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

  Even though he had made peace with England in 1604, King Philip III of Spain was only too eager to help. He sent money to Rory O’Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell, and Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and together they hatched an elaborate plot to escape from Ireland and return soon after with a great army.

  Cúchonnacht Maguire planned the enterprise for more than a year. Described by the Annals of the Four Masters as a ‘rapid-marching adventurous man, endowed with wisdom and beauty of person’, he was such a master of disguise that it was said his nearest friends would have found it hard to identify him. Provided with silver and gold by Philip III, Maguire set sail in great secret from the French port of Nantes and made for Ulster. Near to its destination the ship was arrested by a Scottish warship and held for two days. Fortunately Maguire had put nets and salt aboard and was able to convince his captors that he had come to Ulster only to fish.

  On 25 August 1607 the vessel sailed into Lough Swilly and anchored off Rathmullan. At nightfall a man came ashore with Spanish ducats and set out to bring news to the Earl of Tyrconnell of the ship’s arrival. Two days later a messenger reached the Earl of Tyrone, who was staying with his friend Sir Garret Moore at Mellifont, Co. Louth. Sir Arthur Chichester, the Lord Deputy, was in the area and found Tyrone’s departure a little strange:

  The manner of his departure, carrying his little son with him who was brought up in Sir Garret’s house, made me suspect he had mischief in his head; harm I knew he could do none, if they were upon their keeping, for he was altogether without arms and munition; and his flight beyond the seas I should never have suspected ...

  Making his way from Mellifont to Dundalk, and from there to Armagh and Dungannon, he stopped only when he reached ‘the Craobh’, a house on a lough in the wilds of Tyrone. Here his family and servants were waiting for him. Then on Wednesday 2 September they set off across the Sperrin Mountains for Lough Swilly. According to the Attorney-General,

  He travelled all night with his impediments, that is, his women and children; and it is likewise reported that the countess, his wife, being exceedingly weary, slipped down from her horse, and weeping, said she could go no farther; whereupon the earl drew his sword, and swore a great oath that he would kill her in the place, if she would not pass on with him, and put on a more cheerful countenance withal.

  When they reached Rathmullan, a child with six toes on one foot, which was considered very lucky, was sent for; it is said that they ‘took the infant violently ... which terrified the foster-father’. They crowded aboard the vessel, the cream of Ulster’s Gaelic aristocracy; but in the haste of leaving, many, including the Earl of Tyrone’s son Conn, were left behind. Then, as the earls themselves later reported to King Philip, at noon on Friday 4 September,

  leaving their horses on the shore with no one to hold their bridles, they went aboard a ship to the number of about one hundred persons, including soldiers, women and principal gentlemen.

  Tadhg Ó Cianáin, who sailed with the earls, tells us that they planned to sail straight for Spain:

  They were on the sea for thirteen days with excessive storm and dangerous bad weather. A cross of gold which O’Neill had, and which contained a portion of the Cross of the Crucifixion and many other relics, being put by them into the sea trailing after the ship, gave them great relief. At the end of that time, much to their surprise, they met in the middle of the sea two small hawks, merlins, which alighted on the ship. The hawks were caught and were fed afterwards.

  Fierce contrary winds forced them to change course for France. They made landfall at the mouth of the River Seine. Here the local governor treated them well, and in return the earls presented him with the hawks they had captured at sea. Only when he obtained permission from the King of France, however, would the governor let them go on to Spanish Flanders. They did not then know that they would never return to their native Ulster.

  Episode 80

  ‘WE WOULD RATHER HAVE CHOSEN TO DIE IN OUR OWN COUNTRY’

  On 4 September 1607 the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell and their families and followers sailed away from Ireland, never to return. For Franciscan friars writing their annals in Donegal this was an unparalleled disaster:

  Woe to the heart that meditated, woe to the mind that conceived, woe to the council that decided on, the project of their setting out on this voyage, without knowing whether they should ever return to their native principalities or patrimonies to the end of the world.

