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

to constant border warfare. To this day the difference between the historic borders of Tír

Conaill, and the modern county of Donegal, which includes the lands annexed by the

medieval O’Donnells, can be seen by comparing the borders of the diocese of Raphoe,

originally established in the twelfth century, with the county boundary of Donegal, marked

out in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

In the thirteenth and early fourteenth century the peninsula of Inishowen

was also claimed by the de Burgh earls of Ulster, who had already planted

the lands of the Ulaid, east of the Bann, and were demanding annual tribute

and military service from the western chiefs, the O’Neills, O’Kanes, Maguires

and MacMahons, even from the O’Donnells at the height of the power of

Richard de Burgh, ‘the Red Earl of Ulster’ (d. 1326). It was only after the

assassination of the Red Earl’s grandson, the young Earl William de Burgh,

known as the ‘Brown Earl’, which took place in 1333, and was followed by a

joint revolt of his Gaelic Irish and Anglo-Irish vassals, that Inishowen was

fully annexed by O’Donnell and his chief vassal O’Doherty, who had hitherto

ruled Ardmire in the area of Raphoe.

3) The murder of the Brown Earl of Ulster and the O’Neills’

recovery of power

The events leading up to the murder of the Brown Earl are hinted at in the

modern coat of arms of the city of Derry, which show a skeleton sitting on a

stone, with a castle in the background. The young earl was the legal owner

of almost all the two provinces of Ulster and Connacht, but he had been

brought up in the English court with the future king Edward III, and had

relied on his kinsmen, the Mayo Burkes, to rule Connacht on his behalf, and

his seneschal of Ulster, Sir Henry de Mandeville, to manage Ulster for him,

including the Irish chiefs. The close relationship that arose between the de

Mandevilles and the O’Neills at this time is seen from the adoption of the

name Henry into the O’Neill family. As rebellion stirred in England,

eventually leading to the deposition and death of Edward II, Maurice

Fitzgerald, the future first earl of Desmond, was accused of conspiring to

make himself high-king of Ireland, ruling Meath and Munster himself, and

promising to appoint Walter Burke of Mayo as king of the province

of Connacht, Henry de Mandeville as king of Ulster and William de Bermingham as king of

Leinster.

The accusations may or may not have been true, but Earl William de Burgh clearly

believed them. He imprisoned Walter Burke in his castle of Northburgh (now Greencastle)

on Inishowen until he starved to death (the skeleton in the Derry city coat of arms is thought

to represent Walter). The young earl also attacked Sir Henry de Mandeville, who fled Ulster

to seek refuge in Dublin. The de Mandevilles and the Burkes of Mayo were allied by

marriage, and on 6 June 1333 Robert de Mandeville and John Logan assassinated Earl

William de Burgh as he was on his way to church in Carrickfergus. The widowed countess

fled back to England with the earl's baby daughter and heiress, Elizabeth de Burgh, while

the de Mandevilles and their co-conspirators called on their ally, Henry O’Neill of the

Clandeboy branch of the O’Neills, and other Ulster chiefs to rise to war in support of their

cause. The contemporary chronicler, Friar John Clyn of Kilkenny commented:

This evil, as usual, was said to be committed by reason of a woman, namely Gyle

de Burgh, wife of lord Richard de Mandeville, because [Earl William] imprisoned

her brother Walter de Burgh and others.

This assassination of the ‘Brown Earl’ has been identified by many historians as a key

turning-point in the Gaelic Irish recovery of much land and power during the later middle

ages. The O’Neills in particular benefited from the fact that the earl’s lands passed to his

baby daughter living in England, whose Irish inheritance was inadequately defended by

civil servants. Áed Remor O’Neill (d. 1364), his son Niall Mór and his grandson Niall Óc

brought the earldom of Ulster to the brink of extinction. They changed their title to ‘kings

of Ulster’ (or Ulaid) rather than kings of Tír Eógain, adopted the Red Hand of Ulster crest;

and took over the de Burgh earls’ ‘Bonaght of Ulster’, that is, the practice of billeting a

certain quota of mercenary soldiers on each of the other Ulster chiefs (apart from

O’Donnell), using Scottish MacDonnell galloglasses, where the earl’s mercenaries had been

commanded by the Welsh MacQuillins.

The O’Neills repeatedly raided east of the Bann, where the chief resistance

they encountered came from a rival branch of their own family, the

Clandeboy O’Neills, who had been settled in Co. Antrim by the peace terms

arranged in 1338 after the revolt that followed the Brown Earl’s murder.

