The Second Desmond Rebellion (1579–1583) was the more widespread and bloody of the two Desmond Rebellions in Ireland launched by the FitzGerald Dynasty of Desmond in Munster against English rule. The second rebellion began in July 1579 when James FitzMaurice FitzGerald landed in Ireland with a force of Papal troops, triggering an insurrection across the south of Ireland on the part of the Desmond dynasty, their allies, and others who were dissatisfied for various reasons with English government of the country. The rebellion ended with the 1583 death of Gerald FitzGerald, 14th Earl of Desmond, and the defeat of the rebels.
The rebellion was in equal part a protest by feudal lords against the intrusion of central government into their domains; an Irish clan reaction to English policies that were destroying traditional Gaelic culture; and a religious conflict, in which the rebellion's leaders considered themselves defending Catholicism against religious persecution by a Protestant queen who had been pronounced a tyrant and a heretic in 1570 by Pope Pius V's bull Regnans in Excelsis.
The result of the rebellions was the destruction of the Desmond dynasty and the subsequent Munster Plantations – the colonisation of Munster with English settlers. In addition, the fighting laid waste to a large part of the south of Ireland. War-related famine and disease are thought to have killed up to a third of Munster's pre-war population.
Background
First rebellion, 1569–1573
The Munster branch of the FitzGeralds, known as the Geraldines, were holders of the title Earl of Desmond, which at the time of the rebellions was held by Gerald FitzGerald, 14th Earl of Desmond, referred to here as the Earl of Desmond.
The first Desmond rebellion (1569–73) had been an armed protest against English intrusion into the Desmond territories. Specifically it was against the creation of the office of "Lord President" (governor) in the province of Munster and the English pursuit of policies that favoured the FitzGerald's rivals, the Butlers of Ormonde, and various English colonists. The most pressing grievance of the Geraldines had been the government's arrest of Gerald the Earl and his brother John of Desmond in 1568 for their part in a private war against the Butlers in 1565, which had culminated in the Battle of Affane in County Waterford.
The First Desmond Rebellion was launched in 1569, in the absence of the Desmond leadership, by James FitzMaurice FitzGerald, the "captain general" of the FitzGerald army. That rebellion was quashed by the English crown forces and their Irish allies (primarily the Butlers, led by Thomas Butler, 3rd Earl of Ormonde), and ended in 1573.
Outcomes
The English response after the first rebellion was conciliation of the Geraldines. Fitzmaurice, the leader of the rebellion, was pardoned and the Earl and his brother John of Desmond were released from imprisonment and returned to their lands. As late as 1579, it looked most unlikely that the FitzGeralds would again challenge English rule in Munster. However, a combination of personal, economic, and religious factors, and the actions of James Fitzmaurice FitzGerald himself, led to an explosion of rebellion in July of that year.
Fitzmaurice, who had led the first rebellion, found himself without property and powerless after peace was restored. Lands that he had inherited were confiscated and colonised by English settlers. The Earl of Desmond was forbidden from exacting military service and quartering his troops on his dependants (a practice known as coyne and livery), and he was reduced to maintaining only 20 horsemen in his private service. This abolition by the government of private armies meant that Fitzmaurice, who was a professional soldier, was without a source of income.
Fitzmaurice was therefore impoverished, and in 1574 he was evicted by the Earl from lands he had been renting since 1573. On top of these discontents, Fitzmaurice also had a genuine commitment to the Catholic Counter-Reformation and a deep antipathy to Protestantism, which had been introduced into Ireland by the English. Fitzmaurice left Ireland for France in 1575, seeking help from Catholic powers to restart the rebellion.