  Forced by storms to land in France, the earls found that they were famous throughout Catholic Europe. They were champions of the faith against the heretics. Their long war against Queen Elizabeth had seemed like the struggle of David against Goliath. King Henry IV of France described Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, as being the third greatest general in Europe. When the earls arrived in Spanish Flanders—now the state of Belgium—the Archduke Albert and his wife, the Infanta Isabel, gave them luxurious apartments in their palace. Two days later they were given a military escort to Brussels, where the Marqués of Spínola invited them to a splendid banquet. Tadhg Ó Cianáin was there:

  When greetings had been exchanged in abundance, they entered the hall of the marquis.... He himself arranged each one in his place, seating O’Neill in his own place at the head of the table, the papal nuncio to his right, the Earl of Tyrconnell to his left, O’Neill’s children and Maguire next the earl and the Spanish ambassador and the Duke of Aumale on the other side.... The rest of the illustrious, respected nobles at table, the marquis himself, and the Duke of Osuna were at the end of the table opposite O’Neill. The excellent dinner which they partook of was grand and costly enough for a king, and nothing inferior was the banquet. Gold and silver plate was displayed inside that no king or prince in Christendom might be ashamed to have.

  Back in Ireland the Attorney-General, Sir John Davies, was convinced that O’Neill and his train of barbarous men, women and children ... will be taken for a company of gypsies and be exceedingly scorned.... The formal Spanish courtier will hardly believe he is the same O’Neill which maintained so long a war against the crown of England.

  Davies was quite wrong. The exiled Irish made a very favourable impression and were treated with great respect. The governor of Tournai had cannons fired in salute as they entered his town. But what was to be done with the Irish lords and their families?

  The Spanish government of Flanders had just signed a truce with Holland, a close ally of England. O’Neill and O’Donnell could not remain in Flanders. More important, Philip III of Spain had decided to remain at peace with James I. To leave the Irish in Flanders or bring them to Spain would almost be an act of war. And so it was decided to transfer the Irish exiles to Italy under the protection of the pope.

  The pope agreed to pay the Irish nobles large pensions, and on behalf of the Spanish king the Marqués of Spínola gave the earls 12,000 crowns in silver. But the earls had left their native land with the purpose of putting themselves at the head of a Spanish army in order to invade Ireland and drive out the English. Now this grand design was being set aside. The Spanish ambassador in Brussels wrote to his king in December 1607 telling him how disappointed he was that the earls were being sent out of his dominions to Italy:

  His Highness gave his word to the ambassador of England that within very few days they would leave [Flanders] .…

  I do not know how the earls will take this and I confess to Your Majesty that it seems to me His Highness has taken a harsh decision on this matter with regard to people who have given such service to God and Your Majesty.

  So it was that the Flight of the Earls from Ulster had been for nothing. It was in vain that O’Neill and O’Donnell sent an appeal to King Philip on 17 December 1607:

  Señor

  His Serene Highness orders that we leave his states so that he may keep a promise he made to the King of England.... This has caused us much sorrow and astonishment.... As God is our witness, we would rather have chosen to die in our own country than to see ourselves treated in
this manner by a prince in whom we placed our greatest trust.... Our concern is the pleasure and satisfaction it will give the heretics to see us thus treated.

  Indeed, King James was delighted to hear the news. It gave him the opportunity to put into effect one of the grandest projects of his reign—the plantation of Ulster.

  Episode 81

  ‘BRING IN COLONIES OF CIVIL PEOPLE OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND’

  The Earls of Tyrconnell and Tyrone, along with some of the noblest Gaelic families in Ulster, had sailed away from Ireland in 1607. Their intention was to return with a great Spanish army to drive the English back across the Irish Sea. But King Philip III, in spite of all the gold of Mexico and the silver of Peru, was almost bankrupt. He could not afford to keep his promises to the Catholics of Ireland. The Gaelic lords were sent out of his dominions to Italy. One disaster followed another.

