The Early seventeenth-century port books for Londonderry, Coleraine, Carrickfergus and the Lecale ports are an underrated source which have been underutilised by historians of the early seventeenth century. As Robert Hunter himself highlighted, they can be used to establish the character of the merchant class of the emerging plantation towns and the incipient commercialisation which was one of the characteristics of plantation. They can also be...