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The Flight of the Earls, 1607

The Departure of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone

Apr 14, 2009 Joseph Allen McCullough

A few years after his defeat in the Nine Years War, Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone and many of his supporters fled Ireland.

The Nine Years War (Tyrone’s Rebellion)

In 1593, war erupted in Ulster in the north of Ireland, as the native Irish rebelled against the encroaching Englishmen and the English crown. The leader of this rebellion was Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, and descendant of the O’Neill clan which traced its ancestry all the way back to the great Gaelic warlord, Niall of the Nine Hostages. The rebellion lasted for nine years, during which O’Neill led the Irish to many great victories. Utilizing the Irish knowledge of the terrain, O’Neill focused on defensive guerrilla tactics to defeat the English armies. At one point, Hugh O’Neill was nearly king of Ireland. He had defeated an army under the Earl of Essex, and an allied force from Spain had landed in the south. Then, in 1603, Tyrone met the English in open battle on the field at Kinsale and was defeated.

The Flight of the Earls

Only a few days before the Earl of Tyrone surrendered, Queen Elizabeth died. Her successor, James I was more moderate and forgiving towards the Earl. The king allowed Hugh O’Neill to live, and even granted back a large portion of his land in Ulster. But something happened. On 4 September 1607, Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone; Rory O’Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell; and Cúchonnact Maguire, Lord of Fermanagh, boarded a boat at Rathmullen and sailed for Spain. They must have acted in a hurry because although they took much of their family with them, several members were left behind.

It is not known why these Irish lords left. Possibly they were involved in a conspiracy with Spain that was discovered. Possibly they thought they were going to be murdered by the English. It’s even possible that both of these stories are true.

In the end, the boat never reached Spain. It was blown off course and landed in France. When the news leaked out, the English government declared the lords traitors and demanded that France return them. France refused and instead packed the lords off to Rome, where they lived out their days apart from Irish and English politics.

The Ulster Plantation

As a direct result of the Flight of the Earls, the English crown seized thousands of acres of land in Ulster. It used this land to support the Ulster Plantation, a move to bring in English and Scottish settlers into Ireland. The Ulster Plantation met with mixed results and it helped created the problems that continue to plague a divided Ireland to this day.

For more information on any of these topics, see The Oxford Companion to Irish History, ed. S J Connolly, Oxford University Press, 1998

The copyright of the article The Flight of the Earls, 1607 in UK/Irish History is owned by Joseph Allen McCullough. Permission to republish The Flight of the Earls, 1607 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.