A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes – Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Irish History: Fascinating Snippets of Irish History from the Ice Age to the Peace Process

by Jonathan Bardon

  Being never so wet, [the mantles] will presently with a little shaking and wringing be presently dry; for want of which the soldiers, lying abroad, marching and keeping watch and ward in cold and wet in winter time, die in the Irish ague and in flux pitifully.

  Fynes Moryson, Lord Deputy Mountjoy’s secretary, described the mantle as

  a fit house for an outlaw, a meet bed for a rebel, and an apt cloke for a thief. First the outlaw, being for his many crimes and villanies banished from the towns and houses of honest men and wandering in waste places, far from danger of law, maketh his mantle his house, and under it covereth himself from the wrath of heaven, from the offence of the earth, and from the fight of men. When it raineth, it is his pent-house, when it bloweth it is his tent, when it freezeth, it is his tabernacle. In summer he can wear it loose; in winter, he can wrap it close; at all times he can use it; never heavy, never cumbersome.

  Likewise for a rebel it is serviceable: for in his war he maketh when he still flieth from his foe, and lurketh in the thick woods, it is his bed, yea, and almost his household stuff.... Yea, and oftentimes their mantle serveth them, when they are near driven, being wrapped about their left arm, in stead of a shield; for it is hard to cut through with a sword, besides, it is light to bear, light to throw away, and being (as they commonly are) naked, it is to them all in all.

  The better-off made some attempt to keep up with the latest Spanish, Flemish and English fashions, but Edmund Campion was only one of many who observed the love that Irish men had for voluminous shirts and hanging sleeves:

  Linen shirts the rich do wear for wantonness and bravery, with wide hanging sleeves pleated, thirty yards are little enough for one of them. They have now left their saffron, and learn to wash their shirts, four or five times in a year. Proud they are of long crisped glibs, and do nourish the same with all their cunning: to crop the front thereof they take it for a notable piece of villainy.

  A ‘glib’ was a thick roll of hair at the forehead; a law of 1537 specifically forbade the English in Ireland to wear their hair in this fashion.

  A lady’s gown, dating from the late sixteenth century, was found in remarkably good condition in a bog in Co. Tipperary. Beautifully tailored, it has a very low U-shaped neckline with an opening down to the front to a low waist which appears to be pointed over the stomach. The extraordinarily heavy ankle-length full skirt is made of twenty-three triangular pieces of cloth sewn together, measuring no fewer than 22½ feet at the bottom. There are ninety-two folds formed by welts sewn at intervals. It also has a small stand collar at the back of the neck.

  Irish women seem to have been quite happy to expose their breasts in full in polite society. Nor were they ashamed to be naked, as a Czech nobleman discovered in 1601. Just what Jaroslav z Donína was doing in what is now Co. Londonderry in the middle of a devastating rebellion is impossible to say. Anyway, he encountered sixteen high-born women, all naked, with ‘which strange sight his eyes being dazzled, they led him into the house’ to converse politely in Latin in front of the fire. Joining them, the Lord O’Cahan threw all his clothes off and was surprised that the Bohemian baron was too bashful to do likewise.

  As the sixteenth century was drawing to a close, outsiders were learning a great deal more about the country which the English, for the first time, were conquering from end to end.

  Episode 65

  THE CAPTURE OF RED HUGH O’DONNELL

  Let us have no more such rash, unadvised journeys without good ground as your last journey in the north.... Take heed ere you use us so again.

  This was Queen Elizabeth’s stinging reproof to her Lord Deputy, Sir John Perrot, after yet another expensive and futile expedition against the MacDonnells of the Glens. Eventually Perrot’s uncontrollable rages brought about his downfall. Punching the aged marshal, Sir Nicholas Bagenal, in the face before the whole Irish Council didn’t help, and soon afterwards Perrot was thrown into the Tower of London, where he died. Nevertheless, Perrot had achieved one thing in Ulster that pleased the queen—he had captured Red Hugh O’Donnell, son of one of the most powerful Gaelic chieftains in Ireland, the Lord of Tír Conaill. Red Hugh’s biographer, Lughaidh O’Clery, a cousin of the best known of the Four Masters of Donegal, tells the story:

