The 1641 Depositions and the Irish Rebellion

Annaleigh Margey, Annaleigh Margey, Eamon Darcy, Elaine Murphy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317322054
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The 1641 Depositions are among the most important documents relating to early modern Irish history. This essay collection is part of a major project run by Trinity College, Dublin, using the depositions to investigate the life and culture of seventeenth-century Ireland.

1 Owen Connolly, Hugh Og Macmahon and the 1641 Rebellion in Clogher

Andrew Robinson

On his death in 1629, Sir George Carew, former Lord President of Munster, bequeathed his manuscripts and books to Sir Thomas Stafford, his former secretary and possible illegitimate son.¹ Drawing upon these documents, Stafford edited and published Pacata Hibernia, which gave Carew’s account of the defeat of Hugh O’Neill in 1601 at Kinsale. According to Carew’s narrative, on 22 December,

Brian MacHugh Og MacMahon, a principal commander in the Irish army … sent a boy unto Captain William Taffe, praying him to speak unto the Lord President to bestow upon him a bottle of Aquavitae, which the President for old acquaintance sent unto him; the next night being the three and twentieth, by the same messenger he sent him a letter, praying him to recommend his love unto the President, thanks for the Aquavitae and to wish him the next night following to stand well upon his guard, for himself was at the Councell, wherein it was resolved, that on the night aforesaid (towards the breake of day) the Lord Deputie’s Camp would be assaulted, both by Tyrone’s armie (which lay at their backs) and by the Spanyards from the Towne, who upon the first Allarme would be in readinesse to sally. Whereupon the Lord Deputy gave order to strengthen the ordinary guards and put the rest of the army in readinesse.²

It is of remarkable symmetry that some forty years later, on the night of 22 October 1641, Brian’s son, Hugh Og MacMahon, drunkenly informed his foster-brother Owen Connolly, a Protestant convert, of a plot by disaffected Ulster Gaelic lords to capture Dublin Castle. Connolly ultimately turned informant, escaped whilst in the company of an intoxicated MacMahon in Dublin, and notified Sir William Parsons, one of the lords justices, of the design. This episode is a blend of ‘tragedy and farce, reinforcing in the eyes of many the crude stereotype of Irish Catholics as untrustworthy drunkards, inherently dangerous but ultimately incompetent’.³ Given the prominence in both Irish historical and political traditions of ‘turncoats’ and ‘traitors’, it is surprising that Owen Connolly has not gained greater notoriety in nationalist historiography for his betrayal not only of his foster-brother, but of Catholic Ireland more generally to the English authorities in Ireland.⁴ Instead, this tale of treachery and drunken ineptitude has been embellished over the centuries as the facts became obscured and the episode solidified into Catholic fatalism and Protestant triumphalism and celebration.⁵

This essay explores the relationship between Owen Connolly and Hugh Og MacMahon, demonstrating that despite the efforts of the Stuart crown, traditional Gaelic practices such as fosterage continued to bind local Gaelic septs together in familial co-dependencies in the Clogher diocese and in Monaghan in particular. The relationship between MacMahon and Connolly acts as a microcosm that demonstrates the consequences of social and religious conversion and the birth of an ethno-religious fault-line induced by plantation and the imposition of ‘British’ social, legal and religious practices. Connolly’s ‘betrayal’ of his foster-brother is further reflective of the wider strains put on localized relationships between Protestants and Catholics, Gaedhil and Gaill, where the conflicting aspirations between Gaelic ‘tradition’ and Protestant ‘modernity’ exploded in an ethnic bloodbath.

