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.
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.
Magee serves as a missionary priest in Nigeria for almost six years before being appointed Procurator General of St. Patrick’s Society in Rome. In 1969, he is an official of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples in Rome, when he is chosen by Pope Paul VI to be one of his private secretaries. On Pope Paul’s death he remains in service as a private secretary to his successor, Pope John Paul I and Pope John Paul II. He is the only man to hold the position of private secretary to three Popes in Vatican history. He also acts as chaplain to the Vatican’s Swiss Guard.
On April 28, 1981, Magee travels, without the knowledge or approval of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, to the Long Kesh Detention Centre outside Belfast to meet with Irish Republican Army (IRA) hunger strikerBobby Sands. He seeks, unsuccessfully, to convince Sands to end his hunger strike. Sands dies the following week.
Magee plays a role in the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference where he is featured in the modernisation of the liturgy in Ireland. His pastoral approach places heavy emphasis on the promotion of vocations to the priesthood but, after some initial success, the number of vocations in the diocese of Cloyne declines, a trend reflected across the island of Ireland. He appoints Ireland’s first female “faith developer” and entrusts her with the task of transforming an Irish rural diocese into a cosmopolitan pastoral model using techniques borrowed from several urban dioceses in the United States.
Magee involves himself in a dispute with the Friends of St. Colman’s Cathedral, a local conservationist group in Cobh which organises an effective and professional opposition to the Bishop’s plans to re-order the interior of the cathedral, plans similar to previous re-orderings in Killarney, Cork and Limerick cathedrals. In an oral hearing conducted by An Bord Pleanála, the Irish Planning Board, it emerges that irregularities have occurred in the planning application that are traced to Cobh Town Council, which accommodates the Bishop’s plans to modify the Victorian interior designed by E. W. Pugin and George Ashlin. On June 2, 2006, when Bishop Magee was in Lourdes, An Bord Pleanála directs Cobh Town Council to refuse the Bishop’s application.
On July 25, 2006, Magee publishes a pastoral letter stating: “As a result of An Bord Pleanála’s decision, the situation concerning the temporary plywood altar still remains unresolved and needs to be addressed. The Diocese will initiate discussions with the planning authorities in an attempt to find a solution, which would be acceptable from both the liturgical and heritage points of view.”
A diocesan official explains that the bishop does not wish to institute a judicial review in the Irish High Court because of the financial implications of such an action and because of the bishop’s desire to avoid a Church-State clash.
Claims that the decision of An Bord Pleanála infringes the constitutional property rights of religious bodies are dismissed when it is revealed that the cathedral is the property of a secular trust established in Irish law. It is estimated that Bishop Magee spent over €200,000 in his bid to re-order the cathedral. The controversy is reported even outside Ireland.
A February 2006 article by Kieron Wood in The Sunday Business Post claims that Magee does not have the backing of the Vatican in his proposals for St. Colman’s. At the oral hearing of An Bord Pleanála he is requested to provide a copy of the letter from the Vatican in which he claims he has been given approval for the modernising of the cathedral. The letter that he produces is a congratulatory message dated December 9, 2003 to the team of architects who worked on the cathedral project from Cardinal Francis Arinze, Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. The whole text of this letter is then reproduced in a publication called Conserving Cobh Cathedral: The Case Stated pp. 108–109.
At a meeting of his liturgical advisers and diocesan clergy in November 2006, Bishop Magee speaks of his conversation with the Pope in the course of that ad limina visit at the end of the previous month. He mentions that he has been closely questioned on several aspects of his proposals to re-order St. Colman’s Cathedral. It is obvious, he says, that the Pope has been kept well informed of the entire issue.
Bishop Magee’s contribution to the ad limina visit concerns not only his diocese of Cloyne but also ceremonial matters on behalf of the Conference. He also facilitates the broadcasting, in coincidence with the visit, of a life of Pope John Paul I prepared some months earlier by Italian state television (RAI). In an interview published on the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire on October 26, 2006, Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone criticises the image that the programme presents of Pope John Paul I.
