Lecture Two Wednesday 26th January
Follow this link to the BBC History site about Ireland before the plantation
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/plantation/index.shtml
Political, religious and economic developments in Ireland, 1600-1630
In today's lecture we are going to look at Gaelic Ireland, particularly Gaelic Ulster as this is what was destroyed by two main events; The Flight of the Earls and the subsequent Plantation of Ulster. Before looking at the Gaelic Order however, it is necessary to look at a number of ethnic labels that apply to various culturally distinct groups, will come up that needs some explanation. It is important that we have an understanding of the different ethno-religious groups in early 17th century Ireland.
Ethnic groups in early seventeenth-century Ireland
(1) Gaelic Irish (descendants from indigenous native inhabitants) and Highland Scots, Danish and Norwegians.
Sample names: O’Neill, O’Donnell, O’Hagan, McGuinness, O’Cahan, Maguire, MacSweeney, MacDowell
(2) Old English (descendants from the Anglo-Normans, mainly Catholic, who had migrated to Ireland from the twelfth century).
Sample names: Taaffe, Butler, Clinton, Moore Power, Bellew (also most names with ‘Fitz’; FitzGerald, FitzMaurice etc).
(3) New English (descendants from settlers from England, usually Protestant, who had come to Ireland since the age of the Tudors).
Sample names: Bagnell, Trevor, Parsons, Sterling, Wilmot.
It is important to note that the New English group were further divided into two separate groups as a direct result of the 1641 war.
The new English of the pre-Ulster plantation days became known as the ‘Ancient Protestants’ because they were domiciled in Ireland prior to the war.
Those who came to settle in Ireland as a consequence of that war became known then as the New English.
Until the end of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign in 1603, Ulster in general, especially mid and west Ulster were areas still not familiar to the English.
The end of the Nine Years War in 1603, however, brought an end to the cultural insularity of Gaelicism in the province.
This process was quickened when, in 1608, the English government launched a deliberate scheme to diminish the lordly, particularly landed, powers of the Celtic chieftains in the area – a process that has come to be termed the ‘Plantation of Ulster’.
The first few decades of the 17th century are important in the history of Ireland in that it saw the demise of what was known as Gaelic Ireland.
Most of Ireland had already been brought under the jurisdiction of English common law, either by the Old English colonists (descendants of the Anglo-Normans), or New English settlers who had come to Ireland in the sixteenth century.
Only the counties in mid and west Ulster remained essentially Gaelic at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
In this, and in the next few lectures, we will look at the reasons why and the methods used to bring about the demise of that society.
Before we know what it was that was destroyed we need to know what Gaelic society was like in Ulster.
In looking at Gaelic society we will look briefly on.
1 The Political Structure
2 The Legal System
3 The Religious System
4 Social Life
The Political Structure of Gaelic Life
There were some 60 Gaelic chieftainships in medieval Ireland, ranging in area from a single barony up to the dominion of The Great O'Neill, whose authority extended over three to nine counties depending on his political fortunes.
Whereas the policies of the English crown in the 16th century diminished much of their authority, they still predominated in Ulster.
In the north and west, modern Irish counties approximately reflect territories of the more powerful chieftains, with lesser chiefs holding baronies within these county areas as vassals of the greater chiefs, following their overlord's 'foreign policy' and rendering him military service.
In border regions between the spheres of influence of two paramount chiefs, these often competed for the allegiance of individual sub-chiefs, bribing or terrorising them into joining one side or the other.
English governors similarly competed with O'Neill for control of chieftains on the borders of the English Pale, such as O'Reilly, MacMahon and O'Hanlon.
Sub-chieftains collected tribute in money and cattle from their own subjects for their overlord, keeping back a proportion for themselves. Fines they imposed for murder or theft might also be shared with the paramount chief.
Sub-chiefs with their nobles were bound to attend a popular assembly (oireachtas) held by their overlord once or twice a year.
This was a scene of sporting contests and entertainments for the general public, which also provided the occasion when the chieftain held council with his leading vassals, proclaimed taxes, or even a future war.
Each chieftainship was hereditary within a particular family. Succession did not necessarily pass to the previous chief's eldest son, but to the kinsman considered most powerful in terms of wealth and followers. The choice was made by a council of nobles which included members of the ruling family. There decisions were then formally acclaimed by clergy, poets and lesser landowners at the new chief's inauguration ceremony.
Gaelic society was divided into the Lord or chieftain, freeholders and tenants-at-will. .
