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Henry O’Neill, Prince of the
Irish of Ulster (1455-89): a
missed opportunity?
MARY KATHARINE SIMMS Lecturer in Medieval History
Dr Katharine Simms is a Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College
Dublin, where she was a Senior Lecturer in Medieval History
to 2010. She is author of From Kings to Warlords: the
Changing Political Structure of Gaelic Ireland in the Later
Middle Ages, and Medieval Gaelic Sources together with
numerous articles on the kings, clerics and learned classes
in Gaelic Ireland from the thirteenth to the fifteenth
centuries.
Dr Mary Katherine Simms delivered this lecture Henry
O’Neill, Prince of the Irish of Ulster (1455-89): a missed
opportunity? At the first Mid Ulster Study visit in September
2018.
This following is the text of her lecture with a short list of
suggested further reading.
Dr Simms retains copyright and no content within can be
copied, abbreviated, altered or used in any way without
her prior approval which can be sought through the
project coordinator.
1) Origins of the Northern Uí Néill
The term ‘Uí Néill’ was used in the early middle ages to describe a group
of related royal dynasties ruling a series of kingdoms in West Ulster and
the midlands of Ireland from about the fifth century into the high middle
ages. They styled whichever of their number emerged as the most
powerful king among them in each generation as ‘king’ or ‘highking of
Tara’, and sometimes ‘king of Ireland’, though in reality this meant no
more than the most powerful king in Ireland.
In recent years geneticists have discovered that something like a fifth of
the population in the north-west of Ireland, including Sligo, Donegal and
Tyrone, O’Donnells, O’Dohertys, O’Devlins, O’Donnellys, MacLaughlins
and so on, are actually descended in the male line from a single ancestor
who lived about 400 A.D. This ancestor had a distinctive twist to his DNA
which was passed on in the male line via the Y-chromosome. The publicity
surrounding this discovery identified the ancestor figure as Niall of the
Nine Hostages (Niall Noígiallach), reputed forefather of all the Uí Néill
dynasties in the north and midlands, who may have flourished in the late
fourth or early fifth century A.D. Since, however the same distinctive DNA
signature is also found among O’Rourkes, O’Reillys and some O’Conors,
the origin of the mutation may go back at least as far as Niall’s legendary
father, King Echaid Muigmedón (‘Lord of the Slaves’), identified by the
medieval genealogists as the common ancestor of both the Uí Néill of the
north and midland kingdoms, and the Uí Briúin royal dynasty of Connacht,
through Niall’s elder brother Brión.
From this scientific finding, first published in the American Journal of
Human Genetics in 2006, it is possible to argue that the legendary account
of the origins of the northern Uí Néill may have a good deal of truth in it.
According to legend three sons of King Niall of the Nine Hostages, princes
from the royal line of Connacht, invaded Ulster by way of the pass below
Ben Bulben mountain in Sligo a century or so before the arrival of St
Patrick, at a time when the province of Ulster was still ruled by the Ulaid,
a people based in Eastern Ulster, who dominated the mid-Ulster group of
smaller tribes known as the Airgialla.
Ulster in 6th century from Liam de Paor St Patrick’s World, p. 292
The story goes that the eldest brother was Conall, who founded the kingdom of Tír Conaill,
that is, all Donegal except the peninsula of Inishowen (Inis Eógain), while his younger
brother Eógan took possession of Inishowen itself. Although later tales show these two, and
a third brother Enda, defeating the Ulaid in a series of great battles and conquering all Ulster
in their own lifetime, earlier sources give a different picture of gradual expansion over time.
The Annals of Ulster, and Adomnán’s Life of Columba, record a great battle fought in 563
between rival groups of the Ulaid themselves, at Móin Doire Lothair in north Derry. The
winning side in this civil war had employed Cenél Conaill and Cenél Eógain as mercenary
soldiers, Cenél meaning the kindred, or descendants of the princes Conall and Eógan. The
victorious ‘Cruthin’ (Irish Picts) kings of Ulaid rewarded Cenél Eógain with lands in north
Derry, Ard Eolargg and Fir Lí, that is lands from Magilligan’s Point to the banks of the Lower
Bann, the first time that Cenél Eógain had spread beyond the peninsula of Inishowen itself.