The submission of this branch to Niall Mór O’Neill in the 1370s left the

Anglo-Irish colony wide open to attack. In 1384 Niall Mór burnt

Carrickfergus and exacted hostages from the seneschal of Ulster, Sir

Edmund Savage. To distinguish the O’Neills of Tyrone from those of

Clandeboy, the English began to style their leader ‘The Great O’Neill’, and

this title was even used by King Richard II when he came on an expedition

to Ireland in 1394-5 and received the submissions of the Irish chiefs

Under the entry for his death in 1403 the Annals of Ulster call Niall Mór’s son Niall Óc O’Neill:

‘high-king of Ulster and a courageous, powerful man, and a man who the learned

companies and pilgrims of Ireland thought would take the kingship of Ireland on

account of the prowess of his hands and the nobility of his blood-… -and the

excellence of his hospitality likewise’.

This reference to his hospitality probably arises from a great feast Niall Óc held in 1387 for

all the poets in Ireland in a temporary feasting-hall he erected in the hill-fort of Emain

Macha or Navan Ring near Armagh, site of the legendary palace of Conchobar mac Nessa,

who was said to have ruled all Ulster in the time of Christ.

4) The fifteenth century and the reign of Henry O’Neill

Throughout the fourteenth century the O’Donnells were unable to profit from the general

recovery of Gaelic power, because they were torn apart internally by a prolonged

succession struggle, in which brother murdered brother, and frequently a new candidate

was made king of Tír Conaill by the Great O’Neill and his army of mercenaries. The younger

son of Niall Mór O’Neill, known as Henry Aimhréidh (‘the Turbulent’), or ‘Harry Avery’

O’Neill, carved out a lordship for himself stretching from the Finn Valley to Omagh, which

he ruled from his castle, Harry Avery’s Castle in Newtownstewart. To avoid confusion with

the later Prince Henry O’Neill, the traditional term ‘Harry Avery’ will be retained here for

this man.

Excerpt from the family tree of the Great O’Neills of Tír Eógain

However by the opening of the fifteenth century the shoe was on the other

foot. The O’Donnells’ civil war ended in 1380 when, with the help of ‘Harry

Avery’ O’Neill, a new king of Tír Conaill ascended the throne, Toirdelbach of

the Wine O’Donnell, (Toirdelbach an Fhína), who reigned for the next forty-

two years, and built up his own mercenary army by concluding a permanent

contract of service with the Scottish MacSweenys, establishing them as lords

of the Fanad peninsula in Donegal. In the latter part of his reign Toirdelbach

shared power with his son Niall Garb II (‘N. the rough’), who succeeded to

the kingship seamlessly in 1422. Meanwhile the O’Neills, who had been

following a stable system of succession from father to eldest son, were

thrown into disarray by the unexpected death from smallpox of Niall Óc’s

eldest son, Brian, three months after his father, and the opportunistic seizing

of kingship by Brian’s cousin, Domnall Boc (‘D. the generous’), son of Harry

Avery, leading to a paralysing war of succession between Domnall Boc, and

Niall Óc’s younger son Eógan O’Neill, who was allied to Maguire of

Fermanagh, MacMahon of Monaghan and Niall Garb O’Donnell.

This situation changed the pattern of politics in the North. Niall

Garb II O’Donnell was not in a position to control all Ulster by force alone,

but he was the leader of the largest alliance in the province. He used this

alliance to batter the usurping Domnall Boc O’Neill into submission, but kept

Tír Eógain divided between the two claimants, and drew all the Ulster chiefs

into a sworn confederation aimed at finally expelling the English earls from

Ulster, and ultimately hoping to drive the English from Ireland, with the help

of imported Scottish mercenary troops. He led the entire forces of Gaelic

Ulster on repeated invasions of the English Pale, exacting black-rent from

the town of Dundalk, and driving the chief governor of the day, James Butler,

fourth Earl of Ormond, to appeal for the help of the Gaelicised Burkes of

Connacht and the citizen volunteers of Dublin to reinforce the royal army.

At a local level, Niall Garb took back the territory between Omagh and the

Finn Valley which had been ruled by Harry Avery, and gave it to his brother

Nechtain, who built a castle on the River Finn, presumably at the modern Castlefinn, while

Niall Garb himself built a castle at Ballyshannon to control the passes into Connacht.