The tenants-at-will were the tillers of the soil and herders of cattle. They seem to have lived under the jurisdiction of their landlords, without access to the courts of Brehon law. They formed the majority of the population and were little more than slaves.
Freeholders whose landownership brought military obligations as well as legal citizenship, possessed comparatively small farms, representing their share of a larger family estate.
Landownership passed from father to sons, but was periodically re-divided among cousins (when direct heirs failed), by the senior kinsman (ceann fine).
The ceann fine was also responsible for collecting taxes, debts or fines from his kin-group, unless his authority was superseded by that of a patron or lord.
Lords based their authority over other freeholders on two types of vassalage.
Humbler clients were bound to biatachas, a 'food-providing relationship' - rendering food-stuffs and certain labour services to the lord in return for protection.
Nobler clients rendered óglachas or 'military service'. The increasing use of mercenaries by great lords in the later 16th century distorted this network of personal ties, turning some into military dictators.
According to Kenneth Nicholls there were three Gaelic Ulsters:
Eastern-Ulster (Antrim and Down) which had been intensively developed in the 1200s as an Anglo-Norman colony, and that colony had collapsed later and the area seemed never to have recovered. By the Elizabethan period it was the most under-populated part of Ireland, and though much was very good land, land eminently suitable for settlement and this is the main reason why it attracted such a high proportion of settlers in the late 16th and early 17th century.
The second Gaelic Ulster was the borderlands (Monaghan and Fermanagh) - Cavan incidentally was not regarded as part of Ulster until the Plantation: it was regarded as part of Connaught. Monaghan and Fermanagh were relatively well developed because they had links with and had been interacting with the Pale. They were effectively experiencing the money economies of the Pale and so were already adopting to this so moving away from Gaelicism.
The third area of Gaelic Ulster, according to Nichols was in Tyrone and Tyrconnell and Donegal. They are perhaps relatively under-developed or relatively pastoral economies (though not entirely pastoral, not entirely given up to grazing) but I think the reason why they are relatively under-developed is there were no merchant communities near them: the nearest merchant towns were at Galway in the west and at Carrickfergus in the east. And therefore, they didn’t perhaps participate in the economic upsurge of Ireland.
The Legal System
Brehon law was based on private arbitration of disputes by a hereditary caste of professional judges, the Brehons.
They simply judged the amount of fines due from those guilty, and left it to extended families, patrons or chiefs to enforce payment. Their judgements were based on customary law - preserved in old Irish law tracts of the seventh to the ninth centuries - on case law, and on proclamations of the local ruler.
Chiefs employed official Brehons to try cases involving their own interests, appeals from a lower court, and fines for disobedience and tax evasion.
Although English law and ecclesiastical law came to influence the system, land inheritance was a very conservative area that remained strictly under Brehon control.
This affected the status of women because only men inherited family land. A female could inherit furniture or cattle from her father, and receive settlements in goods, or a life-interest in landed estates, from her husband. Her status in law compared with an adult son still living in his father's house, under paternal authority. The adult son would become emancipated later as a landowner but women always remained under some male authority - father, brother, husband or adult son. Such a protector had a duty to sue for any compensation owed to the woman, to guarantee payment of any fines she incurred, and to arrange her marriage.
A woman without brothers could inherit a life-interest in her family's land but unless she married a close cousin - as many such heiresses did - she could not pass the estate on to her children.
Therefore marriages were not arranged between Gaelic ruling families for the sake of transferring estates of land from one noble lineage to another, as regularly happened in England.
The key consideration in war-torn Gaelic society was that marriages should seal important political and military alliances between the chieftains' dynasties.
Another distinctive feature of Gaelic custom was that most illegitimate children had a right to share in their father's inheritance. Many daughters of minor chieftains were given by their families as concubines to paramount chiefs, and their sons became recognised nobles.
The payment of a 'bride-price' to the concubine or her family, and the consent of her kinsmen, conferred respectability on the arrangement. Even married women were sometimes known to 'name' one or more of their children as illegitimate offspring of the local chief - once their own husband had died or they themselves were on their deathbed. If the claim was acknowledged, nobility and a right to some share in the chief's inheritance was immediately conferred on the child.
The Religious system.
Bardic religious poems show the Irish were reading - in Gaelic translation - the same popular religious tracts and Saints' Lives as those circulating among English lay-people just prior to the Reformation.