  That capture took place in this way. A vessel was got ready, with black gunwale, deceptive, precisely at Michaelmas in the year 1587, in Dublin, with a murderous, odious crew, with abundance of wine for barter to trade with, to see if they could get an opportunity for seizing on Hugh O’Donnell. By the advice of Lord Deputy Sir John Perrot and of the council too this was done secretly.... The vessel went out from the harbour of Dublin till she came to Lough Swilly.... She stopped there opposite Rathmullan out in the sea.... A part of her crew went on shore after a while in the guise of merchants.

  When the fifteen-year-old Red Hugh turned up, he and his companions accepted an invitation to come aboard to taste the wine:

  They were served and feasted with a variety of food and drink till they were merry and cheerful. While they were enjoying themselves drinking, their arms were taken from them and the door of the hatch-way was shut behind them and made prisoners.

  The ship had by now put out to sea, and on its arrival in Dublin Red Hugh was held captive in Dublin Castle:

  Hugh O’Donnell was in chains for the space of three years and three months. It was anguish and sickness of mind and great pain to be as he was.... He was always meditating and searching how to find a way of escape.... That castle was situated such. There was a broad deep trench full of water all round it and a solid bridge of boards over it opposite the door of the castle, and a grim-visaged party of the English outside and inside the gate to guard it.... However, there is no watch of which advantage may not be taken at last.

  One of Red Hugh’s kinsmen made the journey from Donegal and arranged an escape. First he jammed the drawbridge with a thick piece of wood stuck into the chain. Then, from the window of their cell Red Hugh and some of his fellow-prisoners lowered themselves by a long rope on to the drawbridge, and made their escape:

  The gates of the royal city were wide open. They leaped over fences and enclosures and walls outside the town until they stopped at the slope of the mountain opposite.... They did not delay on their way till they crossed Three Rock Mountain before that morning. As they were tired and weary, they went into a dense wood and they remained in it till early dawn.

  Red Hugh was unable to continue:

  He could not go on with his companions because his white-skinned tender feet were wounded and pierced by the furze and thick briars, as his shoes had fallen off his feet owing to the loosening of the seams and ties from the wet. It was a great sorrow and affliction to his companions, and as they could do nothing for him, they took leave of him.

  Unfortunately for Red Hugh, the Irish who lived here, the O’Tooles, fearful that the crown would wreak vengeance on them for giving refuge to such a distinguished fugitive, took him back in bonds to Dublin Castle:

  Iron manacles were put on him as tight as could be, and they put him in the same prison, and they watched and guarded him the best way they could.

  His escape in this way was heard of universally throughout the land of Erin, and his recapture. There came a great gloom over the Irish, and the courage of their soldiers, and the minds of their champions, and the hearts of their heroes were confounded at hearing that news. There were many princesses and noble white-breasted maidens sorrowing and lamenting on his account. There were many high-born nobles weeping in secret for him.... And with good reason, for the multitude expected through him relief would come to them from the dreadful slavery and bondage in which the English held them.

  One Gaelic lord in particular was determined that Red Hugh O’Donnell should not remain in chains. He was Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone.

  Episode 66

  THE ESCAPE OF RED HUGH O’DONNELL

  In the sixteenth century Tír Eóghain was by far the most powerful Gaelic lordship in Ir
eland. The O’Neills had chosen as their chief Turlough Luineach O’Neill. This wily lord took care to keep on good terms with his neighbours, and, protected by a large force of Scots mercenaries known as Redshanks, he commanded respect. Though the English refused to recognise Turlough’s authority, they had failed completely to dislodge him. In despair, the Lord Deputy in Dublin Castle hoped he would drink himself to death: ‘Sir Turlough is very old and what with decay of nature through his age and overrun with drink which daily he is in, he is utterly past government.’ After heavy drinking sessions Turlough would lie unconscious for more than two days at a time. But this O’Neill had a tough constitution and was to live until 1595.