The English responded to the threat by sending over the absentee Earl of Ulster,

Edmund Mortimer, as lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1424. Mortimer summoned all the Ulster

chiefs to join him for a Christmas feast in his castle of Trim, where he listened to their

grievances, and worked on drawing up an accord. The annals say that all was going well

when the young earl suddenly fell sick and died of the plague in January 1425, while the

Ulster chiefs were still in Meath. The violently anti-Irish Lord Talbot was elected temporary

justiciar in this emergency. He arrested all the chiefs present and threw them into prison

on charges of rebellion. Niall Garb O’Donnell alone had stayed away from the Christmas

feast and sent his brother Nechtain instead. This might have seemed like his good fortune,

but the result was that all the other chiefs in Ulster were in a position to discuss matters

with the Dublin government, now led by the more conciliatory James Butler, the fourth, or

‘White’ Earl of Ormond, in the absence of Niall Garb, and the O’Neills in particular had little

reason to be grateful for O’Donnell’s treatment of them. Ormond released the chiefs one by

one over the next six to eight months after each one paid a ransom, and agreed to written

terms of submission, which probably resembled those negotiated earlier with Edmund

Mortimer, because they were far from punitive, and included a mutual extradition treaty

for criminals, recognising a border between the Gaelic and Anglo-Irish jurisdictions. Most

importantly, however, the Earl of Ormond treated Eógan O’Neill as the legitimate ruler of

Tír Eógain in exchange for a promise to leave any sworn conspiracy among the Irish against

the English king and against Edmund Mortimer’s heir, the young Duke of York, who was

now the earl of Ulster.

As soon as he was free, Eógan patched up his differences with his cousin, Domnall Boc, and

together they recovered, we are told, ‘two cantreds of Tír Eógain’ lost during their disputes,

that is, presumably, Harry Avery’s former lordship from Omagh to Lifford, if not as far as

Castlefinn. Eógan’s title was made absolute when his cousin Domnall Boc was assassinated

by the O’Kanes in 1432 and Eógan was formally inaugurated as king of the province of Ulster

on the ‘flagstone of the kings’ at Tullaghogue.

Extract from 16th century map showing Dungannon and Tullahogue

with O’Neill inauguration

In 1433 Eógan O’Neill, now ‘king of Ulster’, forced Niall Garb O’Donnell to

join him as a subordinate ally, and in 1434 they invaded the Pale together,

at which point Niall Garb was taken prisoner by the English, eventually

dying on the Isle of Man in 1439. Eógan attempted to take advantage of the

situation by finally conquering Tír Conaill, but he was blocked by Niall’s

brother, Nechtain, the tánaiste of Tír Conaill, allied to the remaining sons of

Harry Avery O’Neill, who were understandably furious at the assassination

of their leader, Domnall Boc.

It is at this point that Eógan’s eldest son and heir, Prince Henry O’Neill, came

to the fore. Born about 1400, son of Eógan and of Caiterfina (Catherine),

daughter of Ardgal MacMahon, king of the Monaghan area, Henry lived until

1489, to see great changes in economics and politics during the fifteenth

century. It seems he came from a close-knit family. He and his second

brother, Áed ‘of the Fews’ O’Neill, who became his tánaiste, never had a falling out,

and as very young men they cooperated with their mother to ransom their father

in 1422, when he had been captured by O’Neill of Clandeboy. The two brothers

distinguished themselves militarily during the invasion of the Pale in 1434, by

covering the rear of their retreating army after a raid on Nobber, county Meath,

and bringing their men off safely. In 1435 Henry and Áed of the Fews rallied their

men during the war against Nechtain O’Donnell and the sons of Harry Avery

O’Neill, recovering their abandoned campsite, and capturing MacSweeney Fanad,

constable of O’Donnell’s galloglasses. Later that same year Henry and his brother

became famous for a less honourable reason. They summoned the leader of the

Harry Avery clan, Brian Óc O’Neill, to come in for a parley, under the safeguard of

the court poet, Conchobar Rúad MacConmide (MacNamee), and when Brian Óc

turned up, they cut off one arm and one leg from Brian Óc himself and from his

two sons. The outraged poet satirised Henry and Áed, and wrote an elegy for Brian

Óc’s arm and leg, which were buried in the churchyard of Derry cathedral,

beginning Ionmhain taisi atá i nDoire, ‘Dear the relics that are in Derry’ (ABM, no.

