It was not the English, however, but Hugh O’Donnell, a rival lord of neighboring Tyrconnell, who toppled Shane at the Battle of Farsetmore on May 8, 1567. In order to compete with the growing might of the government forces, Shane expanded the privilege of military service to include the peasantry, whom he equipped with firearms. In Ulster, the Lord of Tyrone, Shane O’Neill, declared his open defiance of the English in 1561. Both approaches were resisted by the Irish lords. English landlords made little distinction between native Irish and native Americans–both were regarded as’savages’ and a threat to be eliminated, either by being ‘civilized’ with English culture and Protestant religion, or by destruction. The loss of England’s continental possessions after the Hundred Years’ War, combined with the discovery of America, shifted English attention westward, renewing interest in the acquisition of land in Ireland as well as the New World. England’s adoption of Protestantism under King Henry VIII caused further alienation with the Gaelic-Irish and Anglo-Irish, who remained Catholic. That state of affairs was not tolerated after 1485, when the Tudors ascended the English throne and sought unchallenged control over the British Isles. Although they paid lip service to the government in Dublin and to the crown, the lords collected their own taxes, maintained their own courts of law and waged private wars with their own armies. The majority of Ireland consisted of a patchwork of lordships ruled by a collection of Gaelic-Irish and Anglo-Irish dynasties, the latter being descendants of the original 12th-century Anglo-Norman invaders who had adopted Gaelic culture. For the English, only anarchy and barbarism lay beyond the Pale (thus the origin of the phrase). Hugh O’Neill’s open defiance against the English at Clontibret escalated the rebellion in the province of Ulster into what the Irish would call the Nine Years’ War, a conflict that would engulf all of Ireland and affect its political and social structure to the present day.Īlthough England had long claimed Ireland for its own, actual control at the end of the 15th century was limited to the ‘Pale,’ an area not more than 20 miles in diameter around the city of Dublin in the eastern province of Leinster. Bagenal reported that the expedition had cost him a total of 43 men dead and 139 wounded, including Captain Cuney. During the next seven or eight hours, the English were engaged in a running fight over 14 miles, but they ultimately managed to break out of the trap. ![]() When Bagenal’s force marched back to Newry on May 27, O’Neill ambushed it at Clontibret, near the border of Monaghan and Armagh counties. The Irish did not press their advantage, however, and Bagenal was able push on to Monaghan’s garrison, which he provided with supplies and a company of fresh troops. In previous rebellions, such a show of force would have sufficed to scatter any Irish assault, but this time the 300 musket-armed Irishmen who lined up against the English were equally proficient in the use of their weapons. Consequently, the officers in the vanguard did not know what to do until Captain Richard Cuney, commanding one of the two Staffordshire companies present, engaged the enemy with 150 musketeers and pikemen. Expecting the Irish to attack the rearmost division of his column, Bagenal had stayed at the back. The English resumed their march toward Monaghan on the morning of May 26, but at Crossdall, just four miles from their destination, their vanguard came under attack by a large Irish force. Sir Edward York rode out of camp to parley with him, then returned to report that O’Neill had stated that by 10 the next morning, ‘it should be seen whether the Queen or they should be masters of the field and owners of Ulster.’ Bagenal’s suspicions about O’Neill were confirmed on May 25 when O’Neill rode up with a small troop of horsemen and began surveying the English camp at Ballymoyer, where Bagenal’s men were resting for the evening. Nominally, the Irish rebels investing the castle were led by Hugh Roe (or Red Hugh) O’Donnell, but rumor had it that they were actually being commanded by the Anglicized Irish lord on whom the English had counted to assist them against O’Donnell–Hugh O’Neill, the second Earl of Tyrone.Īs early as February 16, O’Neill was reported to have aided the rebel followers of his bastard brother, Art MacBaron, in their successful storming of the English fort at the Blackwater River northwest of Newry. On May 25, the 1,750-man force, under the command of Marshal Sir Henry Bagenal, had set out to resupply the besieged garrison at Monaghan castle some 20 miles to the west. ![]() ![]() It was a shaken and demoralized English column that returned to its northern Irish base at Newry on the evening of May 28, 1595. Nine Years' War: Battle of the Yellow Ford Close
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