Hugh ONeill and Nine Years War, 1594-1603

Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone Wikipedia

hugh oneal

The point is, after Kinsale, the chance of an Irish victory had passed, and the question was not whether Ireland would be English, Spanish, or independent, but what terms the rebels could hold out for. Fitzthomas and Florence MacCarthy were arrested and sent to the Tower of London, where both of them eventually died in captivity. Most of the rest of the local lords submitted once O’Neills mercenaries had been expelled from the province.

By the 1590s, the Fitzgerald magnates of Munster had been smashed in the Desmond Rebellions. South Leinster was extensively garrisoned by English troops and in the west ruthless commanders named Drury and Malby enforced a pacification settlement known as ‘composition’ on the local lords. In the early part of the 16th century the English Tudor monarchs had embarked on a project to bring all of Ireland for the first time under the control on their Crown. The O’Neill lineage claims descent from Niall Glúndub, a 10th-century king of Ailech as well as High King of Ireland. Niall was descended from the Cenél nEógain branch of the Northern Uí Néill.

He completed his success with a visit to court in 1587, where he charmed the queen and acquired letters patent to the lordship of Tyrone. A subsequent land commission included O’Cahan’s country and the Fews within the earl’s patent. In spite of representations from Perrot and Bagenal, all Turlough received was the captaincy of Tyrone for life. Perrot was furious at the result and an attempt was now made to contain the new earl’s power. One commentator reckoned that the crown had paid £20,000 to put him in power. However, the subsidy paid to him to maintain his horse-band was now switched to Turlough to enable him to pay his composition forces.

O’Neill’s resistance towards the English

Continuous pressure from London on Albert and Isabella however, brought an end to the initial welcome. Hapsburg policy dictated that England should not be offended so the exiles were moved on to Rome, passing through Porta del Popolo on 29 April 1608. Despite his spectacular successes, O’Neill failed to win over the Old English Catholics of the larger towns in the east and south of Ireland, as they preferred to remain loyal to Elizabeth while holding out for freedom of religion. Dublin Castle eventually ran out of patience with O’Neill and he was proclaimed traitor in 1595. Spanish agents arrived in the northwest county of Donegal in 1596 where O’Neill and O’Donnell had requested a Spanish army to aid their struggle.

English soldiers were required by decree to be housed by the townsmen of Dublin and they spread disease and forced up the price of food. As yet, O’Neill stood aloof from the rebellion, although he was directing proceedings, hoping as a compromise to be named as Lord President of Ulster himself. Elizabeth I, though, had correctly perceived that O’Neill had no intention of being a civilised English landlord. Rather, his ambition was to usurp her sovereign power and be, “a Prince of Ulster”.

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There was no conclusive proof, the witnesses and the state were under direct military threat in Dundalk, and the earl claimed that the allegations were concocted against him by Bagenal. His way out of the proceedings at Dundalk was to agree to assist the marshal in a campaign against Maguire. The state next wanted O’Neill to deal with O’Donnell, against whom there was also mounting evidence, but he made excuses. ‘This undoubtedly, together with the rooted malice of the earl towards the marshal, is the cause of these great stirs and uproars in that province’ (PRO, SP 175, no. 89). In the late summer of 1601 O’Neill and O’Donnell finally received news of the dispatch of a Spanish expedition. They were displeased at its small size and later heard that it had landed at Kinsale in Co.

He was a ruthless political operator – killing opponents, who would have used the same methods had they had the opportunity. He was a brilliant negotiator who played ‘good cop’ to O’Donnell’s ‘bad cop’ in encounters with government commissioners. He managed to ‘up the ante’ in these negotiations and the government weakness on display fuelled his ambition. Though formerly a politique, he developed a faith-and-fatherland nationalism. This exercise in enlightened self-interest was too advanced for the Old English.

We spare none of what quality or sex soever, and it hath bred much terror in the people…The last service was upon Patrick O’Quinn, whose house and town was burnt, wife, son children and people slain”[22]. From the outset, O’Neill’s alliances made the rebellion felt far beyond Ulster. Dublin Castle soon realised that they had a nation-wide insurrection on their hands.

