The Nine Years' War (May 1593 – 30 March 1603) was a conflict in Ireland between a confederacy of Irish lords (with Spanish support) and the English-led government. The war was primarily a response to the English Crown's advances into territory traditionally owned by the Gaelic nobility. It was also part of the broader Anglo-Spanish War and the European wars of religion.
The Kingdom of Ireland was established as an English client state in 1542, with various clans accepting English sovereignty under "surrender and regrant". By the early 1590s, widespread resentment against English rule developed amongst the Gaelic nobility, due to the execution of Gaelic lords, the pillaging of settlements by appointed sheriffs and Catholic persecution.
The war is generally considered to have started in May 1593, when Irish lord Hugh Maguire revolted against the appointment of Humphrey Willis as sheriff of Fermanagh. Subsequently an Irish confederacy, led by lords Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Hugh Roe O'Donnell, was formed to resist English incursions into their territory. Across 1593 and 1594, the confederacy utilised guerrilla warfare against royal forces in Ulster and northern Connacht. The confederacy won numerous victories against the royal army, such as the Battle of Clontibret (1595) and the Battle of the Yellow Ford (1598). By 1599, the war engulfed the entire island and took on a religious and nationalist dimension.
The confederacy suffered various military losses in 1600, such as the appointment of Charles Blount as Lord Deputy, the establishment of Henry Docwra in Derry and the defection of unsatisfied confederates. The confederacy were not able to secure Spanish reinforcements until the siege of Kinsale (1601–02), where royal forces decimated the confederacy. The war ended with Tyrone signing the Treaty of Mellifont (1603). In 1607, many of the defeated northern lords left Ireland to seek support for a new uprising in the Flight of the Earls, never to return. This marked the end of Gaelic Ireland and paved the way for the Plantation of Ulster.
The Nine Years' War was the largest conflict fought by England in the Elizabethan era and also its costliest. At the height of the conflict (1600–1601) more than 18,000 soldiers were fighting in the English army in Ireland. By contrast, the English army assisting the Dutch during the Eighty Years' War was never more than 12,000 strong at any one time.
Name
Early historians disagreed on the date that the war began. The confederates called it the "eleven years war" in a letter to James I following their surrender. The 17th-century historian Philip O'Sullivan Beare refers to the conflict as the "Fifteen Years War", considering it to have begun in 1588 with the arrival of the Spanish Armada in Ireland. Standish James O'Grady coined the name "Nine Years' War" in the 19th century as he considered the war to have started in 1594.
Contemporary historians consider the war to have begun in May 1593 with Gaelic lord Hugh Maguire resisting the occupation of Fermanagh. The historian James O'Neill has criticised the name "Nine Years' War" and characterises 1593–1594 as a proxy war which England did not yet recognise the scope of until 1594. Hiram Morgan has used the term "Tyrone's Rebellion" to refer to the war, foregrounding the importance of the Earl of Tyrone.
Causes
The Nine Years' War was caused by the clashes between the Gaelic Irish lord Hugh O'Neill and the advance of the English state in Ireland, whose control had expanded from merely the Pale to the whole of Ireland. In resisting this advance, O'Neill managed to rally other Irish septs who were dissatisfied with the English government and Catholics who opposed the spread of Protestantism in Ireland.
Rise of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, The O'Neill
Hugh O'Neill came from the powerful Ó Néill sept of Tír Eoghain, which dominated the centre of the northern province of Ulster. His father, Matthew O'Neill, Baron Dungannon, was the reputed son of Conn O'Neill the Lame, the first O'Neill to be created Earl of Tyrone by the English Crown. Matthew O'Neill had been appointed by Conn as his heir, whereas Conn's eldest surviving son Shane O'Neill was the preferred heir according to the Irish custom of tanistry. After a period of warfare, Shane had Matthew murdered and became O'Neill after his father died. After the murder of Matthew's first heir, Brian, the English authorities spirited the next heir Hugh out of Tyrone to be brought up with the Hovenden family in the Pale. At the parliament of 1585, Hugh O'Neill requested and was granted his English law birthright to the title of Earl of Tyrone. Prior to this and for several years afterwards Hugh O'Neill warred with the aging reigning chief of Tyrone, Turlough Lynagh O'Neill for control of Tyrone. Turlough died in 1595 allowing Hugh to be inaugurated "The O'Neill" against English wishes as this title was forfeited by him and his descendants. Hugh however had also ruthlessly murdered his chief competitor to the title, Shane's son Hugh Gavelagh O'Neill. He also had sub-chiefs who wouldn't toe the line murdered such as Phelim McTurlough O'Neill, lord of Killetra.