288) but Henry simply banished the poet and confiscated his lands, showing a

rather modern disregard for a bardic poet’s curse.

Henry’s career has other modern features to it. Although his early exploits make

it clear he was personally brave and an efficient military commander, he came

increasingly to rely on diplomacy to gain his ends. In 1442 he journeyed down to

the English Pale and persuaded the Lord Lieutenant of the day, once again James

Butler, White Earl of Ormond, to give him a force of Anglo-Irish troops to assist

his father Eógan to conquer Nechtain O’Donnell. This may have been the occasion

on which Henry married the White Earl of Ormond’s niece, Gormlaith daughter of

MacMurrough Kavanagh. The Anglo-Irish military assistance achieved all he could

have wished. Together with the army of Tír Eógain under the command of his

father Eógan the Great O’Neill, they besieged Nechtain O’Donnell’s castle on the

river Finn, Nechtain surrendered the castle, his claims to the Harry Avery lordship

from the Finn to Omagh, and promised to pay an annual tribute from the

peninsula of Inishowen in recognition of the O’Neills’ prior right to the territory,

in return for O’Neill acknowledging the de facto lordship of O’Doherty there.

Before leaving, Henry O’Neill garrisoned the castle on the Finn with his own men.

The terms of this treaty were to be broken repeatedly in the coming years, but it

was formally renewed in 1452, 1462, 1488, and 1514, and it appears that these

successive treaties between O’Neill and O’Donnell in the course of the fifteenth

century were drawn up as formal charters, which Magnus O’Donnell showed to

the justiciar Sir Anthony St Leger

in 1542, as proof that Inishowen was now legally a part of Donegal. Sir Anthony

remarked these were the only legal charters produced in his court by O’Neill and

O’Donnell, so they form another indication of Henry O’Neill’s modernity, and his

search for an agreed solution that did not rest on violence alone.

In 1449 Archbishop John Mey appealed for secular nobles to assist him in a

dispute with the bishop of Down. Interestingly we are told his letter was read

aloud in the town of Ardglass, county Down, in the presence of Henry, eldest son

of O’Neill, Jenkin MacQuillin, captain of his nation, Robert Savage and Patrick

White. O’Neill’s son was evidently present peacefully inside the remaining colony

of the earldom of Ulster, on friendly terms with the leading Anglo-Irish nobles

there. The annals’ record of later events suggest that Henry had been called in by

the Anglo-Irish as the lesser of two evils, to resist the expansion of the Clandeboy

O’Neills, who were taking over more and more land in north Down from their base

in south Antrim, and were shortly to establish a castle at Belfast.

The degree of trust in Henry’s good faith shown by the archbishops of

Armagh and the Anglo-Irish nobility probably had a lot to do with his marriage to

the White Earl of Ormond’s niece, but in early 1449 the earl and Henry found

themselves on opposing sides. Eógan O’Reilly, chief of east Breifne or Cavan, had

just died, and two rival O’Reillys claimed the succession. The Great O’Neill had

appointed the late Eógan O’Reilly as chief, bringing the Cavan area (which had

previously been reckoned a part of Connacht) into the Ulster province for the first

time, and he naturally wanted the chief’s son, Seaán O’Reilly, to continue as a

vassal of Tír Eogain, while the English of Meath, backed by Ormond, tried to

impose Fergal O’Reilly, who had closer geographical and social links with Meath.

For the last time Eógan O’Neill led MacMahon of Monaghan, Magennis of south

Down and O’Hanlon of south Armagh on an invasion of county Louth, to enforce

his demands. The White Earl of Ormond quickly arranged a truce in April, before

the arrival in Ireland of Richard, Duke of York, who was also earl of Ulster, as Lord

Lieutenant of Ireland.

Immediately the Gaelic Irish chiefs of Ulster were called upon to acknowledge his

authority as earl. They all turned up, including both O’Reilly claimants and a

disappointed MacMahon candidate for the chieftainship of Monaghan as well as

O’Neill’s appointee, Aed Ruad MacMahon. It is noticeable that the disappointed

candidates for kingship in Cavan and Monaghan brought great gifts of cattle to the

