The first siege of Enniskillen takes place at Enniskillen in Fermanagh, present day Northern Ireland, beginning on January 25, 1594, during the Nine Years’ War. In February 1594, the English have captured Enniskillen Castle from the Irish after a waterborne assault and massacre the defenders after they surrender. From May 1594, an Irish army under Hugh Maguire and Cormac MacBaron O’Neill besiege the English garrison in the castle, and in August they defeat an English relief force. A second relief force is allowed to resupply the garrison, but the castle remains cut off. Eventually, in May 1595, the English garrison surrenders to the Irish and are then massacred.
In 1593, Hugh Maguire, Chief of the Name and Lord of Fermanagh, objects to the behaviour of the newly-appointed English Crown sheriff Humphrey Willis. As he had done before being expelled by Hugh Roe O’Donnell from Tyrconnell in 1592, Willis is cattle raiding and plundering throughout Clan Maguire territory. Maguire is not strong enough to resist the sheriff, but after receiving reinforcements from Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, Maguire expelled Willis. In May and June 1593, Maguire and Brian Oge O’Rourke of West Breifne raids lands held by the English Lord President of Connaught, Richard Bingham. They destroy the town around Ballymote Castle. This is part of a proxy war waged to distract the Crown while Hugh O’Neill strengthens his position in Ulster. As hoped for, the Crown responds by sending an army under Sir Henry Bagenal and Gaelic leader Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone (outwardly still loyal to the Crown), who defeats Maguire’s force at the Battle of Belleek in October 1593. However, Maguire’s main force remains unscathed.
Enniskillen Castle sits on the River Erne and commands the strategic bottleneck between Upper and Lower Lough Erne. On January 25, 1594, English Captain John Dowdall arrives at Enniskillen by boat with three infantry companies. They dig trenches in which they place light cannons and musketeers, but the cannons are too small to make much of an impact on the castle walls. On January 30, Captain George Bingham arrives with 300 men.
They launch a waterborne assault on the castle. While musketeers in boats and artillery on land fire at the castle, a large boat holding 67 men anchors at a vulnerable part of the walls. They make a breach in the wall with pickaxes, forcing the Irish to take shelter in the keep. Dowdall threatens to destroy the castle with gunpowder if the garrison does not surrender. An Irish witness claims there are 36 fighting men and 40 women and children in the castle, while Dowdall claims there are 200. After they surrender, Dowdall has them put to the sword and claims to have killed 150. Captain Thomas Lee, who is present, describes this as a great dishonor to the Queen as the defenders had surrendered “uppon composicion, And your majesties worde being past to the poore beggars that kept it, they were all notwithstandinge dishonourably putt to the sworde in a most miserable state.”
Dowdall writes on February 2 to the Lord Deputy of Ireland that he has captured the castle from the “rebel” Hugh Maguire. An English garrison is left in place. A detailed coloured illustration of the siege was made shortly after.
A second siege begins on May 17, 1594. Now acting with the covert support of Hugh O’Neill, Hugh Maguire and Cormac MacBaron O’Neill lay siege to Enniskillen which is now isolated in hostile country. This siege ends on August 30 when Lord Deputy William Russell’s beleaguered garrison withdraws. Following this, there is a truce, but “subterfuge and deception were the hallmarks of this stage of the war.”
A third siege begins when Maguire raises the clan and attacks the castle again in January 1595. In May 1595 the garrison agrees to surrender Enniskillen to the Irish in exchange for their lives. However, the entire garrison is then massacred.
At the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, most of south-eastern Ireland falls to the Catholic insurgents. Roughly 1,000 rebels blockade Duncannon, which is heavily fortified and contains an English garrison of about 300 men. Around 150 of the English troops are killed in forays against the Irish at nearby Redmond’s Hall, but without siege artillery, or expertise in siege warfare, the rebels are unable to take Duncannon.
Hostilities continue throughout 1642, as the Irish, now organised as the Irish Confederacy raid the town’s hinterland. As in much of Ireland, the conflict is bitter. In one incident, Laurence Esmonde, 1st Baron Esmonde, the Royalist commander, hangs 16 Irish prisoners who have been taken at nearby Ramsgrange. In response, the Irish execute 18 English prisoners whom they have been holding.
