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How the Flight of the Earls Changed Irish History Forever
The Flight of the Earls took place on September 4, 1607 when three prominent Gaelic noble families,those of Hugh O’Neill, Rory O’Donnell, and the Maguire clan, fled Ireland to escape feared arrest and seek Spanish assistance for resumption of hostilities against the British Crown. It is seen as the swansong for the Gaelic nobility in Ireland as it paved the way for the Plantation of Ulster.
Elizabeth’s Irish Wars
English army on the march in The Image of Irelande by John Derrick, 1581. Source: Edinburgh University Library.
The 1500s were a time of great flux in Ireland. Although nominally under English rule, only a small area around Dublin known as the Pale was directly administered by the Crown. The remainder of the island was practically autonomous, answering to either the descendants of Anglo-Norman lords or native Gaelic chieftains. The next century was to see a great struggle between these semi-independent chieftains with the last of the old Gaelic strongholds finally being conquered in the early 1600s.
The Norman lords, sometimes referred to as the Old English, were first to be defeated as powerful figures like Silken Thomas or the Earls of Desmond failed in their struggle to preserve their autonomy against the Crown. The struggle with the Gaelic lords took much longer despite them rarely presenting a united front, and at certain points in the 1590s almost the entire island was in a state of war with English control limited to Dublin and isolated towns and forts.
The war devastated the island and left no province untouched. With the native population temporarily subdued, the next stage of control could begin. Plantation as a Crown policy had been in force since the early 1500s. The aim was to settle Ireland with a loyal population that would either drive out or “civilize” the native Irish to make them speak English and observe British laws rather than their local Gaelic chiefs. Vast land grants were given to settlers, servitors, and loyal Irish at the expense of those who had fought against the Crown.
Controlling the North
Gaelic chiefs feasting in The Image of Irelande by John Derrick, 1581. Source: Edinburgh University Library
The 16th century witnessed the strengthening of English power in Ireland as the Crown attempted to subjugate the independent lords of the Gaelic nobility, in a process reminiscent of Scottish policy in the Highlands. These conflicts had culminated in the Nine Years War where the power of the Gaelic lords was finally broken. Those left had been granted a negotiated peace but they found their power much reduced as they were forced to accept English titles and law instead of the traditional Gaelic or Brehon law they had followed.
Traditional Gaelic society in Ireland (as well as the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland) had placed a great amount of power in the hands of local lords. The Tudors had followed a deliberate policy of Surrender and Regrant where a Gaelic lord would surrender his title and lands to the Crown only to be granted the lands back but with an English title, bringing them into the ranks of the English aristocracy and subservient to the English Crown.
In Ulster this policy was used to break the power of the chiefs, though some like Hugh O’Neill did their best to stall it by granting land to family and supporters rather than risk it being taken by British settlers. Land disputes began to arise and O’Neill along with other lords found themselves embroiled in legal challenges. In 1607 he was finally summoned to London to have his case adjudicated by the king. There were also accusations of plotting by Sir Arthur Chichester, the king’s lord deputy in Ireland.
The Flight
Ships in a Gale by Willem van de Velde the Younger, 1660. Source: National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
O’Neill set out on a journey to Dublin to sail to Britain but en route met a messenger from The Maguire and Tyrconnell (Rory O’Donnell), the other powerful lords in Ulster. They intended to flee Ireland to Spain and petition King Philip III for aid. O’Neill appears to have made a snap decision to return north and depart Ireland. He gave his own explanation that his remaining would have exposed him to his enemies as he would have been accused of complicity with the exiles and plotting to raise a rebellion while they gathered Spanish troops and supplies.
Rival accounts from then clash on the truth of this. Some say his enemies planned to have him rot in the Tower of London or be executed, while others believe he would have been released once the furor had died down. There is also the possibility that O’Neill had been planning this for years. He had requested a Spanish ship in 1602 before the surrender and again in 1604 said he would wait two years before making an attempt.
The journey had to be made in secret, a French ship took them from Rathmullan, a village in Lough Swilly in Donegal. They took with them their households and other minor Ulster nobility. It is debatable if the Flight was intended to be permanent as several left their wives behind in Ireland. Spain had been their initial destination, but the weather forced them to divert to France where they traveled to the Spanish Netherlands, while others continued further south to Italy.
