lowry, 38-41. In 1633-5, Traill and Hamilton toured France, Switzerland and Italy, and spent long periods at Paris, Geneva, Rome and Florence. Traill’s letter to Viscount Claneboye of October 1633, sent from Paris, shows that he took the young man’s education very seriously. He made sure that Hamilton attended the ‘academy’ every day, learned French and Latin, took his ‘exercises of riding, dancing and fencing’, and did not forget ‘morning and evening, first and last, his duties of piety’.17Hamilton Manuscripts, 41n-42n.

On the death of his father in 1635, Traill inherited a modest estate in co. Down, and although he no longer served the family as tutor he maintained his close links with the Claneboye household. Traill’s brother, Robert Traill, had returned to Scotland as Presbyterian minister at Elie in Fife, and during the 1640s became a leading Covenanter, and minister of Grey Friars’ Kirk, Edinburgh.18Burke’s Landed Gentry of Ire. 601. Although James Traill no doubt shared his brother’s religious views, his own political reactions in this period were complicated by the unstable situation in Ulster after 1641. In the early months of the Irish rebellion, Traill’s movements are uncertain, although he probably served in some capacity in the regiment raised by Viscount Claneboye, in eastern Ulster. The 1643 royalist cessation of arms, closely followed by the imposition of the Solemn League and Covenant, caused particular problems in Ulster, where many British settlers refused to subscribe to either, and as a result were denied military supplies by all sides. During this crisis, Traill travelled to London, and in October 1643 received instructions to return to Ireland, as agent of the Committee of Irish Affairs and the adventurers’ committee, to investigate the state of Ulster, and to encourage the British forces not to agree to the royalist cessation.19CJ iii. 293a. On his next visit to London in April 1644, Traill reported to the adventurers’ committee the ‘good affections to the Parliament’ of the Ulster regiments, ‘their inclinations to take the Solemn League and Covenant; and their disaffection and utter dislike of the cessation’.20CJ iii. 444a. Traill’s report, which coincided with increased pressure from the Scottish commissioners in England for relief of the Ulster forces, may have influenced Parliament in its decision to lift restrictions on shipments to the northern ports.21Tanner Lttrs. 173-4. As a reward, in December 1644 Parliament gave Traill £66 from the £20,000 recently voted for the Ulster army.22CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 201.

In the later 1640s, Traill returned to England, where he acted as an agent for the Ulster forces. In April 1645 he was in London, where he subscribed the Solemn League and Covenant, and in the next month presented a personal petition to the Commons.23Bodl. Carte 14, f. 425; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 450. Also in May 1645 Triall was used as a messenger by the Committee of Both Kingdoms to the governor of Scarborough; and it may have been on the same expedition that Traill became involved in the seizure of a letter by George Lord Digby*, for which he was examined before the House of Lords in July.24CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 528; LJ vii. 509b. Traill was still in London in October 1646, when he sent the Ulster commissioner, Arthur Annesley*, the latest news about Parliament’s negotiations with the marquess of Ormond and the king’s dealings with the Scots at Newcastle.25CCSP i. 339. Traill’s experience in Ireland and his contacts in England and Scotland made him a valuable agent in London in the difficult winter of 1646-7 – a point evidently lost on the Ulster officers, who demanded that he should return to his regiment in December 1646.26Bodl. Nalson XXI, f. 102. Traill seems to have been unconcerned by his critics: although he was one of the officers ordered to take fresh troops to Ulster in April 1647, he was still in London in August 1647.27HMC Egmont, i. 447. In the same year, Traill’s social ascent was completed by his marriage to Mary Hamilton, the sister of his former tutee, the 2nd Viscount Claneboye, newly created earl of Clanbrassil.28Burke’s Landed Gentry of Ire. 601. He had returned to Ireland by the spring of 1648, when (although still holding the rank of lieutenant-colonel) he was commissioned to command a foot company in Clanbrassil’s regiment.29CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 12.

As an Ulster Presbyterian, the brother-in-law of Clanbrassil, and a senior officer in his regiment, it is likely that Traill joined the defection to the king of the British regiments in Ulster later in 1648 and 1649. If so, he seems to have been ready to reconcile himself to the commonwealth shortly afterwards, as from the summer of 1651 he served as a member of Parliament’s Ulster revenue commission.30SP28/80, ff. 168, 170; SP28/83, f. 3; SP28/85, f. 47. By the end of December 1653 he was acting as revenue commissioner in the precinct of Belfast, and in October 1654 and January 1655 he was appointed assessment commissioner in cos. Antrim, Down and Armagh.31CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 481; An Assessment for Ire. In April 1655 he was one of three commissioners chosen to examine the petition of the Presbyterian ministers of the Belfast Precinct, and it was on the strength of their report that 14 ministers were granted salaries by the Irish council in the following November.32Seymour, Puritans in Ire. 100.

In 1656 Traill was elected for the combined counties of Antrim, Down and Armagh, presumably on the interest of the Hamiltons, but also with the blessing of the military governor of Ulster, Colonel Thomas Cooper II*, who described him as ‘a Scotchman, but I hope godly, and purely upon the English interest, and no ways entangled in the snares of his countrymen’.33TSP v. 336, 343. A later comment by George Rawdon* suggests that Traill was being funded by the three counties, although in practice Rawdon advanced much of the money, ‘which I did upon two grounds, that I know his condition not able to defray such a journey, and to make him willing to undertake it’.34SP63/287, f. 71v. In the Commons, Traill focused on issues which had a direct bearing on Ireland, and especially on Ulster. In December 1656 he was named to the committee for settling lands on Henry Whalley and Erasmus Smith - two prominent Irish adventurers - and in the same month and January 1657 Rawdon and others in Ulster were relying on Traill’s influence to speed the payment of arrears owed to those Old Protestants who had fought the Confederates before 1649.35CJ vii. 463b; SP63/286, f. 239; SP63/287, f. 4. On 17 March Traill was also included in the committee to consider the petition of the countess of Stirling.36CJ vii. 505b. In May he was again actively lobbying on behalf of the Ulster Protestants, this time for the reduction of the assessment tax.37SP63/287, f. 52. On 29 May 1657 Traill was appointed to a committee on the settling of postage in the three nations, and in June he joined Anthony Morgan* and Richard Tighe* in calling for the same favours to be shown to former royalists in Ulster as in Munster.38CJ vii. 542a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 248. In the second sitting of this Parliament, Traill was again involved in lobbying, though with limited success. According to Rawdon, ‘the country seemed ill-satisfied with him and his demeanour there, I know not if he deserve it’; but when it came to the controversial division of assessments within Ulster there was little doubt who was to blame, ‘being wholly left by the rest of the Parliament men of Ireland to Colonel Cooper and him’.39SP63/287, f. 148v.

After the closure of Parliament in February 1658, Traill did not take a prominent role in public affairs. In June 1659 he acted with Arthur Annesley and others as overseer in the will of his brother-in-law, the earl of Clanbrassil, and in 1660-1 he served as poll money commissioner in County Down.40Hamilton Manuscripts, 84; Irish Census, 1659, 626, 645. Otherwise he seems to have retired to his estate at Tallachin, where he died in 1663. Traill had twelve children. His sixth daughter, Eleanor, married her cousin, William Traill (son of James’s brother, Robert), and through her are descended the Traill family of Ballylough, co. Antrim.41Burke’s Landed Gentry of Ire. 601.