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Tag Archives: Phillip III of Spain


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The Flight of the Earls

On September 4, 1607, Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Rory O’Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, and about ninety followers depart from Lough Swilly for the European continent. It is known in Irish history as the “Flight of the Earls.” Their permanent exile is a watershed event in Irish history, symbolizing the end of the old Gaelic order.

After the defeat at the Siege of Kinsale in 1601, Hugh Roe O’Donnell of Tyrconnell travels to Spain to seek support from Philip III. Unsuccessful, he dies in Spain and is succeeded by his younger brother Rory O’Donnell.

The O’Neills and O’Donnells retain their lands and titles, although with much-diminished extent and authority. However, the countryside is laid bare in a campaign of destruction in 1602, which induces famine in 1603. Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, is pardoned under the terms of the Treaty of Mellifont in March 1603 and submits to the crown.

When King James VI and I takes the English throne in 1603, he quickly proceeds to issue pardons for the Irish lords and their rebel forces. Already reigning as king of Scotland, he has a better understanding of the advantages from working with local chiefs in the Scottish Highlands. However, as in other Irish lordships, the 1603 peace involves O’Neill losing substantial areas of land to his cousins and neighbors, who would be granted freeholds under the English system, instead of the looser arrangements under the former Brehon law system. This is not a new policy but is a well-understood and longstanding practice in the Tudor conquest of Ireland.

On September 10, 1602, the Prince of Tyrconnell has already died, allegedly assassinated, in Spain, and his brother succeeds him as 25th Chieftain of the O’Donnell clan. He is later granted the Earldom of Tyrconnell by King James I on September 4, 1603, and restored to a somewhat diminished scale of territories in Tyrconnell on February 10, 1604.

In 1605, the new Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir Arthur Chichester, begins to encroach on the former freedoms of the two Earls and The Maguire, enforcing the new freeholds, especially that granted in North Ulster to the O’Cahan chief. The O’Cahan had formerly been important subjects of the O’Neills and required protection; in turn, Chichester wants to reduce O’Neill’s authority. O’Cahan has also wanted to remove himself from O’Neill’s overlordship. An option is to charge O’Neill with treason if he does not comply with the new arrangements. The discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in the same year makes it harder for Catholics to appear loyal to both the crown and the papacy. A lengthy legal battle however finds in O’Neill’s favor.

By 1607, O’Neill’s allies the Maguires and the Earl of Tyrconnell are finding it hard to maintain their prestige on lower incomes. They plan to seek Spanish support before news of the Battle of Gibraltar arrives. When their ship drops anchor, O’Neill seems to have joined them on impulse. He had three options:

  • Flee with his friends and hope for a reinvasion by Spain
  • Go to London and stay at court until his grievances are redressed
  • Do nothing and live on a reduced income as a large landowner in Ulster

Fearing arrest, they choose to flee to Continental Europe, where they hope to recruit an army for the invasion of Ireland with Spanish help. However, earlier in 1607 the main Spanish fleet in Europe had been defeated by the Dutch in the Battle of Gibraltar. But the oft-repeated theory that they are all about to be arrested contradicts writer Tadhg Ó Cianáin, the main historical source on the Flight, who says at the start of his account that O’Neill heard news of the ship anchored at Rathmullen on Thursday September 6, and “took his leave of the Lord Justice (Chichester) the following Saturday.” They had been meeting at Slane for several days, and there is no proof that warrants for his arrest have been drawn up, nor is it a hurried departure.

Also, as the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604) has been ended by the Treaty of London in 1604, King Philip III of Spain wants to remain at peace with England under its new Stuart dynasty. As a part of the peace proposals, a Spanish princess is to marry James’ son, Henry, though this never happens. Spain had also gone bankrupt in 1598. Tyrone ignores all these realities, remains in Italy, and persists with his invasion plan until his death in exile in 1616.

The earls set sail from Rathmullan, a village on the shore of Lough Swilly in County Donegal, with some of the leading Gaelic families in Ulster. Several leave their wives behind, hoping either to return or retrieve them later. They travel down Lough Swilly on a French ship. Their departure is the end of the old Gaelic order, in that the earls are descended from Gaelic clan dynasties that had ruled their parts of Ulster for centuries. They finally reach the Continent on October 4, 1607.