From Hugh Roe O'Donnell, his ally, Hugh O'Neill enlisted Scottish mercenaries (known as Redshanks). Within his own territories, O'Neill was entitled to limited military service from his sub-lords or uirithe. He also recruited his tenants and dependants into military service and tied the peasantry to the land to increase food production (see Kern). In addition, he hired large contingents of Irish mercenaries (known as buanadha) under leaders such as Richard Tyrrell. To arm his soldiers, O'Neill bought muskets, ammunition, and pikes from Scotland and England. From 1591, O'Donnell, on O'Neill's behalf, had been in contact with Philip II of Spain, appealing for military aid against their common enemy and citing also their shared Catholicism. With the aid of Spain, O'Neill could arm and feed over 8,000 men, unprecedented for a Gaelic lord, and leaving him well prepared to resist English incursions into Ulster.
Crown advances into Ulster
By the early 1590s, the north of Ireland was attracting the attention of Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam, who had been charged with bringing the area under crown control. A provincial presidency was proposed; the candidate for office was Henry Bagenal, an English colonist settled in Newry, who would seek to impose the authority of the crown through sheriffs to be appointed by the Dublin government. O'Neill had eloped with Bagenal's sister, Mabel, and married her against her brother's wishes; the bitterness of this episode was made more intense after Mabel's early death a few years after the marriage, when she was reportedly in despair about her husband's neglect and his mistresses.
In 1591, Fitzwilliam broke up the MacMahon lordship in Monaghan when The MacMahon, hereditary leader of the sept, resisted the imposition of an English sheriff; he was hanged and his lordship divided. There was an outcry, with several sources alleging corruption against Fitzwilliam, but the same policy was soon applied in Longford (territory of the O'Farrells) and East Breifne (Cavan – territory of the O'Reillys). Any attempt to further the same in the O'Neill and O'Donnell territories was bound to be resisted by force of arms.
The most significant difficulty for English forces in confronting O'Neill lay in the natural defences that Ulster enjoyed. By land there were only two viable points of entry to the province for troops marching from the south: at Newry in the east, and Sligo in the west – the terrain in between was largely mountains, woodland, bog, and marshes. Sligo Castle was held by the O'Connor sept, but suffered constant threat from the O'Donnells; the route from Newry into the heart of Ulster ran through several easily defended passes and could only be maintained in wartime with a punishing sacrifice by the Crown of men and money.
The English did have a foothold within Ulster, around Carrickfergus north of Belfast Lough, where a small colony had been planted in the 1570s; but here too the terrain was unfavorable for the English, since Lough Neagh and the river Bann, the lower stretch of which ran through the dense forest of Glenconkeyn, formed an effective barrier on the eastern edge of the O'Neill territory. A further difficulty lay in the want of a port on the northern sea coast where the English might launch an amphibious attack into O'Neill's rear. The English strategic situation was complicated by interference from Scots clans, which were supplying O'Neill with soldiers and materials and playing upon the English need for local assistance, while keeping an eye to their own territorial influence in the Route (present-day County Antrim).