After the ad limina visit, Bishop Magee represents the Irish bishops at a meeting in Rome of the International Commission for Eucharistic Congresses.
In 2007, for the third year in succession, Magee fails to complete his personal schedule of confirmations in Cloyne diocese. On May 12, 2007, he is admitted to the Bon Secours Hospital in Cork to undergo a knee replacement operation. All official engagements are cancelled for the next ten weeks to allow him to recuperate, after which he resumes work.
In December 2008, Magee is at the centre of a controversy concerning his handling of child sexual abuse cases by clergy in the diocese of Cloyne. Calls for his resignation follow. On March 7, 2009, he announces that, at his request, the Pope has placed the running of the diocese in the hands of Dermot Clifford, metropolitan archbishop of the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly, to whose ecclesiastical province the diocese of Cloyne belongs. Magee remains Bishop of Cloyne, but withdraws from administration in order, he says, to dedicate his full-time to the matter of the inquiry. On March 24, 2010, the Holy See announces that Magee has formally resigned from his duties as Bishop of Cloyne. He is eventually succeeded by Canon William Crean whose appointment comes on November 25, 2012.
The subsequent report of the Irish government judicial inquiry, The Cloyne Report, published on July 13, 2011, finds that Bishop Magee’s second in command, Monsignor Denis O’Callaghan, then the parish priest of Mallow, had falsely told the Government and the HSE in a previous inquiry that the diocese was reporting all allegations of clerical child sexual abuse to the civil authorities.
The inquiry into Cloyne – the fourth examination of clerical abuse in the Church in Ireland – finds the greatest flaw in the diocese is repeated failure to report all complaints. It finds nine allegations out of 15 were not passed on to the Garda.
Speaking in August 2011, Magee says that he felt “horrified and ashamed” by abuse in his diocese. He says he accepts “full responsibility” for the findings. “I feel ashamed that this happened under my watch – it shouldn’t have and I truly apologise,” he says. “I did endeavour and I hoped that those guidelines that I issued in a booklet form to every person in the diocese were being implemented but I discovered they were not and that is my responsibility.”
Magee also offers to meet abuse victims and apologise “on bended knee.” He says he had been “truly horrified” when he read the full extent of the abuse in the report. However, a victim says apologies would “never go far enough.” “It’s too late for us now, the only thing it’s not too late for is that maybe there will be a future where people will be more enlightened, more aware and protect their children better,” she says. Asked about restitution for victims, Magee says it is a matter for the Cloyne Diocese.
Mitchel is born in Camnish, near Dungiven, County Derry on November 3, 1815, the son of a Presbyterian minister. At the age of four, he is sent to a classical school, run by an old minister named Moor, nicknamed “Gospel Moor” by the students. He reads books from a very early age. When a little over five years old, he is introduced to Latin grammar by his teacher and makes quick progress. In 1830, not yet 15 years old, he enters Trinity College, Dublin (TCD) and obtains a law degree in 1834.
In the spring of 1836, Mitchel meets Jane Verner, the only daughter of Captain James Verner. Though both families are opposed to the relationship, they become engaged in the autumn and are married on February 3, 1837, by the Rev. David Babington in Drumcree Church, the parish church of Drumcree.
Mitchel works in a law office in Banbridge, County Down, where he eventually comes into conflict with the local Orange Order. He meets Thomas Davis and Charles Gavan Duffy during visits to Dublin. He joins the Young Ireland movement and begins to write for The Nation. Deeply affected by the misery and death caused by the Great Famine, he becomes convinced that nothing will ever come of the constitutional efforts to gain Irish freedom. He then forms his own paper, United Irishman, to advocate passive resistance by Ireland’s starving masses.