Second rebellion
The factors which drove Fitzmaurice into rebellion also created a wide pool of potential rebels in southern Ireland. Firstly, the disbanded Irish soldiers from various lords' private armies faced destitution and even death in an English-ruled Ireland. In the wake of the first Desmond Rebellion, Henry Sidney, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, and William Drury, the Lord President of Munster, had up to 700 unemployed or "masterless" soldiers executed, judging them to be a danger to the public peace. The surviving mercenary soldiers in Munster would form the backbone of the coming rebellion. Secondly, many of the local Irish Lords felt that their interests were threatened by the English policy of plantations – confiscating land for which the owner did not have an English title and establishing English colonies on it. Thirdly, the imposition of seneschals, or English military governors, in various areas where the local leaders had previously been independent meant that some chieftains, such as Fiach MacHugh O'Byrne of the Wicklow Mountains, were already engaged in a low level war with the English authorities throughout the 1570s.
Finally, cultural and religious conflict also played a role in fomenting discontent. In the early 1570s, Sir John Perrot, the English Lord Deputy, had banned aspects of traditional Gaelic Irish culture, including Brehon law, bardic Irish language poetry, and Irish dress. In addition, the English had introduced Protestantism as the state religion in Ireland, whereas the majority of the population were Roman Catholic. This was an increasingly important proof of loyalty to the Dublin administration after the promulgation of Pope Pius V's papal bull Regnans in Excelsis in 1570, when the Papacy excommunicated Elizabeth and her officials. Fitzmaurice appealed to both of these sentiments, speaking only Irish, wearing Irish dress, and also championing the cause of the Counter-Reformation.
Aborted invasion of 1578
In exile in Europe from 1575, Fitzmaurice tried to get backing for a new rebellion. He intrigued at the French and Spanish courts for a foreign invasion of Ireland. However, the Habsburg King Philip II of Spain showed no interest in supporting him, as he was already overstretched fighting the Dutch Revolt in the Netherlands. Fitzmaurice had more success though at the court of Pope Gregory XIII, where he met with exiled English Roman Catholic priests such as William Allen and Nicholas Sanders who were seeking to invade England, depose Elizabeth, and restore a Catholic monarchy.
With the English adventurer Captain Thomas Stukley, Fitzmaurice planned an expedition which was to make Giacomo Boncompagni, the nephew of Pope Gregory, King of Ireland. This was supported by the English Catholics.
Stukley was provided by the Pope with infantry and sailed from Civitavecchia in Rome with 1000 men in March 1578, including pardoned highwaymen, musketeers, and some professional officers, including Hercules of Pisano and Sebastiano di San Giuseppe of Bologna. In Cádiz in Spain he added some Irishmen and King Philip II sent him to Lisbon to secure better ships and meet with Fitzmaurice. Having no ships to offer, King Sebastian of Portugal instead invited Stukley to join an invasion of Morocco, Stukley was killed there in August 1578 at the Battle of Alcácer Quibir, thus ending Fitzmaurice's initial plans for invading Ireland.
1579 invasion
Nicholas Sanders, Fitzmaurice, and others returned to Rome and formed a new expedition with Papal authority. With a small force of Irish, Spanish, and Italian troops, they set sail for Ireland in early June 1579 from Corunna in Galicia, Spain. The fleet consisted of Fitzmaurice's own vessel and three Spanish shallops. Fitzmaurice was joined by Matthew de Oviedo and by Nicholas Sanders as Papal commissary.
En route in the English Channel, they captured two English vessels and arrived at Dingle harbour (part of the area now known as County Kerry) on 16 July. On the 18th they cast anchor in the nearby small Smerwick harbour (now known as Ard na Caithne), where they established a defensive garrison at Dún an Óir (Fort of Gold, Spanish: Fuerte del Oro), an Iron Age promontory fort nearby. Nicholas Sanders paraded the Papal banner with some ceremony at Dingle and Fitzmaurice proclaimed a holy war sanctioned by letters from Pope Gregory. This was a very serious matter in 16th century thinking, as it released the Catholic subjects of Elizabeth I from their duty of obedience to her, on the grounds that she was a heretic (the Pope had excommunicated her in 1570). The fact that Fitzmaurice had openly challenged the legitimacy of the Tudor dynasty to rule Ireland meant that, unlike the first Desmond rebellion of 1569–1573, this one would be very unlikely to end with a negotiated peace.
