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Tag Archives: Irish Army (1661-1801)


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The Proclamation of Dungannon

The Proclamation of Dungannon is a document produced by Sir Phelim O’Neill on October 24, 1641, in the Irish town of Dungannon. O’Neill is one of the leaders of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, which was launched the previous day. O’Neill’s Proclamation sets out a justification of the uprising. He claims to have been given a commission signed and sealed on October 1 by the King of England, Scotland and Ireland Charles I that commands him to lead Irish Catholics in defence of the Kingdom of Ireland against Protestants who sympathise with Charles’s opponents in the Parliament of England.

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 Scottish Covenanters 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.


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Birth of Sir Arthur Rawdon, Soldier & Horticulturist

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 plays an active role in the Williamite War in Ireland. Following the Glorious Revolution he is involved in the raising of the Army of the North, a Protestant force opposed to the Jacobite Irish Army.

Rawdon’s father is Sir George Rawdon, 1st Baronet. His mother is George’s second wife, Dorothy, daughter of Edward Conway, 2nd Viscount Conway. He is a Member of Parliament for County Down, and a general in the army of King William III of England. Besieged at Derry, he falls ill, but manages to escape, though his military career is at an end.

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.


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The Second Siege of Enniskillen

The siege of Enniskillen takes place at Enniskillen in Fermanagh, present day Northern Ireland, in 1594 and 1595, during the Nine Years’ War. In February 1594, the English had captured Enniskillen Castle from the Irish after a waterborne assault and massacred the defenders after they surrendered. 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, had objected 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 expels Willis. In May and June 1593, Maguire and Brian Oge O’Rourke of West Breifne raid 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 Tyrone 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 defeat Maguire’s force at the Battle of Belleek in October 1593. However, Maguire’s main force remains unscathed.

On May 17, 1594, now acting with the covert support of Tyrone, Hugh Maguire and Cormac MacBaron O’Neill lay siege to Enniskillen which is now isolated in hostile country. Their army consists of 1,400 foot soldiers and 600 horsemen. It quickly grows with support arriving from Hugh Roe O’Donnell. The English commander, James Eccarsall, has only 50 foot soldiers and 24 horsemen to defend the castle, along with some light artillery. Eccarsall launches a sortie by boat but has to retreat under heavy fire. Irish fortifications cut off access by river and the castle is attacked nightly. Many of the garrison fall sick due to food shortages and exhaustion brought on by incessant skirmishing with the Irish.

On August 7, Maguire and his allies defeat an English relief force for Enniskillen at the Battle of the Ford of the Biscuits. A second relief force commanded by the Lord Deputy William Russell is sent by another route. Although it is not attacked by the Irish, none of Russell’s scouts or messengers reach the castle nor return. Russell relieves the beleaguered garrison by August 30 with six months supplies, then withdraws. Following this, there is a truce, but “subterfuge and deception were the hallmarks of this stage of the war.”


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Birth of Piers Butler, 3rd Viscount Galmoye

Piers Butler, 3rd Viscount Galmoye, otherwise Viscount Galmoy, an Anglo-Irish nobleman, is born on March 21, 1652. He is descended from Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond, and is the son of Edward Butler, 2nd Viscount Galmoye, and Eleanor (née Whyte), daughter of Sir Nicholas Whyte of Leixlip, County Kildare.

Butler succeeds to the title at the age of fifteen and was educated at the University of Oxford, taking the degree of LL.D. in 1677. In 1678, he is commissioned as a captain in Colonel Thomas Dongan‘s regiment, which is disbanded before he takes up his post.

Under James II of England Butler is Privy Councillor of Ireland, Lieutenant of the County of Kilkenny, and Colonel of the 2nd Regiment of Irish Horse. Serving as part of the Jacobite Irish Army, he commands a regiment at the Battle of the Boyne and serves with distinction in the Battle of Aughrim. He is one of the signatories of the Treaty of Limerick. At the Glorious Revolution, he might have been able to secure his old estates of 10,000 acres in Kilkenny and 5,000 in Wexford, had he consented to give his allegiance to William III of England rather than following Patrick Sarsfield and James II into exile in France. Instead, the English Parliament attaints him and declares his titles forfeited in 1697 by the statute 9 Will. 3. c. 4.