  On their way from Flanders to Rome they lost most of the money given to them by the Spanish. Tadhg Ó Cianáin was with them and described how this occurred:

  Saint Patrick’s day precisely, the seventeenth of March ... they advanced through the Alps. Now the mountains were laden and filled with snow and ice, and the roads and paths were narrow and rugged. They reached a high bridge in a very deep glen called the Devil’s Bridge. One of O’Neill’s horses, which was carrying some of his money, about £120, fell down the face of the high, frozen, snowy cliff.... Great labour was experienced in bringing up the horse alone, but the money decided to remain blocking the violent, deep, destructive torrent which flows under the bridge through the middle of the glen.

  When they eventually arrived in Rome, they were well received by the pope and cardinals and given a house. Soon, however, they were running out of money, as the Spanish ambassador in Rome reported to Philip III:

  I beg Your Majesty to give them some extra financial aid. Their grant is barely sufficient for their food and in other respects they suffer great want. They are so poor that one must have compassion for them. The pope gives them a house but not one stick of furniture and they have neither beds nor chairs. The unfortunates have not money to buy such bare necessities.

  Nor did the climate of Italy suit these northerners. The Earl of Tyrconnell died of fever in Rome in July 1608. Six months later the same disease carried off Séamus, a lord of the MacMahons, and also Cúchonnacht Maguire, Lord of Fermanagh—the man who had done most to organise the flight of the earls and their companions from Ulster. The Earl of Tyrone’s son Hugh—the Baron of Dungannon—died of fever in 1609. And, finally, Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, breathed his last in Rome on 10 July 1616. With him died the last hope that the Gaelic lords of Ulster would return to Ireland with a Spanish army.

  Meanwhile, back in Ireland, a Dublin Castle official wrote to King James I: ‘The undutiful departure of the Earls of Tyrone, Tyrconnell and Maguire offers good occasion for a plantation.’ It certainly did. The king’s Lord Deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester, also thought that the Flight of the Earls offered an unrivalled opportunity. He could not understand why O’Neill had so suddenly left Ulster: ‘It were strange that he should quit an earldom, and so large and beneficial a territory for smoke and castles in the air.’ Chichester urged King James to seize the moment, condemn the exiles as traitors, confiscate their lands and colonise Ulster with loyal subjects:

  If His Majesty will, during their absence, assume the countries into his possession, divide the lands amongst the inhabitants ... and will bestow the rest upon servitors and men of worth here, and withal bring in colonies of civil people of England and Scotland ... the country will ever after be happily settled.

  The king hesitated—could he really confiscate all those lands in Ulster simply because their owners had left the country? Yes he could, the Attorney-General assured him and convened a grand jury. The earls were condemned as outlaws on the rather flimsy charge that when they had assembled at Rathmullan in September 1607 they were, in effect, levying war against the king. Finally, in December 1607, the lands of the departed Gaelic lords were confiscated and put in the possession of the king.

  King James now threw himself with enormous enthusiasm into this grand project which he named the ‘plantation of Ulster’. It would give him a unique opportunity to reward at little cost the many who had claims on his purse. The conquest of Ireland had cost Queen Elizabeth at least two million pounds. King James was left with a huge debt; many merchants and suppliers might be delighted to be paid with landed estates. Certainly his ‘servitors’, that is, the army commanders and civil servants, looked forward to generous grants of lands in Ulster.

  Above all, the successful plantation of much of Antrim and Down—which had begun at the start of his reign in 1603—gave every indication that the colonisation of the rest of Ulster could be a triumphant success.

  Episode 82

  A LUCKY ESCAPE, SCOTTISH LAIRDS AND THE DIVISION OF CLANDEBOYE

  At the close of the Nine Years War in 1603 Conn MacNeill O’Neill, Lord of Upper Clandeboye and the Great Ards, held a party in his castle of Castlereagh. On the third day he ran out of wine and sent a number of his armed retainers into the village of Belfast to get more. These men became involved in some sort of altercation with English troops stationed there, as a result of which Conn himself was placed under arrest and flung into a dungeon in Carrickfergus Castle.