In May 1848, the British tire of Mitchel’s open defiance. Ever the legal innovators in Ireland, they invent a crime especially for the Young Irelanders – felony-treason. They arrest him for violating this new law and close down his paper. A rigged jury convicts him, and he is deported first to Bermuda and then to Australia. However, on June 8, 1853, he escapes to the United States.
Mitchel works as a journalist in New York City and then moves to the South. When the American Civil War erupts, he is a strong supporter of the Southern cause, seeing parallels with the position of the Irish. His family fully backs his commitment to the Southern cause. He loses two sons in the war, one at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 and another at the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1864, and another son loses an arm. His outspoken support of the Confederacy causes him to be jailed for a time at Fort Monroe, where one of his fellow prisoners is Confederate PresidentJefferson Davis.
In 1874, the British allow Mitchel to return to Ireland and in 1875 he is elected in a by-election to be a member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom representing the Tipperary constituency. However, his election is invalidated on the grounds that he is a convicted felon. He contests the seat again in the resulting by-election and is again elected, this time with an increased vote.
Unfortunately, Mitchel, one of the staunchest enemies to English rule of Ireland in history, dies in Newry on March 20, 1875, and is buried there. Thirty-eight years later, his grandson, John Purroy Mitchel, is elected Mayor of New York City.
In 1802 Corry is dismissed from the Exchequer and replaced by John Foster (later Lord Oriel), he is awarded, however, £2,000 p.a. in compensation. In 1806 the changes in ownership of the Newry estates alters his position. The lands pass to a senior line of the Needham family and they support General Francis Needham, 1st Earl of Kilmorey, at the general election. Corry does not have the funds needed, in excess of £5000, to purchase a seat elsewhere. However, Lady Downshire is inclined to support the Grenville ministry and comes to a formal agreement with Corry to give him £1000 towards his expenses should he be successful in Newry, and, if not, to bring him in for another borough. He fails against the Needham interest in Newry, but a seat at Newport, Isle of Wight, is purchased for him, with £4000 from Lady Downshire, and he is appointed to the Board of Trade. Six months later Grenville’s ministry has fallen and there is another general election. Corry stands, again unsuccessfully, for Newry.
Corry is unmarried but has a long-term relationship with Jane Symms. They have three sons and three daughters. His daughter Ann marries Lt. Col. Henry Westenra, the brother of Robert Cuninghame, 1st Baron Rossmore. His residence in Newry is the Abbey Yard, now a school, and Derrymore House, Bessbrook, County Armagh, which he had inherited from his father and sold in 1810. It is now the property of the National Trust. During his life, a road is constructed from near the main entrance of Derrymore House around Newry and links up with the Dublin Road on the southern side of the town primarily for his use. This road subsequently becomes known as “The Chancellor’s Road,” as a result of his term as the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer. A local legend has it that the road is constructed after an incident in which Corry’s stagecoach is stoned while passing through Newry by people angry at an unpopular window tax he had introduced. The road has retained this name, but it is cut in half by the Newry by-pass in the mid-1990s, however, as a result of works associated with the new A1 dual carriageway, the two-halves of the road are now reconnected.
Corry dies at his house in Merrion Square, Dublin, on May 15, 1813, his 60th birthday. He is buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.
The Battle of Glentaisie is fought in the north of Ulster on May 2, 1565. The result is a victory for Shane O’Neill over the Clan MacDonald of Dunnyveg. The conflict is a part of the political and military struggle for control of the north of Ireland, involving the English and occasionally the Scots. Although the MacDonalds are a Scottish family, based principally on the island of Islay in the Hebrides, they have long been associated with the Gaelic polity rather than the Kingdom of Scotland.
O’Neill assembles his army for the attack on the MacDonnells at the tower house of Feadan, at Fathom Mountain, near Newry. Traditionally, he “kept Easter” at Feadan, and an assembly of his clan would be unremarked until its size draws notice.
The MacDonnells expect O’Neill’s sizeable army to take some weeks to reach their territory on the Antrim coast. They start gathering as many warriors in the Highlands and Islands as they can muster. However, O’Neill advances with unprecedented speed. Within a week his army arrives at Edenduffcarrick.
