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Historical Revisions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

Extract

An example of an inaccuracy that has been reproduced by successive historians is furnished by the date of birth of Hugh O'Neill, second earl of Tyrone. Cox, Leland, Plowden and Bagwell omit to mention a date. Mitchel implies that O'Neill was born in 1542 or 1543, Meehan in 1539 or 1540, probably on the authority of Peter Lombard, papal archbishop of Armagh in the first quarter of the sixteenm century. Dunlop gives the date as ‘ about 1540 ’ Yet references in the state papers prove conclusively that his birth could not have taken place until about ten years later. In a letter from Cecil to Challoner, written after the death in 1562 of Brian O'Neill, Hugh's elder brother, it is stated that ‘ there is still another brother alive, not yet twelve years old and so a candidate to the Earldom of Tyrone still exists ’. In a letter to Queen Elizabeth, written in 1587, Hugh O'Neill refers to himself as having been ‘ a child of tender years ’ in 1562, when his brother was murdered. In the same year Sir Henry Sidney wrote to Walsingham in the following terms: ‘ I had with me the young Baron of Dungannon, Shane's eldest brother's son, whom I had bred in my home from a little boy, then very poor of goods and full feebly friended ’. As Hugh O'Neill crossed to England in 1562, and lived in Sidney's house after that date, the year 1540 is obviously inaccurate. Cecil's evidence shows him to have been about twelve in 1562, which would make the year of his birth 1550, and, as this is supported by the other evidence referred to, we must place his birth a decade later than the year usually given.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1939

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References

page no 58 note 1 John Mitchel, Life and Times of Aodh O'Neill (ed. of 1845), p. 225.

page no 58 note 2 Meehan, C. P., The Fate and Fortunes of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel (3rd ed.), p. 315 Google Scholar.

page no 58 note 3 Peter Lombard, The Irish War of Defence, 1598–1600 (extract from De Regno Hiberniae … Commentarius, ed. and trans, by M. J. Byrne), pp. 27–8.

page no 58 note 4 Art. on Hugh O'Neill in DNB.

page no 58 note 5 Cal. S.P. For., 1562, p. 82. The italics are mine.

page no 58 note 6 Cal. S.P. Ire., 1586–8, p. 290.

page no 58 note 7 Cal. Carew MSS., 1575–88, p. 534. The italics are mine.

page no 59 note 1 Hamilton, Lord Ernest, Elizabethan Ulstery p. 53 (1919)Google Scholar.

page no 59 note 2 Ir. MSS. Comm., Commentarius Rinuccianus, i. 332–3Google Scholar.

page no 59 note 3 Ir. Book Lover, xxii. 4 (1934)Google Scholar.

page no 60 note 1 A Collection of such Orders and Conditions as are to be observed by the Undertakers upon the Distribution and Plantation of the Escheated Lands in Ulster (London, 1608 [–9]), reprinted in Harris, Hibernica (1770), pp. 123–30, and Hill, Plantation, pp. 78-89. ‘ The revised Articles of the Ulster Plantation, 1610’, ed. T. W. Moody, in Bull. Inst. Hist. Research, xi. 178–83 (1935). ‘A Project for the Division and Plantation of the Escheated lands in … Ulster ’ 23 Jan. 1609, printed in Harris, Hibernica, pp. 105–22 ; Cal. Carew MSS., 1603–24, pp. 13–22 (seriously inaccurate); Hill, Plantation, pp. 90–116.

page no 60 note 2 Cal. Carew MSS., 1603–24, pp. 48–9. Cal. S.P Ire., 1608–10, pp. 296, 300, 303–6, 458–60, 496v7. See also T. W. Moody, ‘ Redmond O'Hanlon ’ in Proc. Belfast Nat. Hist. & Phil. Soc., second series, vol i, pt. 1, pp. 19–20 (1937).

page no 61 note 1 TCD, MS.N.2.2, ff. 9–10.

page no 62 note 1 Cal. S.P. Ire., 1611–14, pp. 59–60.

page no 62 note 2 Ibid., pp. 66–7

page no 62 note 3 Steele, R. (ed.), Tudor and Stuart Proclamations, ii. 22 Google Scholar.

page no 62 note 4 Hill, , Plantation, pp. 451590 Google Scholar.

page no 62 note 5 BM, Add. MS. 4756, ff. 97V-123, 133.

page no 62 note 6 Cal. S.P. Ire., 1615–25, p. 244. Cal. Pat. Rolls, Jas. I, p. 443.

page no 62 note 7 Records of the Drapers' company of London, Manor of Drapers, B110. Records of the Fishmongers' company of London: minutes of the court of assistants, ii. 889.

page no 62 note 8 James I to lord deputy, 8 Sept. 1619, Marsh's Library, Dublin, MS.Z4.2.6, pp. 420-1.

page no 63 note 1 Cal. S.P. Ire., 1615–25, pp. 322–3.

page no 63 note 2 Ibid., pp. 518–20.

page no 63 note 3 Acts Privy Council, 1623–5, pp. 454–6 ; 1625–6, pp. 154–6. Cal. Pat. Rolls, Chas. I, pp. 100–3, 118-21. Cal. S.P. Ire., 1625–32, pp. 263–4, 334, 349–52. Tudor and Stuart Proclamations, ii. 30 Google Scholar.