  Not long afterwards Sir Hugh Montgomery, sixth Laird of Braidstane in Scotland, came to his aid. First he sent over an agent to win the heart of the jailer’s daughter. This man ‘ply’d his oar so well that in a few nights he had certain proofs of the bride’s cordial love’. Lady O’Neill also played her part by smuggling in rope to her husband Conn in two big cheeses, ‘the meat being neatly taken out, and filled with cords, well packed in, and the holes handsomely made up again’. Then the jailer’s daughter opened the dungeon cell and Conn O’Neill lowered himself down the rope to a waiting boat to be taken across the sea to Largs and freedom.

  Sir Hugh Montgomery had served King James I for many years as a secret agent. Without too much difficulty the king was persuaded to give Conn a pardon on condition that he gave one-third of his lordship to Sir Hugh Montgomery and another third to Sir James Hamilton, also a secret agent of the king.

  In this bizarre way began the most successful scheme of ‘plantation’, that is, colonisation, of any part of Ireland in the seventeenth century. The triple division was agreed in April 1605. Conn O’Neill was probably fortunate to emerge from these tortuous dealings with sixty townlands, centred on Castlereagh and comprising half of Upper Clandeboye. Hamilton’s estates were partly in north Down around Bangor and Holywood and partly on the western shores of Strangford Lough around Killyleagh. Montgomery got much of the Ards peninsula and made Newtownards his base.

  Following the victory of crown forces in Ireland, local Gaelic lords of Antrim and Down had to be careful to keep out of trouble. Many of them had joined the Earl of Tyrone in his rebellion against Queen Elizabeth. Now they eagerly gave up part of their estates in return for a secure title to the lands they kept for themselves. For example, Phelim MacCartan was confirmed in his possession of Kinelarty in south-east Down provided he gave a third of his estates to Sir Edward Cromwell, a soldier from County Rutland.

  At the close of the rebellion Co. Down in particular had suffered severe loss of life during a terrible famine caused by troops slaughtering cattle and destroying crops. Inviting Scots and English to settle on their lands would not only please the king but also ensure that the land would be farmed again. Sir Randal MacDonnell of the Glens of Antrim had fought at Kinsale against the crown in 1601. Now he carefully cultivated his friendship with King James, who in turn welcomed MacDonnell’s support on the other side of the North Channel against the Campbell clan in Argyll. Catholic though he was, Sir Randal invited many Presbyterian Scots to cross over and become tenants on his estates. King James was so pleased that he raised Sir Randal to the peerage as the Earl of Antrim in 1620.

  Many of the officers who had
commanded crown forces against the Irish in rebellion were younger sons of gentlemen who, under English and Scottish law, did not inherit estates at home. Victory against the Irish gave them the opportunity to set themselves up as independent landed gentlemen. They included Captain Hugh Clotworthy at Massereene, Captain Roger Langford at Muckamore, Sir Fulke Conway at Killultagh, Sir Edward Trevor in south Down, Ensign John Dalway in east Antrim, Sir Faithful Fortescue in north Antrim, Sir Thomas Phillips at Toome, and Sir Moses Hill and Sir Arthur Chichester in the Lagan valley.

  Sir Arthur Chichester, the former governor of Carrickfergus, was appointed Lord Deputy in 1605. He had been granted lands in Carrickfergus, Belfast and the lower Lagan valley. Once he was the king’s chief governor, he felt he must make every effort to develop his grant. He ordered the firing of more than a million bricks to turn Belfast into a town. Commissioners appointed by King James were impressed:

  The town of Belfast is plotted out in a good form, wherein are many families of English, Scottish and some Manxmen already inhabiting, of which some are artificers who have built good timber houses with chimneys after the manner of the English Pale, and one inn with very good lodgings which is a great comfort to travellers in those parts.

  The British colonisation of Ulster was well under way.

  Episode 83

  PLANTING DOWN AND ANTRIM