Meanwhile Hugh continued to be fostered by Hovenden’s wife, Joan Walshe, even after she was widowed and remarried to John Piggott. Throughout the rest of his life Hugh was close to his Hovenden foster-brothers, particularly Henry, who became his secretary, whose ‘mother brought up the baron from a child’ (PRO, SP 63/104, no. 28). Much has been made of the alleged bringing-up of Hugh O’Neill by Sir Henry Sidney in England.

In his letters to the Queen he lamented the unwillingness of his countrymen to accept English manners and customs, and mourned over their barbarous preference for Celtic ways. He even desired that effectual steps should be taken to suppress the title of The O’Neill. He was the second son of Matthew, Baron of Dungannon, the reputed son of Con O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone. In Munster, the plantation of the 1580’s was reconstituted, with many of the original settlers returning. Nevertheless, a great many of the native Irish elite survived the re-conquest on their own territory, albeit under state military and legal control. In the absence of their Earls, the Gaelic land of central and west Ulster was confiscated en masse and planted with thousands of Protestant English and lowland Scots.

I am descended from Rev. Francis Doughtie’s son Elias, who married “Sarah O’Neal.” Elias’ sister Mary, after being widowed, married the aforementioned Capt. Hugh O’Neal(e). So, you can see why I suppose that Capt. Hugh O’Neal and Sarah O’Neal were likely siblings, who each married Doughtie siblings. I notice that Hugh married in Delaware, and his wife died in Virginia (i.e. either side of Maryland). Hugh O’Neil took William Heard, the executor the Parker estate, to court to force him to pay the estate’s debt of 1,000 pounds of tobacco that Mary O’Neale earned for Joane Parker’s care. During the case, William said that Joane Parker said that Mary posioned her.

Friedrich von Hügel (born May 5, 1852, Florence [Italy]—died January 27, 1925, London, England) was a Roman Catholic philosopher and author who was the forerunner of the realist revival in philosophy and the theological study of religious feeling. In 2013 Hugh had a huge hit in Turkey and also in Ireland with ‘Son Kez / The Last Time (Videos below). Hugh has appeared on The Late Late Show, RTE, CNN, BBC, BRT and Kanal 7 to mention a few. Hoping to make the case for further Spanish military aid to King Philip III of Spain in person, O’Neill’s hopes were dashed when a storm blew his ship on to the French coast. Philip was embarrassed by the Irish prince’s presence on the continent but relieved that he had not landed in Spain. Spain and England had made peace with the Treaty of London in 1604, each party agreeing that neither should aid the enemies of the other.

She presently took another husband, Hugh O’Neale, and removed with him to his home in Patuxent, Md. Adriaen, who was a lawyer, had met 18 year old Mary’s father, the Reverend Francis Doughty, in court the previous month. Regardless of the fact that Mary was a young Englishwoman, and the https://chat.openai.com/ daughter of a strident and independent-minded father, a courtship began and Adriaen and Mary were married within a year’s time. In 1649, after the onset of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Hugh Dubh was sent south with 2,000 of the best Ulster troops to defend southern Ireland.

Hugh O’Neill and Nine Years War, 1594-1603

Although he was restored to his earldom, interference from English officials, soldiers, and churchmen soon began in earnest. This departure, romanticized as the Flight of the Earls, opened the way for land confiscation and plantation in Ulster. Spain, at peace with England, did not want O’Neill and pensioned him off to Rome. The Scotch-Irish in America tells the story of how the hardy breed of men and women, who in America came to be known as the ‘Scotch-Irish’, was forged in the north of Ireland during the seventeenth century. It relates the circumstances under which the great exodus to the New World began, the trials and tribulations faced by these tough American pioneers and the enduring influence they came to exert on the politics, education and religion of the country.

  • There was no way Philip III would allow O’Neill to travel either to Spain or to Flanders.
  • O’Neill was instantly proclaimed a traitor at Dundalk.[4] The war that followed is known as the Nine Years’ War.
  • All of them died in a murderous battle with Bingham, the President of Connacht at Ardnaree.[7] Having pacified Connacht, Fitzwilliam prepared to move on to Ulster.