In 1643, because of his need for troops to fight in the English Civil War, Charles I signs a ceasefire with the Irish Confederates. As a result, hostilities between Duncannon and the Catholic-held surrounding area are suspended.
However, in 1644, the English garrison of Cork, under Murrough O’Brien, 1st Earl of Inchiquin, unhappy with the Royalist truce with the Irish Confederates, declares for the English Parliament, who are to remain hostile to Irish Catholic forces throughout the 1640s. Esmonde, under pressure from elements of his garrison, also changes to the side of Parliament and effectively re-declares war on the Catholic Confederates. His motives are unclear: though he is a Protestant convert, the Esmonde family are Anglo-IrishRoman Catholics, and he owes his entire advancement to the Crown.
Duncannon is a strategically important town for two reasons. Firstly, it has formidable defences. Secondly and more importantly, its guns overlook the sea route to Waterford and New Ross, two of the most important Catholic-held towns and also ports at which the Confederates receive military aid from Catholic Europe.
Needing to keep this channel open and also fearing the presence of an English garrison deep in their territory, the Confederates’ Supreme Council in Kilkenny despatches Thomas Preston, general of their Leinster Army, to take Duncannon in January 1645. Preston has at his disposal 1,300 men, four cannons and a mortar. The mortar, the first of its kind to be used in Ireland has been donated by Spain the previous year and is commanded by a French military engineer named Nicholas La Loue. La Loue had served with Preston in Flanders and is chief of engineering in the Leinster Army.
Duncannon possesses formidable defences. For one thing, it is located on a peninsula and can only be approached from the north, the other three sides jutting out into the sea. Just off the town are docked four Parliamentarian ships, which are supplying Duncannon with food and reinforcements. Secondly, it possesse two lines of fortifications, the outer line being a more modern low deep rampart protected by a dry ditch and the inner wall being a medieval curtain wall, complete with three towers. However, it has two grave weaknesses, first, it is overlooked by a hill to the north, from which an attacker can fire into the town and, secondly, the water supply is located outside the walls.
Preston arrives at Duncannon on January 20 and proceeds to construct a ring of trenches which cut off Duncannon on its landward side. From the hill that overlooks the town to the north, his guns are able to fire on a squadron of four Parliamentarian ships that are docked off Duncannon and providing the town with supplies. The flagship, the Great Louis, is badly damaged, its mast wrecked by cannon fire, and it takes several more hits from the mortar as it tries to get away. The ship sinks in deep water, drowning its crew and 200 soldiers who are on board.
Having cut off Duncannon’s supply from the sea, Preston proceeds to dig saps closer to the walls, the ultimate aim being to bring his cannon close enough to the walls in order to blast a breach and open the way for an assault. His engineers also dig a mine underneath one of the town’s bastions. All the while, the town’s defenders are kept under a bombardment by the mortar and, as the Confederate troops get closer to the walls, by sharpshooters. On March 12, one such sniper kills the fort’s second in command, one Captain Lurcan, who is hit in the head by a bullet.
On March 16, by which time the Irish trenches are “within pistol shot of the walls,” Preston orders the mine to be exploded, opening a breach in Duncannon’s outer walls. The Irish infantry then assault the town, but are beaten off with some losses. The following day, Saint Patricks Day, Preston tries again and this time his troops succeed in taking the town’s outer, more modern walls but are stopped at Duncannon’s inner, medieval ramparts. They succeed in occupying one of the town’s towers for an hour before being beaten back. Geoffrey Baron, a Confederate politician, who keeps a diary of the siege, reports that 24 Irish soldiers are killed in the two assaults.
At this point, Preston summons Esmonde to surrender, before he has to “proceed to extremities.” This is a delicate threat, implying that if the town falls to an assault, its defenders will be put to the sword – as is customary in contemporary siege warfare. Esmonde is also advised to surrender by the Parliamentarian vice admiral, William Smith, who is anchored offshore with seven ships, but cannot break through to relieve the town. In a letter that reaches Esmonde on March 11, Smith warns him that “if the rebels take the fort by storming it, they will undoubtedly put you all to death…you should agree with thy adversary while thou art in the way.” Esmond has Smith’s letter publicly read to his troops after the assaults of March 16-17 to discourage those who favour holding out.