Sorley Boy MacDonnell gathers a small holding force at a forward base at Cloughdonaghy. He attempts to stop O’Neill’s advancing army at Knockboy, a wooded pass in the hills above Broughshane. O’Neill sweeps Sorley’s ambush away, takes Cloughdonaghy and sends a force of cavalry to seize James MacDonald of Dunnyveg’s recently constructed Red Bay Castle. With the landing beaches at Waterfoot and Cushendall now controlled by O’Neill’s army, the first several hundred of MacDonnell’s men are compelled to land farther north. They land at Ballycastle beach to await the locally raised MacDonnnell army. Their plan is to await the arrival of their brother Alexander, the MacDonnell seneschal of Cantyre, who is assembling a second army composed from late comers to James of Dunnyveg’s army.
O’Neill does not permit the MacDonnells any time for their reinforcement to arrive. His advance guard continues to press the retreating MacDonnell army, who fall back from the beach through Ballycastle. They are driven past the area of the modern Diamond and well away from the river Tow, denying them the necessary water supply for a sizeable army.
Both armies set up camp for the night. O’Neill’s army occupies land at the centre of modern Ballycastle, between the modern Diamond and the river Tow, giving them full access to water. The combined MacDonnell army of around five hundred men occupy the exposed higher ground at Ramon, the ridge at the head of modern Castle Street, Ballycastle, where the Presbyterian Church now stands, with only a small well for their needs.
At very first light, O’Neill attacks uphill with a sudden onslaught led by his heavy Gallowglassinfantry. By forgoing the customary exchange of spears, darts, and arrows by the light infantry kernagh and Scots archers that customarily precede the usually decisive deployment of the Gallowglass corrughadh, or battalions, O’Neill surprises the MacDonnell army. The MacDonnell leaders try to rally their men, but after a violent interlude of some confusion, they break and flee over Knocklayd mountain in the direction of Glenshesk, heading back toward the beach at Cushendun. James of Dunnyveg is seriously wounded in the early fighting and his brother Angus MacDonnell is killed.
The attempt to flee by the old mountain road between Greenan and Ballypatrick Forest in an attempt to reach a possible landing place for their birlinns at Cushendun beach is finally stopped at a hollow at Legacapple. Sorley Boy and James are both taken prisoner. James dies of his wounds two months later at Castle Crocke, near Strabane. Their brother Alistair Og MacDonnell had landed at Rathlin, with the final levies raised in the Highlands and Islands, reputed to be nine hundred men. However, in the immediate aftermath of O’Neill’s decisive victory, Alistair can achieve nothing without a base on the mainland. O’Neill marches on along the north coast to mop up the MacDonnell garrisons and deny Alistair any foothold from which to launch a MacDonnell recovery. Dunseverick and Dunluce fall within a few days, and Alistair returns to Scotland.
McParland holds a unique place in English football history as the first player in the game to score in and win both English major domestic knockout Finals. One of the finest headers and strikers of the ball of the past fifty years, he is regarded as one of the greatest players to represent both Aston Villa and Northern Ireland.
During his time with Aston Villa, McParland is influenced by Jimmy Hogan. He later wins the FA Cup in 1957, scoring twice in the final against Manchester United but also becoming involved in a controversial incident in which he shoulder-charges (at the time a legitimate form of challenge) the Manchester United keeper after only six minutes. This leaves United’s goalkeeper, Ray Wood, unconscious with a broken cheekbone. McParland’s two-goal haul is remembered fondly as an example of his all-round abilities as a player showcasing his diving header and volleying techniques.
McParland also wins the Second Division title in 1960 and the League Cup in 1961 while with Aston Villa. He is on the scoresheet for the second leg of the 1961 League Cup final, when Aston Villa overturns a 2–0 deficit against Rotherham United to win the second leg 3–0 at Villa Park, becoming the winners of the first Football League Cup.