The Outbreak of the Rebellion

Owen Connolly’s account of his interactions with MacMahon in the days leading up to the failed Dublin Castle coup articulates the frustration of many in Gaelic Ulster at their reduced social status at the expense of the new Protestant settlers. According to Connolly, Hugh MacMahon complained that one Edward Aldrich, who once served as a justice of the peace alongside MacMahon, ‘gaue him not the right hand of fellowship neither at the Assizes nor Sessions’. Brendan Fitzpatrick doubted that MacMahon would start a rebellion because of an insult, claiming instead that this was a detail fed to an English audience who would have expected this sort of retort from a dispossessed Gaelic chief.⁶ Such a hypothesis is at odds with the contention that a physical insult motivated Sir Cahir O’Doherty to rebel in 1608, demonstrating the importance of honour amongst Gaelic magnates.⁷ MacMahon complained that Aldrich was ‘but a vintner or Tapster few yeers before’, highlighting his concern that his social position had been usurped by a Protestant ‘blow-in’, a member of a colonial interloper community that lacked the heritage and honour to hold prominent local positions. Owen Connolly’s retort to his foster-brother’s complaint, although completely sycophantic and probably for the benefit of those taking his statement, demonstrated his awareness of the seismic shift in Ireland’s social hierarchy. Connolly stated that he told MacMahon that ‘he would consider, that the Irish weer subordinate vnto the English in regard they were conquered by them’.⁸ Aldrich continued to climb the social strata and by the outbreak of the rising in October 1641, he was a sheriff for the county of Monaghan. He personified the imposition of English legal norms against the interests of the MacMahons and other Gaelic septs in the county, and it is therefore of little surprise that such legal administrators were the first victims of the rising in Monaghan.

On the morning of 23 October, Donn Carrough Maguire, Edmund Carrough Maguire, Redmond Maguire and Patrick Og Maguire, accompanied by thirty or forty others, arrived at the gates of Shannock Castle, County Fermanagh, with two bound prisoners who stood accused of stealing cows. They called upon Arthur Champion, MP for the county, to fulfill his roles as sheriff and justice of the peace and arbitrate in the dispute. This ruse concocted by the Maguires had the desired effect, and the ‘rude company’ threw off their cloaks to reveal hidden skenes and swords with which they killed not only Champion, but also Thomas Ironmonger, clerk of the peace for Monaghan, Humphrey Littlebury, sub-sheriff for Monaghan, and several others in the house. Champion’s widow Alice recalled that the rebels even murdered Henry and Joseph Cross, two tenants of the Fermanagh MP, on the instruction of Conor Maguire simply because of their association with Champion.⁹ On hearing what had happened in Fermanagh, Edward Aldrich immediately fled from his home in Monaghan to Cavan.¹⁰

With the brutal murders of Ironmonger, Champion and Littlebury, as well as the incarceration of Hugh Og MacMahon, much of the administration of local government in counties Fermanagh and Monaghan were removed within the first twenty-four hours of the rising.¹¹ This pattern of compromising key local authority figures through persuasion or forcible ejection was repeated across Ulster. James MacDonnell, justice of the peace in County Antrim, joined the insurgents, as did Michael Garvie, sub-sheriff of Newry. Other key officials in the town followed suit such as John White FitzNicolas of Carlingford, a searcher for the King’s Customs, and Patrick O’Hogan, former bailiff to Sir Arthur Terringham. Nicholas White, who had been brought up by Terringham, also joined the insurgency and was subsequently described by one deponent as ‘a most perfidious and false man to that his good Maister & the protestantes in the tyme of this wicked rebellion’.¹² Rory Maguire, MP for Fermanagh in the Irish parliament and brother of Conor, Lord Maguire, stood accused of hanging Eleazer Middleton, clerk of the peace, despite his having gone to mass and converted to Catholicism.¹³ Though Raymond Gillespie rightly points out that such breakdown of English legal authority contributed to mass panic amongst Protestants in Ulster, the potential influence of such legal apparatus can be over estimated.¹⁴ Peter Hill, high sheriff and provost marshall of County Down impanelled juries to sit in a local quarter session in Killyleagh, the seat of Viscount Clandeboye in the county. By 15 and 19 May 1642 writs were handed to Hill for the arrest of those suspected to be in rebellion. Those named were ordered to appear at one of the five courts kept by Hill in the county or risk being proclaimed ‘owtlawed for want of appearance and answereing our soueraigne lord the king of the treasons & present Rebellion whereof they stood indicted’.¹⁵ Unsurprisingly, the insurgents paid little heed to the lip service of the crumbling system of English law and order.