Alongside the risk of massacre, the English garrison is also very low on gunpowder and water. The town’s only source of fresh water, a well, is behind the Confederate siege lines.
In light of these facts, Esmonde formally surrenders Duncannon to Preston on March 18. The Confederates take possession of the town but its garrison is allowed to march away to Youghal, which is in Protestant hands. However, they have to leave behind the town’s 18 artillery pieces. Esmonde himself dies a feways after the end of the siege. Preston goes on to briefly besiege Youghal, but bad weather, a lack of supplies and squabbling with James Tuchet, 3rd Earl of Castlehaven, the Confederate Munster general, puts an end to his campaign for the winter.
The siege is of importance in that it reopens the sea route into Waterford and eliminates a hostile English garrison in Confederate territory. Preston, who had for many years been the Spanish military governor of Leuven, is highly experienced in siege warfare and his conduct of the siege draws widespread praise. Not only does he take the town, but he does so at a relatively low cost. Sixty-seven Confederate soldiers die in the siege, of whom roughly 30 die of disease. Given that the campaign is conducted in mid-winter, in an age when disease routinely kills many more soldiers than combat, this represents a considerable logistical achievement on the part of the Irish general.
The Great Lewis, the Parliamentarian ship sunk during the siege, is rediscovered in 1999 and raised in 2004.
Alongside his older brother, Connor Maguire, Maguire is a prime mover in the conspiracy which leads to the outbreak of rebellion in Ireland on October 23, 1641. He is tasked with securing County Fermanagh for the rebels, but is only partially successful, with several key fortresses in the county, including Enniskillen Castle, remaining under Protestant settler control. His attempt to murder Sir William Cole immediately prior to the rising fails, but the landowner Arthur Champion is killed in one of the first actions of the rebellion. In November 1641, he joins Felim O’Neill of Kinard at Newry to issue a proclamation in which the rebels claim they are acting in defence of King Charles and Catholicism. In December 1641, the Fermanagh army under Maguire slaughters many of the garrison and refugees in Tully Castle, apparently in retaliation for the killing of the garrison of a Maguire castle which had been taken by assault some days previously. He also destroys Castle Archdale and its neighbouring settler village, and kills eight Protestant settlers at Monea Castle. In early 1642, he is expelled from the Irish Parliament and in the summer of the same year he is made a colonel in Owen Roe O’Neill‘s army in Ulster.
Maguire is appointed Governor of Fermanagh by the authorities of the newly established Confederate Ireland. He commands the rebel reserve in the Battle of Benburb in June 1646. He leads raids into Protestant-held areas in east Ulster, before joining O’Neill in his campaigns in Leinster in the autumn of 1646. Later that year, he raids lands in Connacht controlled by the Royalist commander, Ulick Burke, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde. In August 1647, O’Neill and Maguire move the army to Leinster, where Maguire quarrels so vigorously with O’Neill over the payment of troops that the general orders his arrest and court-martials him. After the court-martial, Maguire and his supporters, about five or six regiments, draw up their forces and threaten to desert. The mutiny soon dissipates and Maguire remains allied to O’Neill.
In 1648, Maguire joins O’Neill in opposing the truce between the Confederates and Royalists. He plays a prominent role in the skirmishes and evasive manoeuvrings that occur between the two sides in central Ireland. In the winter of 1648, Maguire withdraws north and on November 13 he is killed while leading an attack on a fortress near Jamestown, County Leitrim.
During the Irish Confederate Wars, like most Irish Catholics, O’Brien sides with Confederate Ireland. His services to the Catholic Confederation are highly valued by the Supreme Council. He treats the wounded and supports Confederate soldiers throughout the conflict. He is against a peace treaty that does not guarantee Catholic freedom of worship in Ireland and in 1648 signs the declaration against the Confederate’s truce with Murrough O’Brien, 1st Earl of Inchiquin, who has committed atrocities such as the Sack of Cashel against Catholic clergy and civilians, and the declaration against the Protestant royalist leader, James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond, in 1650 who, due to his failure to resist the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland is not deemed fit to command Catholic troops. He is one of the prelates, who, in August 1650 offers the Protectorate of Ireland to Charles IV, Duke of Lorraine.