The contrasts were mainly administrative, especially in Armagh diocese, between Armagh-among-the-Irish (Counties Tyrone and Armagh) and Armagh-among-the-English (Co. Louth). The medieval archbishops of Armagh were Anglo-Irishmen living in Co. Louth, exercising only a partial control - through their Gaelic-Irish deans - over 'Armagh-among-the-Irish'.
By the 12th century many Early church sites had no monks or clergy. Instead hereditary tenants farmed the church lands, under lay abbots known as 'erenaghs' - Irish 'oirchinneach' or 'superior' - in the case of smaller church sites; and 'coarbs' - Irish 'comharba' or 'heir' - who governed the principal shrine in a network of church sites dedicated to a single saint.
Colonists reallocated these 'termon-lands' - or 'sanctuary-lands' - to parish priests, or new monastic orders like Benedictines, or the barons simply annexed them. Meanwhile in Gaelic Ireland the 'termon-men' realised they needed a new legal status inside the church to avoid being taxed as ordinary laymen by the chiefs.
They transferred ownership of their lands to the diocesan bishops. Those remaining on the lands were now the bishops' tenants. 'Erenaghs' and 'coarbs' functioned as stewards, collecting rents and tithes. This revenue went to the rector and vicar of each parish, the bishop and the erenagh himself, who spent some on the maintenance of the church buildings.
Lay erenaghs knew Latin and still claimed spiritual powers of blessing and cursing as guardians of the relics of their founder saints.
Ulster parish clergy were recruited from erenagh families, making the clerical profession hereditary. Bardic poets, historians and judges were often drawn from erenagh families also.
With this ambiguity between clerics and laymen, wives and mistresses of ordained clergy could enjoy social acceptance, despite canon law. The laity, however, reserved their deepest respect for the celibate, highly-educated Franciscan friars.
Most churches in Ulster had been beyond the authority of the English crown. After the Plantation these church lands passed to the king as head of the reformed church, and the erenaghs became tenants of the Protestant bishops. Some conformed and became rectors in the established church, with varying degrees of sincerity. Some were evicted and became bitter adherents of the Counter-Reformation.
Gaelic Social Life
Gaelic Ulster was the most rural part of Ireland. There was some trading at the port of Derry and the harbour at Donegal, at Armagh and at the small market town of Cavan, founded by O'Reilly in the 15th century, and later at Dungannon, where O'Neill had his chief castle.
Ulster was also the area with most emphasis on pastoral farming, with whole villages leaving their winter fields where the crops had been sown, to transfer their families and cattle to areas of rough summer grazing in the hills from May to November. There they lived in settlements of temporary huts called in Ireland booleys (Irish 'buaile', 'cattle-pound').
Click for image of Cattle Raid
The men temporarily travelled back to the winter village at harvest-time to save the crops.
Some people owing to their profession in life - for example a master-poet with his troupe of performers, or a captain of mercenary soldiers with his retinue - had no home base, and brought their herd of mixed livestock with them to graze the lands of each new employer. These were known as 'creaghts'. In time of war or famine, the whole population in some areas might be uprooted to travel into neighbouring territories under their leaders as creaghts - welcome or unwelcome as the case might be.
For most people the periodic fairs and assemblies were the high spots of the year. These might take place on May Day, or Lammas (1st August) or Halloween on a traditional hill-site - often marked by an ancient and venerated tree on the summit. Here cases were tried according to customary law by the Brehons (professional judges). Chieftains consulted their nobles and announced taxes, or decisions as to war or peace. Sporting and athletic contests took place, story-tellers, musicians, poets, jugglers, professional gamblers and clowns all plied their trades, marriages were arranged and commercial deals struck. Oral tradition points to Tullahogue - the inauguration hill of the O'Neills - as the site of annual meetings for sporting contests among the youth of the country.
Since May-day and Halloween were also rent-days for tenants, similar assemblies were sometimes held on the green outside the chief's castle. The lord spent part of the rents on feasting and public entertainment, and used the gathering to consult his nobles and settle outstanding disputes and law-cases.
The meeting in May was perhaps the most important in Gaelic society.
There was the annual redistribution of resources. Marriages were arranged. All sorts of other allocations of land and property for a year were laid out.
The contracts between a lord and his followers only lasted from one May to the next. If a follower didn’t like the way he was being treated by one particular lord in one lordship, he could and frequently did move elsewhere the following year. The most frequent reasons for moving to another Lord was if your lord didn’t offer you protection, didn’t offer you the kind of economic opportunities you wanted, well then you were free to go elsewhere.
This then was the society that prevailed in mid and west Ulster.