  By English law, the rightful Earl of Tyrone was Hugh O’Neill, son of the murdered Matthew and brother of the murdered Brian, and whose close relative Shane had also been murdered. To be sure that he in turn would not be murdered, the infant Hugh had been taken to the Pale close to Dublin and there given a good English education. In 1585 Hugh O’Neill was formally granted the title of Earl of Tyrone and sent back to Ulster to restore obedience to the English crown. Settling himself in Dungannon, the earl steadily increased his power in Tyrone, slowly undermining the authority of the now ailing Turlough Luineach, who was based in Strabane. By 1590 it was the independent power of the Earl of Tyrone, not that of Turlough Luineach, which was causing alarm in Dublin Castle.

  Tír Conaill, together with the neighbouring regions under the control of the O’Donnell chieftain, certainly constituted the second most powerful Gaelic lordship of Ireland. There Finola, wife of Sir Hugh O’Donnell and known as Inghean Dubh, the ‘dark daughter’, had worked hard to ensure that her son, Red Hugh, would succeed to the lordship. But in 1587 Red Hugh had been captured and incarcerated in Dublin Castle. An escape attempt in 1591 had failed. Now the Earl of Tyrone plotted to defy the English crown and arrange the escape of Red Hugh. If he succeeded, the earl would bind together the two greatest lordships of Ireland in friendship and end centuries of debilitating rivalry between them.

  The Earl of Tyrone had many friends in and about Dublin. Using bribes on a spectacular scale, the earl ensured Red Hugh’s escape from Dublin Castle. On Christmas Eve 1592 a guard smuggled Red Hugh and his companions out through a privy, and they swiftly escaped to the mountains. Lughaidh O’Clery’s biography of Red Hugh describes what then ensued:

  The hostages who escaped with Hugh were Henry and Art [O’Neill], the two sons of Shane. They came to the slopes of Three Rock Mountain, where Hugh had come the first time he escaped. The night came on with a violent downpour and slippery slime of snow, so that it was not easy for the high-born nobles to walk on account of the want of clothing. This hurried journey was more severe on Art than on Hugh, and his gait was feeble and slow, for he was corpulent and thick-thighed. It was not so with Hugh, for he had not passed the period of boyhood, and he was active and light.

  Forced to halt under a cliff, they sent a servant on to get help from Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne of Glenmalure, who had often routed English forces sent against him. When O’Byrne’s men found the Ulstermen, they were a sorry sight:

  Alas! Truly the state of these nobles was not happy to the heroes who had come to seek for them. They had neither cloaks nor clothing for protection, so that they seemed like sods of earth covered up by the snow. Art died at last and was buried in the place. Hugh’s strength was on the increase after drinking, except his two feet were like dead members, owing to the swelling and blistering from frost and snow.

  Hugh was carried to shelter on a litter and was then, in a journey lasting many weeks, taken to Dungannon to meet the man who had arranged and financed his escape, the Earl of Tyrone. When they heard that Red Hugh had returned to Tír Conaill, the crown forces swiftly evacuated the region:

  When the English learned that Red Hugh who had escaped was come to the country, a quaking fear and a great terror seized upon them, and they resolved to leave the country....

  As for Hugh O’Donnell, he returned to Ballyshannon. He called in physicians to examine his feet, but they could not cure him until his two great toes were cut off in the end.

  The bond between Red Hugh and Hugh O’Neill would never thereafter be broken. Close co-operation was vital: the power of the English crown was extending, and nowhere more rapidly than in the province of Connacht.

  Episode 67

  GRANUAILE: THE PIRATE QUEEN OF CONNACHT

  During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries nearly all of the province of Connacht had fallen out of the control of the English crown. Descendants of the Norman conquerors of earlier times had gone native, married local girls, and had adopted Gaelic customs and Gaelic surnames. For example, the de Burgos had become MacWilliam Burkes, the Barretts became MacPaddens, the Stauntons became MacEvillys, the Dexters became MacJordans, the Nagles became MacCostellos, and the Prendergasts became MacMorrises. And the Gaelic families which had never been overcome remained strong; they included the O’Connors, the O’Dowds, the O’Garas, the O’Flahertys and the O’Malleys.