In 1651, Limerick is besieged and O’Brien urges a resistance that infuriates the Ormondists and Parliamentarians. Following surrender, he is found ministering to the wounded and ill inside a temporary plague hospital. As previously decided by the besieging army, O’Brien is denied quarter and protection. Along with Alderman Thomas Stritch and English Royalist officer Colonel Fennell, he is tried by a drumhead court-martial and sentenced to death by New Model Army General Henry Ireton. On October 30, 1651, O’Brien is first hanged at Gallows Green and then posthumously beheaded. His severed head is afterward displayed spiked upon the river gate of the city.
After the successful fight that is eventually spearheaded by Daniel O’Connell for Catholic emancipation between 1780 and 1829, interest revives as the Catholic Church in Ireland is rebuilding after three hundred years of being strictly illegal and underground. As a result, a series of re-publications of primary sources relating to the period of the persecutions and meticulous comparisons against archival Government documents in London and Dublin from the same period are made by Daniel F. Moran and other historians.
The first Apostolic Process under Canon Law begins in Dublin in 1904, after which a positio is submitted to the Holy See.
In the February 12, 1915 Apostolic decree, In Hibernia, heroum nutrice, Pope Benedict XV formally authorizes the formal introduction of additional Causes for Roman Catholic Sainthood.
During a further Apostolic Process held in Dublin between 1917 and 1930 and against the backdrop of the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War, the evidence surrounding 260 alleged cases of Roman Catholic martyrdom are further investigated, after which the findings are again submitted to the Holy See.
On September 27, 1992, O’Brien and sixteen other Irish Catholic Martyrs are beatified by Pope John Paul II. June 20th, the anniversary of the 1584 execution of Elizabethan era martyr Dermot O’Hurley, is assigned as the feast day of all seventeen. A large backlighted portrait of him is on display in St. Michael’s Church, Cappamore, County Limerick, which depicts him during The Siege of Limerick.
Following the trial and execution of the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, in May 1641, Ireland is in a state of turmoil. There is growing tension between Catholics and Protestants (particularly those of a Puritan tendency) with the former generally sympathetic to King Charles while the latter supports the English Parliament and the ScottishCovenanters in the dispute that shortly leads to the outbreak of the English Civil War. This forms part of the wider War of the Three Kingdoms.
On October 23, a major uprising breaks out in Ulster organised by leading members of the Gaelic aristocracy. The rebels attack Protestant plantation settlements as well as native Irish Protestants and take garrison towns held by the Irish Army. Irish government authorities in Dublin struggle to contain the insurgency with the limited number of troops they have at their disposal. A last-minute warning saves Dublin Castle from a surprise attack, although O’Neill is clearly unaware of the failure of the Dublin plot when he issues his proclamation.
After seizing several key strategic points in Ulster over the previous twenty-four hours, O’Neill makes his proclamation in Dungannon, a town that has symbolic importance as the traditional capital of the O’Neill dynasty.
In support of his actions, O’Neill claims to have a document from King Charles commissioning him. The Commission is supposedly signed under the Great Seal of Scotland. By declaring their loyalty to the Crown and defence of the Catholic religion, O’Neill and his followers adopt a political stance which is taken up by the subsequent Irish Confederation which governs rebel-controlled territory in the name of the King from 1642 until 1649. The Proclamation encourages many Catholics to believe they can lawfully join the rising with the King’s blessing, while Protestants are left demoralised.
O’Neill’s second and more trenchant proclamation is made “from our camp at Newry” on November 4, 1641 alongside Rory Maguire. He also publishes the actual royal commission that gives authority for his earlier proclamation. It is subtly different, in that it empowers him to arrest and seize property from all of Charles’s English Protestant subjects living in Ireland, but exempts his Irish and Scottish subjects.