This began a major change in the balance of power. Up to then the Cenél Conaill,
had dominated the Northern Uí Néill, ruling three cantreds of Tír Conaill, while
Cenél Eogain had only one cantred in Inishowen. Cenél Conaill were still in the
lead a hundred years later when King Domnall mac Áeda meic Ainmirech, a cousin
of St Columba, who was king of Cenél Conaill, and over-king of the Uí Néill group
of kingdoms, finally defeated the Ulaid at the battle of Mag Roth or Moira, Co.
Down in 637 A.D., permanently confining them to the Antrim-Down area
henceforward, after which the annals call Domnall ‘King of Ireland’, (rí Érenn)
though his power would have been limited to the north and midlands, including
the symbolic site of Tara, settled by the kindred princes of the southern Uí Néill.
However, as the descendants of Eógan began to extend their power southwards
from the north coast of Derry to conquer and colonise the Airgialla in mid-Ulster,
re-naming the area Tír Eógain (Tyrone) as against the Tír Conaill
(Tyrconnell/Donegal) of the Cenél Conaill dynasty, they ended up in possession
of a larger, more fertile kingdom than the Cenél Conaill, with much closer access
to the even more fertile midlands of Meath and Westmeath, where the other
branches of the Uí Néill were prepared to acknowledge the overkingship of the
kings of Cenél Eógain as alternating in the highkingship of Tara with their own
leaders.
Diagram showing alternating highkingship between the
kings of Meath and Tír Eógain
The Cenél Conaill found themselves boxed into Donegal, deprived of the over-
kingship and subject to constant attempts from the kings of Cenél Eógain to
conquer and dominate them, which they as constantly resisted. The mountainous
nature of Donegal made their heartland almost impossible to conquer. Moreover
the most powerful kings of Cenél Conaill were able to compensate themselves to
some extent by spreading their authority south of BenBulben into Carbury
Drumcliff in north Sligo as far as Ballysadare Bay.
2) The rise of modern surnames and the Anglo-Norman invasion
The Ulster surnames we are familiar with today developed gradually between the
tenth and twelfth centuries, and at this point it must be made quite clear that
whereas the whole federation of Uí Néill dynasties north and south took their
dynastic appellation from their fourth or fifth-century forefather, Niall of the Nine
Hostages (Niall Noígiallach), the medieval O’Neills traced themselves to a more
modern ancestor, Niall Glúndub or Black-knee, king of Cenél Eógain and high-king
of Tara, who died in 919. His grandson, the high-king Domnall of Armagh who
died in 980 was the first to call himself Domnall Ua Néill, or Domnall grandson of
Niall (see diagram above). The first O’Donnell to use their surname was King
Cathbarr Ua Domnaill (d. 1106), a local king of Cenél Luigdech near Kilmacrenan,
whose name is inscribed as patron on the shrine of the Cathach of St Columba.
It was not until 1200 that Éiccnechán O’Donnell became the first of his surname
to rule all Tír Conaill, overcoming the claims of the older established royal families
of O’Cannon and Dorrian (Ó Canannáin and Ó Máeldoraid). It was also around
1200 that Áed Méith O’Neill rose to be king of Tír Eógain in defiance of the claims
of his distant kinsmen, the MacLaughlins of Inishowen. By this date Anglo-
Norman barons had invaded Ireland in 1169, followed by King Henry II’s
establishment of a lordship there 1171-5. Eastern Ulster (Ulaid) had been
conquered in 1177 by the baron John de Courcy, and elevated to an earldom for
Hugh de Lacy the younger in 1205. However the two newly established O’Donnell
and O’Neill kings cooperated successfully to resist the attempts of Bishop Grey,
deputy of King John of England, to complete the conquest of Ulster between 1211 and 1214.
As fast as he built motte and bailey castles round the borders of Ulster they demolished
them.
The unspoken price for this cooperation from the O’Donnells was the transfer of
all lands west of the Mourne/Foyle river, that is the peninsula of Inishowen and the Finn
Valley, to Tír Conaill, and this claim was to be resisted by the O’Neills for centuries, leading