Their destination is Spain, but they disembark in France. The party proceeds overland to Spanish Flanders, some remaining in Leuven, while the main party continues to Italy. Tadhg Ó Cianáin subsequently describes the journey in great detail. While the party is welcomed by many important officials in the Spanish Netherlands, he makes no mention of any negotiations or planning between the earls and the Spanish to start a new war to regain the earls’ properties.

James I soon plants the O’Neill and O’Donnell lands with Protestant settlers, helping to sow the seeds of the present “Troubles.” O’Donnell dies in Rome in 1608 and O’Neill dies there also in 1616.

Ó Cianáin’s diary is important as the only continuous and contemporaneous account of the Flight. Its original title, Turas na dTaoiseach nUltach as Éirinn – the departure of the Chiefs of Ulster from Ireland – has been changed since the creation of the more dramatic phrase “Flight of the Earls” to the latter’s modern literal translation, Imeacht na nIarlaí.

The Flight of the Earls is a watershed event in Irish history, as the ancient Gaelic aristocracy of Ulster goes into permanent exile. Despite their attachment to and importance in the Gaelic system, the Earls’ ancestors had accepted their Earldoms from the English-run Kingdom of Ireland in the 1540s, under the policy of surrender and regrant. Some historians argue that their flight is forced upon them by the fallout from the Tudor conquest of Ireland, while others that it is an enormous strategic mistake that clears the way for the Plantation of Ulster.

From 1616, a number of bards outside Ulster have a poetic debate in the “Contention of the bards” and one of the arguments celebrates King James’s Gaelic-Irish Milesian ancestry through Malcolm III of Scotland. So, it is debatable whether the Gaelic order has ended or is evolving.

(Pictured: A bronze sculpture commemorating the Flight in Rathmullan, County Donegal)


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Hugh O’Neill’s Army Defeated at the Battle of Kinsale

On December 24, 1601, Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and his Spanish and Irish allies are defeated by the English at the Battle of Kinsale, one of the most important battles in Irish history. With the able assistance of his main ally, Hugh Roe “Red” O’Donnell, he is fighting to defend Gaelic Ireland against the forces of Elizabeth I of England.

O’Neill, along with O’Donnell, train an army and before long they find a powerful ally, King Phillip III of Spain. King Phillip is more than keen to help the Irish for two reasons. Firstly, he wants revenge for the famous defeat of his Spanish Armada in 1588 and secondly, he sees Ireland as a terrific foundation from which he can invade England.

King Phillip agrees to the request of O’Neill and O’Donnell to send a large army to help them defeat the English. For several years prior they had held the English at bay from the strongholds in Ulster, beating them at Yellow Ford in 1598 and Moyry Pass in 1600. But if they are to ever drive the English back across the Irish Sea, they have to come out from the hills and passes and meet them in open battle. King Phillip eventually sends his army of 4,800 men to Kinsale in County Cork, thirteen miles south of Cork, arriving on September 21, 1601. They are surrounded by the English army, led by Charles Blount, 8th Baron Mountjoy, and George Carew, 1st Earl of Totnes, the President of Munster.

The landing of the Spanish army is not where O’Neill would have hoped as he and O’Donnell are located in the northern county of Donegal. He had sent a message asking them to land further north, so they might join forces and march against the English, but that message either never arrives or arrives too late. Now O’Neill and O’Donnell face a long march to join with their allies, and the English are much closer to Kinsale than they.

Before the Irish can get there, Mountjoy’s army has laid siege to the Spaniards at Kinsale. To leave their northern strongholds holds many dangers for the Irish chieftains, but leave they do, marching their army 250 miles to Kinsale to put the future of Gaelic Ireland to the test on the battlefield, a march which many say is one of the greatest marches to date in Irish History.