The rebels were joined on 25 July by two galleys with 100 more Spanish troops.
Rebellion begins
Fitzmaurice's small force might well have been crushed rapidly had he not been joined on 1 August by John of Desmond. John Fitzedmund Fitzgerald, like Fitzmaurice, had been a soldier and had a large following among his kinsmen and the disaffected and unemployed soldiers of Munster. It was only after John's joining of the rebellion that it was joined by these soldiers in large numbers. John and his brother, James Fitzedmund Fitzgerald, the Seneschal of Imokilly, marked their entry into the rebellion by assassinating two English officials, Henry Davells and Arthur Carter in a tavern in Tralee.
John of Desmond and Fitzmaurice together commanded a force of over 3000 men, including a small number of European soldiers, and several thousand native Irish troops. The prospect of further continental reinforcements was hampered though, when Sir William Winter, on 29 July 1579, four days after the landing at Smerwick, seized the ships of the invasion force and cut off their sea-routes.
The Earl of Desmond, who was reasonably satisfied with the English settlement of the first rebellion, initially tried to stay out of Fitzmaurice's rebellion and attempted to raise the Geraldines to put it down. However, he managed to assemble only 60 men – in contrast to the thousands raised at short notice by his brother John, indicating that most of the FitzGeralds and their allies sympathised with the rebellion.
A number of the invasion force went to other parts of Ireland. A small number went to Carrigafoyle Castle on the southern banks of the River Shannon (in northern County Kerry), the seat of the Earl of Desmond. This contingent included an Italian engineer, Captain Julian, who set about perfecting the castle's defences.
Fitzmaurice himself mounted a sortie to Connacht to try to provoke rebellion there. However, he was killed in a skirmish with the forces of the Burkes of Clanwilliam on 18 August, after his men stole some horses belonging to Theobald Burke (a cousin of Fitzmaurice). This left the rebellion under the command of John of Desmond, now effectively the leader of the Geraldines.
The rebels were left in control of southern Munster and the English did not have enough troops to re-take it. Drury, the English Lord Deputy, marched 600 men to Limerick, where he was joined by Nicholas Malby, with a force of 1,100 English soldiers. Drury was in poor health and died shortly afterwards. He left the Crown forces under the command of Malby.
Gerald the Earl joins the rebellion
In late October, Malby marched through the Desmond territory, devastating the countryside there and demanded that Gerald the Earl of Desmond surrender his castle at Askeaton. Desmond refused and resisted when Malby tried to take the castle by force. William Pelham, the Lord Justice of Ireland, then proclaimed Desmond a traitor, meaning that he was to be captured and executed. This forced Gerald and the remaining FitzGeralds to join the rebellion.
The Earl assumed leadership of the rebellion in a spectacular manner. On 13 November 1579, he and his followers sacked the town of Youghal, massacring its English garrison, hanging the English officials there, looting the town, and abusing the civilian population. Desmond's force then blockaded the city of Cork before withdrawing westwards into the mountains of Kerry. MacCarthy Mor, meanwhile, chief of the MacCarthys, announced his joining of the rebellion by sacking Kinsale.
Spring 1580 campaign
The ferocity of Desmond's actions were repaid in kind by the Crown forces early in the following year. Thomas Butler, 3rd Earl of Ormonde, Sir William Pelham, and Sir George Carew were sent to Munster to subdue the rebels and proceeded to systematically destroy the Desmond lands in County Limerick, County Cork, and north County Kerry and to kill the civilians who lived there at random. These tactics were intended to cause so much economic and human damage to the Desmonds' followers that they would be forced to leave the rebellion. The Crown troops were not only English but also composed of Irish forces antagonistic to the Geraldines, notably, apart from Ormonde's followers, the over 1000 fighting men of the MacCarthy Reaghs of Carbery, and also the O'Driscolls. Hugh O'Neill, 3rd Earl of Tyrone, also led a contingent from his lands in Ulster.