What then were the factors leading to the demise of Gaelic Life
Ulster was always the largest area under Gaelic rule since medieval times. Expeditions by the English to complete its conquest during the late 16th century and the alarming example of the Plantations already underway in southern Ireland caused Ulster chiefs to upgrade their military strength. They did this both by 'arming the peasants' - as was reported of Shane O'Neill - and by importing regiments of armoured foot soldiers from the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland at great expense.
At the same time the constant fighting not only kept armies on the move, but turned villagers into 'creaghts' - or herds of refugees with their livestock - transferring out of war-torn areas under the leadership of their local lords.
Up to that time the lack of market towns in the area put a limit to the amount of rents Gaelic lords could extract from their tenants, because rent was paid in foodstuffs, which had to be consumed immediately by the lord and his followers or rot away - as Sir John Davies noted in 1607.
In the last decades before the Plantation, there were signs that Ulster lords were feeling their way towards a market economy, and the collection of money rents. This would enable them to accumulate a surplus - to buy fine clothes and build larger castles at their tenants' expense and, in war-time, to pay for troops.
O'Neill, O'Donnell and their sub-chiefs obtained royal licences to hold weekly markets at their chief residences, and both Shane O'Neill and Hugh O'Neill, the Great Earl of Tyrone, encouraged Anglo-Irish tenants from the Dundalk area to settle on their under-populated lands.
Hugh O'Neill replaced a patchwork of varying tributes and taxes from his Irish tenants with a single charge of one shilling per quarter year for every cow in their herds, to be collected by the leaders of the creaghts, who kept back a quarter of the sum as their salary. This yielded Tyrone an income of over 2,539 Euros / £1,631 a year, eight or ten times the revenue of MacCarthy Mór in south-west Munster.
The Plantation altered this gradual shift from a bartering economy to a money-based one into an overnight transformation. Now it became profitable to rack-rent tenants, since the foodstuffs which they still paid as rent could be sold in the new market towns for export - or traditional tenants might be displaced to make way for more agriculturally productive outsiders.
Even Gaelic chiefs who retained some lands had to change their ways or go bankrupt, while some were reduced to leasing summer pastures from the new planters, to camp there all the year round with their creaghts.
The breakneck speed of this social transformation accounts for the traumatic grief and shock expressed in Gaelic literature of this period as much as the actual change in landownership.
The mushrooming of towns and fenced-off lands, the end of assemblies on hills with their sport and music, and the feasts of the lords, are all mourned.
This can be seen in the Gaelic poetry of the period
If you look at the compositions of a poet like Fear Flatha Ó Gnímh who was based for most of his life in Antrim in east Ulster, the poems that he writes at the time that the Ulster Plantation was in progress are quite depressing reading in some ways.
He was very traumatised by The Flight of the Earls which saw the Gaelic chiefs such as Hugh O’Neill, Hugh O’Donnell, Maguire and others, leave Ulster for good and go to the Continent.
A poet like Fear Flatha Ó Gnímh O’Gnieve laments the condition of Ireland now that those chieftains have gone, and focuses on his sense of loss but doesn’t try to blame anybody in particular for that loss. He explains O’Neill’s downfall as being self-induced: that if O’Neill had been more subservient to God, had shown greater respect for his principles, I suppose, that this wouldn’t have happened; if he hadn’t got so over-mighty, that he wouldn’t have fallen.
It’s explained largely in religious
terms that - to quote a translation of the poem -
"Oh people of Uí Néill, if you had been submissive to God,
who could have overthrown you?".
That was the kind of attitude that Fear Flatha Ó Gnímh conveyed: there is no sense in his poetry that in any way outsiders - newcomers of any sort - are to blame for the circumstances of the Gaelic Irish in Ulster in the early 17th century. The explanations for the decline of their society are self-contained explanations that don’t look at all to put the blame on anybody else, on any outsiders.
The system run by the O’Neills was highly oppressive by the people at the top. If you were at the top you could do very much what you liked, but you would be subject to the fact that your brothers and cousins and all had much the same ambitions.
This is the weakness of the Gaelic system was defective mechanisms of succession so that the ruler would always be opposed by some of his own kinsmen unless he was exceptionally strong and had an exceptionally long reign so he could exclude them.
And he would be opposed by his own kinsmen who would feel that they had as much right to be ruler as he did; and of course these families proliferated to an incredible extent because they were in practice polygamous having a multitude of wives (in practice if not in theory) and because the illegitimate were admitted to a full share on par under native Irish law - they were admitted to full rights, they were not discriminated against as elsewhere, and of course in any lineage society where power depends on being born into a ruling lineage, just as in African societies, a woman maximises the opportunities for her children by having them fathered by a member of the dominant lineage.