Exiled in Europe
The Flight of the Earls by Henry Warren. Source: Meisterdrucke
The earls were initially welcomed by the Spanish but political changes were to dash their hopes. Spain and England had ended their long war in 1604 with a return to the status quo. Spain had agreed to halt any further military interventions in Ireland in exchange for a reciprocal agreement by England to stop sending military support to the Dutch Republic. Privateering by English ships would also stop, a welcome respite for the Spanish Habsburgs who relied on the wealth being transported across the Atlantic from their conquered colonies in the New World.
Although Spain was still sympathetic to the plight of Catholics in Britain and Ireland (just as England had been to Protestants in the Low Countries or France), it was unlikely to restart a costly war solely on religious principles. The conflict had been a huge financial burden for both states. It had been in the interests of Spain to aid the Irish in the 1590s when open warfare prevailed but their defeated allies had little to offer in 1607.
For most it was a life of exile, with both earls, O’Neill and Tyrconnell, dying in Italy. O’Neill continued to petition the Spanish until near his death, only halting when he was threatened with the loss of his pension. English spies kept a careful watch on him, especially in 1608 when a former Crown loyalist, Cahir O’Doherty, rebelled and sacked Derry. The English Crown briefly attempted a reconciliation in 1614 but O’Neill was to die in exile in Rome in 1616, never seeing Ireland again.
The Impact on Those Left
English officials parley with the Irish in The Image of Irelande by John Derrick, 1581. Source: Edinburgh University Library
For the Gaelic Irish, the Flight of the Earls was to have dramatic implications. It left Ulster open to plantation as the lands formerly ruled by the nobles were now deemed forfeited. The earls were seen as traitors and were deprived of their titles. These attainders were not recognized on the continent but it had an immediate effect in Ireland. Their lands were now confiscated and taken by the crown for plantation. Whatever the loss suffered by the nobility, the Plantation of Ulster was to have a dreadful impact on the Gaelic commoners in the province.
The lack of concerted local resistance to the plantations meant that they could proceed with little opposition. Huge swathes of land, nearly four million acres, were now owned by the Crown and the Plantation of Ulster could proceed in earnest. Prior to the Flight and O’Doherty’s rebellion, only a limited effort had been planned but now the scale of the ambition increased.
The Flight of the Earls cost the native population of Ireland dearly. Efforts had been made at plantations in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland but with little success. Land had been promised to those willing to ethnically cleanse the islands north of Ardnamurchan but there had been no takers. Merchant adventurers from Fife attempted plantation on Lewis between 1598 and 1609 but to little avail against the hostility of the local lords. By leaving their native lands, the earls had abandoned their people to a worse fate and changed the history of the north of Ireland forever.
The Flight’s Legacy
Flight of the Earls monument. Source: Donegal Public Art
If the lords had stayed, there is a possibility that the effects of the Plantation of Ulster might have been mitigated in a similar manner to that of the failed attempts at plantation in the Rough Bounds and the Outer Hebrides in the face of local hostility. Plantation efforts in Scotland frequently resulted in a shuffling around of Gaelic lords but in Ulster they were to see a massive population transfer and increase in urban settlement. The Flight of the Earls exposed the Gaelic population in Ulster to the plantations, leaving them with little legal protection.
Although the Crown had won the Nine Years War, Ulster and Ireland as a whole still remained a dangerous territory. The English administration could not simply sweep through fire and sword to drive out the native population for fear of another mass uprising. They had to take a more methodical approach and the continued presence of the Gaelic lords made the first few years very quiet in Ulster. The plantation and settlement only began at a large scale after the Flight of the Earls and the confiscation of their titles.
The Flight of the Earls is still commemorated but more so for the actions it would lead to. There has been much Romanticism about the end of the old Gaelic order, but all the nobles who fled had surrendered their titles to the English Crown and been regranted them despite using the Gaelic form with their own followers. Ireland in the 17th century would have many more struggles ahead.
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