In 1692, Butler is created Earl of Newcastle in County Limerick in the Jacobite peerage of Ireland. In France he is named Colonel of the 2nd Queen’s Regiment of Irish Horse in the service of that country and serves with distinction in various battles of the War of the Spanish Succession, also becoming a Lieutenant-General in the Spanish army. He is at the Siege of Roses in 1693, and in 1694 is a Brigadier attached to the army of Germany. He serves in Italy and other parts of Continental Europe from 1701 to 1703, sharing all the fortunes of the Irish Brigade. He later serves in the French army as a Lieutenant-General. He is created Brigadier of Cavalry in 1694.

Butler marries Anne Mathew and with her has one son, Colonel Edward Butler, who is killed at the Battle of Malplaquet in 1709. After the death of his first wife, he marries Henrietta FitzJames, the illegitimate daughter of King James II and Arabella Churchill and the widow of Henry Waldegrave, 1st Baron Waldegrave, on April 3, 1695. She deserts him and returns to England.

Butler dies at the age of eighty-eight in Paris on June 18, 1740, and is buried at St. Paul’s there. John C. O’Callaghan writes in Irish Brigades in the Service of France (Glasgow, 1870): “The successive claimants of the title of Galmoy were officers in France down to the Revolution; in whose armies, as well as in others, various gentlemen have honourably represented a name, of which the illustrious General Lafayette is related to have said, in the war for the independence of the United States of America, that ‘whenever he wanted anything well done, he got a Butler to do it.'”

Notwithstanding the attainder, the viscountcy is assumed by his nephew, James Butler of the Irish Brigade in France, the son of the Viscount’s brother, Richard Butler of Galmoye.


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The Break of Dromore

The Break of Dromore takes place on March 14, 1689, near Dromore, County Down in the early stages of the Williamite War in Ireland. It features Catholic Jacobite troops under Richard Hamilton and Protestant Williamite militia led by Hugh Montgomery and Arthur Rawdon.

The Protestant forces are taken by surprise and there is little fighting, reflected in the term “Break,” a Scottish word for rout. Victory secures eastern Ulster for the Jacobites but they fail to fully exploit their success.

While much of the Protestant population of east Ulster supports the claim of William III to thrones of Ireland, England and Scotland, the rest of Ireland, including the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, and the army, support James II. As a result, war breaks out in Ireland after James is deposed in the Glorious Revolution. At the start of the conflict, the Jacobites are left in control of two fortified positions at Carrickfergus and Charlemont in territory which is predominantly Williamite in sympathy. The local Williamites raise a militia and meet in a council at Hillsborough. They make an ineffective assault on Carrickfergus. However, this is easily beaten off and a local Catholic cleric named O’Hegarty reports that the Williamite are badly armed and trained.

The Jacobite commander in the north is Richard Hamilton, an experienced soldier who serves with the French military from 1671 to 1685, when he is appointed a colonel in the Irish Army. In September 1688, he and his regiment are transferred to England. When James flees into exile, he is held in the Tower of London. Released on parole by William in February, he is sent to negotiate with Talbot but drops this mission once back in Ireland. Alexander Osbourne, a Presbyterian clergyman, is sent to offer the Hillsborough council a pardon in return for surrender but they refuse, reportedly encouraged by Osbourne. On March 8, Hamilton marches north from Drogheda with 2,500 men to subdue the Williamites by force.

On March 14 Hamilton crosses the River Lagan and attacks a 3,000 strong Williamite force under Lord Mount Alexander at Dromore. Alexander’s cavalry falls back in disorder following a charge by the Jacobite dragoons. Seeing this, Hamilton orders a general advance of his infantry and the Williamite foot flee toward Dromore itself. They are overtaken in the village by the Jacobite cavalry and slaughtered, roughly 400 being killed and the rest fleeing for their lives.