Until the late nineteenth century historians generally accept that the commission is genuine, or at the very least Charles had secretly encouraged the Irish Catholics to launch a rising. Since then, for a variety of reasons, it has been considered to be a forgery produced by O’Neill and his associates without the knowledge of the King. They may well have acquired a copy of the Great Seal of Scotland when they captured the garrison town of Charlemont on October 23.
The historian David Stevenson notes that it would be unlikely that the commission would have been addressed to O’Neill. Had it been genuine it would almost certainly have been issued to more senior Irish Royalists such as the James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond, or the leading Catholic noble of Ulster, Randal MacDonnell, 1st Marquess of Antrim. It is also unlikely to have been issued at Edinburgh as O’Neill claimed. However, King Charles was in Edinburgh on October 1, dealing with Scottish political matters.
Forgery or not, King Charles publicly proclaims all the Irish rebels as traitors on January 1, 1642.
That the Commission is genuine is widely accepted in England and Scotland by the King’s opponents and even some of his own supporters. It seems to tie in with earlier rumours of an army plot which had suggested that Charles might bring over the New Irish Army, made up largely of Ulster Catholics, to impose his will on England and Scotland. Anger at the King’s alleged links with the insurgents grow – particularly as horror stories of atrocities committed, such as the Portadown Massacre, begin to filter across the Irish Sea. Tensions arising from news of the Irish rebellion is a factor in the English push to Civil War in early 1642.
The Scottish authorities dispatch an Army which quickly retakes much of Ulster from the insurgents. Once the English Civil War breaks out in October 1642, Charles’ emissaries begin negotiations with the Irish rebels for their support, which seems to present further evidence to his opponents of his links with the Catholic Ulster leaders. Many of these later dealings are exposed when Charles private letters are captured during the Battle of Naseby (1645) and published as King’s Cabinet Opened.
When O’Neill is captured in 1653 following the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, he is put on trial for his life. The authorities offer to spare him if he will repeat his earlier claims that Charles had ordered the Catholics to rise in 1641. O’Neill now refuses to implicate the King, who had been executed four years earlier, and is put to death himself. Nonetheless, the English Republicans continue to use O’Neill’s earlier claims of the King’s involvement to justify their decision to commit regicide.
Sir Arthur Rawdon, 2nd Baronet, soldier, and horticulturalist, is born on October 17, 1662. He builds a large part of Moira, County Down in the seventeenth century. Known as the “Father of Irish Gardening” and “The Cock of the North,” he is a keen botanist, and brings over 400 different species of plants to Moira from Jamaica.
Rawdon marries Ellen Graham, daughter of Sir James Graham of Congleton in Cheshire. They have at least two children, John and Isabella.
Rawdon inherits the lands at Moira after his father dies. He rebuilds a mansion, surrounded by trees, sheep and huge gardens. On this estate, he builds the first hothouse in Europe.
Rawdon is a botanist and imports 400 plant species from Jamaica, earning the name “Father of Irish Gardening.” His garden has a labyrinth, ponds, and canals. The trees include the “Locust of Virginia” which is 30 feet high and has a trunk of at least a foot and a half in diameter. For two generations the garden is maintained.
Rawdon dies on October 17, 1695, his thirty-third birthday, and John succeeds to the baronetcy and estate as a minor. The plant collections, perhaps inevitably, decline after his death, though his wife and sisters share his interest in natural history. Some of his plant specimens are still preserved in Hans Sloane‘s herbarium in the Natural History Museum, London.
Today in Moira many places are named after Sir Arthur Rawdon, including Rawdon Court, off Main Street. Off Meeting Street there is Rawdon Place which is a housing street. Parts of the remains of his mansion are still visible.
After the Battle of the Boyne, William occupies Dublin and the Jacobites retreat to the west of Ireland. William assaults and besieges Limerick in August 1690 but is repulsed. To secure the Jacobite-held ports of Cork and Kinsale on the southern coast, he dispatches a force under John Churchill, then 1st Earl of Marlborough.