On the morning of December 24, O’Neill moves to attack Mountjoy’s army. There is no coordination between O’Neill’s army and the Spanish in Kinsale, under Don Juan del Águila. The Spaniards make no attempt to attack in force or even create a diversion. O’Neill’s army, especially his cavalry, which perform badly, are not ready to meet the English in this sort of combat. The battle lasts only an hour, with Irish losses of 1,200 soldiers whereas the English lose only twenty. The critical battle of the Nine Years’ War has been lost.

Afterwards, O’Donnell flees to Spain where he lives comfortably until he dies a few months later, said to have been poisoned by a spy of Carew’s named Blake.

Hugh O’ Neill surrenders to the English in 1603 and later returns to Ulster, where Lord Mountjoy treats him respectively well. However, most of his lands and authority are non-existent. In 1607, he goes to Spain with a number of family members and supporters, most of whom are lesser chieftains, and this becomes famously known as the Flight of the Earls. The power of the Gaelic chiefs in Ireland become a thing of the past.


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The Retreat of Donal Cam O’Sullivan Beare

donall-cam-osullivan-beare

Donal Cam O’Sullivan Beare and his clan begin their epic march to Ulster on December 31, 1602. O’Sullivan has supported Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, in his fight against Elizabethan England‘s attempts to destroy Gaelic Ireland once and for all. The cause O’Neill and O’Sullivan fight for is probably doomed after O’Neill’s defeat in the Battle of Kinsale in 1601, but the fight goes on, nonetheless.

O’Sullivan Beare conceals 300 of the women, children and aged of his community in a stronghold on Dursey Island, but this position is attacked, and the defenders hanged. In what is later termed the Dursey Massacre, Philip O’Sullivan Beare, nephew of O’Sullivan Beare, writes that the women and children of the Dursey stronghold are massacred by the English, who tie them back-to-back, throw them from the cliffs, and shoot at them with muskets.

After the fall of Dursey and Dunboy, O’Sullivan Beare, Lord of Beara and Bantry, gathers his remaining followers and sets off northwards on December 31, 1602, on a 500-kilometre march with 1,000 of his remaining people. He hopes to meet Hugh O’Neill on the shores of Lough Neagh.

O’Sullivan Beare fights a long rearguard action northwards through Ireland, through Munster, Connacht and Ulster, during which the much larger English force and their Irish allies fight him all the way. The march is marked by the suffering of the fleeing and starving O’Sullivans as they seek food from an already decimated Irish countryside in winter. They face equally desperate people in this, often resulting in hostility, such as from the Mac Egans at Redwood Castle in County Tipperary and at Donohill in O’Dwyer’s country, where they raid the Earl of Ormonde‘s foodstore.

O’Sullivan Beare marches through Aughrim, where he raids villages for food and meets local resistance. He is barred entrance to Glinsk Castle and leads his refugees further north. On their arrival at Brian Oge O’Rourke‘s castle in Leitrim on January 4, 1603, after a fortnight’s hard marching and fighting, only 35 of the original 1,000 remain. Many had died in battles or from exposure and hunger, and others had taken shelter or fled along the route. O’Sullivan Beare had marched over 500 kilometres, crossed the River Shannon in the dark of a midwinter night, having taken just two days to make a boat of skin and hazel rods to carry 28 at a time the half-kilometre across the river, fought battles and constant skirmishes, and lost almost all of his people during the hardships of the journey.

In Leitrim, O’Sullivan Beare seeks to join with other northern chiefs to fight the English, and organises a force to this end, but resistance ends when Hugh O’Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone signs the Treaty of Mellifont. O’Sullivan Beare, like other members of the Gaelic nobility of Ireland who flees and seeks exile, making his escape to Spain by ship. O’Sullivan Beare settles in Spain and continues to plead with the Spanish government to send another invasion force to Ireland. King Phillip III gives him a knighthood, pension, and the title Earl of Bearhaven, but never that which he desires most, another chance to free his homeland.

Many generations of O’Sullivan Beare’s family later achieve prominence in Spain. In 1618, Donal Cam O’Sullivan Beare is killed in Madrid by John Bathe, an Anglo-Irishman, but the legend of “O’Sullivan’s March” lives on.

The Beara-Breifne Way long-distance walking trail follows closely the line of the historical march.