Of course, my interest in the art was inseparable from my interest in the artist—that melancholy boy with Black Irish looks, who grew up in a drama of his own. His father, James, was the headliner, a ham actor, whose matinée-idol posturing and self-delusion prompted his brilliant son to run away and cook up a new kind of realism—fuelled by European-influenced ideas about angst and hopped up on the American vernacular. And then there was the high drama that his mother, Mary Ellen, a morphine addict, indulged in. O’Neill’s beloved older brother, James, Jr., or Jamie, inherited both forms of helplessness. In the so-called Nine Years War O’Neill gained a Europe-wide reputation as a soldier.

An American Family History

Remembering Jerry West
There is literally no one as symbolic of the NBA’s history as Jerry West, the man whose dribbling silhouette is seen in the league’s logo. West died yesterday at 86 years old, leaving a titanic legacy in basketball. He was a Hall of Fame guard, a good coach and maybe the best executive this game has seen — he’s partially responsible for both the Showtime Lakers and the Kobe Bryant/Shaquille O’Neal era … and helped build the modern Warriors dynasty. As a religious scholar, von Hügel sought to interpret the relationships between theological dogma and history, Christ and humanity, free will and church control, and Roman Catholicism and contemporary scientific reasoning.

This report is typical of English tactics all over the country, which deliberately targeted the civilian population. This attrition quickly began to bite, and particularly so after Chichester began launching raids across Lough Neagh into the heart of Tir Eoin. It also meant that the Ulster chiefs were tied down in Ulster to defend their own territories.

hugh oneal

Hugh Dubh O’Neill, 5th Earl of Tyrone (“Black Hugh”, meaning “black-haired” or “dark tempered”) (1611–1660) was an Irish soldier of the 17th century. He is best known for his participation in the Irish Confederate Wars and in particular his defence of Clonmel in 1650. The great O’Neill would surely have demurred with the annalist considering his demise in Rome to have been a token of God’s pleasure, but the presence of the exiles’ graves in the church of S.

One epithet the O’Neills bore was “Creagh,” derived from the Irish craobh, meaning “branch.” This is attributed to their tradition of disguising themselves as foliage for the advantage against Norse invaders. However, it could also derive from the legend of three O’Neill brothers who, after achieving victory in battle, were awarded laurel branches for their feat. Each allegedly took the name “Creagh,” to remember their triumph and their prize. King Aedh “the Stout” O’Neill of Ulster first used the crest during his reign in the mid-1300s.

In May Matthew de Oviedo, who had been named Archbishop of Dublin, arrived as envoy to O’Neill, bringing from Clement VIII. Indulgences to all those who had fought for the Catholic faith in Ireland, and to O’Neill himself a crown of peacock’s feathers, probably similar to that sent by a former Pontiff to John on his being nominated King of Ireland. The prestige thus gained was dearly purchased by the death, in a skirmish, of Hugh Maguire, one of his ablest lieutenants. The Earl of Essex landed in April 1599, with an army of 20,000 foot and 2,000 horse, sufficient, as Queen Elizabeth and her advisers believed, to crush O’Neill.

hugh oneal

Further afield, the MacShane’s dynastic allies, the Fitzgeralds, had been annihilated in the Munster rebellion and could be of no help to them. The fact that the supposed progenitor in Ireland, B.P. O’Neill, probably died in 1669, if so, makes it impossible for him to have subsequently fathered a son named Hugh O’Neill supposedly born c. 30 years later, regardless of the fact that the connection between the O’Neills of Shane’s Castle and the O’Neills of hugh oneal Virginia, as best as I can tell, is still based purely on 19th century fanciful speculation. In September 1607 Tyrone, with Rory O’Donnell, earl of Tyrconnell, and their followers, secretly embarked on a ship bound for Spain. From there the refugees made their way via the Spanish Netherlands to Rome, where they were acclaimed by Pope Paul V. This “flight of the earls” signaled the end of Gaelic Ulster; thereafter the province was rapidly Anglicized.

The lords justices in Dublin reported themselves as being ‘mere strangers’ to these goings-on in the north. However, with his early years in Ulster, his youth in the Pale, and his visit to court, Hugh had an unparalleled range of contacts, Gaelic, Old English, New English, and English, at his disposal. In these circumstances the lord justice, Henry Sidney (qv), gave Matthew’s sons – the MacBarons – Brian and Hugh as wards of the crown to be fostered by Giles Hovenden, a New English settler, who had leased Conn’s property at Balgriffen, Co.