Marlborough reaches Cork by sea on September 21, 1690. His English forces are 5,000 strong and he also has at his disposal a fleet which blockades the port of Cork. He captures several of the harbour’s defences, including Fort Camden, and lands troops at Passage West on September 24, before setting up his base at Red Abbey, to the south of the walled city. Approaching from the northern, landward side are 4,000 Danish troops under the Ferdinand Willem, Duke of Württemberg-Neuenstadt.
The Williamites take the forts, such as Elizabeth Fort, which command the hills around Cork and commences a bombardment of the city from the heights. When a breach is opened in the city walls, the city’s garrison opens surrender negotiations, asking to be allowed to leave Cork and join the main Jacobite army at Limerick. Marlborough refuses the request, although Württemberg is in favour of granting the terms.
A few days later, the Williamites mount a joint English-Danish assault of the breach from the south. Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Grafton, is reputedly mortally wounded while leading this assault. After the Williamites reach the walls, the Governor of Cork, Roger McElligott, opens new surrender talks and agrees that the garrison will become prisoners and will surrender their arms and stores. Marlborough accepts and the city surrenders.
In spite of this, the Williamite troops sack the city, do a great deal of damage, looting much property and abusing the Catholic inhabitants. Many civilians are killed before Württemberg and Marlborough restore order.
It remains for the Williamites to take nearby Kinsale, which is strongly defended by two forts, the Old Fort, also known as James’s Fort, and the New Fort or Charles Fort. Marlborough assaults these fortifications but is unable to take them by storm. The Old Fort, defended by the Governor Colonel Cornelius O’Driscoll, falls after an assault is made possible by an accidental explosion in its gunpowder magazine, which kills forty. After some 200 are slain in the following assault, including Colonel O’Driscoll, the rest surrender, receiving quarter. Charles Fort, however, holds out for ten days and surrenders only after receiving guarantees that its 1,200-strong garrison can march away to Limerick. It is defended by the elderly and experienced Governor Sir Edward Scott, and his Deputy Governor Colonel Donal IV O’Donovan.
Doire Leathan is on the eastern shores of Teelin Bay, being just across from the village of Teelin. The battle is part of the ongoing succession dispute for the leadership of the Gaelic lordship of O’Donnell. A combined force of Irish clans and ScottishRedshankmercenaries hired by Iníon Dubh (pronounced “In-neen Doo”) defeat and kill Sir Domhnall Ó Domhnaill (Sir Donnell O’Donnell). The Tanist of Tír Conaill, Sir Domhnall’s younger half-brother and Iníon Dubh’s son, Red Hugh O’Donnell, is still imprisoned in Dublin Castle, but later rises following a subsequent escape to lead Clan O’Donnell and is a prominent figure during the Nine Years’ War.
According to the Annals of the Four Masters, “The son of O’Donnell, i.e. Donnell, the son of Hugh, son of Manus, son of Hugh Duv, son of Hugh Roe, son of Niall Garv, son of Turlough of the Wine, attempt to depose his father, after he had grown weak and feeble from age, and after his other son had been imprisoned in Dublin; so that Donnell brought under his power and jurisdiction that part of Tirconnell from the mountain westwards, i.e. from Bearnas to the River Drowes; and also the people of Boylagh and Tir-Boghaine. It was a cause of great anguish and sickness of mind to Ineenduv, the daughter of James Mac Donnell, that Donnell should make such an attempt, lest he might attain the chieftainship of Tirconnell in preference to her son, Hugh Roe, who was confined in Dublin, and who she hoped would become chief, whatever time God might permit him to return from his captivity; and she, therefore, assembled all the Kinel-Connell who were obedient to her husband, namely, O’Doherty, with his forces; Mac Sweeny-na dTuath (Owen Oge), with his forces; and Mac Sweeny Fanad, with his forces; with a great number of Scots along with them. After Donnell O’Donnell had received intelligence that this muster had been made to oppose him, he assembled his forces to meet them. These were they who rose up to assist him on this occasion: Mac SweenyBanagh (Donough, the son of Mulmurry); a party of the Clan Sweeney of Munster, under the conduct of the three sons of Owen, the son of Mulmurry, son of Donough, son of Turlough, and their forces; and O’Boyle (Teige Oge, the son of Teige, son of Turlough), with all his forces, assembled. The place where the son of O’Donnell happened to be stationed along with these chieftains was Doire-leathan at the extremity of Tir-Boghaine, to the west of Gleann Choluim Cille. The other party did not halt until they came to them to that place; and a battle ensued between them, which was fiercely fought on both sides. The Scots discharged a shower of arrows from their elastic bows, by which they pierced and wounded great numbers, and, among the rest, the son of O’Donnell himself, who, being unable to display prowess or defend himself, was slain at Doire-leathan, on one side of the harbour of Telinn, on the 14th of September. Seldom before that time had his enemies triumphed over him; and the party by whom he was slain had not been by any means his enemies until they encountered on this occasion; and although this Donnell was not the rightful heir of his father, it would have been no disgrace to Tirconnell to have elected him as its chief, had he been permitted to attain to that dignity. In this conflict were slain along with Donnell the three sons of Owen, son of Mulmurry, son of Donough above mentioned, together with two hundred others, around Donnell.”