Following Aston Villa, McParland joins local rivals Wolverhampton Wanderers for a brief period in 1962. Although he is only there for one season, he manages to score 10 goals in 21 games. The following season he moves on to Plymouth Argyle, his final English league club before hanging up his boots. In 1965, he is recruited to play for Toronto Inter-Roma FC of the Eastern Canada Professional Soccer League. He scores many memorable goals, especially one against the Hamilton Steelers to give his side the victory.
McParland represents Northern Ireland 34 times and scores twice in his debut against Wales in the 1953–54 season. He also stars for Northern Ireland in the 1958 FIFA World Cup in which he scores five goals and helps his team to the quarterfinals. France defeats Northern Ireland 4–0 in their quarterfinal match.
McParland holds the record for being the highest-scoring Northern Irish player in World Cup finals history.
In April 2015, the feature-length documentary Spirit of ’58 is screened as part of the Belfast Film Festival. It features McParland prominently alongside Billy Bingham, Billy Simpson, Jimmy McIlroy and Harry Gregg, the other surviving players at the time, as it tells the story of Northern Ireland’s journey throughout the 1950s under the managership of Peter Doherty, culminating in the 1958 World Cup.
McParland is the last surviving player from the 1957 FA Cup Final following the death of Bobby Charlton on October 21, 2023. Following the death of Billy Bingham on June 9, 2022, McParland is the last surviving member of the Northern Ireland squad from the 1958 World Cup campaign. He is one of the last surviving members of the 1958 FIFA World Cup.
The assault focuses on the English fort which sits at a bridge on the River Blackwater, marking the border between Counties Tyrone and Armagh. It is built by Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex, in 1575 as an outpost of English military strength in the heart of Gaelic Ulster, but also to secure the power of the main Irish ally in the region, Hugh O’Neill, Baron of Dungannon. The fort is composed of a square earthwork bawn “twelve score yards in circuit” reinforced by two bulwarks and punctuated with gun loops in its ramparts. In one corner stands a wooden tower, four stories tall, topped with a wooden walkway and a slate-covered building. It is accessed by two doors, one leading out onto the ramparts, another leading to a cellar. Each story has defensive firing loops, also known as spike holes. This tower overlooks a road and bridge across the river. At the other side of the river, on the Tyrone side, is a stone tower. The stone tower controls access to the bridge, as the road runs through it via large wooden doors.
Hugh O’Neill, Lord of Tyrone, is thought an ally of the English Crown and he is supported by the English authorities in Dublin as a counterweight to the power of other native lords in Ulster such as Turlough Lynagh O’Neill. However, encroachment by English authorities on the liberties of the native Irish lords in Ulster during the 1580s and early 1590s causes O’Neill to create an alliance of Irish lords, which look to throw off English rule with the help of Philip II of Spain. From April 1593, O’Neill orchestrates a proxy war against the English using Hugh Maguire, Lord of Fermanagh, and Hugh Roe O’Donnell, Lord of Tyrconnell. They engage the English in the west of Ulster while O’Neill, outwardly still loyal to the Crown, strengthens his power base in Ulster and subdues the Crown’s Irish allies in the north. The Irish lay siege to Enniskillen Castle and defeat an English force sent to relieve it.
O’Neill’s alliance is not limited to Ulster as he is allied to Fiach McHugh O’Byrne in Leinster. He has come under increasing pressure from Lord DeputyWilliam Russell‘s military expeditions into the Wicklow Mountains. In desperation, Fiach McHugh asks that Tyrone offer help or at least raid the northern Pale to draw Russell out of Wicklow. O’Neill requests a meeting with Russell to discuss how to proceed but this is dismissed by the Lord Deputy as a ploy to draw him out of O’Byrne’s lands. Therefore, to help O’Byrne, O’Neill makes his first open move against the Crown.