What did all this lead too? An event that has passed into history as the
FLIGHT OF THE EARLS
On 4th September 1607, the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell, along with a close circle of family and associates, boarded a ship at Rathmullan on Lough Swilly, bound for Spain.
This event has become known as ‘The Flight of the Earls’ and is widely regarded as one of the most enigmatic events in Irish history, virtually defying explanation.
Even the designation of the Earls’ departure as a ‘flight’ has been contested, though the fact that the Earls left in such a hurry that the Earl of Tyrone’s young son, Con, was left behind, while the Earl of Tyrconnell departed without his pregnant young wife, should dispel lingering doubts in this regard.
Symptomatic once again of the intrigue that swirled around the flight both at the time and ever since is the continuing fascination with the identities of the ‘noble shipload’ of 99 people that departed Lough Swilly, the so-called cream of Gaelic society.
Many attempts have been made to resolve this ‘mystery’, though they have all been in vain, not least, as it turns out, because the ship was not so jam-packed with the Gaelic nobility of Ulster after all. Some 60 people on board may be accounted for as the crew who had travelled from Spain to pick them up.
Why the northern Earls took flight has also been a matter of considerable debate, leading to accusations by hostile commentators that the Earls were up to their necks in treason while their apologists portray them as offended innocents, badgered into departing their homeland in fear of their lives.
As often happens in such circumstances, it emerges that the Earls were as much sinned against as sinning. Crown officials in Ireland in the wake of The Nine Years' War (1594-1603), led by the Lord Deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester, maintained a vendetta against the northern Earls after the conflict ended with the Treaty of Mellifont, 1603. Having lost his brother during the war, Chichester had additional personal reasons for despising the northern Earls. Not surprisingly, as a result, there is evidence that the crown authorities in Ireland resorted to provocative tactics, not the least of which turned out to be a campaign of religious persecution.
As the self-proclaimed champion of Catholicism in Ireland, the Earl of Tyrone became involved in renewed conspiratorial machinations with a view to overthrowing the Protestant administration in Dublin.
Their anger fuelled by resentment at the manner in which the royal authorities in Ireland were mounting legal challenges to their territories, the northern Earls became ever deeper embroiled in treason, seeking and ultimately obtaining a Spanish pension in return for treasonable promises.
Fearing that they had been compromised by the information of an informer (who turned out to be Lord Howth), the Earls were advised by influential contacts on the continent that their lives were in danger and that a ship would be sent to convey them to safety. Thus the Earls departed Rathmullan, though they never reached Spain. Stormy weather resulted in landfall being made in France. The diplomatic furore which followed instigated a major international crisis involving the English, French and Spanish governments.
The French government rejected calls for their extradition, whereas the Earls’ allies during The Nine Years' War, the Spanish, were anxious to avoid causing offence to England in the wake of the Anglo-Spanish peace treaty of 1604. As a compromise the Earls ended up dwelling in Rome where they ended their days.
In the settlement made after the 9 years war, O'Neill received much better treatment than O'Donnell. The former was much stronger than the latter and, unlike O'Donnell, he did not have any competition for the chieftainship.
The newly appointed lord deputy, Chichester, and the attorney general Davies, had a hatred, not so much against the Gaels, by against the palatinate jurisdiction and excessive feudalism of land inheritance under the Gaelic system.
Ulster represented the worst forms of both of these and it was the only place left in Ireland that had not been penetrated by English Common Law.
Between 1604 and 1607 the Dublin government tried to implement these laws, especially those relating to the land. Davies proclaimed that all who had held freeholds in Ulster prior to the 9 years war should continue to do so. All dependency on Gaelic chieftains was prohibited. All inhabitants of Ulster were declared to be free, natural and immediate subjects of his majesty, and none were to be reputed or called the natives or natural followers of any lord or chieftain.
This effectively declared war on the chieftains source of strength, which was their hold over their followers especially in matters relating to land.
Extra judges were appointed and commissioners were sent to Ulster to ensure that freeholders were created among the Gaelic people.
Whereas Tyrone tried to stall this by appearing to agree with it, O'Donnell, in Donegal, had been guilty of depriving the MacSweenys and O'Boyles of lands that had previously been given to them in freehold. The government forced him to restore these freeholds which caused him to loose face.