Duke of York, presumably to buy his support, but in the event it was O’Neill’s

nominees who remained in power in these areas. Henry O’Neill drew up an

indenture with the Duke of York on 27th August 1449, stating he had full powers

to speak for his father, his kindred and his followers, in effect for most of Ulster

west of the Bann. He offered a relief payment of 600 beef cattle to have his family’s

title to their lands recognised, and the Duke agreed to reduce the amount to 300

cattle in consideration of Henry’s future military service. There was no mention

of fines for rebellion such as had featured in prior negotiations with the Mortimer

earls of Ulster, there was no dispute over whether the other Irish of Ulster should

be directly subject to O’Neill or to the earl, and the earl’s right of imposing quotas

of mercenary soldiers on the other chiefs of Ulster known as the ‘Bonaght of

Ulster’, was to be rendered now as a simple money tax. The most contentious

clause, and the one that Henry was to break almost immediately, did not directly

affect the Duke, but concerned the Fews of Armagh, where Henry’s brother, Áed

of the Fews was building up a lordship by occupying the churchlands of the

archbishops of Armagh and estates belonging to the Louth family of the Bellews

of Castleroche, though the latter were probably not in a position actively to

cultivate them.

The Duke of York soon went home to prosecute his ambitions, leading to the Wars

of the Roses in England, but the text of Henry’s agreement with him flags up to

further problems that Henry eventually solved by negotiation rather than

violence. One was the fact that, as the Duke accepted, Henry was to all intents and

purposes the current ruler of Tír Eogain, with claims to oversee the O’Donnells

and many of the inhabitants of eastern Ulster, but his father was still nominally

the Great O’Neill. The other was that the activities of his brother, Áed of the Fews,.

in occupying church lands in south Armagh, was drawing down

excommunications from the archbishop of Armagh, excommunications that

included Henry himself for failing to take steps against his brother.

Excommunicated rulers could not claim loyalty from their subjects or even eat at

the same table with good Christians. The whole O’Neill family had been under

excommunication when the Duke came in 1449, and Henry had first to make his

peace with the archbishop before he could negotiate with the Duke.

Trouble with the archbishop broke out again in 1451 and continued to 1455 with

the whole diocese of Armagh-among-the-Irish being put under interdict, no priest

allowed to say mass or hear confession, and the principal O’Neills being

proclaimed as heretics because of their depraved indifference to the church’s

authority. Attacking heretics earned a crusader’s indulgence of forty days

spiritual reward, though the only people likely to take up this suggestion were the

Bellews of Castleroche and their friends.

Indeed we hear that in 1452 the Bellews invaded the Fews of Armagh in alliance

with MacMahon of Monaghan, to the outrage of Eógan O’Neill, who saw

MacMahon’s disloyalty as an attack on his honour. However his son Prince Henry

O’Neill subsequently brought MacMahon in to a parley, where the chief of

Monaghan renewed his submission and paid O’Neill’s ‘honour-price’ in

compensation for the insult.

In 1455 Henry solved both his problems. He persuaded his father to retire, then

had himself inaugurated at Tullahogue in early July, say the annals of Ulster, in a

ceremony attended not only by all the O’Neills, a phrase that might include O’Neill

of Clandeboy, but also O’Kane from Derry, MacMahon from Monaghan, and

Maguire from Fermanagh, justifying Henry assuming the title King of the Province

of Ulster, and they say John Mey, the archbishop of Armagh or coarb of Patrick,

was also present. There was a certain questioning of Henry’s assumption of

authority within his father’s lifetime, and a bardic poem addressed to Henry,

probably on the occasion of his inauguration, is careful to produce a reasoned

argument based on Roman civil law to prove that long possession of the reality of

power entitles one to formal recognition:

Right is the judgement given, however much it be disputed, in favour of possession; a good man and he in possession – whoever can make good these two claims his case is clear…

This king of the Í Néill shows by his deeds that he descends from that bear of Baoi, Niall Óg, that hero made of clay so pure that the land was plainly proved to be his by right…

Son of Catherine of the House of Té, noble his birth; Teamhair (Tara) of Té shall be his without dispute; he will hold it without any man’s feeling resentment. (McKenna, Aithdioghluim, no. 17)

Some Irish annals from outside the Ulster area accused Henry of deposing his

father forcibly, and this may be why on 4 August, Henry brought Eógan to Armagh

where he formally announced his retirement on the grounds of ill-health in the

presence of Archbishop Mey, and indeed he was to die naturally the following

year.