O’Neill was a member of the O’Neill dynasty, the leaders of which left Ireland in the flight of the Earls in 1607. Hugh Dubh’s father, Art Óg O’Neill, was among those exiles who made careers for themselves in the Spanish Army of Flanders. It’s no wonder then that the Ui Neill dynasty that descended from Niall split into two septs, northern and southern, at the beginning of the fifth century. Today the existing line is officially attributed to Nial Gluin Dubh ( ), “Niall of the Black Knee,” another warrior king who managed to bring the two septs together under his power and whose grandson Domhnall adopted the surname we recognize today. The Irish forces were defeated and Hugh O’Neill and Red Hugh O’Donnell were forced to leave Ireland, in what is now known as the “Flight of the Earls,” in 1607. The departure of those two Irish chieftains for Europe effectively ended the Gaelic order in Ireland.

There was plainly a worry that the earl would be arrested in London, where he had been called to settle the legal dispute with O’Cahan. It may be that he was secretly involved in a catholic conspiracy and feared discovery. It meant the earl abandoning plans at an advanced stage for the hugely significant marriage of his son and heir Hugh, baron of Dungannon, to a daughter of the earl of Argyll. In these initial stages of the war, O’Neill used his brothers, relatives, and followers as proxies who made war on his behalf.

In attempting to restore forward momentum in 1588, Hugh rendezvoused with Sir Hugh O’Donnell for an attack on Turlough; Perrot described the overthrow the earl suffered as a result at Carricklea as the best news from the north in nine years. With his route to ultimate power now blocked, Hugh O’Neill had increasingly to resort to bribery, conspiracy, and subterfuge to advance his cause. At the time of the shipwreck of the Spanish armada on the Irish coast, the Dublin government feared his reaction as a leading papist, but they need not have worried. Besides having properly paid composition forces, Turlough had now established an open alliance with the MacShanes, welcoming Hugh Gavelach O’Neill back from exile in Scotland and adopting Conn as his son and tánaiste. At the end of 1589 the earl had a stroke of luck when he gained possession of Hugh Gavelach after his capture by the Maguires. It was alleged that the earl had hung Gavelach from a thorn bush with his own hands.

Of Charles Co., immigrated by 1667 with Mary, his wife, Daniel, Charles, & Joy, his children, Pelthya Moore, Mary Urin (or Vrin), Jean Marloe, Olife Panton, Silvester Bell, & John Hicks, his servants, & Enoch Dowty & Mary, his wife, & Joy Dowty. Hugh O’Neale was probably the brother of Sarah Doughty who married his wife’s brother, their parents unknown. Ireland’s journey to the European Union (EU) was not straightforward, but it culminated in the country joining the bloc in 1973. However, back in Ireland, the government continued to challenge O’Neill’s authority, particularly over his feudal rights the principle dispute being over the O’ Cathains. In 1607 he decided to take this to the King but was warned secretly that he was to be arrested. By 1595 O’Neill was to commit his first act of resistance to the English when he overran the fort at Blackwater and destroyed the bridge.

Most significantly Perrot had ‘Red’ Hugh O’Donnell (qv) arrested and imprisoned by the famous stratagem of sending a ship full of wine to Rathmullen. Hugh O’Neill protested at this action against the young Tirconnell lord, to whom his daughter was betrothed, as ‘the most prejudice that might happen unto me’ (PRO, SP 63/132, no. 31). He was similarly annoyed when Perrot began a new round of surrender-and-regrant agreements with minor Ulster lords, which threatened to detach the uirríthe from his clutches.

On his return the earl intensified his control of Tyrone, making use of the patent to claim absolute landownership so as to reduce the landholdings of collateral branches of the O’Neill family or convert them to tenants-in-chief. He also needed tillers of the soil to boost the economy, and as a result he tried hard to hold on to or attract back the mobile tenantry, the so-called churls, who had been dispersed by the war. However, with Mountjoy’s influence waning at court the government policy soon reverted to the prewar reform agenda. In 1605 the government issued a proclamation freeing the tenantry from illegal restraint by their lords. In Tyrone itself the earl faced legal challenges about his control of church lands and fishing rights.