However, attacks on those who administered English legal machinery in Monaghan were not merely a calculated attempt to undermine its authority in the localities, but an opportunity to settle old scores and grievances. Driven by a long-held desire for revenge for the judicial execution of his brother, Art McBrian Savagh MacMahon slew Richard Blayney, a Monaghan justice of the peace and commissioner of the county’s subsidies. Before hanging him from a tree in the orchard of Monaghan Castle he asked Blayney, ‘doe yow remember how you hangd my brother and made me fly my Cuntrey for 3 yeares butt I will hange yow before yow goe’. MacMahon, ‘a wicked villaine whoe since dyed mad’, refused Blayney the presence of a Protestant minister, mocking his victim that ‘he goeth deepe enough into hell hee needs noe minister to plunge him deeper’. The corpse was then tossed into a nearby ditch and Lady Blayney, his mother, was unable to inter his body in the church and instead buried him in the castle orchard.¹⁶ Likewise Patrick Og O’Connolly took his opportunity for revenge on Luke Ward, a local magistrate, who had indicted him at the quarter-sessions before the rising. O’Connolly allegedly forced Ward to consume a vast quantity of alcohol, before hanging him from a suitable tree. The corpse was then stripped naked and his wife denied permission to give him a Christian burial.¹⁷ The Maguires responsible for the murder of Arthur Champion refused to allow him to be buried in the parish church in Clones, instead insisting that he be interred in an old chapel yard. However, on the very night of his burial, they exhumed the corpse and stole his winding sheet. Humphrey Littlebury, murdered in the same incident, suffered a worse fate: his body unburied and partly eaten by dogs before being thrown into a ditch.¹⁸ Such examples of post-mortem humiliation of Protestant corpses reveal a deep-seated hatred of individual victims. The evidence of Katherin Allen also suggests that many individuals accused of such violence and murder were driven by pure opportunistic criminality. Allen alleged that her husband was murdered on the opening day of the rising by Call O’Connell, Turlough O’Connell, Cahir O’Connell and various other insurgents near Clones. She stated that she had then been robbed by servants who claimed to be in the service of Sally MacMahon, housekeeper and aunt of Hugh Og MacMahon. Allen then employed a ‘reputed base daughter’ of Hugh Og to plead for the return of her stolen possessions, but the same servants saw their opportunity to rob her of her remaining goods and drove her livestock into MacMahon’s house.¹⁹

However, several depositions also suggest that some MacMahons and Connollys were quite capable of making the distinction between a general animosity towards the policies of the English legal and ecclesiastical administration and an aversion to individual Protestant settlers. Katherine O’Reilly, sister of Hugh Og MacMahon and mother of Phillip Hugh O’Reilly, is mentioned in two separate depositions for her part in saving some settlers from the wrath of the insurgents.²⁰ George Creighton, vicar of Lurgan, County Cavan, and later chaplain to James, Marquis of Ormond, noted that he and Katherine bonded over their shared ancestry to the Campbells of Argyll whilst taking care of several Protestant refugees in his home. These familial links convinced Katherine and Phillip O’Reilly to publicly proclaim that Creighton should not be harmed by the insurgents.²¹ Charles Campbell asserted that had it not been for the intercession of Rory MacMahon and his wife, he would have been hanged alongside other Scots settlers in Clones on 14 December 1641.²² Matthew Browne, however, gave a less favourable impression having observed MacMahon’s wife carrying a white staff in her hand to denote her position as provost marshall, and alleged she personally ensured that a Scotswoman by the name of Jane Hutchinson was hanged.²³ Francis Wyne informed the commissioners that he was saved by Turlough O’Connolly, a priest from Killeevan, County Monaghan, who ‘carried him 9 myles out of the towne to a private place of saffetie’.²⁴ Charity towards Protestant settlers was not uncommon in Monaghan with Robert Branthwaite naming an extensive list of those Catholic inhabitants of Carrickmacross, Monaghan, who sheltered their neighbours from the savagery of the rising. He named:

Patrick mc Cohoonatt mc Eward of Creemourne… Readmond Boorke his wife, and familie, seruant to the Earl of Essex Richard ffahy and his wife, he was my seruant Richard Taaffe and his wife, The widdow Caalan & her family, Brian reagh ô Duffy the Constable & his wife, Patrick Conoley…William Kelly his wife and family, George Plunckett his wife and family, George Plunckett and his wife, George Dol...