On the morning of Sunday, February 16, 1595, Art MacBaron O’Neill approaches the fort from the direction of Armagh with 40 men, escorting what appears to be two prisoners. As they cross the bridge one of the English warders notices the match cords of the Irishmen’s matchlock calivers are lit, a sign that they are ready to fire. The English open fire and MacBaron’s men force their way into the stone tower, but the English withdraw to the upper stories and prevent the Irish from taking the tower. Meanwhile, on the other side of the river, 200 Irish soldiers sweep over the earth ramparts and take the bawn. The English soldiers and their families retreat to the wooden tower. Defensive fire from within keeps the Irish back and twice the warders thwart MacBaron’s attempts to burn the position. Fifteen of MacBaron’s men are killed attempting to storm the towers, and eight more later die of their wounds. The stalemate lasts until five o’clock in the evening when MacBaron calls for a ceasefire. He offers the garrison terms for their surrender. The English, led by Edward Cornwall, are critically low on ammunition but still prevaricate until MacBaron threatens to burn the fort to the ground with all in it. The ward’s surrender is agreed and MacBaron guarantees their safe passage to Newry.
The loss of the fort is doubtless a military setback for the Crown, but of more significance is the presence of the Earl of Tyrone in person. According to the English commander, O’Neill arrives after the surrender and is outraged at the losses suffered in taking the fort and is angry that the defenders had not been executed. After the English soldiers and their families leave, O’Neill looks on as the bridge is demolished and the fort’s defence slighted. Up until this point there is no concrete proof that O’Neill was active in the attacks by Maguire and O’Donnell in the west of Ireland. Now there is indisputable proof that the Crown was at war with O’Neill.
(Pictured: The Blackwater Fort at present-day Blackwatertown in County Armagh, built by the Earl of Essex during a foray into Ulster in 1575 and captured and destroyed by the Irish in 1595. This pen and ink sketch measures 22½ by 16½ inches and is dated March 27, 1587.)
Blackham is born in London, England, on December 16, 1891. His father, William George Blackham, is an Ulster Protestant from Newry, while his mother is an Englishwoman named Evison Elizabeth Saunders. An uncle is Robert J. Blackham who is the Surgeon-General to the British Army in Ireland. The family are evangelical Protestants, against which he rebels. Having been brought up to take the Bible literally, he suffers a religious crisis upon the realisation his teachers at school do not. He finds the transition to adulthood difficult, particularly due to the early death of his father.
For a time, Blackham moves in socialist circles, under the influence of Ulster socialist Robert Wilson Lynd. However, upon the discovery that his father had been a Protestant who had been in favour of Irish home rule and also had some republican sympathies, he turns toward Irish nationalism.
Blackham becomes involved in the Gaelic League while in London. he Gaelicizes his name to Aodh Sandrach de Blácam or Hugh de Blácam, despite his non-Gaelic ethnic origin. He learns the Irish language from the essayist Robert Wilson Lynd. During this time, he seeks to synthesize his urge to reclaim his sense of Irish nationality with the works and thoughts of hardline Catholic author G. K. Chesterton. It is partially because of Chesterton’s influence that he converts to Catholicism, although the conversion of Protestant Irish Nationalists to Catholicism is common throughout the early 20th century. Another influence upon his decision to convert is his desire to marry Catholic Mary McCarville of County Monaghan.
In May 1914 de Blácam returns to Ireland and begins working as a freelance journalist. He joins the Enniscorthy Echo as a journalist in 1915.
During the Irish War of Independence de Blácam writes nationalist propaganda alongside Arthur Griffith and Herbert Moore Pim. He is interned by the British in 1919. During this time period he writes two political manifestoes: Towards the Republic; a study of new Ireland’s social and political aims (1918) and What Sinn Féin Stands For (1921). The two books argue that at their root, Catholic social teaching (CST) and Bolshevism are essentially identical and that Ireland, having only experienced feudalism and capitalism because of external forces, can skip many of the phrases normally described in the Marxist Trajectory of historical development and go straight to a soviet-type society, an idea not dissimilar to the two-stage theory. He imagines this soviet-type society to be an Irish-speaking decentralised rural cooperative commonwealth. Critics of Sinn Féin frequently cite his works as proof of the infeasibility of Sinn Féin’s aims.