(Pictured: Hugh Roe O’Donnell, otherwise known in history and lore as Red Hugh O’Donnell)
Butler is born c. 1467, the third son of James Butler and Sabh Kavanagh. His father is Lord Deputy of Ireland, Lord of the Manor of Advowson of Callan (1438–87). His father’s family is the Polestown cadet branch of the Butler dynasty that started with Sir Richard Butler of Polestown, second son of James Butler, 3rd Earl of Ormond. His mother, whose first name is variously given as Sabh, Sadhbh, Saiv, or Sabina, is a princess of Leinster, eldest daughter of Donal Reagh Kavanagh, MacMurrough (1396–1476), King of Leinster.
In 1485, Butler marries Lady Margaret FitzGerald, daughter of Gerald FitzGerald, 8th Earl of Kildare and Alison FitzEustace. The marriage is political, arranged with the purpose of healing the breach between the two families. In the early years of their marriage, Margaret and her husband are reduced to penury by James Dubh Butler, a nephew, heir to the earldom and agent of the absentee Thomas Butler, 7th Earl of Ormond, who resides in England. Butler retaliates by murdering James Dubh in an ambush in 1497. He is pardoned for his crime on February 22, 1498.
Butler and Margaret have three sons: James (1496–1546), also called “the Lame,” who succeeds him as the 9th Earl, Richard (1500–1571), who becomes the 1st Viscount Mountgarret, and Thomas, who is slain by Dermoid Mac Shane, MacGillaPatrick of Upper Ossory, and six daughters: Margaret, Catherine (1506–53), Joan (born 1528), married James Butler, 10th Baron Dunboyne, Ellice (1481–1530), Eleanor, married Thomas Butler, 1st Baron Cahir, and Helen, also called Ellen (1523–97), married Donough O’Brien, 2nd Earl of Thomond.
Butler also has an illegitimate son, Edmund Butler, who becomes Archbishop of Cashel and conforms to the established religion in 1539.
During the prolonged absence from Ireland of the earls, Butler’s father lays claim to the Ormond land and titles. This precipitates a crisis in the Ormond succession when the seventh earl later dies without a male heir. On March 20, 1489, King Henry VII appoints him High Sheriff of County Kilkenny. He is knighted before September 1497. The following year (1498) he seizes Kilkenny Castle and with his wife, the dynamic daughter of the Earl of Kildare, likely improve the living accommodations there. On February 28, 1498, he receives a pardon for crimes committed in Ireland, including the murder of James Ormonde, heir to the 7th Earl. He is also made Seneschal of the Liberty of Tipperary on June 21, 1505, succeeding his distant relation, James Butler, 9th Baron Dunboyne.
One of the heirs general to the Ormond inheritance is Thomas Boleyn, whose mother is Lady Margaret Butler, second daughter of the 7th Earl. Thomas Boleyn is the father of Anne, whose star is rising at the court of King Henry VIII. As the king wants the titles of Ormond and Wiltshire for Thomas Boleyn, he induces Butler and his coheirs to resign their claims on February 17, 1528. Aided by the king’s Chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Butler is created Earl of Ossory instead. On February 22, 1538, the earldom of Ormond is restored to him.