Lord Mount Alexander rides to Donaghadee and takes a ship to England, while many other Protestants leave for Northern England or Scotland. Hamilton’s men capture Hillsborough, along with £1,000 and large stocks of food but fail to pursue their opponents. This allows the bulk of the militia under Rawdon and Henry Baker to reach Coleraine, then make their way to Derry, where they take part in the successful defence of the city.


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The Capture of Bandon

The Capture of Bandon begins on February 23, 1689, when the town of Bandon, County Cork, is forcibly seized from its rebellious Protestant inhabitants by force of Irish Army troops under Justin McCarthy. The skirmishing at the town takes place during the early stages of the Williamite War in Ireland. The Jacobite success at Bandon helps suppress any chance of a general Munster uprising against the rule of James II similar to that which occurs in Ulster the same year. The slogan “No Surrender!” is believed to have been first used at Bandon and subsequently taken up, more famously, by the defenders at the Siege of Derry later in the year.

In 1685, the Catholic James II comes to the throne. This leads to a sharp reversal of government policy in Ireland, which had previously favoured the Protestant inhabitants. This is quickly changed by James’ representative Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell. Under Talbot’s administration, the army and civil government are mostly purged of Protestants, who are replaced by Catholics. In Bandon, the previous town burgesses are replaced by Catholic nominees.

Talbot’s actions lead to a growing hostility amongst the Protestant inhabitants across the island toward the King and his Irish government. Bandon is a historic centre of Protestants, dating back to the Plantation of Munster in the Elizabethan era and is a natural focus of dissent against James’s rule. In 1688, a similar opposition in England leads to the Glorious Revolution, in which William III successfully invades with a Dutch Army. Many Protestants now believe William to be their rightful King while Catholics, and some Protestants, remain loyal to James. During the growing turmoil, many rural County Cork Protestants come to shelter in Bandon.

Fearing a potential outbreak of rebellion in Bandon will occur, the government sends a detachment of the Irish Army under Captain Daniel O’Neill to take the town. They reportedly enter on a Sunday morning while the inhabitants are attending church services. The following day, February 24, sometimes referred to as “Black Monday,” the townspeople rise and attack the soldiers. Various sources say between three and eight of the redcoats are killed and the remainder are driven out of the town. Using their captured weapons, the Protestants then make an effort to prepare Bandon to withstand an assault.

Having received word about the growing rebellion in the county, Talbot in Dublin has already dispatched six companies of infantry under Justin McCarthy, an experienced Irish Catholic soldier. Instead of immediately assaulting Bandon, McCarthy first seizes nearby Cork, another major centre of Protestants in the south of the country and clamps down on other potential dissidents. He then proceeds to Bandon with his troops, plus some cavalry and artillery. Although they had previously hung out a banner proclaiming “No Surrender,” the defenders negotiate a surrender in exchange for generous conditions. Despite the usual punishment for rebellion being death, the town corporation is fined £1,000 and the walls are ordered to be demolished.

The comparatively light terms imposed on the town are part of a wider attempt by King James to convince Protestants of his goodwill toward them. It angers more hardline Catholics, including McCarthy’s nephew, Donough MacCarthy, 4th Earl of Clancarty, who wants a harsher punishment for the rebels.

The fighting at Bandon is part of a succession of defeats of locally raised Protestant troops both across Munster (at Castlemartyr) and Ireland as a whole, with the Ulster-raised Army of the North suffering heavy defeats at the Break of Dromore and the Battle of Cladyford. The advance of the mainly Catholic Jacobite Army is halted by the successful Protestant defence of Enniskillen and Derry. The arrival of large-scale reinforcements under Frederick Schomberg and King William reverse the tide, and Dublin is captured following the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. The same year, Bandon is re-taken by Protestant forces following John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough‘s successful Siege of Cork. The walls are not rebuilt, as they are becoming increasingly militarily obsolete.