Before long the rival chieftains were engaged in hostilities—Hugh being aided by the English government. In 1584 he was put in the possession of the southeastern portion of Tyrone, Turlough Luineach being restricted to the north-western. He served in the English army in the Irish wars, was present at the Smerwick massacre in 1580, cooperated with Essex in the settlement of Antrim, and the Ulster wars, and was more than once commended for his zeal in the Queen’s service. From 1595 to 1603 the Irish rebel Hugh O’Neill led an unsuccessful Roman Catholic uprising against English rule in Ireland. The second defining event of the decade happened in 1607, when O’Neill, O’Donnell and many other Ulster chiefs left for Spain, in what is known as the Flight of the Earls. At first sight it is puzzling why they abandoned such a favourable settlement as they got  at the end of the Nine Years War.

However she died shortly after the birth of their son, Don Juan Antonio Luis O’Neill de Castilla. Tulio was promoted to Field Marshal in charge of the Royal Guard in 1828 and it was he who made the public announcement of the birth of a daughter to the King in 1830, namely the future Isabel II of Spain. The reservation as to clan leadership being made by a junior branch is debatable as Irish inheritance and Spanish inheritance follow different laws. In 1613 the English crown, with the Ulster plantation faltering and trouble with the Irish parliament, opened a channel to O’Neill about a reconciliation. The Spanish government proved lukewarm and the offer lapsed as the Irish and international situation changed.

Coats of arms

By initially cooperating with the government of Queen Elizabeth I, he established his base of power, and in 1593 he replaced Turlough Luineach O’Neill as chieftain of the O’Neills. But his dominance in Ulster led to a deterioration in his relations with the crown, and skirmishes between Tyrone’s forces and the English in 1595 were followed by three years of fruitless negotiations between the two sides. He put together the highly effective army of Ulster, yet his tactics always had to be defensive because he did not have the resources to wage open, offensive, or siege warfare. This may have led to a lack of confidence, which translated into the fateful retreats from difficult but nevertheless winnable positions at the battles of Moyry Pass and Kinsale.

Hugh O’Neill Obituary (2006) – Lyndhurst, OH – The Plain Dealer Obituaries

Hugh O’Neill Obituary ( – Lyndhurst, OH.

Posted: Wed, 29 Sep 2021 01:16:54 GMT [source]

O’Neill’s defeat of an English force of 4,000 men at the Yellow Ford in 1598 attracted international attention. Sir Henry Sidney, the lord deputy, the English monarch’s senior representative in Ireland, backed Hugh O’Neill’s claim to become Earl of Tyrone, hoping thus to create a loyal ally in the subjugation and Anglicisation of Ulster. In the second half of the 16th century, the Tudor monarchy – now under the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I – adopted a more aggressive approach in extending crown authority throughout the island of Ireland. Gaelic Ulster, however, where the O’Neills of Tyrone were the leading dynasty, proved particularly recalcitrant. As the O’Neills were often divided among each other, it suited Dublin Castle to foment these fissures in the hope of breaking their resistance. It was claimed for its strategic value as a lookout point – all nine counties of Ulster were visible from its summit, enabling the O’Neills to keep track of their land.

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He should have compromised in 1596 or at least risked the visit to London in 1607. He miscalculated his own and Ireland’s importance in great power politics, becoming a pawn when he committed himself to Spanish intervention during the war and then sacrificing his position by fleeing in the mistaken hope of their benevolence. Instead of continuing to strive to lead the catholics of Ireland, his flight left the Ulster Irish leaderless and subject to plantation. In this Hugh O’Neill was a typical Gaelic lord – he cared only about himself, his offspring, and his immediate followers, and nothing for a people who deserved better. Hugh O’Neill is a study in power – he spent his life trying to win it, trying to retain it, and trying to regain it.