In Enniskillen, armed Williamite civilians drawn from the local Protestant population organise a formidable irregular military force. The armed civilians of Enniskillen ignore an order from Robert Lundy that they should fall back to Derry and instead launch guerrilla attacks against the Jacobites. Operating with Enniskillen as a base, they carry out raids against the Jacobite forces in Connacht and Ulster, plundering Trillick, burning Augher Castle, and raiding Clones.
A Jacobite army of about 3,000 men, led by Justin McCarthy, Viscount Mountcashel (in the Jacobite peerage), advance on them from Dublin. Lord Mountcashel’s men consist of three regiments of infantry and two of dragoons. The regiments include his own regiment, Mountcashel (approx. 650 men in 13 companies), The O’Brien regiment (also 13 companies of 650 men), and the Lord Bophin (Burke) regiment. He also has the dragoon regiments of Cotter and Clare, each with seven companies of about 350 dragoons. On July 28, 1689, Mountcashel’s force encamps near Enniskillen and bombards the Williamite outpost of Crom Castle to the southeast of Enniskillen. Crom Castle is almost 20 miles (32 km) from Enniskillen by road and about 5 miles (8.0 km) from Newtownbutler.
Two days later, they are confronted by about 2,000 Williamite ‘Inniskilliniers’ under Colonel Berry, Colonel William Wolseley and Gustave Hamilton. The Jacobite dragoons under Antoine Hamilton stumble into an ambush laid by Berry’s men near Lisnaskea and are routed, taking 230 casualties. Mountcashel manages to drive off Berry’s cavalry with his main force but is then faced with the bulk of the Williamite strength under Wolseley. There is some debate in the sources over troop numbers, though it is believed that Mountcashel has a large number of poorly armed conscripts. Unwisely, Mountcashel halts and draws up his men for battle about a mile south of Newtownbutler.
Williamite histories claim that many of the Jacobite troops flee as the first shots are fired. Up to 1,500 of them are hacked down or drowned in Upper Lough Erne when pursued by the Williamite cavalry. Of the 500 men who try to swim across the Lough, only one survives. Approximately 400 Jacobite officers, along with Lord Mountcashel, the Jacobite commander, are captured and later exchanged for Williamite prisoners, with the other Jacobites being killed. These claims seem unlikely, for several reasons. Each Irish regiment includes approximately 40 officers. The entire force, therefore, would include only about 200 officers. Many of these officers are accounted for in an October 1689 roll call, which shows approximately a 15–20% change in the officer roll call since July for the infantry regiments and 5% for the dragoons. This totals some 20–30 officers in all. Also, the Mountcashel regiment’s roll call for October shows that companies which would normally have 50–60 men, have around 25, which results in a loss of approximately 300–400 men for this regiment. The Cotter and Clare dragoons who ride away from the battle do not have significant losses, based on the October 1689 roll call. Assuming the other two infantry regiments suffer similar losses, gives a total loss of 1,200–1,300. Given their officers are recorded in the October roll and show fewer losses than the Mountcashel regiment among officers, there may be fewer losses in the ranks as well. The Williamite histories acknowledge that they captured approximately 400, including men who are later sent to Derry, which would indicate a total loss of killed, wounded, and missing of 800–900, and likely less. This number is necessarily an estimate based on the available data but should be contrasted with Williamite claims that they killed and drowned 2,000. It appears likely that a couple of hundred men from Mountcashel’s regiment may have fled into the bogs toward Lough Erne, and some of them who made it to the river tried to swim and were drowned, leading to the story of the hundreds drowned.
The battle is still commemorated by the Orange Order in Ulster and is mentioned in the traditional unionist song, “The Sash.”
The battle is significant in another way: the regiments on both sides go on to have long and famous histories. On the Williamite side, the Innsikilling Regiment (27th Foot), and on the Jacobite side, the Clare and Mountcashel/Lee/Bulkeley regiments of the Irish Brigade. The two Irish regiments face off again at the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745, where the Irish Brigade famously drives the British army from the battlefield with a charge in the final stage of the battle.
seamus dubhghaill 