War breaks out
In 1592, Hugh Roe O'Donnell had driven an English sheriff, Captain Willis, out of his territory, Tyrconnell (modern day County Donegal). In 1593, Maguire supported by troops out of Tyrone led by Hugh O'Neill's brother, Cormac MacBaron, had combined to resist Willis' introduction as Sheriff into Maguire's Fermanagh. After Willis was expelled from Fermanagh, Maguire, with the aid of MacBaron, launched punishing raids into northern Connacht, burning villages around Ballymote Castle. Maguire launched a more ambitious raid into Connacht during June, when he clashed with forces led by the governor of Connacht, Sir Richard Bingham, but the English were beaten back and Maguire continued to spoil thorough Roscommon before returning north. In response, the crown forces were gathered under the command of Sir Henry Bagenal, who launched an expedition into Monaghan, then Fermanagh, to crush Maguire and his allies, receiving his commission on 11 September 1593. Bagenal had under his command 144 horse, 763 foot, and 118 kern, to which O'Neill was to bring a further 200 horse and 1,200 foot. Bagenal entered Fermanagh on 22 September and was joined by O'Neill four days later. Unable to make a crossing of the River Erne, Bagenal and O'Neill marched (separately) northwards to the northern end of Lower Lough Erne. Blocking forces were posted by Maguire at the ford of Belleek, but these were overcome by Bagenal and O'Neill at the Battle of Belleek on 10 October.
Initially O'Neill assisted the English, hoping to be named as Lord President of Ulster himself. Elizabeth I, though, had feared that O'Neill had no intention of being a simple landlord and that his ambition was to usurp her authority and be "a Prince of Ulster". For this reason she refused to grant O'Neill provincial presidency or any other position which would have given him authority to govern Ulster on the crown's behalf. Once it became clear that Henry Bagenal was marked to assume the presidency of Ulster, O'Neill accepted that an English offensive was inevitable, and so joined his allies in open rebellion in February 1595, with an assault on the Blackwater Fort, which guarded a strategic bridge on the River Blackwater.
Later in 1595 O'Neill and O'Donnell wrote to King Philip II of Spain for help, and offered to be his vassals. Philip proposed that his cousin Archduke Albert be made Prince of Ireland, but nothing came of this. A truce in late 1595 was followed by the submission of Hugh Maguire in April 1596, and Tyrone promised to explain his conduct before the Queen in London, but the arrival of three Spanish envoys from Philip II in 1596 promising men and supplies ended any chances of peace. An unsuccessful armada sailed in 1596; the war in Ireland became a part of the wider Anglo-Spanish War.
Irish victory at Yellow Ford
The English authorities in Dublin Castle had been slow to comprehend the scale of the rebellion. After failed negotiations in 1595, English armies tried to break into Ulster but were repulsed by a trained army including musketeers in prepared positions; after a stinging defeat at the Battle of Clontibret, successive English offensives were driven back in the following years. At the Battle of the Yellow Ford in 1598 up to 2,000 English troops were killed after being attacked on the march to Armagh. The rest were surrounded in Armagh itself but negotiated safe passage for themselves in return for evacuating the town. O'Neill's personal enemy, Sir Henry Bagenal, had been in command of the army and was killed during the early engagements. It was the heaviest defeat ever suffered by the English army in Ireland up to that point.
The victory prompted uprisings all over the country, with the assistance of mercenaries in O'Neill's pay and contingents from Ulster, and it is at this point that the war developed in its full force. Hugh O'Neill appointed his supporters as chieftains and earls around the country, notably James Fitzthomas Fitzgerald as the Earl of Desmond and Florence MacCarthy as the MacCarthy Mór. In Munster as many as 9,000 men came out in rebellion. The Munster Plantation, the colonisation of the province with English settlers, was dealt a serious blow; the colonists, among them Edmund Spenser, fled for their lives.
Only a handful of native lords remained consistently loyal to either side, and loyalties were complicated by splits within clans. However all the fortified cities and towns of the country sided with the English colonial government. Hugh O'Neill, unable to take walled towns, made repeated overtures to inhabitants of the Pale to join his rebellion, appealing to their Catholicism and to their alienation from the Dublin government and the provincial administrations. For the most part, however, the Old English remained hostile to their hereditary Gaelic enemies. The English fortress at Castle Maine surrendered in November 1599 after a thirteen month siege.