The flight of the Earls

 

 

 

 

During Elizabeth I’s long reign her ambition was to anglicise Ireland.  By the 1590s she had been more or less successful with the exception of Ulster but Ulster appeared to be safe enough, cut off as it was from the rest of the country by a natural barrier of mountains and lakes.  So long as the Northern chiefs were quiet it was safe enough to leave them alone.

In Munster Elizabeth made a concentrated effort to anglicise the province.  Fighting dragged on for three years and almost all Munster was laid waste.  Although Elizabeth won this conflict it had the effect of uniting the native Irish and the Old English settlers, the descendants of the Normans, in their common faith of Catholicism.  This strengthened the government’s belief that to be Roman Catholic was synonymous with treason.  A land settlement in Monaghan had undermined traditional life there and the establishment of military garrisons at strategic points suggested that preparations were being made for an assault on the North.

Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone appeared to be loyal to the crown,  but it was around him that the Ulster chiefs  gathered.  He took the now illegal title “The O’Neill” and made alliances with Hugh Roe O’Donnell who was known to be  bitterly anti-English.  O’Neill and O’Donnell saw the Gaelic tradition of Brehon law, the Irish indigenous law system which dealt with family rights and succession, disappearing and the prospect of English law and the reformed church being imposed on Ulster.

In 1598 Hugh took to the field. Elizabeth was not worried and thought that he could be easily beaten but  “The Battle of the Yellow Ford” was to be one of the most significant on Irish soil.  Hugh O’Neill was prepared when a large English army entered Ulster and He dug a mile long trench between two treacherous bogs.  With himself at one end and Hugh O’Donnell at the other, the Ulstermen in the forests fired musket shot at the enemy so directing them into the ambush.  When  a cannon got stuck in the Yellow Ford the English leader rode back to help and was shot and mortally wounded.  The Irish closed in as the English threw down their weapons and fled wildly into the melee at the ford.  This defeat became a disaster when a soldier, filling his powder horn, managed to blow up two barrels of gunpowder.  It was the greatest victory the Gaelic lords had ever achieved over the crown.

The news of the victory spread rapidly and English rule was shaken to it’s foundations.  Elizabeth now appointed Lord Mountjoy as Lord Deputy of Ireland.  He was under orders from Elizabeth to

"burn all the dwellings and destroy the corn in the ground, when the plough and breeding of cattle shall cease then will rebellion end”

Mountjoy changed his tactics to starvation.  A terrible man-made famine spread across Ulster leaving the people starving and homeless.  At last at the end of her reign Elizabeth relented and offered a pardon to Hugh O’Neill, stripping him of his titles but leaving him vast tracts of land.

In 1607,the new Earl of Tyrconnell, Rory O’Donnell decided to flee from Ulster rather than have all his lands confiscated.  Meanwhile O’Neill had been summoned to London, a summons he ignored and the two great earls with about 100 of Ulster’s aristocracy  boarded ship in Rathmullen and sailed into exile.  This became known as the “Flight of the Earls” and it sowed the seeds for conflict in Ulster for centuries to come. 

Hugh O’Neill and Hugh O’Donnell were intent on keeping Ulster’s Gaelic traditions and religion intact as the rest of Ireland came under English law and the reformed protestant church.