  The tide turned in the sixteenth century. Some lords were prepared to accept knighthoods and other English titles; for example, the lord who bore the gaelicised title of Upper MacWilliam Burke in Co. Galway was ennobled as the Earl of Clanricarde. Others were alarmed as growing English power eroded their independence. One of these was Granuaile, Gráinne O’Malley. The O’Malleys dominated the entire coastlands and islands of Mayo and maintained a formidable fleet of galleys. In 1546, at the age of sixteen, Gráinne was married to Donal O’Flaherty, head of another strong seafaring family based in Connemara.

  Though she bore three children in rapid succession, Gráinne—often called Grace or Grany O’Malley by the English—soon acquired a reputation as a pirate queen and a military commander of some renown. Because of his aggressive behaviour, her husband Donal got the nickname ‘the Cock’, and she was in turn was called ‘the Hen’. When Donal was murdered by the Joyces of eastern Connemara, she fought back with fury. The castle on an island in Lough Corrib she defended with such determination became known as ‘Hen’s Castle’, the name it still bears today.

  From then on Gráinne’s main opponents were the English. She led another defence of Hen’s Castle and forced the crown forces to retire only after she ordered the lead from the roof to be torn off, melted down and then poured onto the heads of her assailants. In 1566 she married Risdeárd-in-Iarainn, a Lower MacWilliam Burke, or, as the English called him, ‘Richard-in-Iron’. This marriage alliance created an alarming challenge to royal authority throughout the province of Connacht.

  In an attempt to strengthen government control in the province, Sir Edward Fitton was appointed the first Lord President of Connacht in 1569. Fitton made many enemies by smashing holy images in churches, or ‘idols’ as he called them, and his cruelties attracted criticism even from his own colleagues in Dublin and London. Inevitably, he felt he had to curb the power of Richard-in-Iron and his wife. In 1574 Fitton advanced on their main fortress, Rockfleet Castle at the head of an inlet in Clew Bay. Here Gráinne had a long chain from her favourite ship tied to her bedpost every night in case anyone would be tempted to steal the vessel.

  After a three-week siege, the English were forced to withdraw with heavy losses. Three years later, without being summoned, Gráinne travelled to Galway to talk terms with Lord Deputy Sidney, as he recalled:

  There came to me also a famous feminine sea captain called Grany Imallye, and offered her services to me, wheresoever I would command her, with three galleys and 200 fighting men, either in Scotland or Ireland; she brought with her her husband for she was as well by sea as by land well more than Mrs Mate with him; he was of the Nether Burkes and called by nickname Richard-in-Iron. This is a notorious woman in all the coasts of Ireland.

  Then in 1577, Gráinne O’Malley overreached herself by plundering the lands further south in the province of Munster. She was arrested, as the Lord President of Munster informed the Lord Deputy:

  Grany O’Ma
lley, a woman that hath impudently passed the part of womanhood and been a great spoiler, and chief commander and director of thieves and murderers at sea to spoil this province, having been apprehended by the Earl of Desmond this last year, his Lordship hath now sent her to Limerick where she remains in safe keeping.

  She was sent as a captive to the capital and held in Dublin Castle. After a time she was released on condition of good behaviour. Her husband, Richard-in-Iron, was recognised by the queen as the head of the Lower MacWilliam Burkes in Mayo and was knighted in 1581. The Lord President of Connacht observed that ‘Grany O’Malley thinketh herself no small lady’.

  Gráinne O’Malley was a survivor, and for the next twenty years she struggled hard to keep her independence as Queen Elizabeth’s rule spread to every corner of Connacht.

  Episode 68

  GRANUAILE AND THE COMPOSITION OF CONNACHT

  Commanding a large fleet of galleys and ruling the western coastlands and islands from Inishbofin to Achill, Gráinne O’Malley had married for a second time in 1566 and become the wife of ‘Richard-in-Iron’ Burke, the greatest lord in all of Mayo. Their combined territories formed one of the most extensive lordships in Connacht.