After this inauguration the archbishop addressed letters to Henry as Your

Excellency, Prince of the Irish of Ulster. A few months later a major concordat was

drawn up between O’Neill and the archbishop, arbitrated by lawyers representing

each side – it was agreed the cadet branches of the O’Neills who occupied church

lands would pay rent for them (not a very big rent) and Henry O’Neill’s soldiers

and administrators would enforce collection of the rents and guarantee the

archbishop and his servants safe-conduct whenever they came north on episcopal

visitations. A hundred and fifty years later the concordat was still remembered in

a passage from the text ‘Ceart Uí Néill’, the ‘Right of O’Neill’, in Father Éamon Ó

Doibhlín’s translation:

‘Henry son of Eoghan son of Niall Óg son of Niall Mór …was a very mature and a very righteous king who suppressed falsehood and lawlessness and maintained the rights of the strong and the weak. And during that Henry’s reign the churches and the cemeteries were freed from every disability they endured up till then.

In 1463 Henry was at the height of his power and influence. In that year he

authorised the archbishop to grant safe-conducts in his name to merchants

wishing to trade in the ports of the earldom of Ulster, apparently implying that

Ardglass and Carrickfergus were within his sphere of influence. In that same year

the new King of England, Edward IV, son of the late Duke of York, and thus

absentee earl of Ulster, sent Henry O’Neill a gold chain and forty-eight yards of

scarlet cloth, in effect the livery of a peer of the realm. In 1467 English exchequer

accounts record payment made to a messenger sent to King Edward IV from the

Great O’Neill, who is here described as ‘the King’s friend’ (amicus Regis).

After his inauguration Henry O’Neill had ceased his invasions of the English Pale,

accepting instead regular payments of black-rent or protection-money from the

inhabitants of Louth and Dundalk, while the Anglo-Irish of county Down made

their payments either to the Great O’Neill or to O’Neill of Clandeboy, whichever

was the more immediate power at the time. Again a bardic poem justifies Henry’s

policy of confining his ambitions to ruling the province of Ulster, this time using a

principle of canon law: Ubi est Papa, ibi est Roma, that the Pope continues to have

authority over the whole church even when his curia is based in Avignon rather

than Rome – ‘Rome is everywhere the Pope is’:

Tara is every place where a king is, why should Henry change, if he has a desire for the wilderness of Eamhain [Navan Ring, co. Armagh], for the river where he was brought up?

If he who is head of the canon law should happen not to be in Rome, Rome is whatever the place in which he succours the multitudes (ABM, no. 464).

The fact that two ceremonial odes addressed to Henry O’Neill take their

inspiration respectively from Roman civil law and from canon law may reflect the

fact that Henry’s chief judge, or ‘brehon’ was not a member of one of the

traditional Gaelic legal families but a canon of Armagh cathedral called Art Mac

Cathmail (McCaul/Campbell), whose primary qualification was in canon law. It

may well have been due to his influence that the treaties drawn up between

O’Neill and O’Donnell concerning the lordship of Inishowen struck Sir Anthony

St Leger as legally valid charters. In the later fifteenth century Áed Rúad O’Donnell

(d. 1505) also employed a canon lawyer, Feidlimid Mac Uinsennáin (d. 1507) as

his chief judge, or ‘brehon’.

So, what went wrong with this new approach of compromise, diplomacy and the

acceptance of money payments to resolve age-old territorial disputes? One

problem arose from a virtue of Henry, his close relations with his own brothers.

He divided Tír Eógain out into delegated jurisdictions, with Áed of the Fews ruling

south Armagh, another brother Art of the Castle of Omagh ruling the former

lordship of Harry Avery in the west, another brother Feilim in the Cookstown

area, and another brother Seaán Buide in the castle of Kinnaird at Caledon on the

Blackwater. All except Seaán Buide justified his trust by their loyalty and

cooperation. But Henry lived a long time, and at the end of his reign Tír Eógain

was torn apart by the conflicting claims of his many nephews, trying to turn their

fathers’ administrative offices into hereditary lordships, with Henry making

increasing use of Anglo-Irish troops to maintain himself in control.

At the height of his power in the 1460s, Tír Conaill had been paralysed by yet

another bout of succession disputes – in 1452 Nechtain O’Donnell banished the

sons of his late brother Niall Garb II, and Henry O’Neill acting as overlord, took up

their cause and invaded Tír Conaill. Nechtain O Donnell was killed, and Henry

divided the country between the sons of Niall Garb and the sons of Nechtain, re-

imposed the treaty of 1442 giving the Finn Valley to himself, and even married

the widow of King Nechtain, who was a Mayo Burke, thus blocking the sons of

Nechtain from access to military support from Mayo. In order to do this however,

he had first to divorce Gormlaith Kavanagh, the niece of the White Earl of Ormond.