De Blácam opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty and subsequently aids the Anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish Civil War. For this he is interned by the newly created Irish Free State in 1922. Following his release, he continues to pin his flag to the mast of Éamon de Valera and his newly formed Fianna Fáil party. He believes De Valera fully embodies his own political ideas.
During the 1920s de Blácam joins The Irish Times, which he later leaves to become editor of The Catholic Standard. For seventeen years he writes a feature in the Fianna Fáil aligned The Irish Press called “Roddy the Rover.”
It was also during the 1920s that de Blácam moves to Dublin, where he begins to move in the same circles as George Bernard Shaw, George Russell, and W. B. Yeats. He hopes all three men might one day convert to Catholicism as he did and is sorely disappointed when each do not. Upon the death of Yeats, he goes so far as to refer to Yeats’ poem as “Demonic.” He has similar hopes for Peadar O’Donnell but is similarly disappointed in his lack of interest in conversion.
In 1938 de Blácam publishes The Black North, a book which carries an introduction by de Valera. In the book he argues that Ulster Protestants are in actuality both Irish and Catholic, but they simply do not realise it. Among his arguments to support this idea are the suggestions that the presbyterian emphasis on self-government is derived from the Gaelic clan tradition, that presbyterian “kailyard” writers of rural nostalgia such as Lydia Mary Foster exemplify the naturally Irish piety and purity of her co-religionists, and that the fact that some workers commute from the Armagh borderland to work in Dundalk factories prove that the south is better off economically than the north.
It is suggested de Blácam is an influence upon de Valera’s 1943 broadcast “The Ireland That We Dreamed Of.” Politically he is highly considered about rural depopulation and is involved in a number of organisations seeking to end it. He advocates more economic autarky and cultural protectionism to combat rural depopulation and lamented urbanisation and industrialisation. He also tries to convince the Fianna Fáil executive that they should ban women from emigration as well as ban women from factories in order to force women to remain in rural Ireland. His ideas fail to impress the executive, with Seán MacEntee in particular standing in strong disagreement.
De Blácam is a member of the Fianna Fáil executive until 1947, when he defects to the upstart Irish Republican party Clann na Poblachta. For this move he is immediately fired from The Irish Press. He stands for Clann na Poblachta in the Louth constituency at the 1948 Irish general election but is not elected.
During the brief period in which Clann na Poblachta is in government, de Blácam serves as an official spokesman for the Department of Health and as a speechwriter to Noël Browne, the embattled Minister for Health.
De Blácam dies while working in the Custom House on January 16, 1951. His funeral is attended by many dignitaries including TaoiseachJohn A. Costello and former Taoiseach Éamon de Valera. He is buried in New Mellifont Abbey, County Louth.
The Battle of Moyry Pass begins on September 20, 1600, ending on October 9, in counties Armagh and Louth, in the north of Ireland, during the Nine Years’ War. It is the first significant engagement of forces following the cessation of arms agreed in the previous year between the Irish leader Hugh O’Neill and the English Crown commander, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex.
The battle is fought by the armies of O’Neill and Charles Blount, 8th Baron Mountjoy, a follower of the late Earl of Essex. Mountjoy is determined to pierce O’Neill’s heartland in central and western Ulster by the Moyry Pass. In the course of the two-week assault the English troops establish a garrison near Armagh, taking heavy casualties, and Mountjoy retires with difficulty to Dundalk.
