Henry O'neill, Prince of the Irish of Ulster (1455-89): a Missed
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Dr Katharine Simms is a Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College Henry O’Neill, Prince of the Dublin, where she was a Senior Lecturer in Medieval History to 2010. She is author of From Kings to Warlords: the Irish of Ulster (1455-89): a Changing Political Structure of Gaelic Ireland in the Later Middle Ages, and Medieval Gaelic Sources together with missed opportunity? 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. MARY KATHARINE SIMMS Lecturer in Medieval History 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, Ulster in 6th century from Liam de Paor St Patrick’s World, p. 292 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 The story goes that the eldest brother was Conall, who founded the kingdom of Tír Conaill, medieval genealogists as the common ancestor of both the Uí Néill of the that is, all Donegal except the peninsula of Inishowen (Inis Eógain), while his younger north and midland kingdoms, and the Uí Briúin royal dynasty of Connacht, brother Eógan took possession of Inishowen itself. Although later tales show these two, and through Niall’s elder brother Brión. a third brother Enda, defeating the Ulaid in a series of great battles and conquering all Ulster From this scientific finding, first published in the American Journal of in their own lifetime, earlier sources give a different picture of gradual expansion over time. Human Genetics in 2006, it is possible to argue that the legendary account The Annals of Ulster, and Adomnán’s Life of Columba, record a great battle fought in 563 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 between rival groups of the Ulaid themselves, at Móin Doire Lothair in north Derry. The from the royal line of Connacht, invaded Ulster by way of the pass below winning side in this civil war had employed Cenél Conaill and Cenél Eógain as mercenary Ben Bulben mountain in Sligo a century or so before the arrival of St soldiers, Cenél meaning the kindred, or descendants of the princes Conall and Eógan. The Patrick, at a time when the province of Ulster was still ruled by the Ulaid, victorious ‘Cruthin’ (Irish Picts) kings of Ulaid rewarded Cenél Eógain with lands in north a people based in Eastern Ulster, who dominated the mid-Ulster group of smaller tribes known as the Airgialla. 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, The Cenél Conaill found themselves boxed into Donegal, deprived of the over- had dominated the Northern Uí Néill, ruling three cantreds of Tír Conaill, while kingship and subject to constant attempts from the kings of Cenél Eógain to Cenél Eogain had only one cantred in Inishowen. Cenél Conaill were still in the conquer and dominate them, which they as constantly resisted. The mountainous lead a hundred years later when King Domnall mac Áeda meic Ainmirech, a cousin nature of Donegal made their heartland almost impossible to conquer. Moreover of St Columba, who was king of Cenél Conaill, and over-king of the Uí Néill group the most powerful kings of Cenél Conaill were able to compensate themselves to of kingdoms, finally defeated the Ulaid at the battle of Mag Roth or Moira, Co. some extent by spreading their authority south of BenBulben into Carbury Down in 637 A.D., permanently confining them to the Antrim-Down area Drumcliff in north Sligo as far as Ballysadare Bay. henceforward, after which the annals call Domnall ‘King of Ireland’, (rí Érenn) 2) The rise of modern surnames and the Anglo-Norman invasion 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. The Ulster surnames we are familiar with today developed gradually between the However, as the descendants of Eógan began to extend their power southwards tenth and twelfth centuries, and at this point it must be made quite clear that from the north coast of Derry to conquer and colonise the Airgialla in mid-Ulster, whereas the whole federation of Uí Néill dynasties north and south took their re-naming the area Tír Eógain (Tyrone) as against the Tír Conaill dynastic appellation from their fourth or fifth-century forefather, Niall of the Nine (Tyrconnell/Donegal) of the Cenél Conaill dynasty, they ended up in possession Hostages (Niall Noígiallach), the medieval O’Neills traced themselves to a more of a larger, more fertile kingdom than the Cenél Conaill, with much closer access modern ancestor, Niall Glúndub or Black-knee, king of Cenél Eógain and high-king to the even more fertile midlands of Meath and Westmeath, where the other of Tara, who died in 919. His grandson, the high-king Domnall of Armagh who branches of the Uí Néill were prepared to acknowledge the overkingship of the died in 980 was the first to call himself Domnall Ua Néill, or Domnall grandson of kings of Cenél Eógain as alternating in the highkingship of Tara with their own Niall (see diagram above). The first O’Donnell to use their surname was King leaders. 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 Diagram showing alternating highkingship between the Hugh de Lacy the younger in 1205. However the two newly established O’Donnell kings of Meath and Tír Eógain 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. In the thirteenth and early fourteenth century the peninsula of Inishowen As fast as he built motte and bailey castles round the borders of Ulster they demolished was also claimed by the de Burgh earls of Ulster, who had already planted them. 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 The unspoken price for this cooperation from the O’Donnells was the transfer of and MacMahons, even from the O’Donnells at the height of the power of all lands west of the Mourne/Foyle river, that is the peninsula of Inishowen and the Finn Richard de Burgh, ‘the Red Earl of Ulster’ (d. 1326). It was only after the Valley, to Tír Conaill, and this claim was to be resisted by the O’Neills for centuries, leading assassination of the Red Earl’s grandson, the young Earl William de Burgh, to constant border warfare. To this day the difference between the historic borders of Tír known as the ‘Brown Earl’, which took place in 1333, and was followed by a Conaill, and the modern county of Donegal, which includes the lands annexed by the joint revolt of his Gaelic Irish and Anglo-Irish vassals, that Inishowen was medieval O’Donnells, can be seen by comparing the borders of the diocese of Raphoe, fully annexed by O’Donnell and his chief vassal O’Doherty, who had hitherto originally established in the twelfth century, with the county boundary of Donegal, marked ruled Ardmire in the area of Raphoe.