In 1606, the commissioners concentrated on Monaghan, Fermanagh and Cavan, where lands were relocated creating many freeholds among the Gaelic people there. This influence in Fermanagh saw the Maguire later join with the other earls in flight.
Why did the Earls leave?
The native Irish sources provide few clues to the cause of the flight. The contemporary poets had little to say and the great Gaelic chronology of events (The Annals of the Four Masters), was even less informed.
The government side of things can be seen in the State Papers of the period and these can be divided into two categories.
(1) The Official account drawn up by the Dublin government.
(2) The counter charge of the earls themselves who sent petitions to the King from the continent, given their reasons for departing.
(These docs are on reserve in the library and I strongly advise all to get a copy of them)
The official accounts drawn up by the Dublin government is best described as that the earls had no cause of grievance, religious or civil; that they had plotted treason, and that they were ungrateful outlaws. Because of this they were charged with and found guilty of treason which meant that all of their lands was deemed confiscated to the King.
The counter charges of the earls themselves (see them on reserve) were many and varied. O'Donnell claimed religious reasons for leaving and because he could not cope with his Gaelic opponent, Sir Niall Garb O'Donnell.
O'Neill listed 20 reasons for leaving and these can be divided into the following four categories (1) Religious; (2) Resentment against appointed sheriffs; (3) complaints of attempts to deprive him of his property; (4) Dread of the ambitions of the Dublin officials. (see them on reserve).
What are the reasons that other historians put forward for their departure.
Dr. Hiram Morgan, the foremost historian of Hugh O’Neill and the flight of the earls had this to say.
The nine years’ war at the end of the 16th century was not caused by another attempt at Plantation in Ulster: in fact it was caused by an attempt to fragment the Gaelic lordships into smaller units and destroy the great Gaelic lords. And the first attempt happens at Monaghan when Monaghan is broken-up into small grants of land to the local Irish, and the local lord Hugh Roe McMahon is hung apparently outside his own door in Monaghan town which is a great shock to all the Gaelic Irish of Ulster.
Now in this situation the main beneficiaries of this policy are going to be the English officials who are now going to rule Ulster, and basically in those terms, the main English official who was going to gain by the so-called Reformation of Ulster was Henry Bagenal who was Marshall of Ireland; and he hoped to become the Lord President of Ulster and that is why there is great rivalry between Hugh O’Neill and Henry Bagenal.
Hugh O’Neill, in the first instance, tries to neutralise Henry Bagenal by enmeshing him in a marriage alliance - far from Hugh O’Neill falling in love with Mabel Bagenal, the business of his elopement with Mabel Bagenal is a much older man, using Hugh O’Neill’s undoubted charm to inveigle Mabel Bagenal into a marriage in an attempt to force the Bagenal family into an alliance with him, or at least neutralise them. But that doesn’t work and in fact it further embitters relations between O’Neill and the Bagenals.
In Western Ulster, Bingham, who is Governor of Connaught, has ambitions in Fermanagh and Donegal and is already active in Leitrim, also breaking up the lordship of Leitrim. After Sir Brian O’Rourke, because of assisting Armada sailors and survivors, had been executed in London at Highburn, County Leitrim was taken over and its lordships sort of broke it up, so that the power of the Gaelic lords has been broken. And similarly this was also underway in Clandeboye as well where the lordship is being made into segments, and English law is being opposed. And at the head of this whole process, Bagenal is the man who hopes he is going to be there ruling the thing, so this is why Hugh O’Neill takes such exception to Bagenal and the Gaelic lords of Ulster generally take such exception to this new policy of breaking up the lordships.
- Dr. Raymond Gillespie
One of the things which is happening in late 16th century Ulster society is that the great lords, O’Neill / O’Donnell, are increasingly stressing their power at the expense of those underneath. So when they leave with The Flight of the Earls in 1607, it raises a whole generation of lords of the second rank, people such as the Baron Enniskillen, Sir Phelim O’Neill - and these people who previously were nobodies, or very, very tangentially connected to the élite, suddenly become important landowners.
They get property under the Plantation scheme, they are... Many of these are the so-called deserving natives; many of them had fought for the Crown during the 9 years’ war in the 1590s; and these people become powerful figures within Irish society. They also become very anglicised.
It’s interesting that, in 1641, when the rebellion breaks out, the way the rebellion breaks out is Sir Phelim O’Neill going to have dinner with Sir Toby Caulfield. He knocks on the gate, the guards let him in: this is a common occurrence, he goes to dinner with this Englishman quite often. He then draws his sword and seizes the castle.