Mountjoy’s strategy for putting down O’Neill’s rebellion is gradually to constrict his territory in Ulster with a ring of fortified garrisons on the borders. To this end, he lands seaborne forces at Derry in the north of the province and at Carrickfergus in the east of Ulster. In September 1600, Mountjoy moves north from Dublin and concentrates at Dundalk in order to mount an expedition further into Ulster and re-establish a garrison at Armagh, which position had been evacuated by the English Crown forces after O’Neill’s victory at the Battle of the Yellow Ford in 1598.
On September 17, 1600, Mountjoy sets out from Dundalk, intending to march to Newry and then on to Armagh. The Moyry Pass (or “Gap of the North”) is the sole point of entry to Ulster as much of the terrain is wooded and mountainous, and it has been well fortified by O’Neill with trenches and barricades. There are three lines of trenches, barricaded with earth and stone, and on the flanks the Irish have made further earth and stone works and “plashed” (twisted) the branches of low-growing trees in order to provide cover for themselves and prevent the English occupying the heights on either side of the Pass.
The English reach the pass on September 20 and set up camp just outside, to the south on Faughart Hill. Taking advantage of a misty day on the 25th, an officer named Thomas Williams (who had commanded the Blackwater Fort during the Battle of the Yellow Ford) makes a sortie into the pass. After heavy fighting he identifies the Irish defence works and returns to the English camp with 12 dead and 30 wounded. For six days heavy rain holds up the fighting, until the weather clears on October 2. The weather is important because the matchlock muskets of the day do not work in wet conditions. On October 2, Sir Samuel Bagnall leads his regiment of infantry into the Pass at the head of four other regiments. The English breach the first barricade, and Thomas Bourke’s regiment leads the way to the second and third lines of defence. The English take the second line only to find themselves in a trap, with gunfire concentrated from three sides. They try to dislodge the Irish from their remaining positions for three more hours before retreating, with the Irish in close pursuit. The English admit 46 killed and 120 wounded, but it is thought that they understated their losses throughout the campaign.
On October 5, Mountjoy sends two regiments on a flanking march over the hill to the west, with one further regiment supported by horsemen advancing up the centre of the Pass. No significant gains are made, and the regiments turn back, reporting casualties of 50 dead and 200 wounded.
By October 9 the privy councilorGeoffrey Fenton complains, “we are now but where we were in the beginning.” Mountjoy retires to Dundalk on either October 8 or 9, but on October 14 word reaches the English camp that O’Neill has abandoned the Pass and retreated to a crannog stronghold at Lough Lurcan. The most likely explanation for O’Neill’s withdrawal from his position of strength is that he is short of ammunition and food and fears a flanking attack on his rear from Newry.
Mountjoy occupies the Moyry Pass on October 17 and dismantles O’Neill’s earthworks. He marches on to Carrickban, just outside Newry, and by Sunday, November 2, sets up camp at Mountnorris, halfway between Newry and Armagh. There he builds an earthwork fort and leaves a garrison of 400 men under the command of Captain Edward Blaney. He then marches back to Dundalk via Carlingford, but is attacked on November 13 by O’Neill, close to the Fathom Pass. Mountjoys men force their way through, and the Lord Deputy claims the army lost 15–20 killed and 60–80 wounded, but a later report suggests the losses are much heavier, with 80 killed.
The battle of Moyry Pass is a stalemate as Mountjoy cannot take the Pass and O’Neill cannot keep it. Mountjoy does establish a garrison at Mountnorris, but has to retire to Dundalk after taking substantial casualties. Mountjoy claims his force lost only 200 men killed and 400 wounded in the fighting from September 20 to November 13, though this may be a considerable underestimate. More, he says, died of disease. The Irish casualties are given by the English as an incredible 900–1,200 killed and wounded, but this is questionable given that the Irish were in a strong defensive position of their own choosing, behind the protection of fieldworks. These figures probably say more about what Mountjoy wanted Queen Elizabeth I to hear than about the actual casualty figures. The following year Mountjoy builds Moyry Castle to secure the pass.
(Pictured: View of the entrance to the Moyry Pass looking north from Faghart Hill)
seamus dubhghaill 