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Nevertheless Hugh O’Neill was now forced to travel to London to exculpate himself. There he was placed under house arrest but released after letters from Fitzwilliam and the Irish council commending him as a source of stability in the north. Hugh was further embarrassed at court by the arrival of Conn MacShane with a welter of allegations against him, but he was eventually allowed to leave, having agreed to forego the title of ‘O’Neill’ and to accept the reform of his territories. Although born into the powerful O’Neill family of Ulster, Hugh was fostered as a ward of the crown in County Dublin after the assassination of his father, Matthew, in 1558. His wardship ended in 1567, and, after a visit to the court in London, he returned to Ireland in 1568 and assumed his grandfather’s title of earl of Tyrone.

The northern garrisons were in a continual state of blockade; interminable letter writing was carried on between the parties without definite result; and the negotiations were interspersed with occasional fighting, and an abortive raid into Ulster. O’Donnell complained of invasions of his father’s territory, and of an opposing O’Donnell being set up, and of his and Owen O’Toole’s long imprisonment. Chat GPT On Sir Turlough O’Neill’s death in 1595, he assumed the title of The O’Neill, in addition to that of Earl of Tyrone. This check did not prevent their soon afterwards relieving the English garrison in Monaghan. This position as head of the O’Neill family made him formidable in the eyes of Elizabeth’s advisers. Day by day he brought the surrounding clans more and more under his influence.

In January 1600 Hugh O’Neill, with a force of nearly 3,000 men, made a foray into Munster, ravaged the territories of his countrymen in alliance with the English, and strengthened his position by fresh alliances. Marshal Bagnall, at the head of the flower of the English forces, conveying provisions, arms, and money, occupied Armagh. In consequence of operations against his friend O’Byrne, O’Neill marched against Armagh and forced the garrison to surrender.

Given such circumstances, it is remarkable that the earl managed to remain in hiding in the forest of Glenconkyne until he was able to surrender with some dignity at Mellifont in March 1603. Hugh’s ambition and ‘dissimulation’ was apparent to the state as early as 1579 when he sent Siobhán – she had not borne him a male heir as yet – home to Tirconnell and prepared to marry a daughter of Turlough in order to become tánaiste of Tyrone. When this rapprochement with the ruling O’Neill failed, Hugh took back his spurned wife. Instead he made a new mutually beneficial arrangement with the state, by which he undertook to defend the borders of the Pale from the depredations of his fellow Ulstermen in return for soldiers in pay. When Turlough waxed strong in 1580, Hugh left the province for a time to serve in Munster, though he was not present at the massacre at Smerwick.

In September 1607 Tyrone, with Rory O’Donnell, earl of Tyrconnell, and about 100 northern chieftains, secretly embarked on a ship bound for Spain. From there the refugees made their way to Rome, where they were acclaimed by Pope Paul V. This so-called “flight of the earls” signaled the end of Gaelic Ulster; thereafter the province was rapidly Anglicized. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. The irony of Hugh O’Neill’s early life is that it looked as if his career would be tied to success of English government in Ireland.

Hugh O’Neill, the son of the murdered Lord, Fear Dorcha O’Neill, educated in the Pale and reinstated in Gaelic Ulster by the English, would cast a long shadow over the future of the province. His own story so dominates that of Ulster and  of Ireland in the late 16th century that it is worth looking at in detail. Its collapse in 1333 allowed a branch of the O’Neill that had been on good terms with the Normans, Clandeboye, to step into the power vacuum and take control over large parts of eastern Ulster. My Hugh O’Neal and his wife the widow Vanderdonck (n�e Mary Doughtie, dau. of maverick preacher Francis Doughtie, “witch hunter”) figure very prominently in the archives of the early Maryland colony.

The buannacht system, originally devised to maintain Scots mercenaries, was now switched to the support of this domestic standing army. In the summer of 1584 the MacShanes made their bid for power, backed by Scots mercenaries. This gave Lord Deputy John Perrot (qv) the opportunity to impose English composition forces led by the so-called ‘butter captains’ on the north, instead of the Scots mercenaries the lords generally employed. Although the long-term intention was the extension of crown control, the composition was also a short-term measure to shore up Turlough. Perrot also divided up central and eastern Ulster into lieutenancies in an attempt to demarcate spheres of influences for Turlough, Hugh, and Marshal Bagenal. In 1585 Hugh O’Neill took advantage of Turlough’s declining power to overrun Dungannon, the Tyrone heartland, and the same year when attending parliament he was recognised as earl of Tyrone by the house of lords.

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