Immediately the earl gathered a great army and brought it northwards, forcing

Henry to divorce Nechtain’s widow and take back his wife Gormlaith, though it

was the White Earl’s last great effort, as he died of old age and over-exertion on

the way home. Gormlaith herself died not many years after, and in 1464 Henry

ended the succession struggle in Tír Conaill by appointing Áed Rúad son of Niall

Garb II O’Donnell as king there. He went on to have a very long and successful

reign to his death in 1505, while Henry himself married Áed Rúad’s young

daughter, Úna. A bardic poem celebrating the marriage (ABM no. 391) hints at the

age discrepancy by predicting the young bride will remain chaste despite the

admiration of all her husband’s courtiers.

Henry’s decision to divorce Gormlaith in 1452 may indicate that he already saw

power in the Anglo-Irish colony was shifting from the Butlers of Ormond to the

FitzGeralds of Kildare. One of his last active policy strokes in 1480 was to arrange

the marriage of his son Conn Mór to the sister of the justicar of Ireland, Gerald

Mór, 8th earl of Kildare. In terms of the English Wars of the Roses, the Kildares

were Yorkists, where the Butlers had been Lancastrians, and we have seen Henry

accepted livery from the Yorkist king Edward IV in 1463. But at the battle of

Bosworth in 1485, the Lancastrian Tudors finally defeated the Yorkists, and the

fortunes of Henry O’Neill and his son Conn Mór were deeply affected. Henry had

retired in 1483, passing the title of Great O’Neill on to Conn Mór, but as the

Lancastrian Butlers gained influence in the Anglo-Irish government, through the

activities of Black James of Ormond, a sworn opponent of the Earl of Kildare in

1493, the only O’Neill to have Butler blood, Henry Óc son of Gormlaith Kavanagh,

assassinated his brother Conn Mór, and seized the kingship of Tír Eógain,

precipating a fierce succession struggle in which the Great Earl of Kildare became

involved. One can only be thankful that Henry son of Eógan did not live to see this

dire result of some of his earlier policies, as he had died of old age in 1489, on 15

June, ‘after spending his time happily, prosperously, luckily, profitably’, say the

annals. Áed Rúad I O’Donnell had also allied with the Kildare Geraldines, fostering

a young son of the Great Earl of Kildare, but when the Lancastrian Tudors

ascended the English throne, Áed Rúad and his son Áed Dub O’Donnell trimmed

their sails and began to connect with the Tudors and the Butler family. However

the next generation of O’Neills, Art Óc and Conn Bacach actually were half-

Geraldine, and became inextricably involved in the fall of the House of Kildare,

and alienated from the new English régime. Henry O’Neill’s long career of

compromise and diplomacy had no lasting success, but it did provide a model

demonstrating for future generations that greater power can be achieved by

compromise than by war.

Abbreviations

ABM=A Bardic Miscellany ed. Damian McManus and Eoghan Ó Raghallaigh (Dublin 2010 – Irish language texts only)

McKenna, Aithdioghluim=Aithdioghluim Dána, a miscellany of Irish bardic poetry ed. Lambert McKenna (2 vols, Dublin 1939, 1940 - vol. 1 text; vol. 2 translations).

Selected Reading

BYRNE, Francis John, Irish Kings and High-Kings (2nd ed., Dublin 2001).

HENNESSY, WILLIAM and MACCARTHY, Bartholomew, eds., The Annals of Ulster

(4 vols, 1887 reprinted Dublin 1998 and see https://celt.ucc.ie//).

JASKI, Bart, ‘Medieval Irish genealogies and genetics’ in Princes, Prelates and Poets

in Medieval Ireland ed. Sean Duffy (Dublin 2013), pp. 1-17.

SIMMS, Katharine, ‘Niall Garbh II O'Donnell, king of Tír Conaill, 1422-39' in the

Donegal Annual 12 no. 1 (1977), pp. 7-21.

SIMMS, Katharine, ‘The concordat between Primate John Mey and Henry O’Neill,

1455’ in Archivium Hibernicum 34 (1976/7), pp. 71-82.

SIMMS, Katharine, ‘“The King's Friend” - O'Neill, the Crown and the earldom of

Ulster' in England and Ireland in the later middle ages ed. James Lydon (Dublin,

1981), pp. 214-36.